As a distinct political
current within the radical workers’ movement, council communism arose in the
1920s and ‘30s, originally in Germany and Holland. The revolutionary uprising in
Germany from 1918 to 1921 provided the original impulse. Council communists
were initially part of a larger international current known as “left communist”
(condescendingly referred to by Bolshevists as “ultra-leftists”), and were
briefly allied with, and attached to, the Third or Communist International
(during 1920-21). As such, the council communists were entirely within the marxist
political tradition. But what came
to separate them from all other currents in that tradition was their
appreciation of the historical lessons to be drawn from the course of events
that occurred in Germany and Russia (and elsewhere, such as Hungary and Italy)
between 1917 and 1923.
Foremost among these
‘lessons’ concerned the question of the role of the communist party in
the revolutionary process. While the Bolsheviks and their supporters in the
Third International insisted on the necessity for the party to lead, organize
and direct the revolutionary process – as the ‘vanguard of the working class’ –
and to attain (and retain) supreme power in the new, ‘revolutionary workers
state’; the left and council communists from Germany and Holland, on the other
hand, rejected such vanguardism. Whereas the early German and Dutch left
communists were in favour of a minoritarian (as opposed to a ‘mass’)
revolutionary party which would refuse to try to organize or dominate the
revolution – leaving that to the masses of workers themselves; the council
communists came to reject the party organizational form itself as inherently
counter-revolutionary (because inherently vanguardist), and in any case
unnecessary for the success of the revolution. It was for such reasons that
they came to call themselves “council” communists in opposition to all of the
“party” communists.
Of most significance after
the question of the “revolutionary party” for the council communists was the
question of the state. The Russian experience had shown to them that
giving power to a new state after the destruction of the old capitalist state
in order to facilitate the transition to a socialist society was a
counter-revolutionary strategy, as it only provided the institutional means for
the rise of a new bureaucratic ruling elite. As far as the council communists
were concerned, the workers’ councils are sufficient for the transition to
socialism, while any organization holding power above or beyond them would only
counteract their ability to make changes favourable to the interests of the
whole class.
Soon after disassociating
themselves from the Bolsheviks and the Third International, the German and
Dutch left communists began a critical analysis of the new “Soviet” regime and
social system, characterizing it as state capitalist. Later, in the
‘30s, the council communists developed an analysis according to which the 1917
revolution was a bourgeois (rather than a proletarian) revolution and the
Bolsheviks were (all along) radical defenders of capitalist development.
For the council communists,
then, the central problem for the success of the proletarian revolution was the
question of the development of revolutionary class consciousness throughout
the whole of the working class; such development of political consciousness
being the only guarantee against a vanguard party substituting itself for the
whole class in the seizure and exercise of supreme power in the revolution. If
the class was sufficiently conscious – and for them this was a matter of
conscious collective action, rather than mere beliefs or ideas – the
workers would not permit a vanguard group to usurp their collective power. As a
result, all of their views on appropriate tactics for the radical
workers’ movement were concerned primarily with fostering workers’ tendencies
towards collective self-activity, self-initiative, and most importantly,
self-organization.
Their experience in Germany,
and their understanding of the Russian workers’ experience during the crucial
years of 1917-21, convinced them that during such periods of acute social
crisis of modern capitalist society, workers spontaneously generated
forms and methods of collective action
which permitted them to collectively control their struggle without any
hierarchy or separate leadership. As a result, they fundamentally opposed not
only vanguardist parties and their practice of ‘revolutionary parliamentarism’,
but also working within trade unions in order to transform them into tools of
revolutionary struggle. Their first-hand experience had irreversibly convinced
them that all trade unions were fundamentally and unalterably tied to the
continued domination of capital and the state over the working class, and
further, that when necessary, workers would abandon the unions and create their
own autonomous ‘factory committees’ to undertake the tasks usually left to the
unions – as they had done in their hundreds of thousands in Germany in 1919-20.
