Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder was pretty big for me with regards to how it encouraged me to be more aware of opportunism amongst the people I work with in an organising capacity, not to mention being careful not to fall into such pitfalls myself.
A great many people in leadership positions will justify counterproductive actions and policies in the name of the “good of the organisation”, but this assertion doesn’t necessarily hold water in itself. Discerning the proper course of action in any given situation is often complicated and people can subscribe to positions that hold their organisation back, while fully believing that their chosen course is in fact prudent and correct.
Its that mentality that leads organisers to fall into bad practices in leadership, such as endlessly surrendering small battles here and there at the first sign of trouble in the name of protecting the organisation from greater losses. Knowing when to advance and retreat is a critically important skill, the judgement of which is rarely something that can be carried out in a mechanistic fashion; often times the relevant factors leading to success or failure are very difficult to distinguish and therefore much depends on the personal judgement of the leadership in charge. It isn’t a problem that can be solved with a simple calculus of your available resources. To give up whenever a problem becomes difficult is to foster a style of leadership that easily surrenders in the face of the slightest adversity. Such a leadership is incapable of leading the working class in any capacity, under whose leadership their organisations will be consistently chipped away at until functionally nothing remains.
That’s precisely the issue though; there is no sweet spot. There are only actions taken on a case by case basis. This is especially the case when the consequences of success or failure are whether or not someone has a roof to sleep under, as is so often the case in my union.
Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder was pretty big for me with regards to how it encouraged me to be more aware of opportunism amongst the people I work with in an organising capacity, not to mention being careful not to fall into such pitfalls myself.
A great many people in leadership positions will justify counterproductive actions and policies in the name of the “good of the organisation”, but this assertion doesn’t necessarily hold water in itself. Discerning the proper course of action in any given situation is often complicated and people can subscribe to positions that hold their organisation back, while fully believing that their chosen course is in fact prudent and correct.
Its that mentality that leads organisers to fall into bad practices in leadership, such as endlessly surrendering small battles here and there at the first sign of trouble in the name of protecting the organisation from greater losses. Knowing when to advance and retreat is a critically important skill, the judgement of which is rarely something that can be carried out in a mechanistic fashion; often times the relevant factors leading to success or failure are very difficult to distinguish and therefore much depends on the personal judgement of the leadership in charge. It isn’t a problem that can be solved with a simple calculus of your available resources. To give up whenever a problem becomes difficult is to foster a style of leadership that easily surrenders in the face of the slightest adversity. Such a leadership is incapable of leading the working class in any capacity, under whose leadership their organisations will be consistently chipped away at until functionally nothing remains.
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That’s precisely the issue though; there is no sweet spot. There are only actions taken on a case by case basis. This is especially the case when the consequences of success or failure are whether or not someone has a roof to sleep under, as is so often the case in my union.
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