As a public transaction with history, leadership is really what makes the world go round. The idea of leadership affirms the capacity of individuals to move, inspire and mobilize masses of people in pursuit of an end. It sometimes serves good purposes, sometimes bad; but whether the end is benign or evil, great leaders are those who leave their personal stamp on history.
The very concept of leadership implies the proposition that individuals can make a difference. This proposition has never been universally accepted. From classical times to the present day, eminent thinkers have regarded individuals as no more than the agents and pawns of larger forces, whether the gods and goddesses of the ancient world or, in the modern era, race, class, nation, the dialectic, the will of the people, the religion of the times, history itself.
The thesis of historical determinism contends that against such forces, the individual dwindles into insignificance. This is crystal clear in Tolstoy’s War And Peace. Why, Tolstoy asked, did millions of men in the Napoleonic wars, denying their human feelings and their common sense, move back and forth across Europe slaughtering their fellows? “The war,” Tolstoy answered, “was bound to happen simply because it was bound to happen.” The previous history determined it. As for leaders, they, Tolstoy said, “are but the labels that serve to give a name to an end and, like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event. The greater the leader, the more conspicuous the inevitability and the predestination of every act he commits.” The leader, he said, is “the slave of history.”
Determinism, however, is not historical per-se. It takes many forms (i.e., Islam in Iran is the determinism of religion.) The idea of men and women as the slaves of history, though, runs athwart the deepest human instincts. Rigid determinism, of any kind, abolishes the idea of human freedom—the assumption of free choice that underlies every move we make, every word we speak, every thought we think. It abolishes the idea of human responsibility, since, it is manifestly unfair to reward or punish people for actions that are by definition beyond their control. No one can live consistently by any deterministic creed, for determinism is extremely susceptible to the cult of leadership.
More than that, history refutes the idea that individuals make no difference. Just suppose, for the sake of argument, that Adolf Hitler had been killed in the street fighting during the Munich Putsch of 1923, that Lenin had died of typhus during the World War I, that Fidel Castro was captured and killed by Batista soldiers in the Alegrěa de Pěo battle of 1956, that the assassination attempts on Shah’s life were successful, that Khomeini was executed -instead of being forced to exile- by the Shah’s regime in 1963, and that the 1980 attempt on Reagan’s life succeeded. Would all the 20th century contemporary events, in which these individuals were involved, end up the same way they did?
The history also provides us with the profound conviction that some great men have it in them to affect its (the history's) course. That the individuals, particularly the ones who understand the strategic importance of controlling the history, do, indeed, make a difference. “The notion that a people can run itself and its affairs anonymously,” wrote William James, “is now well known to be the silliest of absurdities. Mankind does nothing save through initiatives on the part of inventors, great or small, and imitation by the rest of us --these are the sole factors in human progress. Individuals of genius show the way, and set the patterns, which common people then adopt and follow.” Leadership, James suggests, means leadership in thought as well as in action.
The leaders in thought may well make the greater difference to the world. But, as Woodrow Wilson once said, “Those only are leaders of men, in the general eye, who lead in action.... It is at their hands that new thought gets its translation into the crude language of deeds.” Leaders in action, though, have to be effective in their own time, and they cannot be effective by themselves. They must act in response to the rhythms of their era. Their genius must be adapted, in a phrase of William James’, “to the receptivities of the moment.” Leaders are useless without followers. “There goes the mob,” said Ledru-Rollin, the French politician, hearing a clamor in the streets. “I am their leader. I must follow them.” Great leaders turn the inchoate emotions of the mob to purposes of their own. They seize on the opportunities of their time, the hopes, fears, frustrations, crises, potentialities. They succeed when events have prepared the way for them, when the community is waiting to be aroused,when they can provide the clarifying and organizing ideas.
Leadership ignites the circuit between the individual and the mass and thereby alters history. Leaders may alter the history for better or for worse. They have been responsible for the most extravagant follies and most monstrous crimes that have beset suffering humanity. They have also been vital in such gains as humanity has made in individual freedom, racial tolerance, social justice and respect for human rights. The dilemma, however, is that there is no sure way to tell in advance who is going to lead for good and who for evil. But the leadership candidate gallery of today’s world may be asked the fundamental question of: Why does the leader want to lead?
