Computing In Context: Does The Great Man Theory Still Obtain?

Computing In Context: Does The Great Man Theory Still Obtain?

I’ve never been much of a fan of the Great Man theory as articulated by Thomas Carlyle. Worshipping “divinity” in others tends to ignore the material circumstances that lead to their rise — it’s no coincidence that great men, throughout history, have traditionally arisen from the ranks of the ruling classes. I’m a bit more partial to Buckminster Fuller’s Great Pirate theory, from 1969’s Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth. Great pirates, in Fuller’s telling, are those who realize and act on uneven resource distribution and scarcity for profit. While he’s nearly as worshipful of these pirates as Carlyle is of his Great Men, this model is at least a bit closer to the truth of most of human history.

For better or worse, Carlyle’s hero-worship is still widespread today. A number of efforts have been made to counter the Great Man telling of history, but it’s still MLK’s name that schoolchildren know, not Ella Baker’s. While this view is certainly held to be true today, is it accurate?

My thoughts on this are a bit all over the place. Obviously, history never happens through the work of a single individual. Collaborative efforts lead to change. On a scale as small as a workplace, in Mary Follett’s work, collaboration leads to success more readily than domination. In the MLK example, none of his successes would have been possible without the work of Baker, the SNCC, and countless untold individuals who gave their time to the work of liberation.

However, is it possible that the work of the many also requires the work of these “Great Men”? Couldn’t Ella Baker be considered another Great Person, without whom the efforts of collective liberation and participatory democracy would not have occurred? Can we give collective credit for a movement, without focusing on the achievements of one person?

I’m inclined to believe that the collective efforts of a group, and the material conditions of a historical period, tend to lead to the emergence of Great People. They’re a symptom of historical upheaval, and if we remove one from the equation another will arise — although once they’re given that position, they certainly influence historic events. Great people emerge in the narrative of history because we can’t (or at least, we don’t very often) tell stories about collective struggle without elevating one voice or another. That’s the nature of stories. A number of the arguments against the Great Man theory seem (validly) more convincing as arguments to give credit to Great Women and other Great People, rather than arguments for entirely abolishing the practice of giving credit for movements to their leaders. And as an earlier week’s reading, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, points out, groups organized around a lack of hierarchy rarely make history. Leaders may be a necessary evil. However, the idea that they possess some inherent quality that separates them from the rest of us, rather than properties like “being dedicated to a cause” and “being in the right place at the right time”, seems unlikely to me.

I’m not sure if this is a problem, exactly, but I’m drawn to Foucault as a potential solution. The very idea of individuality, especially as it’s defined by western Liberalism, leads us to create Great Men. It’s this need to reduce a collective story to a Hero’s Journey, this desire each of us has to be Great. The need to be an individual, to be a protagonist, is a brain worm that ought to be examined, if not crushed. If we want to abolish power structures, then we should start with ourselves — consider our individualities as “power’s vehicles”, not as a divine freedom but as an imposed structure, inescapably paired with the disciplinary structure liberalism purports to combat. If we want to create true participatory democracy, engage in collective action sans Great Men, we have to examine our conception of ourselves as individuals and work towards creating a collective conception of self where we share the work and responsibility equally.