In the following article, Fraser critiques “Notes on Leadership,” a
discussion paper issued by Lexington Socialist Feminists in 1975. These
Kentucky women were dissatisfied with both the “traditional
conception of leadership” and the New Left “radical democracy” pattern
because both pushed women into auxiliary roles. Rather than examining
the politics behind these organizational forms, the Lexington group
implied that leadership itself might be an oppressive concept.
Nevertheless, the writers were also concerned that feminists, like the
New Left, were having “difficulty building viable, long-term
organizations,” and they judged that “a major part of our dilemma
revolves around our ability/inability to come to grips with collective
leadership in practice.”
Source: Fraser, C. (1998). "Response to 'Notes on Leadership'". In Revolution, She Wrote (pp.79-72). Seattle, WA: Red Letter Press.
Transcription/Markup: Philip Davis and Glenn Kirkindall
Copyleft: Internet Archive (marxists.org)
2015. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
“Notes on Leadership,” in my opinion, raises the right issues and places them squarely in the proper context—the historical one. So I find myself in agreement with the approach, and with many of the particular formulations. However, I am not exactly sure just what the conclusions are, i.e., the solutions offered, and there seems to be—again, I am not sure!—a lingering aroma of what I call New Left Organizational Anarchism, which I do disagree with. Perhaps your intent was to be tentative and suggestive, rather than definitive, in order to better stimulate discussion; in any case, let me indicate the shape of my reflexes to what I think you are proposing.
You describe concepts of leadership as being polarized between traditional bourgeois structures, based on hierarchical power, and the relatively recent New Left rejection of all organizational forms in favor of collective decision-making and constant re-examination of policy. You imply that both poles are deficient, and that a new leadership model must be constructed.
A deeper thrust into political history would soon reveal that another model does exist, one that has proven its feasibility. I refer to the Leninist-Bolshevik practice of democratic centralism, which, in its undefiled (by Stalinism) form, is a marvelously flexible and practical process. In its real form, utilized honestly to serve revolutionary politics, it is never static, mechanical, rigid or mysticized. Instead, it is dynamic, sensitive, adaptive, and clearly designated as a tool, a means, a method for achieving goals and serving programs, and, moreover, a method which demands total participation and involvement in decision-making as well as operations.
Democratic centralism simply means that decisions are made by the total body, and that after decisions are made, the body acts in a centralized, united, uniform manner to achieve the agreed-upon goal. Disputes are suspended while the action is underway; afterwards, a free-wheeling and deep-going postmortem is in order, as a check upon the action and policy, and a basis for further decision-making.
As regards internal-vertical organizational forms, democratic centralism provides for levels of leadership, divisions of labor, and clear-cut area and project accountability; yet every leadership level—organizer, executive committee, subcommittees, boards, commissions, officers and staffs—is conclusively subordinate to the total membership, meeting in convention, or general meeting, or plenary session. And disagreements, rather than being squelched, are encouraged and even organized; groupings, tendencies, and factions are not only permitted but provided equal access to party publications and distribution resources, and organized, official discussion periods and voting periods are a regular part of the organization’s calendar of events.
I have worked under conditions of democratic centralism for most of 35 years, and it works! It provides brilliantly for collective thought and conclusion, vastly democratic processes, ample opportunity for questioning, challenging, debating and just plain reflection—at the same time that it insures effective and efficient administrative procedures. It offers both stability and change, both proven leadership and developing leadership, both self-discipline and a flowering of ability, talent and personality.
It should be apparent, by now, that I do not seem to have the same vibrations about certain concepts as you seem to! For instance, I am not opposed to Structure or Hierarchy or Dominance or Power or Organizational Methods—as such. These are things, processes, connoting no absolute right or wrong in themselves. It is actually the combination, the interrelations, the synthesis of these phenomena that counts. Hierarchy, Dominance, etc., are not bad, not masculine, not capitalist—they may or may not be, depending on who uses them how and for what purpose and to what effect. What’s wrong with “non-debatable goals,” “persuasion skills, ”“technical know-how,” personal style/personality/charisma, energy, rugged individualism??? Nothing is wrong, if these are used democratically, collectively, thoughtfully, considerately, and in a fashion guaranteed to protect individuality and human dignity.
