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Thread: Anarchism and Leadership

Perhaps you have encountered one or both of these related ideas:

- That every society inevitably has leaders of some kind, or

- That every leader exercises command, so that

- No truly egalitarian society without hierarchy of command is likely or even impossible.

I have frequently seen these arguments deployed in an effort to invalidate anarchism. A summary would go something like this: “anarchism is impossible, or at least we have no evidence that anarchism could be possible, because even the most primitive tribe has chiefs or elders, and these leaders issue commands that must be obeyed.”

I thought it would be worth unpacking this a bit.

1/12
Jones
There's a little error...

> - No truly egalitarian society without hierarchy of command is likely or even impossible.

"impossible" -> "possible"

:)
Chad Meyers
Love the thread! I cited this phenomenon in my doctoral dissertation in China in order to explain Deleuze's flat ontology and draw out the chieftain's angle from Daodejing. Most ppl love the point that the graph Dao 道 is composed of the graphs going/walking 走 with the chief 首, so getting Dao involves getting the hang of non-coercive 无为 leadership and guidance, warding off hierarchical organization by surplus distribution, relinquishing ulterior motives, etc.
HeavenlyPossum
First, it’s worth noting that there are societies in which no one serves in any leadership role. These tend to be “immediate return” forager societies, in which people tend not to store any food but rather immediately eat what they collect.

Consider this description of decision making among the Ju/'hoansi people of southern Africa, a community that lacks anything like a “chief” role:

“The Ju/'hoansi are careful not to entrust key decisions to single individuals or small sub-groups. Leadership is temporary and knowledge-based, shifting even within a single conversation. Leaders refrain from stating their opinions early in the conversation, which could bias the opinions of others who have yet to speak. The role of a leader in group decisions is to guide deliberation, state the group's mood, and help finalise a decision. Leaders are respected, but they cannot coerce others.”

https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-ju-hoansi-can-tell-us-about-group-decision-making

2/12

What the Ju/’hoansi can tell us about group decision-making | Aeon Essays

Hunter-gatherer societies are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity
Vivek V Venkataraman (Aeon Magazine)
HeavenlyPossum
The author is using “leader” here colloquially and not to describe any formal or regularized role. Individuals might be particularly respected on a specific issue, or be particularly persuasive in a specific conversation, but no one holds a permanent role as a “leader,” much less commands coercive authority.

We often find a similar dynamic even in stateless societies that do have people serving in the roles of “chief” or another comparable position. Early in their work “The Dawn of Everything,” David Graeber and David Wengrow cite Jesuit missionary Le Jeune’s description of the Montagnais-Naskapi in 1642:

“They imagine that they ought by right of birth, to enjoy the liberty of wild ass colts, rendering no homage to any one whomsoever, except when they like. They have reproached me a hundred times because we fear our Captains, while they laugh at and make sport of theirs. All the authority of their chief is in his tongue's end; for he is powerful in so far as he is eloquent; and, even if he kills himself talking and haranguing, he will not be obeyed unless he pleases the Savages.”

3/12
HeavenlyPossum
This phenomenon, of leaders who can only persuade and encourage but not command, is incredibly common in the ethnographic record. Consider Marshall Sahlins’ description in his 1968 work “Tribesmen”:

“The chieftain is usually spokesman of his group and master of its ceremonies, with otherwise little influence, few functions, and no privileges. One word from him and everyone does as he pleases. But then, things usually manage to take care of themselves in communities of close kinsmen who know how to do right by each other and are usually so inclined - on pain of ridicule and a breakdown of reciprocity.”

https://jyvukugi.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/lowie-1948.pdf

4/12
HeavenlyPossum
In his 1948 essay “Some aspects of political organization among the American Aborigines,” anthropologist Robert Lowie surveyed the role of chiefs in many of the indigenous American societies that employed them:

“What, them, are the titular chief's positive attributes and functions? The outstanding one...he refrains from attempting physical force, because many societies conceive him primarily as a peacemaker. It would be a contradiction in terms for him to mete out punishment when his business is to smooth ruffled tempers, to persuade the recalcitrant, coax and even bribe the justly aggrieved into forgoing vengeance…

…A Sanpoil chief presents each litigant with a blanket; his Cree colleague is expected to give up thoughts of revenge on his own behalf, such as other men freely indulge. A Winnebago went still further: 'If necessary, the chief would mortify himself, and with skewers inserted in his back have himself led through the village to the home of the nearest kinsman of the murdered person.' By thus arousing compassion he hoped to avert a feud.”

