Marvin:
That's the problem with "crisis of leadership" theory. It is never able to explain why - if the consciousness of the leadership was in conflict with the (presumed) more advanced consciousness of the base - the left rarely succeeded in replacing it.
There's an answer to this. Workers generally assumed that the Communists were the genuine leadership. And when Trotskyists (and Maoists to some extent) challenged that leadership, they did so in a sectarian, self-marginalizing fashion. We are paying for the sins of Stalinism in one way or another. Finally, after 80 years, a new type of leadership is emerging in Latin America, not without bumps in the road.
Now, in the imperialist countries, the issue is a lot more problematic since most workers are not driven to revolutionary conclusions. Perhaps that will change in the future, but for the time being it is quite natural for them to think in reformist terms. The objective conditions encourage that.
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