The New Left’s rejection of these no- no’s in favor of endless touchy-feelie probes and shudders only led, as we know, to mutual suspicion, subjectivism as holy writ, clique politics, alienation, paralysis and finally collapse and even selfimposed, elitist death. Yet the antipathy to serious, welldelineated organization complete with a definitive leadership function lingers on, and I think this is too bad, because it is counterproductive.
In the feminist movement, we saw the convulsions of New Leftism running riot, rampant with emotionality for its own sake and irrationality for its own sake. Why is the human ability to rationally persuade, deal in abstractions (i.e., political theory), debate concepts, master technical skills and impress others relegated to the dustbin of “masculine” characteristics? This actually demeans women, who, in mixed organizations, easily equaled and often surpassed males in these capacities. The problem was not our inability to compete, but the entrenched sexism that caused a lack of recognition and a lack of respect for the skills and abilities of the women. So women, rebelling at the discrimination, seized on the forms of organization instead of the theory, program and political practices of mixed groups as the culprit, and committed the disastrous error of inventing a new ideology which began with organization theory or rather, anti-organization theory.
Now this, I submit, was irrational, if understandable and to a certain degree inevitable. This was illogical, ass-backwards, because organizational form must flow from program, must serve it, and not vice versa. If your goal is simply selfexpression, free of constraints, then endless rap-sessions are fine, but if social revolution is your bag, then leadership style and structure must be very different indeed.
When feminists enthroned “consciousness” as queen, they assassinated sociology, which is definitely objective, i.e., dealing with classes, races, sexes, ages, institutions, conditions, mass practices, and so on. In life and in politics, neither awareness nor social processes can exist independently of each other, and each takes on meaning and identity only in relation with the other.
Just as democratic centralism combines and reconciles authority with democracy, a viable leadership theory can absorb the interpenetration of hierarchy with equality, and provide for both at the expense of neither in a truly dialectical flow. Authority and collectivity need not be poles at either end of a linear continuum, need not be mutually exclusive contradictions; they can also be gradations on a spiral, reinforcing each other in a constant movement from lower to higher levels of functioning. And while our discussion here addresses a political rather than a philosophical issue, our method of thought is pertinent to our conclusions, and revolutionary, dialectical logic should prove far more helpful to us than the narrow constrictions of formal, academic logic still based on Aristotle’s limp old syllogisms.
I believe, in short, that what you want—freedom from bureaucratic high-handedness—and what I want—a disciplined combat organization capable of overthrowing capitalism, taking power, and building workers’ democracy on a global plane—can be achieved through the same organizational/ leadership constructs. If I truly believed that one had to be sacrificed to achieve the other, I would promptly become a Stalinist or shoot myself.
I have another problem with your paper. You do announce one “non-negotiable item”: you reject dominating patterns of relationships. And this you call the keystone of your“ideology.”
But what do you mean by “domination”? If it means refusal to be intimidated and silenced by superior brute force or fear of angering a leader, fine. But if it means refusal to recognize and respect manifestly superior logic, special experience, analytic consistency, firm programmatic grasp, proven proficiency—if it means, in effect, a rejection of everything we mean by Leadership (with a capital L!)—then you are again espousing not a new concept of leadership, but that tired old warhorse of anti-leadership. You want a leadership, in effect, that does not lead. A true leadership never dominates in the sense of behaving oppressively or relegating all leadership functions to itself; but it does dominate in the sense that it makes the rules as actions are implemented and it is a key watchdog of the doctrine and the principles of practice.
And isn’t this what we want women to be?
I appreciate that you aspire toward a cogent definition of leadership, but you simultaneously shy away from it, as in your plea for “situational” leadership, which always exists, but doesn’t resolve the problem you pose. Because who decides which approach and which people are best for which situations? We’re right back where we started.
