The role of Workers’ Councils in Socialist Revolution (Birmingham – 2.00pm)

[ALB]

I still think that social, political and economic conditions in Russia a hundred or more years were so vastly different from those that exist in Britain, most other European countries, North America, Australasia, Japan, etc that tactics derived from Tsarist Russia are not relevant for us today (and weren't then in Britain or North America either). So, discussing them is interesting but largely of historical or academic interest.Incidentally, in 1905 both Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg saw mass strikes organised by workers' councils as a means of bringing about a "bourgeois revolution" in Russia, i.e political democracy. The "soviets" (which is merely the Russian word for "council") arose as representative organisations for workers as there was then no other means for expressing their views (no constitution, no parliament, no elected local councils, no votes for workers).Let's talk instead about the conditions for a social revolution from capitalism to socialism in the light of present-day political and economic circumstances.

[alanjjohnstone]

Proletariat, i suppose the problem of dwelling on the history is that as i said in my #5 post, we may well disagree on actual facts of history and get side-tracked. The history should be a different debate. Putilov Works had 30,000 workers and was the largest factory in the world at the time with 40 factory committees to represent them during the revolutionary period Many of the Asia garment factories are a thousand or so workers but it doesn't include the many sub-contractor sweatshops of a few hundred workers. Only when we start talking about the likes of high-tech Foxconn do we begin seeing numbers not in the tens of thousands but the hundred of thousands in what are in effect self-contained cities.See what i mean if we begin talking too much about history, we can get bogged down on the details. 

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I still think that social, political and economic conditions in Russia a hundred or more years were so vastly different from those that exist in Britain, most other European countries, North America, Australasia, Japan, etc that tactics derived from Tsarist Russia are not relevant for us today (and weren't then in Britain or North America either). So, discussing them is interesting but largely of historical or academic interest.

[my bold]Personally, I think this constant pre-occupation, with the Bolsheviks' experience during the Tsarist period, is one of the main factors why Communists during the 20th century have had less and less influence on other workers. It might have been relevant in some areas prior to WW2, but since then that period has become increasingly irrelevant to the problems (and potential solutions) of workers on this planet.We must learn to explain our ideas in contemporary terms, not those of the 19th or early 20th centuries. Some can be translated (Marx's gobbledegook is still useful, but needs updating and, most of all, explaining), but the ideas, context and experiences of Lenin and the Bolsheviks are as irrelevant and sleep-inducing to most, as are the minutiae of 8th century Vatican personalities and policies.I've nothing againgst 'historical and academic interests' (if fact, I think that they'll bloom under Communism), but they are not the political and ideological interests that should be our focus, in the present.

[link]

I am actually still learning about the SPGB’s view of the world and do find that ALB is diminishing the agreements or the good things in the discussion in BirminghamI felt there did end up establishing a good deal of agreement on the role of militants/political party for example despite the bit you focus on when there were some sharp accusations about Leninism.  I note also that you keep ignoring the emphasis we all put on direct democrary and on the use of delegates recallable at any time.   Surely this is a lesson from workers councils themselves – you certainly didn’t learn that from parliament!Im disappointed that you dismiss the value of history – something I wasn’t expecting from socialists.   The discussion itself only spent maybe 45 minutes talking such things and nobody who took part in that would suggest that that is all that needs discussing.   Its pretty sad if you cant cope with that in a discussion.  It was a after all a meeting on the role of the workers councils (a title that was the SPGB's suggestion) and it would be absurd to do that without looking at actual examples.   Your attitude however does perhaps explain how the SPGB can suggest that parliament can be used to overpower the capitalist class –  you don’t care about history and you don’t need historical examples to believe something to be possible!!   Ah – the role of faith in history!! Yes conditions now are very different to the end of the first world war,  so,  at least ask what lessons can be learnt and how they apply now.  Don’t just mock the idea.I keep being surprised the SPGB feels hard done by the suggestion that you dismiss economic struggles.  Its clear from the SPGBs (ALB?) presentation that you see workers councils ‘merely’ as tools of economic management and to quote AJ earlier in this thread:  “workers’ movement that fights for economic gains, yes!  A socialist party that fight for the emancipation of the working class, even better!”Don’t think there is any doubt is there? Now clearly I know that you are on the side of the workers in economic and limited struggles, nobody is suggesting otherwise.  Such struggles are not struggles for socialism ok but at certain times in history, workers learn from then and as they learn, the struggles become political and become confrontations with the capitalist state.  I want therefore to emphasise the link between economic and political struggles within capitalism.   Whilst I think we can all say, that limited economic struggles are not enough and that only political struggles of class conscious workers can lead to socialism.  The question here is how what is the relationship of one to the other and I would like to hear how the SPGB explains this.The value of looking at the history of workers councils is in the way they manage to combine the economic and political and as an organisational form allow workers as a class to manage those struggles.  With such organisations emerging in periods of heightened class struggles, the workers don’t need parliament and political parties to take control – hopefully wont let them –  they can do it themselves. If they don’t emerge from struggles,  then I am wrong but at some point if workers don’t vote for the SPGB (there aren’t  any other genuine socialists in parliament after all) then you will have to admit that you are wrong too. 