The stifling hierarchical and bureaucratic structure necessary for the
day-to-day functioning of any large trade union in modern capitalist society
could only act against the tendency of workers directly organizing and
controlling their own struggles.
Syndicalist ‘revolutionary’
unions were rejected on the grounds that spontaneously generated councils and
factory committees were the appropriate organizational forms for revolutionary
action; while any union, no matter how ‘revolutionary’ in words, would
necessarily be contaminated by ‘opportunism’ and reformism, since it would, in
non-revolutionary periods, have to engage in collaboration and compromise with
the forces of capitalist domination. For the council communists, the project of
building and maintaining ‘strong organizations’ within modern capitalist
society, as far as the revolutionary workers’ movement is concerned, is
hopeless, since such organizations will require a powerful central bureaucracy
to remain ‘strong’, while the forces of social control and ideological
domination at the disposal of the ruling capitalist class would inevitably
infect these organizations, rendering them incapable of revolutionary activity
when such is demanded of them.
So how was it, then, that
the workers’ councils permitted the class at large to co-ordinate and control
their struggle without any hierarchy or separate leadership? The actual
functioning of the early councils in Russia and Germany showed how:
workers organized themselves in general assemblies at the point of production,
debated and then collectively decided on courses of action, not just for
themselves in their separate workplace, but for the whole social movement of which
they form a part; then they elect council delegates who are explicitly mandated
to defend only the positions collectively decided by their assembly; these
delegates were also recallable (or revocable) at any time as decided by their
assemblies; the delegates in the councils would attempt to reach agreement on
which course of action to pursue, but if this was problematic they would then
return to their respective assemblies, apprise all workers there of the
situation, and then the assemblies would debate and collectively decide whether
they would change or revise their positions, and re-mandate their delegates
accordingly; in this way they would work out a solution, without delegating any
power to a separate group of potential ‘leaders’.
In the radical activist
upsurge of the 1960s, there occurred a revival of interest in council
communism, but often this was from a perspective more libertarian and less
marxist than was that of the original council communists. This new ‘councilism’
focused on issues of local autonomy and self-management, and ‘community’
concerns, rather than narrowly ‘economic’ and strictly ‘workerist’ matters.
Well known theorists of this
tradition include Anton Pannekoek, Otto Ruhle, Jan Appel, Henk Canne-Meijer,
Paul Mattick, Karl Korsch, Cajo Brendel, and, more recently, the ‘councilists’
Cornelius Castoriadas (a.k.a. Paul Cardan), Claude Lefort, and Henri Simon.
Wage Slave X
October 2000
POSTSCRIPT:
The above text was written at the request of an acquaintance who is initiating a local ‘libertarian communist’ publication. It was written as a non-partisan introduction to council communism for a largely libertarian anti-capitalist readership. However, I wish to make it clear that although I defend many political positions which are often characterized as “council communist”, I do not consider myself to be a council communist; rather, I consider myself to be in the political tradition of the international communist left.
There are two key issues
mentioned in the above text on which council communists and left communists
(atleast those coming from the German-Dutch left) disagree. What follows is
intended to clarify what the views of the author are on these disputes.
(I) In regard to the
question of whether or not all political parties and organizations are
necessarily vanguardist and counter-revolutionary, I refer to the following
excerpts from a text written nearly thirty years ago:
“Revolutionaries develop because within capitalism because there is a
class capable of revolutionary action. It isn’t the revolutionary minorities
which will make the working class a revolutionary class. The process of
realizing the necessity of socialism operates within the working class and manifests
itself in the appearance of revolutionary groups. Through the development of
different revolutionary tendencies, the working class shows the signs of its
revitalization.
The revolutionaries’ role is to contribute to the
development of a class position by working out the links between past and
present working class activity, by elaborating a coherent theory which takes
into consideration the objective development of capitalism and the needs of the
future struggle, by diffusing their analyses as widely as possible and by
developing a practice consonant with their political positions. It is obvious
that the development of revolutionary consciousness is not a uniform process
appearing in the whole working class at the same time and to the same degree.
