Leaderless Revolution
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In the streets and squares of their capitals, people achieve unity, show defiance, and change societies. Mighty governments are usually no match for ordinary citizens when they show up in bulk quantities. For instance, Ukrainians, in orange dress, forced a new election in late 2004 and confirmed that indignation is the strongest political force in the world today. Kiev is not the only government to surrender to a mass outpouring of emotion. Governments in Manila, Belgrade, Lima, and Tbilisi all fell before as did the regime in Bishkek afterwards.
In these days of deepening pessimism in the West—caused by the rise of fanaticism, authoritarianism, and leftism—we need to remember that common folks still risk everything to have a greater say over their lives. Among all the gloomy trends today, there is one that carries a hopeful message. For want of a better term, it is "leaderless revolution."
First, we need a quick tour through political science theory. Every family, social club, and orchestra needs a maestro, bigwig, or kingpin. And, according to the experts, so does every political movement that hopes to succeed. Political scientists, who like to bring order to the inexplicable, give us lists of elements that must be present for "discontinuous political change" to occur. At the top of every such enumeration is strong and disciplined leadership.
We have Vladimir Lenin to thank for elevating the importance of leadership. The Russian’s most original contribution to political theory is his insight that revolutionaries can substantially increase their probability of success by meticulous planning and by paying attention to structure and administration. As Samuel Huntington wrote, the Russian "glorified" organization. These ideas have become so accepted since his time that contemporary theory holds that the existence of dissident leadership is a prerequisite for successful revolution.
A consequence of the triumph of this Leninist theory in the halls of political science is that we are often surprised by the success of mangy dissidents when they manage to overthrow governments. From the outside, those opposing established leaders almost always look weak and ineffectual until the eve of their victory. President James Earl Carter, Jr. was stunned by the collapse of the Shah’s regime in 1979. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent failure of Eastern European governments, George Herbert Walker Bush was taken aback when the Soviet Union itself disintegrated in late 1991.
Unfortunately, there is seldom visible evidence of change taking place within hardline polities. "I recall that my friends and I for decades were asked by people visiting from democratic Western countries, ‘How can you, a mere handful of powerless individuals, change the regime, when the regime has at hand all the tools of power: the army, the police and the media, when it can convene gigantic rallies to reflect its people’s ‘support’ to the world, when pictures of the leaders are everywhere and any effort to resist seems hopeless and quixotic?’ " wrote Vaclav Havel, who knows something about how people under communist governments think. "My answer was that it was impossible to see the inside clearly, to witness the true spirit of the society and its potential—impossible because everything was forged. In such circumstances, no one can perceive the internal, underground movements and processes that are occurring. No one can determine the size of the snowball needed to initiate the avalanche leading to the disintegration of the regime."
If the first President Bush looks obtuse for failing to see the weakness of the Soviet government, he can perhaps be excused because most people who lived inside that regime did not see what was happening either. Even after the loss of the Eastern European satellites, Soviet citizens despaired of getting rid of their government. They felt that change would not happen because there was no opposition, says Andrew Meier, a Time correspondent in Moscow at the time.
So Russians demonstrated that an organized opposition was no longer—if it ever was—a necessary condition for revolutionary change. The truth is that in Moscow spontaneous combustion had brought down a government, indicating that the model of political change was itself changing. Before the Rose, Orange, and Tulip "color revolutions" of the first decade of this century, Seattle had become the new template for political change. In 1999 small and amorphous "affinity groups" routed the police in that city, shut down the downtown area, and grievously wounded the World Trade Organization. "In the eyes of many activists," notes writer Austin Bunn, "the greater success of the battle of Seattle was the validation of their decentralized, leaderless model." "Our model of organization and decision making was so foreign to their picture of what constitutes leadership that they literally could not see what was going on in front of them," writes activist "Starhawk," referring to the Seattle police.
What worked in Seattle also produced a miracle in Manila in January 2001 when "People Power 2," a mass protest, brought down the corrupt government of President Joseph Estrada. Estrada was finished when an unknown Filipino sent out a text message urging people to congregate at a well-known intersection. Other citizens urged friends and relatives to join by sending other text messages ("Go 2 EDSA. Wear blck.") from cell phones. The crowd grew geometrically, beyond the expectation—or control—of anyone. Ringleaders of the anti-Estrada forces didn’t lead the protest as much as they took advantage of it. A demonstration that would never have happened in the past occurred spontaneously and grew electronically. Eventually the military, gauging public opinion by the size and fervor of the crowd, switched allegiance and forced Estrada to resign.