[LBird]

link wrote:

Whilst I think we can all say, that limited economic struggles are not enough and that only political struggles of class conscious workers can lead to socialism.

That seems to be a point we all agree on, link. SPGB, ICC and all those non-aligned, here. But…

link wrote:

I want therefore to emphasise the link between economic and political struggles within capitalism.

The problem is, which way does the main transmission flow? From economic to political, or from political to economic? As you say,

link wrote:

The question here is how what is the relationship of one to the other and I would like to hear how the SPGB explains this.

I can't answer for the SPGB, but my present opinion is that the main transmission is 'from political to economic'. That is, propaganda and ideological struggle to develop our class consciousness, so that workers are Communist, is the 'starting point'. Of course, we'd all agree that once the process is up and running, the influences flow both ways to some extent, and that economic struggle can lead to 'lessons learned', but, really, your question is about the origin and main influence.It's my opinion, that the underlying philosophical assumptions behind these positions are:'economic to political': Engels and 'materialism', or 'positivist science'; and'political to economic': Marx and 'idealism-material', or 'theory and practice', or 'praxis'.I'd be very interested to hear opposing arguments to my schema. I don't think 'struggle' necessarily leads to 'consciousness', to put it another way.

[ALB]

I've nothing against history. Nor has the SPGB. Far from it. At this stage of the development of the socialist movement, when we are so few, a degree of knowledge about it is important. I would have thought, though, that this criticism would be more appropriately directed at those at the meeting who argued that workers can spontaneously reach a socialist consciousness simply through struggle without needing to hear the past experiences of the working class as encapsulated in socialist principles and conveyed in publications or by word of mouth. For the record (and for discussion, if you want) here's my take on the "soviets" in Russia.It was just that I was disappointed that the meeting might turn into a discussion about the details of what did or did not happen in the upheavals in Russia in 1905 and 1917, as has so often happened in discussions we've had with the ICC and CWO. Fortunately, in the second part, the discussion did centre on contemporary political, economic and social conditions which are significantly different from those in Russia a hundred years and the implications of this for revolutionary socialists today.For instance, the internet and its use to organise demonstrations and strikes and to spread socialist ideas; the fact that today most workers do not work in big factories in huge industrial complexes as they did in St Petersburg in the days of "soviets" and the implications of this for factory workers councils; and how to involve in the struggle for socialism workers not at work (the unemployed, the retired). We tried to bring out the use as a weapon in the class struggle of the vote (which didn't exist in Russia in 1905) by revolutionary socialists and by the working class in general, but came up against a brick wall.Incidentally, to return to history, if you re-read Luxemburg's 1906 pamphlet on the mass strike you will see that at the end of the first chapter (which also contains a vitriolic attack on anarchist anti-parliamentarism) she is advocating its use in Russia (and by implication in Germany too) to try to get political democracy:

Quote:

… the mass strike in Russia has been realised not as means of evading the political struggle of the working-class, and especially of parliamentarism, not as a means of jumping suddenly into the social revolution by means of a theatrical coup, but as a means, firstly, of creating for the proletariat the conditions of the daily political struggle and especially of parliamentarism. The revolutionary struggle in Russia, in which mass strikes are the most important weapon, is, by the working people, and above all by the proletariat, conducted for those political rights and conditions whose necessity and importance in the struggle for the emancipation of the working-class Marx and Engels first pointed out, and in opposition to anarchism fought for with all their might in the International. Thus has historical dialectics, the rock on which the whole teaching of Marxian socialism rests, brought it about that today anarchism, with which the idea of the mass strike is indissolubly associated, has itself come to be opposed to the mass strike which was combated as the opposite of the political activity of the proletariat, appears today as the most powerful weapon of the struggle for political rights.

