I regularly see trots being memed about because “they do nothing apart from writing newspapers”, but to me from their viewpoint (and as an anarchist) it totally makes sense and is a sympathetic view how it should be the workers leading the fight towards a revolution and the vanguard should stand aside and take the role of advisors (hence the newspapers) rather than leaders.
I feel like i’m missing something but i don’t know what.
A leader is directing things, setting priorities, assigning resources, maintaining focus on a goal and bearing a chunk of the responsibility for the results.
An advisor gets to make suggestions but doesn’t have to suffer consequences if they’re wrong, telling somebody what I think they should be doing doesn’t mean I have to bear any responsibility for being wrong. Advisors don’t have as much “skin in the game” as a leader would. Feels a bit like this qualifies as tailism.