Leadership

Revolutionary leadership is explicitly addressed in Lenin's masterpiece, What is to be done?. He starts from the description of a trade union leader: "The ideal leader, as the majority of the members of such circles picture him, is something far more in the nature of a trade union secretary than a socialist political leader. For the secretary of any, say English, trade union always helps the workers to carry on the economic struggle, he helps them to expose factory abuses, explains the injustice of the laws and of measures that hamper the freedom to strike and to picket (i. e., to warn all and sundry that a strike is proceeding at a certain factory), explains the partiality of arbitration court judges who belong to the bourgeois classes, etc., etc."

But, as Lenin continues, that is not enough. The revolutionary leader must be "the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat."

For Lenin, revolutionary leadership is not just a matter of individuals but of the revolutionary party. He emphasizes that they must be in touch with and serve as a leader for all oppositional strata of the society, not just the working class: "We must take upon ourselves the task of organising an all-round political struggle under the leadership of our Party in such a manner as to make it possible for all oppositional strata to render their fullest support to the struggle and to our Party. We must train our Social-Democratic practical workers to become political leaders, able to guide all the manifestations of this all-round struggle, able at the right time to "dictate a positive programme of action" for the aroused students, the discontented Zemstvo people, the incensed religious sects, the offended elementary schoolteachers, etc., etc."

Party leaders have traditionally been called "cadres," a French work, perhaps out of respect for the French revolutions. Mao Tse-Tung, in his revolutionary writings, put great emphasis on the training of many cadres: "In the final analysis, the question of training successors for the revolutionary cause of the proletariat is one of whether or not there will be people who can carry on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary cause started by the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not the leadership of our Party and state will remain in the hands of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not our descendants will continue to march along the correct road laid down by Marxism-Leninism..."

Mao continues that: "Our Party organizations must be extended all over the country and we must purposefully train tens of thousands of cadres and hundreds of first-rate mass leaders. They must be cadres and leaders versed in Marxism-Leninism, politically far-sighted, competent in work, full of the spirit of self-sacrifice, capable of tackling problems on their own, steadfast in the midst of difficulties and loyal and devoted in serving the nation, the class and the Party. It is on these cadres and leaders that the Party relies for its links with the membership and the masses, and it is by relying on their firm leadership of the masses that the Party can succeed in defeating the enemy."

Leadership for nonviolence promises to be an important part of revolutionary leadership in the future. As Mahatma Gandhi has pointed out, "It takes a fairly strenuous course of training to attain to a mental state of non-violence" and "it has to be a course of discipline though one may not like it, like, for instance, the life of a soldier." And, as Martin Luther King has emphasized, "The method is passive physically, but strongly active spiritually. It is not passive nonresistance to evil, it is active nonviolent resistance to evil."

For Che Guevara, the revolutionary leader must "combine an impassioned spirit with a cold mind and make painful decision without flinching." For this, revolutionary leader must act out of love: "Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealise their love for the people, for the most hallowed causes, and make it one and indivisible ... revolutionary leaders must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth to avoid falling into dogmatic extremes, into cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses."

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