Avoiding Substitutionism in Working Class Revolutions

Introduction

Every revolution begins with a promise: the many will finally govern themselves. And almost every revolution confronts the same temptation: let a capable few take charge for now, just until the danger passes, just until the masses are ready.

That small concession has buried more emancipatory dreams than open repression ever did.

The tragedy of the Russian Revolution was not that workers rose up. It was that, in the name of defending the revolution, a minority consolidated authority above them. The language remained socialist. The structure hardened into hierarchy. The party substituted itself for the class, the state substituted itself for society, and a new ruling stratum emerged wearing the costume of liberation.

If your movement seeks genuine working class emancipation, this history is not an artifact. It is a warning label.

The central strategic challenge is not only how to defeat the existing system, but how to prevent your own structures from crystallizing into a new one. The real question is this: how do you sustain mass participation without creating invisible hierarchies that quietly govern in the shadows? The thesis of this essay is simple and demanding. A movement that wants freedom must design itself as a living laboratory of decentralised sovereignty, constantly disrupting its own tendencies toward substitutionism.

The revolution is not only what you fight. It is how you fight.

The Substitutionist Trap: When the Few Replace the Many

Substitutionism is the quiet belief that someone else can make history on behalf of the masses. It appears reasonable, even compassionate. If workers are exhausted, fragmented, or misled, then perhaps a disciplined minority must act for them.

This logic is older than the twentieth century. It lurks in every theory that assigns historical destiny to a party, a vanguard, or a central committee. The danger is not merely authoritarian personalities. The danger is structural. Once a minority assumes responsibility for directing the revolution, it develops interests in preserving its directing role.

From Revolutionary Minority to New Ruling Layer

In Russia, workers created soviets, councils rooted in factories and neighborhoods. These were organs of direct participation. Yet as civil war intensified and economic collapse deepened, decision making shifted upward. Emergency measures became permanent architecture.

The party increasingly governed through decrees rather than deliberation. Dissent inside the revolutionary camp was framed as betrayal. Over time, the soviets became formal shells. The state expanded; worker autonomy contracted.

What began as an uprising against exploitation hardened into state capitalism administered from above.

The lesson is not that revolutions inevitably fail. It is that substitutionism can wear revolutionary language while hollowing out popular power.

The Psychology of Substitution

Substitutionism thrives on three psychological pressures.

First, urgency. Crisis conditions make centralized command feel efficient. The argument goes: we do not have time for messy assemblies.

Second, expertise. Activists who read theory or master logistics can start to believe they understand history better than those they claim to serve.

Third, fatigue. Mass participation fluctuates. When turnout dips, a core cadre fills the vacuum. What begins as temporary stewardship becomes routine governance.

The uncomfortable truth is that substitutionism often arises from good intentions. It is the belief that you know what is best for others.

If you want to avoid this trap, you must design against it deliberately. Structures do not remain neutral. They either disperse power or concentrate it.

The revolution must be defended not only from counterrevolution, but from internal consolidation.

Hidden Hierarchies in Contemporary Movements

You may reject authoritarianism in theory and still reproduce it in practice.

Hierarchy today rarely arrives in uniforms. It hides inside habits. It hides in the meeting structure, the digital platform, the funding channel. It hides in who speaks, who drafts agendas, who controls passwords, who translates jargon.

If you want to build genuine grassroots participation, you must interrogate the rituals that feel indispensable.

The Ritual of the Permanent Facilitator

Many movements pride themselves on horizontalism. Yet the same skilled facilitators often guide meetings. They are elected for continuity or respected for competence. Over time, facilitation becomes a quiet throne.

Even if they act with integrity, others defer to them. New participants feel secondary. Informal authority solidifies.

The ritual appears benign. In effect, it shapes whose voice carries weight.

The Invisible Digital Gatekeeper

In the age of encrypted messaging and collaborative platforms, control over communication equals structural power. The person who manages the mailing list, moderates the chat, or administers the shared drive possesses leverage.

