1931 Council Communist critique of revolutionary industrial unionism à la IWW
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I see that at that time (1931) some Council Communists were arguing this:
“The French comrades seem to go a step further by demanding the abolition of wage labor through the abolition of the market and money, while factory life should take place “without the compulsion to work”.
I wonder who they were and what happened to them. The Dutch Council
Communists didn’t agree and drew up a complicated blueprint for circulating “labour money”.For the SPGB criticism of the IWW see:
The SPGB as _bloody_ revolutionists. How times have changed. Ha!
‘GEIS observed that the members of The Socialist Party of Great Britain were obsessed with the idea of an armed Revolution ; they could not conceive the possibility of a peaceful revolution, and therefore they insisted on the necessity of the control by the workers of the armed forces of the nation. Their eyes were full of the blood of the French Revolution. Unless the workers were Industrially organised a bloody revolution would undoubtedly occur.’
‘He (Fitzgerald) had every reason to desire a peaceful revolution, but the history of class-antagonisms and the circumstances of modern times provided him with but little hope in that direction.’
@ALB, earlier this morning I put this question (along with another one) to leftdis.wordpress.com, old-fashioned KAPD-style German-Dutch left-communists and champions of the GIC thing. Fredo Corvo by name.
(Later I saw that you posted your question to that libcom page. )
I see that 25 years later the IWW was using the same argument against the Council Communists:
“The IWW is therefore also an opponent of armed insurrection in the class struggle. It is convinced that it will never be a match for capital in military terms, which is why it leaves violence to the ruling class.”
I don’t think Fitzgerald was advocating either bloody revolution or armed insurrection but was simply making the point that the ruling class was likely to violently resist the socialist revolution. Hence the need to gain control of the armed forces, to stop them being used against the workers and to suppress any “slaveholders revolt” by the capitalist class. Any violence would come from them not us.
Actually, both the SPGB and Council
Communists were making the same basic point against the IWW — that the workers can’t ignore the state and simply take and hold the means of production through industrial unions.
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