MILITANTS AND WORKERS' COUNCILS
 Militant organisations make themselves autonomous from the masses which they claim to represent. They are naturally led to consider that it is not the working class which makes the revolution, but « the organisations of the working class ». Thus it suits them to reinforce the latter. In extreme cases the proletariat becomes mere raw material, the manure from which will bloom the red rose of the Revolutionary Party. The necessities of co-option require that they say little about this externally; that is where the demagogy begins. The autonomy of the objectives of the militant organisations must be concealed. Ideology is used for this purpose. They loudly proclaim that they are at the service of the people, that they don't act for themselves and that if ever they were obliged to take power for a short time they would never abuse it. Once the working class had been well educated they would make haste to return power to them. The history of workers' councils shows that the so-called workers' organisations systematically sought to play their own game, and extricate their own chestnuts from the fire; for the best of reasons of course. To ensure their own power they sought to limit, co-opt and destroy the forms of organisation which the proletariat had given itself : territorial soviets and factory committees. The Russian soviets were first bribed and then liquidated by the Bolshevik party and state. In 1905 Lenin had attached no importance to them. In 1917 by contrast the bolsheviks proclaimed : « all power to the soviets ». In 1921 the soviets which had served as stepping stones to the seizure of power became troublesome; the workers and sailors of Kronstadt who demanded free soviets were crushed by the red army. In Germany, the social-democrat government, the « peoples stewards », undertook to liquidate the workers' councils in the name of the revolution. Once again, in Spain the Communists took care to make the forms of popular power disappear. This was done to better develop the fight against fascism ! There is no point in multiplying examples. All historical experiences have confirmed the antagonism which opposes the revolutionary proletariat and the militant organisation. The most extremist ideology can conceal the most counter-revolutionary position. If certain organisations like the Spartacus League and the anarcho-syndicalist CNT-FAI could fight at the side of the proletariat until their common defeat, nothing proves that these organisations would not have started to fight for power for themselves once their opponents had been overcome. For all that they have cloistered themselves in politics, militants are no less social individuals, subjected to the influence of their milieu. When things heat up, many may cross over to the revolutionary camp. After all we have seen union representatives take charge of sequestrations ! But the massive desertion of militants will be all the more likely since the councils and revolutionary councillists will be the stronger. The movement may be helped in its successes by the reinforcement of many militants, but in the event of mistakes or hesitations the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction. The militant organisations will then be reinforced by proletarians seeking to reassure themselves. The liquidation of the workers' councils was made possible by their weakness, their inability to apply internally the rules of direct democracy, and to effectively take power while crushing all the powers outside them. Militant organisations in fact are merely the proletariat's own weakness exteriorised, and then turned back against them. Workers will make mistakes again. They will not immediately find the most appropriate form for their own power. The fewer illusions the masses have about militancy, the more the power of the councils will have a chance to develop. Discrediting and ridiculing militants, this is the task that falls to revolutionaries today. This task will be completed by the criticism in deeds represented by the birth of councillist organisations. These organisations will know how to do without a leadership and a bureaucratic apparatus. A product of the solidarity of combative workers, they will be free associations of autonomous individuals. They will demonstrate through their ideas, and especially by their behaviour in struggle, that they will never venture to pursue their own interests, as distinct from those of the whole of the proletariat. The development of modern capitalism, which results in all social space being occupied by commodities, in the generalisation of wage labour, and also in a degradation of moral values and a contempt for work and for ideologies, will increase the violence of the clash. Proletarians will go much faster and much further than they did in the past. While in the past organisations of militants could perform a revolutionary role for a time, that will no longer be possible. At the time of the next great battles of the struggle, these organisations can only rapidly become more and more counter-revolutionary. |