Herbert Read on Leadership

THE late Richard Hunt, himself a major influence on the development of National-Anarchism, once made the curious observation that in tribal societies there would be "one word from the chief and everyone did as they liked." Professor Frederic C. Bartlett makes a very similar observation in his 1923 work, Psychology and Primitive Culture, in which he explains that the relationship between the chief and the tribe

"does not depend mainly upon domination or assertion, but on a ready susceptibility of the thoughts, feelings and actions of the members of the group. The chief, that is, expresses the group, rather than impresses it. This is a kind of relationship, entirely different, it seems to me, from dominance and assertiveness".

Herbert Read, addressing Professor Bartlett's comments in relation to the natural leader of the tribe and someone who is thus expressive rather than impressive, said:

"It is this second kind of leader, and only this kind of leader, who has a place in a community of free people. And who is the leader that expresses the thoughts, feelings and desires of the people—who but the poet and artist? That is the conclusion I have been leading up to. It is not a new idea—it is the conclusion that Plato came to, and that Shelley revived in this country: the idea that it is the man of imagination, the poet and philosopher above all, but equally the man who can present ideas in the visual images of painting and sculpture or through the still more effective medium of drama—the idea that it is this individual whom society should accept as its only leader."