As with all living processes, this development will not be a homogeneous one
but constantly influenced by events and social conditions.
Nothing is more absurd than for revolutionaries, that
is, those who have made an effort to develop class consciousness to some
degree, to put themselves on the sidelines of the effort to generalize
consciousness out of fear that their efforts will be construed as ipso facto
authoritarian or that their ideas will find only a limited response in the
short run. Revolutionaries are not merely the result of changing social
conditions, they must be an active factor as well.
In addition to contributing to the ongoing struggles
of the working class as far as possible, the fundamental role of revolutionaries
is to work towards the clarification of a revolutionary position which can
serve for future struggles. The working class develops a more profound class
consciousness through the confrontation of ideas among different political
tendencies, through a constant critical approach towards its past struggles and
present difficulties.
These essential functions cannot be effectively
carried out through isolated individual work. They require a collective and
organized effort because apart from praxis there can be no real consciousness
and revolutionary praxis cannot be effectively undertaken on an individual
level.
And later on:
“If revolutionary parties became instruments of the counter-revolution
it is not because their very existence was ‘cursed’. A thorough-going analysis
must be made to determine, on the one hand the false conceptions of the role
and function of revolutionary groups which these parties defended, and on the
other hand the specific historical reasons and the circumstances of the class
struggle that led to these deformations and defeats.
In spite of the degeneration and bureaucratization of
past revolutionary groups, in each new burst of activity the proletariat has
continued to form new revolutionary groupings which can only be explained by
the need to find a theoretical expression for the fundamental interests of the
class.
Because the proletariat is an exploited class it
suffers under the ideological sway of the ruling class. Its struggle for
emancipation is impossible without a theoretical effort which can liberate it
from the weight of bourgeois ideology.
Those who see no role for revolutionary groups ignore
the complexity of working-class conditions and adopt an idealized and mistaken
image of them: an image of the working class as a homogeneous entity
automatically and simultaneously coming to consciousness one glorious day.
Their superstitious aversion to any attempt to form political groups is
tantamount to rejecting an essential aspect of revolutionary activity: the
search for theoretical coherence.”
(from “Leninism, Ouvrierism, or Marxism”, by Marc C. and Judith Allen,
in Internationalism #2 (1971).)
(II) The Russian Revolution
of 1917 was an act of the Russian working class; it was also the first
step of an effort by the international working class (of that time) to bring
about the world proletarian, anti-capitalist revolution. However, because of
the various historical circumstances in which this effort – the various mass
struggles and uprisings by workers around the world – took place, the process
of conscious revolutionary struggle against capitalism was transformed into its
opposite, into the defeat of the revolution, into, that is, the state
capitalist counter-revolution (Stalinist, Fascist, and Democratic). That many
previously revolutionary, proletarian political parties and organizations were
implicated in this process made the defeat of the revolution – more
particularly, the destruction of the revolutionary consciousness of the working
class on a global scale – all the more thorough and lasting. Not least among
these political organizations was the Bolshevik Party (while still under the
leadership of Lenin and Trotsky). And not least among the historical conditions
in which the first international proletarian revolution became a bourgeois
counter-revolution were the following essentially social democratic, bourgeois
doctrines held by the (Lenin-led) Bolsheviks, viz. (i) that the taking of
supreme political power necessary for the success of the proletarian,
anti-capitalist revolution cannot be “organized or directed except by a
political party” (from a resolution of the 2nd Congress of the
Communist International, 1920); and (ii) that strengthening state capitalism in
Russia was a necessary step towards the elimination of capitalism there, and
its replacement by socialism. This is not to deny in any way that the primary
factor in the explanation of the defeat of the revolution was the failure of
attempts by the working class in countries outside of Russia to
overthrow the power of the capitalist state there and join up with the
revolution in Russia; and all of those failures were the result of a level of
development of the political consciousness of the working class insufficient
for the success of their revolution. (Of course, this last ‘explanation’ is
axiomatic, or tautological.)
November 2000