Letter on Workers Councils - Anton
Pannekoek
This letter by Pannekoek was first published in the journal
Funken, Vol. III No. 1, and June 1952. This translation has been made
from the version published in the anthology of his writings
Neubestimmung des Marxismus 1. Diskussion über
Arbeiterräte. Introduction by Cajo Brendel. (Karin Kramer
Verlag, Berlin, 1974).
I would like to make some critical and complementary remarks
about Comrade Kondor's observations on "Bourgeois or Socialist
Organisation" in the issue of Funken for December 1951.
When firstly he criticizes the present-day role of the trade
unions (and parties), he is completely right. With the changes in the
economic structure the function of the different social structures
must also change. The trade unions were and are indispensable as
organs of struggle for the working-class under private capitalism.
Under monopoly and state-capitalism, towards which capitalism
increasingly develops, they turn into a part of the ruling
bureaucratic apparatus, which has to integrate the working class into
the whole. As organizations maintained and developed by the workers
themselves they are better than any apparatus of compulsion for
installing the working class as a section within the social structure
as smoothly as possible. In today's transitional period this new
character comes to the fore ever more strongly. This realization
shows that it would be wasted effort to repair the old relationship.
But at the same time it can be used to give the workers greater
freedom in choosing the forms of struggle against capitalism.
The development towards state-capitalism - often propagated under
the name Socialism in Western Europe - does not mean the liberation
of the working class but greater servitude. What the working class
strives for in its struggle, liberty and security, to be master of
its own life, is only possible through control of the means of
production. State socialism is not control of the means of production
by the workers, but control by the organs of the state. If it is
democratic at the same time, this means that workers themselves may
select their masters. By contrast direct control of production by
workers means that the employees direct the enterprises and construct
the higher and central organizations from below. This is what is
called the system of workers councils. The author is thus perfectly
correct when he emphasizes this as the new and future principle of
organization of the working class. Organized autonomy of the
productive masses stands in sharp contrast to the organization from
above in state socialism. But one must keep the following in mind.
"Workers' Councils" do not designate a form of organization whose
lines are fixed once and for all, and which only requires a
subsequent elaboration of the details. It means a principle - the
principle of the workers' self-management of enterprises and of
production.
This principle can in no way be implemented by a theoretical
discussion about the best practical forms it should take. It concerns
a practical struggle against the apparatus of capitalist domination.
In our day, the slogan of "workers' councils," does not mean
assembling fraternally to work in co-operation; it means class
struggle - in which fraternity plays its part - it means
revolutionary action by the masses against state power. Revolutions
cannot, of course, be summoned up at will; they arise spontaneously
in moments of crisis, when the situation becomes intolerable. They
occur only if this sense of the intolerable lives in the masses, and
if at the same time there exists a certain generally accepted
consciousness of what ought to be done. It is at this level that
propaganda and public discussion play their part. And these actions
cannot secure a lasting success unless large sections of the working
class have a clear understanding of the nature and goal of their
struggle. Hence the necessity for making workers councils a theme for
discussion.
So, the idea of workers councils does not involve a program of
practical objectives to be realized - either tomorrow or in a few
years - it serves solely as a guide for the long and heavy fight for
freedom, which still lies ahead for the working class. Marx once put
it in these words: the hour of capitalism has sounded; however he
left no doubt about the fact that this hour would mean an entire
historical epoch.
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