Friedrich von Wieser, Führung (1927)

Friedrich von Wieser’s encyclopedia entry presents leadership as the indispensable mechanism of collective action. Its five sections move from the nature of leadership through anonymous innovation and the foundations of authority to organizational hierarchy and ruling social strata. The connecting concept is Massentechnik: the means by which large populations achieve coordinated conduct when personal discussion and agreement are impossible. Wieser treats leadership broadly, encompassing command, instruction, judgment, invention, and persuasive example. His central claim concerns not merely political government but the constitution and continuity of social life:

Die wesentliche Leistung des Führers besteht im Vorangehen, dessen Erfolg die Masse zur Nachfolge bewegt.

English translation: The essential achievement of the leader consists in going ahead, the success of which moves the mass to follow.

Leadership thus joins initiative to successful imitation. Prophets, teachers, artists, judges, and workplace directors perform structurally comparable functions: they supply orientations around which otherwise dispersed people converge. Public opinion, on this account, is an echo of leaders’ opinions rather than the outcome of discussion involving everyone. The breadth of this definition allows Wieser to place coercion and attractive example within one explanatory framework, although their differences receive less attention than their common coordinating function.

This premise grounds a pointed criticism of democratic sovereignty. Referendums require proposals formulated by leaders; elections require candidates selected by party organizations. Voters accept or reject alternatives rather than independently generating them. For Wieser, the ballot therefore expresses adherence to a party under its leadership, not an unmediated popular will. He explains disappointing elections in young democracies by the absence of historically selected leadership groups. The argument shifts attention from formal voting rights to the prior organization of choice, but also assumes a strong incapacity of large populations to formulate collective purposes themselves.

The second section complicates any reading centered exclusively on exceptional personalities. Sociology must explain persistence and gradual development as well as dramatic historical transformations. Religious communities require continuing local instruction after their founders disappear; economic development depends on countless modest improvements whose inventors remain obscure. Agriculture, crafts, the division of labor, and interconnected market prices emerge through cumulative adaptation and imitation. The plough and money need not be attributed to a god or a single legislator:

Alle die vielen gesellschaftlichen Bildungen, die wir geschaffen sehen, ohne daß ein Schöpfer und Erhalter wahrzunehmen wäre, gehen auf anonyme Führung zurück.

English translation: All the many social formations that we see created, without a creator and sustainer being discernible, can be traced back to anonymous leadership.

Anonymous leadership supplies the bridge between individual initiative and apparently impersonal social development. An innovator’s reputation may remain local while the innovation acquires extensive influence and durability. Wieser thus distributes formative agency among innumerable actors without abandoning his distinction between those who initiate and those who follow. Institutions can lack an identifiable designer while still arising through successful examples.

The third and longest section distinguishes personal selection through achievement from the historically accumulated foundations of authority. Great leaders establish themselves through successful exercise of their capacities; anonymous leaders undergo a comparable selection within narrower circles. Election, in its pure form, formally recognizes an already demonstrated qualification while clarifying the mandate’s duration and limits. Such recognition works most directly among associates who know one another. Modern electorates lack that familiarity and consequently depend on party nominations.

Authority nevertheless becomes detached from the individual performance that originally established it. Dynasties transmit positions secured by founders, combining inherited resources with a public preference for orderly succession:

Der Titel des Erbrechts ersetzt die persönliche Führerauslese.

English translation: The title conferred by hereditary right replaces the personal selection of leaders.

Established legitimacy explains why successful ministers such as Richelieu and Bismarck exercise leadership behind hereditary rulers instead of displacing them. Wieser extends this historical mechanism to parties, the papacy, and private enterprise. Party nominees inherit organizational power; popes benefit from believers’ historically cultivated readiness to obey; heirs acquire access to economic leadership through inherited property. These examples distinguish effective personal capacity from possession of an authoritative office. Historical standing can sustain even weak officeholders, although failure eventually undermines leadership, gradually or through abrupt overthrow.

The final sections locate individual leaders within organizations and social stratification. Large associations require subordinate leaders who connect the highest authority with people beyond its personal reach. Appointment should ideally rest on demonstrated achievement, though hereditary and service-based entitlements may modify it. Leadership opportunities are also socially distributed: conquering peoples dominate subject populations, privileged estates supply political rulers, and the modern propertied and educated class enjoys preferential access. Wieser leaves the detailed explanation of these strata undeveloped. The entry’s lasting conceptual interest lies in connecting initiative and imitation with institutional continuity, party mediation, inheritance, and unequal access to authority. Its limitation follows from the same organizing premise: by treating leadership as universally necessary, it tends to interpret popular participation chiefly as the acceptance or refusal of directions supplied elsewhere.