8. THE COUNCILS' SYSTEM Factory organisation (Betriebsorganisation) and Workers' Union (Arbeiterunion) are sustained and dominated by the principle of the councils' system. The councils' system is the organisation of the proletariat corresponding to the nature of the class struggle, as to the later communist society. If Marx said that the working class could not simply take over the government machine of the capitalist state, but must find its own form for carrying out its revolutionary task, this problem is solved in the councils' organisation. The idea of councils was born in the Paris Commune. The fighters in the Commune recognised that it was necessary to destroy resolutely the bureaucratic military machine instead of transferring it from one hand to the other if they wanted to reach a "real people's revolution". They replaced the smashed state machinery with an institution of fundamentally different character : the Commune. "The Commune," wrote Marx, "was to be not a parliamentary but a working body, executive and legislative at the same time." "Instead of deciding once in 3 or 6 years which member of the dominant class is to represent or trample on the people in parliament, the general right to vote was to serve the people constituted in communes as the individual right to vote serves every other employer, to locate workers, foremen and book-keepers in his business." [25] The first decree of the Commune was the suppression of the standing army and its replacement by the armed people. Then the police, the tool of the state government, was at once stripped of its political attributes and converted into the responsible tool, removable at any time, of the Commune. Likewise, the officials of all other departments of administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, public service had to be performed for workers' pay. The acquired entitlements and upkeep allowance of the high state dignitaries disappeared with these dignitaries themselves. The judicial officials lost that apparent independence ; they were to be henceforth elected, responsible and removable. The effecting of complete eligibility and removability of all official persons, without exception, at any suitable time, the reduction of their wages to the level of the usual workers' pay, these simplest and most obvious democratic measures, bound up the interests of the workers with those of the majority of the peasants and served at the same time as a bridge linking capitalism and socialism. The measures taken by the fighters of the Commune could not be more than such a linking bridge because their political reorganisation of the state lacked the appropriate economic basis. In the Russian Revolution the link bridge became a proper coherent structure. As early as 1905 in Petersburg, Moscow, etc., the institution of the workers' councils existed, although it soon had to give way to the reaction. But their image had impressed itself on the workers, and in the March revolution of 1917 the mass of Russian workers immediately seized on the formation of councils again, not from lack of other forms of organisation but because the revolution had awakened in them the active need for an amalgamation as a class. Radek wrote at that time in observing this phenomenon : "The party can always call only upon the most skilled, lucid worker. It shows a broad path, wide horizons, presupposes a certain level of proletarian consciousness. The trade union appeals to the most direct needs of the mass, but it organises by occupations, at best by branches of industry, but not as a class. In the period of peaceful development only the front ranks of the proletariat are class conscious. The revolution however consists in the broadest layers of the proletariat, even those which have hitherto met politics with hostility, being drummed out of their rest and seized by deep ferment. They wake up, want to act ; various bourgeois and socialist parties, different in the aims of their efforts and in the path they want to take, turn to them. The working class feels instinctively that it can triumph as a class. It seeks to organise as a class. And this feeling, that it can only conquer as a class, that the efforts of its opponents who group themselves around a single party cannot be victorious, is so great that with every continuation of freedom of agitation for the party slogans, even the most advanced sections of the proletariat, whose endeavours go farther than the momentary wishes of their class, submit to class organisation in the decisive days. They do it from clearer insight into the nature of the proletarian revolution. In the peaceful epoch of the movement, the proletarian vanguard sets itself narrowly limited political goals, to attain which the strength of the whole class was not at all necessary. The revolution places the question of the conquest of power on the order of the day. For that the energies of the avant-garde are not adequate. The workers' councils thus become the ground on which the working class unites itself." The Russian revolutionaries, the workers and small peasants, conquered economic and political power with the help of the councils. They took power for themselves only, no longer shared it with any remnant of the bourgeoisie. They divided up Russia into Districts, in which the Soviets were elected by workers and poor peasants, first for the local areas then for the districts ; the District Soviets elected the Central Soviet for the whole state, and the Executive Committee issued from the Congress of these Soviets. All the members of the municipal, district and Central Soviets, just like all officials and employees, were only elected on a short-term basis ; they always remained dependent on their electorate and were accountable to them. In the workers' councils the workers had found their organisation, their amalgamation on a class scale and expression of will, their form and their essence. For the revolution as for socialist society. Through the setting up of workers' councils, even if it could not itself maintain them in their revolutionary form and make them effective for the tasks of socialism, the Russian Revolution has given to the workers of the world the example of how the revolution -- as a proletarian phenomenon -- will be carried through. With this example before it, the proletariat can prepare the world revolution. The proletariat of the world, in order to transport themselves -- and themselves alone -- to economic and political power everywhere the proletarian revolution is starting to unroll, before, during and after the struggles, will have to create workers' councils in municipalities, districts, provinces, areas of country, and nations. When the German November Rising broke out, suddenly at the centre of all the revolutionary demands and slogans stood the watchword : All power to the