When leaders have as their goal the supremacy of a master class/race/religion, or the promotion of totalitarianism, or the acquisition and exploitation of colonies, or the protection of greed and privilege, or the attainment and preservation of personal power, it is likely that their leadership will do little to advance the cause of humanity. On the contrary, when their goal is the defense of freedoms of expression and opposition, the liberation of women, the enlargement of opportunity for the poor and powerless, the extension of equal rights to minorities of any kind, then it is likely that their leadership will increase the sum of human liberty and welfare.
That question should be followed by whether the leader leads by force or by persuasion? By command or by consent? Through most of history, leadership was exercised by the divine right of authority. The duty of followers, as non-equals, was only to defer: “Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.”
The greatest, and by far the most romantic, contemporary revolution promised to change all that and trumpeted: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”
Liberté and Fraternité (sense of belonging - Maslow) were echoed by all other revolutions to follow, including Khmer Rouge and the recent one in Iran. Did any of these revolutions succeed in gaining them? It all depends on whom you ask, for they are extremely subjective in nature.
This leaves us with Egalité. But equality in what? The idea that all people should have equal legal condition has undermined the old structure of authority and hierarchy. Alexis de Tocqueville points out in Democracy In America, that equality might mean equality in servitude as well as equality in freedom: “I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world, rights must be given to every citizen, or none at all to anyone save one, who is the master of all.” There is no middle ground “between the sovereignty of all and the absolute power of one man.” However, the revolution of equality that grants absolute power to one man will, inevitably, lead to “Fuhrerprinzip” and more terrible absolutism than the world had ever known.
What is left then? Sovereignty of all? Is it not what is called “Bedouin democracy?” For, once rights are given to every citizen and sovereignty of all is established, the problem of leadership takes a new form and becomes more exacting than ever before. It is easy to issue commands and enforce them by bayonets, boots, concentration, and censorship (Tammaddon-a-Bozorg, Velaayat-a-Faqeeh.) It is much harder to use argument and achievement to overcome opposition and win consent.
Sovereignty of all?
Yes.
But how is it managed (led)?
By what Alexander Hamilton calls “reflection and choice.”
This is just a slogan.
It very well may be. But lets consider its theory. Reflection and choice calls for a new style of leadership and a new quality of follower ship. It requires leaders to be responsive and accountable to popular concerns, and it requires followers to be active and informed participants in the process. This does not eliminate emotion from politics; sometimes it fosters demagoguery; but it is confident that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. It measures leadership by results and retires those who overreach or falter or fail. It is true that in the long run despots are measured by result too. But they can postpone the day of judgment, sometimes indefinitely, and in the meantime they can do infinite harm. It is also true that reflection and choice is no guarantee of virtue and intelligence in government. But by assuring the rights of opposition, it offers built-in resistance to the evils inherent in absolutism.
Leaders have done great harm to the world. They have also conferred great benefits. Even “good” leaders must be regarded with a certain wariness. Leaders are not demigods.. No leader is infallible, and every leader needs to be reminded of this at regular intervals. Irreverence irritates leaders but is their salvation. Unquestioned submission corrupts leaders and demeans followers. Making a cult of a leader is always a mistake. Fortunately hero worship generates its own antidote. “Every hero,” said Emerson “becomes a bore at last.”
The single benefit the great leaders confer is to embolden the rest of us to live according to our own best selves, to be active, insistent, and resolute in affirming our own sense of things. For great leaders attest to the reality of human freedom against the supposed inevitabilities of history. And they attest to the wisdom and power that may lie within the most unlikely of us. A great leader, said Emerson, exhibits new possibilities to all humanity. “We feed on genius. . . . Great men exist that there may be greater men.”
Great leaders, in short, justify themselves by emancipating and empowering their followers. So humanity struggles to master its destiny.