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By Root 680 0

leader for the crystallization of a mass movement. A genuine leader (a Socialist Churchill) at the head of the Labor government would have initiated the drastic reforms of nationalization in the fervent atmosphere of a mass movement and not in the undramatic drabness of Socialist austerity. He would have cast the British worker in the role of a heroic producer and in that of a pioneer in truly scientific industrialism. He would have made the British feel that their chief task is to show the whole world, and America and Russia in particular, what a truly civilized nation can do with modern methods of production when free alike from the confusion, waste and greed of capitalist management and from the byzantinism, barbarism and ignorance of a Bolshevik bureaucracy. He would have known how to infuse the British people with the same pride and hope which sustained them in the darkest hours of the war.

It needs the iron will, daring and vision of an exceptional leader to concert and mobilize existing attitudes and impulses into the collective drive of a mass movement. The leader personifies the certitude of the creed and the defiance and grandeur of power. He articulates and justifies the resentment dammed up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles the vision of a breathtaking future so as to justify the sacrifice of a transitory present. He stages the world of make-believe so indispensable for the realization of self-sacrifice and united action. He evokes the enthusiasm of communion—the sense of liberation from a petty and meaningless individual existence.

What are the talents requisite for such a performance?

Exceptional intelligence, noble character and originality seem neither indispensable nor perhaps desirable. The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants. This last faculty is one of the most essential and elusive. The uncanny powers of a leader manifest themselves not so much in the hold he has on the masses as in his ability to dominate and almost bewitch a small group of able men. These men must be fearless, proud, intelligent and capable of organizing and running large-scale undertakings, and yet they must submit wholly to the will of the leader, draw their inspiration and driving force from him, and glory in this submission.

Not all the qualities enumerated above are equally essential. The most decisive for the effectiveness of a mass movement leader seem to be audacity, fanatical faith in a holy cause, an awareness of the importance of a close-knit collectivity, and, above all, the ability to evoke fervent devotion in a group of able lieutenants. Trotsky’s failure as a leader came from his neglect, or more probably his inability, to create a machine of able and loyal lieutenants. He did not attract personal sympathies, or if he did he could not keep them.43 An additional shortcoming was his ineradicable respect for the individual, particularly the creative individual. He was not convinced of the sinfulness and ineffectuality of an autonomous individual existence and did not grasp the overwhelming importance of communion to a mass movement. Sun Yat-sen “attracted to himself … an extraordinary number of able and devoted followers, firing their imaginations with his visions of the new China and compelling loyalty and self-sacrifice.”44 Unlike him, Chiang Kai-shek seems to lack every essential quality of a mass movement leader. On the other hand, de Gaulle is certainly a man to watch. The leaders of Communist parties outside Russia, by their subservience