And another time he said :-
“I am not a labor leader. I don’t want you to follow me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.”

There is one political party that does take the issue of leadership seriously and since its formation over a hundred years ago , it has had no leader !!
Working class emancipation necessarily excludes the role of political leadership. Even if it could be conceived of a leader-ridden working class displacing the capitalist class from power such an immature class would be helpless to undertake the responsibilities of democratic socialist society. The SPGB is a leader-less political party where its executive committee is solely for housekeeping admin duties and cannot determine policy or even submit resolutions to conference (and all the EC minutes available for public scrutiny access on the web as proof of our commitment to openness and democracy ) . All conference decisions have to be ratified by a referendum of the whole membership . Even our General Secretary has no position of poweror authority over any other member . Despite some very charismatic writers and speakers in the past , no personality has held undue influence over the the SPGB .

It is NOT the party’s task to lead the workers in struggle or to instruct its members on what to do in trade unions, tenants’ associations or whatever , because we believe that class conscious workers and socialists are quite capable of making decisions for themselves. For the Trotskyist Lenininist Left, all activity should be mediated by the Party (union activity, neighbourhood community struggles , etc.) , whereas for us, the Party is just one mode of activity available to the working class to use in their struggles, a tail to be wagged by the dog.
The SPGB is like no other political party in Britain. It is made up of people who have joined together because we want to get rid of the profit system and establish real socialism. Our aim is to persuade others to become socialist and act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about the kind of society that we advocate. We reject the idea that people can be led into socialism. Socialism will not be established by good leaders but by thinking men, women and children. There can be no socialism without socialists.
Democracy and majority decision-making must be the basic principle of both the movement to establish socialism and of socialist society itself.
If a majority of workers really were as incapable of understanding socialism as many on the Left maintain , then socialism would be impossible since, by its very nature as a society based on voluntary cooperation, it can only come into being and work with the conscious consent and participation of the majority. Socialism just could not be imposed from above by an elite as envisaged by the Left . Democracy is not the mere counting of noses; it is the only principle of organisation compatible with a classless society.

A real democracy is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of leadership. It is about all of us having a direct say in the decisions that affect us. Leadership means handing over the right to make those decisions to someone else. We don’t vote for leaders to implement this or that decision; we vote according to our ideological inclinations to give them a “free hand” to make decisions. The point is that the very mechanism of decision-making we have today is a product of the social system we live under. The market economy, with its built-in contradictions and conflicting interests, has massively complicated the process of decision-making itself. It has moved it further and further from the ambit of “ordinary people” as the system itself has become more and more globalised. It is this that has made the paper pledges of our elected leaders seem increasingly irrelevant and ineffectual

Don’t get me started on teachers… It’s not a pretty sight.

I mostly agree with you, and tried to say so in my piece. By the word ‘leaders’, I meant all leaders, be they political leaders, military ones, bosses of all descriptions, pop stars who turn to saving the planet – anyone at all who would insist that others must follow their lead; they ALL cannot be trusted. What I think they CAN do, and are indeed welcome to do, is put across their point of view – try and persuade me with the power of their argument; and providing they allow me to also hear the counter-argument I will think about what they have to say.

You’re right about the priests too who, as a class, are no different to any other type of leader. Throughout history they have colluded and conspired with tyrants, lying to the people to achieve their common purpose – personal power and fortune.

David,

Thankyou for your input – I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. How can you not have leaders AND an absolute dictatorship?

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images/glbSSTSeaNorm.gif

Still time if we act now.

If you live on the coast read this and use your mind. Boring it will not be.

The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. [referring to the banks]

Before I knowed it, I was sayin’ out loud, ‘The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing.’ . . . . I says, ‘What’s this call, this sperit?’ An’ I says, ‘It’s love. I love people so much I’m fit to bust, sometimes.’ . . . . I figgered, ‘Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,’ I figgered, ‘maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe that’s the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an’ all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

Thank you for the sweeping generalties. Your essay lacks “just three basic components: information, information and information.”

Let me suggest just one reason that we need the worthless tripe that has and continues to become our world’s leaders. Without these self-serving, self-entitled connivers, we would have an absolute dictatorship on this planet.

You see, there is nothing but the wistful dreams of five-year-olds that thinks that most of humanity wants much more than to get from one day to the next, whether that is defined as food, shelter, and a loin cloth or Mickey D’s, a 1200 square foot ranch house, and underpants from Wal Mart.

No. We need the swells if for no other reason than that each wants the biggest yacht, the most gold, and the latest suit from Brioni’s all for themselves. And they have and always will commit fratricide to get what they see as theirs and theirs alone.

of course, the biggest lyiars/oppressors/usurpers were always the clergy.
at one time we had to be, i educe, very trusting/trustworthy/egalitarian to have adapted for survival. Not lying about where the deer, fish, cabbage is was essential for our ancestors’ survival.
but then came shamans [psychos]; followed by ‘religions’ [read:cults] and our pristine, fair, gregarious life had been destroyed; possibly for ever.

john, in your next piece on whatever subject, cats the widest look possible, please.
sorry to bring you up. And i sincerely hope you are not in any way smitten by my words. tnx

Three clowns at the gates of heaven
Three clowns died and are at the pearly gates of heaven. St. Peter tells them that they can enter the gates if they can answer one simple question.
St. Peter asks the first clown, “WHAT IS EASTER?”
The clown replies, “Oh, that’s easy, it’s the holiday in November when everybody gets together, eats turkey, and is thankful…”
“WRONG,” replies St. Peter, and proceeds to ask the second clown the same question, “WHAT IS EASTER?”
The second clown replies, “No, Easter is the holiday in December when we put up a nice tree, exchange presents, and celebrate the birth of Jesus.”
St. Peter looks at the second clown, shakes his head in disgust, looks at the third clown and asks, “WHAT IS EASTER?”
The third clown smiles and looks St. Pete in the eye.

“I know what Easter is. Easter is the Christian holiday that coincides with the Jewish celebration of Passover. Jesus and his disciples were eating at the last supper and He was later deceived and turned over to the Romans by one of his disciples. The Romans took Him to be crucified and was stabbed in the side, made Him wear a crown of thorns, and He was hung on a cross. He was buried in a nearby cave which was sealed off by a large boulder. Every year the boulder is moved aside so that Jesus can come out, and if He sees his shadow there will be six more weeks of winter.”

Watch the Senate on just health care then of course climate change and the third clown said it well and these people think of themselves as leaders of man, ok.