I suppose I could have mentioned this too but appeals to authority was another thing I was trying to avoid, but we can by all means discuss it here or even at a future meeting. Anyway, you can use her against us !

[proletarian.]

Quote:

I can't answer for the SPGB, but my present opinion is that the main transmission is 'from political to economic'. That is, propaganda and ideological struggle to develop our class consciousness, so that workers are Communist, is the 'starting point'. Of course, we'd all agree that once the process is up and running, the influences flow both ways to some extent, and that economic struggle can lead to 'lessons learned', but, really, your question is about the origin and main influence.It's my opinion, that the underlying philosophical assumptions behind these positions are:'economic to political': Engels and 'materialism', or 'positivist science'; and'political to economic': Marx and 'idealism-material', or 'theory and practice', or 'praxis'.I'd be very interested to hear opposing arguments to my schema. I don't think 'struggle' necessarily leads to 'consciousness', to put it another way.

It probably won't surprise you that in my opinion it's much more 'economic to political'. The political struggle naturally comes out of the economic. Just ask yourselves why workers' strike? It tends to be only political reasons during heightened struggle and even then it's usually after much economic struggle. Take a firm that is going to make workers' redundant and close down. They occupy the workplace primarily due to economic factors, loss of wages, no future work. It becomes political when they realise their trade union is not only not helping them spread the struggle but actively curtailing it by telling them to leave the factory and do a deal afterwards. The experience and reflection not only after the struggle but during is much more political than at the start. There is an argument of course a strike or occupation is a political act but what does that even mean?

[alanjjohnstone]

Chomsky has been particularly active  recently  advocating to the American worker to do exactly as that in regards to the Detroit car industry citing Mondragon as the way to go – take control – so many are in good company.I suppose the difference for us is that the immediate reason , loss of job and income spurs the action , not the struggle for a new society. We are accused that our support for trade unions is for an organisation that has accommodated itself with capitalism, but wouldn't that be exactly the same with a workers occupied factory that was taken over simply to make it more "economic" within capitalism and save jobs. They'll do exactly as it did before…look for markets…look for cost-cuts…So a workers council aspires to do more successfully what a corporate board of directors do, run a successful business. And if it fails, which i think 90% would from past evidence (but that is always arguable and i stand to be corrected)  the political factor is the disillusionment may lead to the conclusoon that it is not capitalism at fault but workers are not capable of being in charge…we need the despotism of one man management which Lenin and Trotsky insisted upon for efficiency.As we said about nationalisation if it is done in the name of revolution and socialism , its failings are ascribed to the revoution and socialism. So yes a bread and butter issue transforms into politics, how can it not? But the effect can be a negative politics as well as a positive one. On the soviets and the SPGB approach to history, in debates on Libcom, i have disagreed with some groups understanding of the actual history and have touched on those differences here as why on this thread it is perhaps none to wise to start quoting history. It deserves a debate on its own the origin and developmemnt of soviets (and the factory committees which are related but a separate thing.) The way decision making may express itself goes back earlier than 1905. Kropotkin and Bookchin discuss the French Revolution section general assemblies (and also for Bookchin the New England town meetings), Marx – the Paris Commune. In the 20s we had the CP try to turn the local trade councils into soviets. Between a workers council and a neighbourhood assembly , just which has primacy? The locl versus the regional?  These questions will arise in practice. The application of democracy is a worthwhile debate but i think as we all know now, there exists different analysis based on different emphasis rather then out and out opposition of opinion in principle.   

[proletarian.]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I suppose the difference for us is that the immediate reason , loss of job and income spurs the action , not the struggle for a new society. We are accused that our support for trade unions is for an organisation that has accommodated itself with capitalism, but wouldn't that be exactly the same with a workers occupied factory that was taken over simply to make it more "economic" within capitalism and save jobs. They'll do exactly as it did before…look for markets…look for cost-cuts.