Decisions can be framed by how information is summarized. Threads can be closed or amplified. Access can be delayed.

Digital infrastructure is not neutral. It is architecture. If the architecture is centralized, the movement’s sovereignty is brittle.

The Finance Committee as Black Box

Money concentrates authority. Even movements that reject formal leadership often create small finance teams to manage funds.

Without radical transparency, these teams become de facto executives. They decide which projects receive resources. They define priorities. Their judgments shape the movement’s trajectory.

Secrecy, even when justified by security concerns, can drift into insulation. Insulation becomes hierarchy.

Charisma as a Substitute for Structure

Sometimes the hierarchy is not procedural but emotional. A charismatic speaker, a gifted writer, a media-savvy organizer becomes the public face.

Media ecosystems reward singular voices. Funders prefer identifiable leaders. Audiences gravitate toward personalities.

Charisma can mobilize. It can also narrow imagination. When a movement’s energy attaches to one figure, collective agency shrinks.

You cannot abolish human difference. Some will always be more articulate or experienced. The strategic question is whether your structure distributes influence or funnels it.

The test is simple. If a key individual disappeared tomorrow, would your movement fracture or flow?

Designing Anti-Substitutionist Structures

Avoiding substitutionism is not achieved through declarations. It requires engineering. Think of your movement as applied chemistry. Every rule, every rhythm, every ritual alters the balance of power.

You must innovate or evaporate.

Rotate, Randomize, and Limit Tenure

Permanent roles calcify. Even roles justified as technical or administrative can accumulate symbolic authority.

Institute strict term limits for facilitation, spokesperson duties, and coordination roles. Rotate responsibilities on a predictable rhythm, perhaps monthly or quarterly. Where possible, use lottery systems to select facilitators from a pool of trained participants.

Randomization disrupts the assumption that competence equals permanent control. It also compels knowledge transfer.

Pair outgoing stewards with incoming ones. Treat succession as pedagogy.

Radical Transparency as Default

Transparency is not performative openness. It is structural exposure.

Publish budgets in real time. Project financial ledgers during assemblies. Document how decisions travel from proposal to execution. Make meeting notes accessible and searchable.

Transparency reduces mystique. It demystifies expertise. It invites scrutiny, which is the oxygen of democracy.

If security requires discretion, define clearly what is confidential and why. Vague secrecy breeds suspicion and consolidation.

Build Assemblies that Matter

Assemblies are often reduced to symbolic rituals. They vent frustration but hold little power. Real decisions happen elsewhere.

To avoid substitutionism, assemblies must control tangible levers. Resource allocation. Campaign direction. Tactical shifts.

When people see that participation alters outcomes, engagement deepens. When assemblies become decorative, apathy spreads and cadres step in.

The women of the Paris Commune in 1871 did not wait for permission. They formed vigilance committees, organized supplies, and defended barricades. Their participation was not ornamental. It was decisive.

Participation grows when it is consequential.

Design for Accessibility as Strategy

Working class participation is not an abstract slogan. It requires childcare, translation, transport support, and meeting times that accommodate shift workers.

If your assemblies are dominated by the flexible and the fluent, you are reproducing class hierarchy internally.

Accessibility is not charity. It is strategic infrastructure.

The Québec casseroles in 2012 offer a lesson. By inviting residents to bang pots and pans from balconies and sidewalks, the movement transformed entire neighborhoods into participants. It lowered the threshold of engagement. Sound became sovereignty.

The more accessible the action, the broader the authorship.

Experimentation as Democratic Self-Defense

Even the best-designed structure can ossify. Pattern decay applies to internal organization as much as to public tactics. A process that once felt liberating can become ritualized authority.

Therefore, you must treat governance as experimental.

Identify Sacred Processes

Ask yourselves: which practices feel untouchable? The weekly general assembly. The consensus model. The spokesperson council. The digital stack.