I believe the most horrendous chapter of the women’s movement was that incredible period when anybody even remotely resembling a leader or spokeswoman, especially if they were recognized by the media, was viciously condemned, slandered, attacked and pilloried by other feminists. The movement has really never recovered from this blood bath, this excrescence of orgiastic matricide. We played the bosses’ game, the males’ game, in that reverse-macho exercise. We generated a sinister, Suddenly Last Summer cannibalism that graphically revealed the shocking, subterranean depths of our mass self-hatred, self-contempt and fiercely competitive“femininity.” And this is our real problem, I suspect, not the difficulty of creating a sensible and fair and meaningful and non-threatening leadership process.
Without leadership, there is no movement, no organization, no development of consistent theory, no division of labor, no refinement of practice, no stability, no training and demonstration, no growth.
Without leadership, nothingWithout leadership, guarantees that the program will be implemented, for everybody cannot do everything at the same time. We desperately need strong, rational, logical, persuasive, effective, energetic, rugged female individuals as leaders, just as we need ranks with the same qualities who love and admire and support and criticize their leaders as they themselves learn to develop and perfect leadership qualities. Nobody has to be dominated, or repressed, or intimidated, but everybody has to learn to take criticism and evaluation. Real leadership welcomes and organizes debate, criticism, hard looks at policy and practice; real leadership is nothing to fear, and something to tenderly nourish!
Yet feminists, socialist feminists, continue to fear being“dominated by abstraction or personalities.”
Permit me to indulge in a “masculine” epithet. I think this is ridiculous. Tragic. Blind. Women still fear other women. We want, I assume, to storm the barricades against sexism, racism, imperialism—and yet we’re afraid of each other.
But fear is not a program, much less an “ideology.” And fear is negotiable, i.e., discussible, analyzable, changeable. Neither men nor lack of organizational principles are the enemies here—we are the enemy, the enemy at home, the enemy within. We are divided, split, uncertain within our own minds on the propriety of women being leaders, and we can easily end up hoisted on the petard of our own roleschizophrenia, our own unconscious acting out of the feminine mystique.
I say to socialist feminists: please, enough already, let’s stop the carnage against ourselves. Leadership is a reality and an even greater potential; it is a burning need and we can never, never produce enough leaders. Let’s meet the paralyzing fear head-on, and say what we really know: the fear was a wish, and when we stop wishing to be dominated, we will stop fearing ourselves, and others, and we will welcome the leadership of other women, which is our only road to muscular mass action and fundamental social change.
One final comment, or elaboration on a previous point:
In the final analysis, discussions of leadership cannot productively occur in a vacuum, cannot be separated out of the context of program. If you decide to go underground, and resort to guerrilla tactics, you would have to adopt stringent military organizational forms. If you opt for revolutionary politics, it follows as the night the day that you must build mass combat organisms marked by a bold and forceful cadre. If you accept this reasoning, then strong leadership must be built, but strong leaders may well display tendencies toward personal domination. Indeed, if they didn’t, they probably wouldn’t be strong leaders. And this is where everybody else, the collective, comes in: the control function is squarely in the hands of the total group precisely in order to curtail bureaucratic and oppressive feints. This means the collective may not resort to “rejecting” dominating patterns by eliminating leadership, but is obligated, is responsible for exercising its muscle (so to speak!) to hold leadership in rein where indicated. And in this collective enterprise lies the ultimate leadership, the real heroines. This was Marx and Engels’ concept and it is mine. And I think it should be yours, because it is neither male nor female, bourgeois nor New Left, military nor anarchist. It is simply objectively true.
I sincerely hope I haven’t misinterpreted you, or overstated what I tend to see as your position. I’m in complete accord with your view that the women’s movement has an“important leadership role to play in regard to left politics.” Indeed, I believe we are destined to be the leadership of the radical movement, and that is why I feel so strongly and carry on so vociferously on the subject. Thanks again for asking me to contribute to the discussion.