The Limitations of Workers' Councils

The Implosion Point
of Democratist Ideology (10)

The Limitations of Workers' Councils

The merit of the workers' councils which have appeared at different times during this century is that debate was not seperated, as it is in a bourgeois parliament, instead they were assemblies where discussion and action were reconciled, those who debated being the same as those who acted. The critique of workers' councils doesn't relate to the form of organisation they took, but to the fact that they remained confined to the place where they were established, the factory.

It is true that history has also given us the example of « territorial » soviets, as in Russia in 1917-18, or in Germany in 1918. But in fact these were bodies in which soldiers, workers' representatives and the members ( intellectuals ) of workers' parties ( even, in Germany, representatives of fractions of the bourgeoisie ) were found jumbled together.

Because of the role played by parties in Russia, particularly the Bolcheviks ( who saw in the councils a means to take power and did everything to limit their action ), because of the role played by social-democracy in Germany, ( which, relying on its working class base, succeeded in containing the Spartacists, even excluding Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht from the central Council of delegates for Greater Berlin because they were not workers, before finally assassinating them ), and finally because of the role played in both cases by soldiers, ( who often only wanted peace and nothing more, and limited the movement after having been the element which spread it ), these territorial soviets represent a separate case in the history of councils since they were neither rank and file assemblies, nor assemblies composed of rank and file delegates. Besides which, they swiftly proved to be ineffective, and then counter-revolutionary.

Staying with Russia and Germany, if it is a question of criticising the action of the workers' councils, properly speaking one can only place in this category the factory councils in Germany ( which finished by being integrated in the form of works councils ) and the factory committees in Russia ( which disappeared after the summer of 1918 ).

Born in the factory, because it was there that proletarians had begun to attack their exploitation, the workers' councils remained imprisoned within them, their vision of the world remaining that of something to be managed. Remarkably, for it bore upon the central location of their exploitation, their attack remained partial. In particular from the start they retained the organisational form -- the council as a place of debate, with its problems of majority and minority -- and they forgot the essential purpose, action by workers against their exploitation, action for which organising themselves in councils in order to debate was only one aspect. But in fact the « critique of workers' councils » hardly makes sense. In reality it is a question of understanding the actions of workers who, having formed councils in their factories amongst other things, did not know how to extend their action to the whole of society.

The question of whether form precedes content or vice versa, is the same type of false debate. To put it correctly it is the movement itself which conditions the forms of organisation it gives itself. As long as the movement is in the ascendant, it naturally finds the forms necessary for the pursuit of its activities. The « democratic » purity of decisions matters little as long as the decisions taken lead to actions which develop the movement's adhesion. At that moment, initiatives by a determined minority can rally round them a majority which can immediately recognise itself within the actions in which it finds itself caught up, and this will more often advance the movement than debates where a democratic majority remains undecided. It is often when the movement begins to ebb that its form solidifies, and this even contributes to accelerate the defeat.

When one looks back at the great movements of the past one can see that they always began to be « beaten » from within. Thus it was with the Paris Commune, the soviets and factory committees in Russia, the councils in Germany in the 1920s, in Spain in 1936 or in Hungary in 1956 - these movements all began by losing the initiative before being beaten by reactionary forces, which existed either outside of them or in their midst.

The revolutionary movement inherited from the democratic viewpoint the idea that all conflict can be regulated through debate. This is trebly false : it is false beforehand when a movement has not yet erupted, it is false when it is spreading and it is even false when it ebbs. Most strikes do not start following a vote. The situation is ripe and there is suddenly an explosion, or more frequently, an audacious minority forces the hand of the others and the result is an activity which is not the object of a debate, which is not voted for and which is not sanctioned. To take well known examples, it is enough to mention the strike at the Renault factory at Cléon in May 1968 [9] or the railwaymens strike in 1986-7.

( ... ) The idea of voting to strike, for example, is as absurd as the idea of decreeing a riot. You don't go on strike because a majority of your comrades are ready to, but because you yourself as an individual and as a proletarian, and not as a « member of the working classes », desire to do it. If the lads of Paris-north, of Bretigny or wherever had waited until a majority of French railwaymen had agreed to walk out, there simply would not have been a strike. On the contrary, they sought to pull the others out by first affirming their own revolt. Hats off to them !

In the same way the extension of the movement to other enterprises ( starting with the nearest, the RATP and the PTT ) could not be a decision emanating democratically from the assemblies or coordinations. The assemblies which could have expressed the will for it had no real power, since they systematically pushed away anything that might divide them. As for the representatives of the movement, they similarly made no moves to saw through the corporatist branch on which they sat. It would thus have been necessary that some determined railway workers went everywhere to incite factory and office workers to strike. And that they did this without the prior support of the railwaymen's assemblies, and obviously without waiting for the workers from other enterprises to approach them. This made a lot of conditions to be fulfilled and on the whole they were not. On the other hand democracy functioned very well to accelerate the return to work. In the second week in January, while a majority of depots were still on strike and at the same time most of the assemblies had declared themselves in favour of continuing the struggle, it was enough for those who had decided to go back to work to announce that they would not comply with the decisions of the assembly, and immediately a second vote produced a majority in favour of resuming work. And thus, in the space of a few days, the « slow » driftback became a « quasi general » return to work, to the satisfaction of all our enemies. Of course, the connivers in the coordinations and trade unions threw all their weight in this direction. But that made no difference to the fact that it was the democratic mechanism which made it possible to break the movement ( ... )

Finally it is necessary to say a few words on the famous « autonomous coordinations » vaunted by some at length in leaflets. In fact they were only the result of a bungled compromise between bureaucrats and workers, between democratic ideology and the real workers' movement, between the necessities of the struggle and the needs of the apparatuses. Proletarians, when they rebel, are confronted with the urgent necessity of accomplishing a host of concrete tasks. To this end they spontaneously join together without the need to refer to abstractions like the « sovereign assemblies » or the « autonomous coordinations ». And so long as they act in this way, their movements are difficult to control in practise : this was the case with the railway workers strike during the first week.

Things begin to go bad when, out of fear, the greater number tend to rely on a few to lead the struggle, thus falling again into the rut of passivity. Increasingly centralised structures take form which seize control of everything : meetings, decisions and actions. At this point the trade unions and parties perk up : on the one hand by placing their men at all levels of these new structures of proletarian control, on the other hand by organising phoney demonstrations alongside them and by promoting corporatist strikes which are obviously aimed at exhausting workers combativity. Then the bastards can claim with the stalinist Krasuki : « The rank and file doesn't exist, the rank and file is the CGT » ( or the CFDT, or LO, the list is not closed ). Effectively, the rank and file didn't know in time how to get rid of the rank and file militants ( ... )

Extracts from the pamphlet
Critical reflections on the social movement in France, Winter 1986-87

Notes

[9] On May 15, three hundred young workers went on strike and blockaded the factory. By the next day they had carried behind them the rest of the factory, and then the whole of Renault.