Councils ! And all at once, workers' and soldiers' councils arose. They were certainly incomplete and often unsuitable -- the German worker confirmed here too the old lesson that the German has no great aptitude for revolution -- but they were not so bad, miscarried and disunited as the criticism of the parties and the hostility of the counter-revolutionaries has made out. However gross their mistakes might be, they represented a new principle -- the principle of the proletarian revolution, the principle of socialist construction. Therein lies their significance, their world-historical value. And on that the respect owed to them should have been based. But the SPD, accomplices of reaction and allies of the bourgeoisie (which latter it had already rescued with its policy of collaboration through the dangers of the war), fell raging upon the workers' councils. It insulted and slandered them, never tired of discrediting them by false and exaggerated insinuations and accusations, and sabotaged them by making the existence of the workers' councils dependent on parliamentary elections. When these, as the result of the participation of bourgeois elements quite unreliable or directly opposed to the revolution, turned out in a more or less reactionary way, it let the power of the councils won in the revolution be bestowed by majority decisions and the bureaucratic authorities on the National Assembly. Where the revolutionary workers resisted this treacherous and malicious procedure, the Noske guards stepped in, suppressed the workers with armed power in sometimes embittered struggles (Bremen, Braunschweig, Leipzig, Thuringen, the Ruhr) and violently made an end of the councils. If these councils had not been quickly opened blooms of revolution which fell unexpectedly into the lap of the German workers but were basically alien to their political ideology and remained alien, if rather they ripened organically in the consciousness generated through proletarian struggle and had been firmly rooted forms in the places of employment, with whose function and mode of operation the mass would have familiarised itself -- they could never have been so quickly erased and obliterated again from the image of the German Revolution. So the German proletarian let the only gain he had won from the November days, and from which he could have developed the beginning of his, the proletarian revolution, be swiftly snatched away again, and crawled back like a good party and trade union sheep into the fold of the big hierarchical outfits. With that, the revolution was lost for him. The struggle for councils' organisation shows three phases. The first is the struggle for the conquest of power. Here the councils' organisation is the progressive liberation from the chains of capitalism : above all from the chains too of the bourgeois intellectual world. In their formation is embodied the progressive development of self-consciousness of the proletariat ; the will to convert proletarian class consciousness into reality and also to give it visible expression. The strength with which this councils' organisation is fought for is, directly, the thermometer that indicates how widely the proletariat has understood itself as a class and intends to prevail. At the same time it is also clear that the pure fact of workers' councils being nominated does not prove they are expressions of the new, the proletarian organisation. It will occur in the course of development that genuine councils degenerate again, that they congeal into a new bureaucracy. Then the struggle against them will have to be taken up just as ruthlessly as against the capitalist organisations. But development will not stand still, and the proletariat can and will not rest until it has reached the dictatorship of the proletariat. With that the second phase of councils' organisation begins. In the struggle for the communist and therefore classless society, there is no sort of compromise between capital and labour ; the unconditional vanquishing of the exploiting class is pre-requisite for the development of the proletarian class into the bearer of the new society. The stage of the dictatorship, whose duration is dependent on the conduct and lifespan of the old powers, makes the transition possible. The proletarian class exercises dictatorship in that it controls all the political and economic institutions of society exclusively in its interests. The instrument for this is the councils. Only thus does the construction of the communist community become possible. This is the third phase of the councils' system. The sword is exchanged for the trowel. The economy is oriented and organised towards new aspects. The legislation expresses economic and social necessities in generally binding form. The carrying out and making valid the new laws becomes the business of those who made them : legislative and executive coincide. The legislating and the administering body form a unity in the name and interest of society as a whole. The organ of this large-scale and perfected construction activity will be the councils' system. The councils' system is at once a negative and a positive thing. Negative because it destroys and sets aside the old bureaucratic-centralist organisational system, the capitalist state, the profit economy, bourgeois ideology ; and positive because it creates and forms the framework of the new social order, the communal economy, the federation of proletarian forces for the new cultural construction, and socialist ideology. Its element is social, not individual ; its mentality the sense of community, not egoism ; its principle the general interest, not individual well-being ; its frame of reference society, not the possessing class ; its goal communism, not capitalism. The basic social attitude of the councils and their orientation to the essence and content of the socialist idea arise necessarily, as a matter of course : complete openness to the public and unhindered control of all official and managerial functions, radical elimination of all bureaucracy and professional leadership, complete alteration of the voting system (assemblies, right of recall, binding mandate, etc.), shifting of the main emphasis of all important decisions to the will of the masses, construction of education on the foundation of social production, revolutionising of the entire ideology in the direction of the socialist principle. The councils' organisation also implies above all new tactics. The bourgeois revolutions were fought out on the street, on the barricades, with military weapons and armies. But armies and military force are bourgeois means even when they are formed by workers. The army was actually formed by proletarians even in the bourgeois period. Even a Red Army is a centralist-structured, authoritarian, basically bourgeois organisation of struggle. There