I agree immediate reasons spur action. However, I think these actions can objectively become socialist during the struggle. As I said about economic struggle turning political.  But it's only ever a potential. That doesn't mean I don't think the working class needs organisations though. We have to have workers like all of us here who try and learn lessons from history, theorise, discuss, involve ourselves in struggles etc to help in what little way we can.  Eventually a much bigger world wide organisation would surely help and perhaps take on much bigger tasks?In the instance of an occupied factory or any workplace it wouldn't be with the idea of running it as before under capitalist "workers' control". I agree with you that the workplace would face the same pressures as before. My idea is more to encourage other workers' who face the same or similar problems to follow suit. To widen the struggle and potentially gain a better outcome. It breeds confidence and vital experience. 

Quote:

..So a workers council aspires to do more successfully what a corporate board of directors do, run a successful business. And if it fails, which i think 90% would from past evidence (but that is always arguable and i stand to be corrected)  the political factor is the disillusionment may lead to the conclusoon that it is not capitalism at fault but workers are not capable of being in charge…we need the despotism of one man management which Lenin and Trotsky insisted upon for efficiency.

I think you might be mixing up a factory or workplace committee with a workers' council? My idea isn't for workers' to run anything along capitalist lines. However, I agree struggles ending in defeat can lead to disillusionment. That's why it is necessary to fight against what perpetually holds back and kills off struggles. Like union bosses calling off strikes even when workers have voted for them.

Quote:

As we said about nationalisation if it is done in the name of revolution and socialism , its failings are ascribed to the revoution and socialism. 

Completely agree. I am not in favour of nationalisation at all. If we are internationalists then we shouldn't have any interest in national boundaries unlike the Trotskyists. 

Quote:

So yes a bread and butter issue transforms into politics, how can it not? But the effect can be a negative politics as well as a positive one. 

I think that's something we have to accept and fight against. 

[alanjjohnstone]

“In the instance of an occupied factory or any workplace it wouldn't be with the idea of running it as before under capitalist "workers' control"…My idea isn't for workers' to run anything along capitalist lines.” How else can an enterprise run except along capitalist lines. I was responding to your hypothetical scenario of a factory closure within capitalism. Except a few rare cases occupation would inevitably lead to disillusionment, it would be just a matter of time scale.—-…. "Like union bosses calling off strikes even when workers have voted for them."….— I experienced a spate of official and unofficial strike action when i worked. We would hold almost daily union meetings but the one that was always the most eagerly attended was the return to work meeting, even more so that the actual one calling for the strike. I seldom encountered those rejecting the union leader's recommendation or the shop stewards' when it was a wildcat strike. It always personally angered me that you see not hide or hair of some of your colleagues on the picket line but when it came time to settle the strike they turned up in droves chewing at the bit to vote for the end of the strike… …Perhaps your experience has been different but we all know that the most successful strike is the one that was not needed because the threat and the ballot result for it was suffice as a negotiating weapon. The power of the vote again, in a different aspect. 

[LBird]

proletarian wrote:

It probably won't surprise you that in my opinion it's much more 'economic to political'. The political struggle naturally comes out of the economic.

No, your view doesn't 'surprise' me! We have differing opinions on whether the notion that 'political struggle naturally comes out of the economic' leads to class consciousness, or not.I don't think 'economic struggle' leads to class consciousness. I think, most of the time, 'economic struggle' remains focussed on 'economic issues': and fighting for 'jobs' or 'higher pay' leads to consciousness of the need for a 'effective wage system' which supplies jobs and higher pay. If this leads to any 'political' awareness, as ajj says, it's likely to lead to negative political effects, like the need for national autarchy in the economy, to protect 'jobs and pay' from 'outsiders'.I don't believe Communism will simply emerge from 'economic struggles'. I think that a class conscious proletariat has to engage on all levels, economic, political, ideological, cultural, in concert, to further their Communist aims, which are openly declared from the start. In this scenario, 'economic struggle' will be the fight to destroy the wage system, not an essentially bourgeois fight for jobs and higher wages.I know we disagree, proletarian, but I think it is of the utmost importance for the various Communist strands to keep discussing this issue: SPGB, ICC, other organisations and the presently non-aligned.Furthermore, as I've said already, I think that there are differing philosophical bases to this overt political disagreement. That is, it's not simply a tactical disagreement over which gets priority, economic (struggle) or political (propaganda), but is a strategic debate about the objective/subjective, matter/consciousness, transition periods, organisation, etc.I don't think that the answers to this issue lie in appeals to 'authority' or in digging through 'historical examples', but in clarification of our 'ideas'. Philosophy is always at the basis of human actions. Ideas drive activity, as Marx said, not the other way around. In my opinion, anyway, comrade!