5/12
HeavenlyPossum
In addition to serving as a community’s primary peacemaker, Lowie noted that chiefs were also expected to serve as the community’s primary source of charity:

“Besides being a skillful peacemaker, the ideal chief was a paragon of munificence....Thus a Namikuara headman constantly shares with his tribesmen whatever surplus of goods he may have acquired...A chief of the Tanaina Athabaskans (about Cook Inlet) feeds and clothes the destitute, provides for the households of men away on hunting trips, adopts orphans, and even pays for shamanistic services that are beyond a poorer tribesman's means.”

Finally, Lowie notes a role that we saw earlier with Le Jeune’s description of the Montagnais-Naskapi and Sahlins’ anthropological survey—that of the primary orator in a community:

“A third attribute of civil leadership is the gift of oratory, normally to be exercised on behalf of tribal harmony and the good old traditional ways.”

6/12
HeavenlyPossum
I don’t get the sense that the people raising objections like “even primitive tribes have chiefs” are aware that the role of chief, more often than not, entails enormous personal sacrifice, which warrants precisely no amount of command. A person who can induce other people to act only through persuasion is, in anarchist terms, just another person, regardless of any titular role assigned to them.

I get the sense that, for some societies at least, the very role of “chief” or “leader” is an artifact of an encounter with a hierarchical society, like ours, that mirror-imaged a leaderless society, effectively creating chiefs (on paper at least).

Much in the same way there are about 10 different rivers named “Avon” in the UK, because the word for “river” in Brythonic is “avon” and the invading Romans mistook this for a proper name, hierarchical states tend to mistake the first person they meet from an egalitarian society as its “leader.”

7/12
HeavenlyPossum
Consider this description of “leadership” on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, which was settled as a deliberately egalitarian society:

“Such a person may indeed become a leader by example if not by dictum, that is, his opinions and suggestions (by words or actions) might carry a little more weight than those of others…But even these would be among the first to assure the bewildered visitor that 'there ain't no headman on the island,' and their prestige and influence probably depended more than anything else on the fact that they did not appear to want positions of leadership. Even 'Chief' Willie Repretto, Frances Repretto's son-whose gentle manners contrast sharply with his powerful frame and booming voice and who was appointed 'chief' by one of the missionaries to Tristan-normally plays only a representative role vis-à-vis outsiders and does not wield any power in terms of determining the actions of the community or anybody in it.”

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.1970.72.6.02a00050

8/12
HeavenlyPossum
And therein lies the crux of the problem: we use words like “leader” and “authority” to categorize wildly unlike phenomena. We might call someone a “leader” if they successfully persuade other people to voluntarily agree, but as an anarchist I have no objection to something so fundamental to social life among free people.

As an anarchist, what I object to is *coercion,* not voluntary agreement through persuasion. Whether by an individual or an institution, the threat to freedom is from leaders who command through explicit or implicit threats of violence. A person who lacks any institutional control over violence, even if serving in a titular role such as “chief,” is not an “archos,” a holder of power, from which the term “anarchy” is ultimately derived and to whom an anarchist is ultimately opposed.

9/12
Eric Lawton
I had to take "leadership" courses when I was employed.

This is what they were about.

Coercion was never mentioned.
Mike Anderson
this role of leaders who guide decision making is also well understood in Western society. We call it "chairperson".
Murilo Trigo
One of the least discussed aspects of socialist libertarian organizing, but so vital
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