Of course, every revolution in history has had leaders. But today, their role is diminished as crowd formation is becoming the most important event in the dynamics of regime change. As Havel has written, "Without anybody organizing a demonstration, the passersby had turned into demonstrators who filled the main square in Prague." Leaders still make preparations, but they are often the captive of events once they begin to occur. Today, change creates leaders as much as leaders create change.
Leaders these days are the ones who best follow the mood of common folk. Of course, that has always been true, but now popular opinion counts for much more than it ever has. The combination of the concept of self-rule and the power of instant communications, which has never existed before in history, has magnified the strength of crowds in the streets. There is, in short, a new legitimacy for people taking power into their own hands. When people feel aggrieved these days, they act.
In the past, Mao Zedong built the Chinese Communist Party on the concept of isolation—separating China from the rest of the planet and the Chinese people from each other. The Internet and cell phones, however, are putting people back in touch, and thus making it possible for leaders to emerge from society. A person can reach out and speak to someone, tens of millions of them in fact. In 2006, 430 billion text messages whizzed across one country, China. According to journalist Allen T. Cheng, you can send out a message that will be read by 100 million Chinese citizens within an hour.
So thoughts—at least some of them—spread faster than in the past. Communications crystallize thinking faster than before with the inevitable societal consequences. That’s why we have sudden fads, accelerated social phenomena, and unexpected political unrest. If governments crumble—or "tip" to borrow a fashionable word—it’s because, at some point enough people think the same way. "Ideas sometimes seep into people’s minds almost imperceptibly and, over time, become embedded in a population’s collective psyche," writes Jean Nicol, a psychologist and South China Morning Post columnist. When perceptions shift, societies seemingly change overnight, but the transformation actually takes place out of sight over years—"in the shadows" as one Ukrainian commented at the time of the Orange Revolution.
In a war waged in the minds of a population, a thought can start out small and spread rapidly, says Hong Kong activist Christine Loh. A concept dominant throughout the remainder of the world—representative government, for instance—can sweep a people. When a notion is widely shared, it’s not surprising people react the same way. Therefore, it doesn’t take much to rouse a population. When people realize they’re not alone, they collectively engage in heroic acts even though none of them is brave on his own. Citizens lose fear, gain hope, and then let little stand in their way. So, one person, at the right moment, can move a nation.
Will the next person to do so be Chinese? James Mann apparently does not think so. The veteran journalist and author argues that China is too big to fail. There may be labor strikes in the country’s northeast or protests sweeping its big cities, but that won’t matter. "There will always be large numbers of regions that are unaffected," he writes in his fine new book, The China Fantasy.
Yet the world’s most populous state would appear to be especially vulnerable to a mass insurgency. Although it is true that dissident groups have yet to link up and Beijing’s opponents look weak and scattered, appearances reveal almost nothing about their ability to do battle with the Communist Party. For the Party, the most subversive aspect of the internet is that for the first time it is permitting ordinary Chinese to engage in nationwide conversations.
In a China of instant communications, emotions travel at extraordinary speed. Alliances can come together quickly, thereby making a broad coalition possible. In the future, groups can be separated geographically yet still act in concert. Connected by cell phone or pager, they "can be drawn together at a moment’s notice like schools of fish to perform some collective action." That’s already beginning to happen in Shanghai where organizers of housing protests in different parts of the city have made extensive use of cell phones for coordination. Texting spread rumors on SARS and forced the government to take action in 2003. We can only begin to think of the political and social implications of what can happen tomorrow. In 1999 a bank run in China was spread by rumors posted on the Internet. Why can’t revolution, another type of event fueled by emotion, be transmitted electronically?
In 2002 tens of thousands of workers across China protested against a single company, PetroChina. "It’s the first time we have seen protests occur in the same industry, over the same issues, in different cities in China," says Han Dongfang, the labor activist exiled from the Mainland. As Beijing creates nationwide organizations, it creates the possibility of nationwide dissent. Next time, "leaders"—many of them—can synchronize activities across China through the push of a button. How secure can the Communist Party be when each person can have 15 minutes of leadership?
Beijing works hard—and effectively—to prevent the emergence of opposition leaders. Yet it cannot jail everyone. And in an age of essentially leaderless revolution, it just might have to do that to prevail.