[link]

It seems to me a bit sad that you resort to all these strange distortions  of arguments put before you and chase the old Aunt Sallyies that you prefer to dismiss and mock.. Proletarian makes valid points about how workers councils in a revolutionary situation yet you mock the idea that workers councils can run an enterprise within capitalism.    He makes valid points about the emergence of learning from economic struggles but you prefer not to reason with that or provide alternate sources of learning.On my contribution earlier you ignore the history I suggest is relevant and complain about it,  then you raise all sorts of historical points against, some relevant some irrelevant.   The quote from Luxemburg is certainly a problem for me but reading the chapter, I do think she is here arguing against the anarchists that their vision of revolutionary activity was shown to be wrong by events in 1905?   It was written at the end of  a period when all of social democracy was in favour or using parliament as a strategy for propaganda – it was the reformists that were starting to seek power through elections!   Thank you anyway for the reminder about the Mass Strike booklet that Luxemburg wrote – do please read the rest of it because I would argue that it entirely supports the arguments I am putting forward.  For example she goes on to say: “But in order to be able to overthrow it, the proletariat requires a high degree of political education, of class-consciousness and organisation. All these conditions cannot be fulfilled by pamphlets and leaflets, but only by the living political school, by the fight and in the fight, in the continuous course of the revolution.”Let me add here that I think Workers Councils are a product of the period of mass strike – genuine workers councils (now that’s another topic to take up) appear in revolution situations and there is real evidence that they happened, were run by workers not by the party,  were capable of taking over society and still representing workers in a way that parliament never can.  They don’t run capitalist enterprise and they don’t take over and run the capitalist state.   When run by class conscious workers, they showed the capacity to enable workers themselves to run society according to  socialist principles ie ignoring money, costs, profits and focusing instead on need, on equality and recallable delegates.   This is Socialism in embryo appearing in practice, surely you can appreciate the importance of that?  

[ALB]

link wrote:

For example she goes on to say: “But in order to be able to overthrow it, the proletariat requires a high degree of political education, of class-consciousness and organisation. All these conditions cannot be fulfilled by pamphlets and leaflets, but only by the living political school, by the fight and in the fight, in the continuous course of the revolution.”

True, but the immediately preceding sentence reads:

Quote:

Absolutism in Russia must be overthrown by the proletariat.

Which confirms my point that she was advocating mass strikes and "workers councils" to obtain political democracy in Russia and that the revolution she was talking about was the bourgeois revolution.Later, after the collapse of the German and Russian empires in 1917-8, she did envisage these as weapons to try to overthrow capitalism too. But as can be seen from this article she did not adopt the abstentionist position you do towards participating in elections:http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/23.htmNote the reference in the opening line to the fact that the Workers Councils in Germany had voted to back the reformist Social Democrat government. In other words, there is nothing necessarily socialist about the Workers Council form of organisation.

link wrote:

When run by class conscious workers, they showed the capacity to enable workers themselves to run society according to  socialist principles ie ignoring money, costs, profits and focusing instead on need, on equality and recallable delegates.   This is Socialism in embryo appearing in practice, surely you can appreciate the importance of that? 

It would be, but when and where has this happened?

