at handling abstractions; some at thinking, others at typing—a historical situation characterized by an efficient division between the labor of decision and the labor of execution. The experience which makes revolutionary leaders confident of their ability to deal with society's fundamental contradictions is not the experience of the producer but the experience of the official. By internalizing the powers of social offices, revolutionary leaders become personifications of social powers and cease to be mere individuals. The power to deal with the central contradiction does not reside in the individual revolutionary leader, but in the State office. The confidence of a revolutionary leader is not self-confidence in the individual's own powers. Such self-confidence is in fact rare among revolutionary leaders due to the fact that the self-powers, the creative abilities, of a leader are in general undeveloped; the failure to develop these powers is the form of the leader's sacrifice to the revolutionary goal. The confidence of the revolutionary leader is confidence in the ability to wield the powers of a State office. What the individual leader cannot do, the office can do. What no individual can do, the office of the central Leader can do. By internalizing the power of the Leader, individuals simultaneously internalize their own powerlessness. Every act which lies within the sphere of influence of the Leader is out of bounds for an individual. Individuals come to feel themselves unable to wield their own powers over the environment. The Leader can do everything. The individual can do nothing.
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