leaders are required with unlimited power of command, and troops with unconditional obedience. Discipline is produced by force : few must dominate over many. A revolution made with military, with armies, would mean : proletarians were seeking to overcome the bourgeoisie with bourgeois means. If this were possible, the parliamentarists would also have been right when they took parliament for a revolutionary means. No trust in parliament, no trust in the army. Anyway we are not bringing a bourgeois army together at all. For a start, we have no weapons. A few machine-guns scatter all heroes with rifles and revolvers. It is especially ludicrous to try with our human resources to take on a bourgeois army, which, with tight centralism, rests on the slavish obedience of the troops. For such a struggle, revolutionaries are too independent and enlightened. The comrades no longer held down under blind discipline, they are free people -- hence, however, they are also not so useful and efficient as an army. On bourgeois fighting ground the bourgeois are superior to us, in military matters as at the negotiating table and in parliament. From this we learn that we must not go to the bourgeois fighting ground but must force the bourgeoisie to come to our ground : into the factory. We have understood that the proletarian revolution is in the first place an economic affair. The worker set in party ideology thinks first of the conquest of political power. This is wrong. The conquest of political power does not have as a direct result that economic power too falls to the victor. The lessons of 1918 have proved this. On the other hand, neither does the conquest of economic power make political power at once fall like a ripe fruit into the lap. For these superstitions the Italian syndicalists have had to pay dearly [26]. We must always keep before us the fact that political and state power are means of securing economic interests ; army, justice, constitution, church, schools -- all serve to secure capital and profit. The political superstructure is second, the economy first. The struggle must be waged from the economic basis. There is no particular recipe for this. But the revolutionaries must first take possession of the factories and their functions. Control, participation in calculations and management, right of co-determination, taking over the factories, are according to the situation, perhaps stages which could swiftly follow each other in revolutionary times. In connection with this, the apparatuses of the state and local administration, of justice, police, armies, school, etc., must be shaken not so much by the assault from outside which, because it is experienced as alien and hostile by these apparatuses, is usually opposed with a united resistance, as rather by the fierce unremitting struggle within, which will spring from the growing internal struggle and be nourished by it. This internal struggle will only be waged if councils are in existence. They are the ferment that continually engenders the upheavals and conflicts within, pushes them farther, stirs them constantly until the open outbreak of the struggle follows. Alongside there may still be street fights, armed masses may clash and contend for predominance according to the laws and rules of bourgeois warfare -- they will not be the decisive struggles. The main emphasis of the decision will be with the struggles in the factories. Here the masses stand on their battleground ; here they know best what's what ; here they are in their element. Here, in the end, the battles of street and barricade also find again and again the requisite support. Here alone lies the guarantee of victory. But only when the councils' organisations are at once economic and political formations, not one-sidedly political, like the party, not one-sidedly economic, like the unions (anarcho-syndicalists included), not such adulterated, dangerous to the public, counter-revolutionary surrogates as the legal works' councils, with which the Scheidemann clique crowned the bankruptcy of the November Revolution. The highest representation of the revolutionary workers' interests is the Congress of Councils. It must emerge from the factory organisations, be the organisational and actively functioning expression of the workers' will. It is nonsense to think that it could be set up by a party or trade union. Then it would always exist only as a party branch or trade union appendage. If the KPD makes propaganda for the Congress of Councils without the intention of giving up its own existence immediately on the meeting of the Congress, its whole work of propaganda amounts to a swindle. It only seeks to obtain with the Congress of Councils an effective instrument for the control of the workers in the hands of the party leaders and to perpetuate their influence beyond the lifespan of the party. In Moscow we see how the Congress of Councils, by grace of the party, has become a puppet-play in the all-powerful hands of those who hold power in the party, ascended to become state-dignitaries. Therein lies the doom of the Russian Revolution, which long ago -- not lastly on that account -- ceased to be a proletarian affair. The party must give itself up as finished with the constitution of the Congress of Councils. Likewise the trade union. Yes, even the Workers Union (Arbeiterunion), which is structured on the councils principle and embodies propaganda for the councils' idea made flesh and blood, has fulfilled its task with that. In the case where a Congress of Councils should come about alongside the parliament before the end of the bourgeois-capitalist period -- which, of course, could only be a prefiguration of the real Congress of Councils -- the Workers' Unions (we refer explicitly to the Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers, a foundation of the KPD ; the KAPD's Workers' Union (AAUD) ; the syndicalists' Free Workers' Union (FAUD), and the German General Workers' League-Unitary Organisation (AAUD-E), as the most consistent and unified in their programmatic and organisational constitution) are perhaps conceivable as fractions in this Congress of Councils. In proportion, however, as they influence and determine the effectiveness of the Congress through their activity, as their nature overflows into the nature of the Congress, they bring about their own end and make their existence superfluous. For the time being, the Workers' Unions are, so to speak, keeping the place for the councils' system. In the councils' system itself lies the fulfilment of the organisational, administrative-technical, society-forming ideals of the socialist epoch. With the councils' system socialism stands or falls. Footnotes [25] K.Marx - The Civil War In France Section 3. [26] This refers to the defeat of the Italian proletariat following the factory occupations of 1919-1920. |