Welcome aboard, Graeme.

You've offered a lot of good material to bounce off of and with which to deepen the inquiry. I'm going to take a deep breath, first, waiting for some other copublishers to jump in (they can be too shy sometimes).

In other words, I will temporarily flee, but in fleeing, seek a weapon.

To wit: Yes, I too am looking forward to the discussion of the "We Have No Leaders" doctrine... We'll get to that... And I'll offer a brief quotation here as an appetizer, because the weapon in my hand right now has the word "chief" and "leader" written on it:

"Warding off th formation of a State apparatus, making such a formation impossible, would be the objective of a certain number of primitive social mechanisms, even if they are not consciously understood as such. To be sure, primitive societies have chiefs. But the State is not defined by the existence of chiefs; it is defined by the perpetuation or conservation of organs of power. The concern of the State is to conserve. Special institutions are thus necessary to enable a chief to become a man of State, but diffuse, collective mechanisms are just as necessary to prevent a chief from becoming one. Mechanisms for warding off, preventative mechanisms, are part of chieftanship, and keep an apparatus distinct from the social body from crystallizing. (Pierre) Clastres describes the situation of the chief, who has no instituted weapon other than his prestige, no other means of persuasion, no other rule than his sense of the group's desires. The chief is more like a leader or a star than a man of power..."

- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Nomadology: The War Machine
(1986, Semiotext(e), New York)

Y'see, I think the "We Have No Leaders" doctrine invites and welcomes the formation of State power to corrupt revolutionary moments... Even an "affinity group," as fluffy as the title sounds, too often fast becomes an oppresive form of State power... In fact, the revolutionary war machines do require what Deleuze and Guattari called chieftanship to be able to ward off that internalization of State (static) forms of power (all artists and warriors have come up against "Temporary Autonomous Bureaucracies" dressed in alterna-clothing). Firstworlders get so damn confused, we've been indoctrinated with a false sense of "egalitarianism" that confuses "chiefs" and "leaders" who lead by a "sense of the group's desires" (think Marcos, but also of others) with men and women "of the State" (in all its micro and macro forms) who really are dangerous to democracy.

Thus, the confusion that paints legitimate, listening, chiefs and leaders (including perhaps book authors, singers, and athletes... and why not plumbers for that matter? After all, when the bathroom clogs, that kind of leadership, or lack of it, can make or break any home!) with tyrants of State in fact works to eliminate the very kind of legitimate leadership that is a Sina Qua Non for warding off and preventing State power from gaining traction.

It's not that "we have no leaders." It's that we have a different kind of leadership. As I look around me, I see it everywhere. Our denial of it is holding us back, and giving State power a foothold among movements that sincerely wish to destroy it, but don't know how.

Anyway, co-publishers: Show some leadership and chieftanship, please, and start tapping that keypad!