this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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Anarchism
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They don't need to be formal leaders to be leaders. In a cooperative video game it's pretty normal to have everyone just milling about until one or two people take charge of organizing. You might have one person herd a party together while another informs on strategies and organizes people into roles. They're often not even the leader of the party as designated by the game; it's the social dynamic of deferring to someone who seems to know what they're doing that matters.
Here's the thing... leadership is never a formal thing. They even acknowledge this in military writings (though never directly) - even old Sun Tzu drew a distinction between someone who is followed due to trust and respect and someone who merely has a rank.
This presents us with a golden opportunity to redefine what this term means - not just for those familiar with radical politics, but for those who aren't, too. If our much stronger and sensible understanding of leadership contrasts starkly with the wishy-washy esotericism the term is ladden with in the hierarchical world - well, let's just say that you can't buy that kind of propaganda.
Even if someone merely has a rank, you still have to listen to them if they've been assigned authority over you within a system that coerces your compliance under a threat of some kind. What phrase would be better to describe this kind of authority?