[alanjjohnstone]

If some of our views about workers councils are coming over too negative it is probably because we are reacting to the contrary negativism about voting for a socialist party is not really representing the workers.Too lazy to return to the post but it was mentioned that modern industrial unionists and worker council proponents had to incorporate communities in decision making, not just the work-place. So what is illegitimate about existing local council wards, local councils, parish councils being part of the democratic process in socialism? Do we have to re-invent the wheel? Coming up soon is the anniversary of the miners strike and wasn't one of the strong points of that,  the women's support groups, but did they actually have a vote or say ? Or were they sometimes excluded when their entitlement was almost the same as a NUM member? The German SPD is often held up as a really bad bureaucratic socialist party but actually it incorporated all these social, educational, cultural and sporting associations within it which were reflecting much more than the narrow parliamentary part of it. Surely, a socialist party of the future can be the umbrella organisation for all the single issue campaigners. The SPGB have made it clear that we consider workers councils or industrial unions, whatever the working class choose to opt for,  will be valid and vital forms of running society. There is no disagreement on that. We only add a caveat that perhaps they will not be the only means of democracy tasked with the role of running local, district, regional, and more wider geographical areas. Other approaches may entail a collection of different ways and style of administration and whats okay for Merseyside might not be suitable for Mumbai. Nor is there any disagreement that class struggle can contribute to rising consciousness by highlighting the social conflicts in the world but once again we do not insist that it is the only way to it. Environmentalists may well reach socialist conclusions without ever being in a union or taking part in a strike against the employer. Class struggle has widened its definition to include protests against pollution. We also say that plain old arguing and debating is part of the process of acquiring socialist consciousness. We want a world where wealth is shared equitably and we want to start this sharing by sharing our ideas on it with one another, when pub conversations isn't about the latest tv reality show or football result because it i when these conversations are dominated by racist and sexist views that they get reinforced and transmitted and become commonly held attitudes. I lose count with the times i'm told by somebody ".. . i'm glad you said what you did because i always thought a bit like that myself but can't put in words in an argument especially when another person claims what they say is factually true but turns out, as you proved, it is not so…" ..well, i think you know what i am getting at there, it has happend to you too, i am sure. Where differences begin to arise is amongst those who offer such things as co-ops and worker-owned enterprises as stepping stones. You mention in passing that workers councils show the capacity of workers to run society without recourse to profit and what-not. I would refer people to the voluntary charity RNLI as an example of the same thing and umpteen other charities. One thing we don't require told i our capability and capacity to organise society…the working class problem is that they do it for our ruling class rather than for ourselves. I am sure on the brink of revolution there will be occupations and factory committees springing up all over the place. Also discussions on how to transform the anti-social aspects of production into socially useful…remeber the 1970s union pland for Lucas Aero-Space – swords into ploughshares but in their case from cockpits of jet fighters to kidney dialysis machines. ….i often ask, without the vote for a socialist candidate for parliament, just how can someone not working, not able to participate in mass assemblies, even attend party branch meetings, due to disability or infirmity, family responsibilties, old age or whatever restricts his or her active participation able to express his or her wishes. Are they simply to be excluded from the revolutionary process?So we are all in agreement mostly, just a bit diference in emphasis and priorities..that doesn't make us class enemies. In the end its not you or me who will decide on strategy but tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands , millions of our fellow workers. Long before they decide they will have devised the structure to do so. You and me are only concerned about the few hundred in the SPGB and perhaps the couple of thousand in the Left-communist and class-struggle anarcho-communistt movement. Maybe apart from that we got a voice in our trade union branch, as well. Should we ignore that existing organisation too, expend our energy and resources dismantling it in the midst of a class war to build something that shares the same purpose? Ahhh…trade unions…are they the spawn of satan as some lead us to believe?

[link]

ALB I do think you should have read the link to Rosa Luxemburg which you suggest refutes my argument – Hardly.  One paragraph says: ‘In order to do this, is a majority in the National Assembly necessary?  Only those who subscribe to parliamentary cretinism, who would decide the revolution and socialism with parliamentary majorities, believe this. Not the parliamentary majority in the National Assembly, but the proletarian mass outside, in the factories and on the streets, will decide the fate of the National Assembly.”Do you agree with this then?Yes I agree the approach to the use of parliament was different in the 19th century certainly to what I would argue now.  The problem of the use of parliament is after all one reason why the SPGB left social democracy if you remember.I do agree that there needs to be a balance between the discussion of history and current events.  I don’t think you have not found that yet though.  First you criticize me for too much history about the workers councils in Russia in 1905 and 1917 and Germany 1918 (which I did mention briefly) as well.  Then you come up with other historical references to criticize me for using too much history and NOW you demand that I go back over ‘when and where has this happened’  which is precisely what I discussed in the first place.Are you now agreeing that you should have read/listened to my presentation?

[Author]

Posts