Sacred processes are often invisible hierarchies in waiting.

Name them. Map how they distribute influence. Who speaks most? Who drafts proposals? Who controls final wording?

Clarity precedes transformation.

Run Time-Limited Governance Experiments

Design intentional disruptions.

For one cycle, let agendas be drafted by lottery among participants. For another, require that proposals be co-authored by at least three people from different working groups.

Hold a silent assembly where motions must be communicated through written cards or gestures. This exposes reliance on rhetorical dominance.

Project the budget onto a screen and allocate funds collectively in real time. Observe how priorities shift when decisions are visible.

Treat each experiment as a hypothesis. Define what success looks like. After a set period, gather reflections and decide whether to adopt, adapt, or abandon.

This is democratic self-defense.

Protect the Psyche While You Disrupt

Continuous experimentation can exhaust participants. Psychological safety is strategic.

After intense cycles, build rituals of decompression. Shared meals. Reflection circles. Collective art.

Movements burn out when constant urgency erodes trust. Substitutionism often emerges when only the most hardened remain active.

If you want sustained mass participation, you must care for the emotional ecology.

Revolutions are not machines. They are human constellations.

Sovereignty as the Metric of Success

Many movements measure progress by crowd size or media impressions. These metrics flatter the ego and deceive the strategist.

The real metric is sovereignty gained.

Have workers expanded control over their workplaces? Have tenants built durable unions that can negotiate collectively? Have communities created parallel institutions that reduce dependence on hostile authorities?

Occupy Wall Street reframed inequality globally. Yet its encampments were evicted. Its assemblies dissolved. The story vector endured, but sovereignty remained fragile.

Contrast that with movements that seed cooperatives, councils, or defense networks that persist beyond the protest cycle. These structures, however small, embody self-rule.

Sovereignty does not require immediate seizure of state power. It requires incremental construction of alternative authority.

If your revolution only demands from above, it risks substituting one elite for another. If it builds from below, it rehearses freedom in advance.

The future of protest is not bigger crowds. It is new sovereignties bootstrapped out of failure.

Putting Theory Into Practice

To foster genuine grassroots participation and prevent substitutionism, implement the following steps:

• Map your power flows. Create a visual diagram of how decisions are made, who controls resources, and who manages communication. Identify bottlenecks and concentration points.

• Institute rotation and term limits. Set clear time boundaries for facilitation, spokesperson roles, and committee membership. Use lotteries where feasible to democratize opportunity.

• Adopt radical transparency tools. Maintain open financial ledgers, accessible meeting notes, and documented decision trails. Make transparency the default, not the exception.

• Design participation thresholds strategically. Provide childcare, translation, and transport support. Schedule meetings that accommodate working schedules. Lower the barrier to entry for action.

• Run governance experiments on a fixed cycle. Every three to six months, deliberately alter one core process. Evaluate collectively and refine.

• Measure sovereignty, not spectacle. Track the concrete gains in self-management and collective control, even if they are small.

These steps are not cosmetic. They reshape the internal metabolism of your movement.

Conclusion

A working class revolution that entrusts its destiny to a minority, however sincere, plants the seeds of its own betrayal. Substitutionism is not an aberration. It is a gravitational pull toward hierarchy.

The antidote is structural vigilance. Rotate authority before it roots. Expose decision making to light. Design assemblies that matter. Experiment relentlessly. Care for the emotional fabric that sustains participation.

Freedom is not declared at the moment of victory. It is practiced in the mundane choreography of meetings, budgets, and facilitation.

If you want a democratic, cooperative society, you must prefigure it. You must risk inefficiency in order to avoid domination. You must trust the many, even when the few seem more capable.

The revolution will not be saved by a vanguard. It will be sustained by ordinary people who experience themselves as authors of history.

So ask yourselves, with ruthless honesty: where in your current practice are you asking others to trust you instead of trusting themselves, and what would it take to reverse that equation starting this month?