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A GENUINELY REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT WILL NOT HAVE A "BIG LEADER," AND HERE'S WHY
To see why, one must first keep in mind what exactly makes a revolutionary movement genuinely revolutionary.
A genuinely revolutionary movement is one that has an explicit goal--a vision of what it wants--that, when achieved, will mean the end of class inequality and the end of all the horrible things that upper classes do to remain in power over people.
A genuinely revolutionary movement knows why it is possible for it to win: because the values it aims to shape all of society by are the values with which most people are already trying to shape the little corner of the world over which they have any real control today--equality and concern for one another.
A genuinely revolutionary movement knows who its friends and potential friends are, and who its enemies are. It does not attack scape goats or good people who happen to be of the "wrong" race or ethnicity or religion.
The actual leaders of a genuinely revolutionary movement are all of the people in it who help their friends and neighbors see clearly the above things.
But a genuinely revolutionary movement will not have a BIG LEADER, meaning a nationally famous person with a platform from which to speak to and give genuinely revolutionary leadership to millions of people. As soon as such a BIG LEADER emerges, the ruling class will do whatever it takes to shut him or her up. Here are some of the things the ruling class can do.
* The ruling class can take away the BIG LEADER's platform (ban the person from the airwaves, shut down the internet if necessary, put the person under house arrest or in prison, etc.)
* The ruling class can bribe the BIG LEADER to change his/her tune to be mis-leadership that renders the revolutionary movement no longer genuinely revolutionary.
* The ruling class can threaten the BIG LEADER, with threats to his/her person or threats to his/her loved ones, to make him/her change his/her tune.
Such a threat is likely why Ted Kennedy, when he was running to be the Democratic Party candidate for President on a populist platform similar to that of Bernie Sanders, suddenly became tongue-tied, incoherent, vague and repetitive when T.V. interviewer, Roger Mudd, asked him the simple question, "Why do you want to be president?" Kennedy replied as if he didn't know why, saying at best that he wanted the country to "move forward." [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6qLFAnBIFg ] This is how one talks after receiving a mortal threat and reminder of what happened to one's older brothers when they displeased the billionaire ruling plutocrats.
Could this be why Bernie Sanders suddenly did a 180 turn-around to the consternation of his followers and lavished unseemly praise on Hillary Clinton, totally ignoring and refusing to make an issue out of the notorious voter fraud that denied him primary wins in states including California, where a law suit about this is under way?
* The ruling class can use character assassination to make followers no longer trust the BIG LEADER.
* The ruling class can use actual assassination to eliminate the BIG LEADER.
This is why we lost BIG LEADERS to assassination even when they were not explicitly revolutionary but simply effective in bringing millions of people together for widely shared goals the ruling class opposed, such as ending the Cold War (JFK), abolishing Jim Crow AND ending the Vietnam War (Martin Luther King, Jr., who towards the end of his life saw class, not race, as the dividing line) and uniting people of ALL races against racial discrimination (Malcolm X did this near the end of his life when, for example, he gave a speech to the virtually all white student body of Dartmouth College [I was in the audience] and received a standing ovation.)
Our genuinely revolutionary movement will thus never have a genuinely revolutionary BIG LEADER. We need to understand that the only "BIG LEADERS" we are likely to see will be ones that the ruling class wants us to have: mis-leaders.
We are going to have to use our own brains to provide ourselves, on the local level, the leadership we need. Everybody can help do this in one way or another.
Here is how everybody can provide some of the leadership we need.
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