Council communism
Council communism is a
Radical Left movement originating in
Germany and the
Netherlands in the
1920s. Its primary organization was the
Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both left-wing
Marxism and
Libertarian Socialism, and shares a number of traits with
Anarchism.
The central argument of Council Communism, in contrast to those of
Social democracy and
Leninist communism, is that
workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural form of working class organisation and governmental power. This view is opposed to both the
Reformist and the
Bolshevik stress on
vanguard parties,
parliaments or
bureaucratic states.
The core principle of council communism is that the
government and the
economy should be managed by
workers' councils composed of delegates elected at workplaces and
recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run "
bureaucratic collectivism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a workers' democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils.
Council Communists support workers' revolutions, but oppose
one-party dictatorships. This has much in common with
libertarian communism and most strains of
anarchism, although the latter usually upholds individual liberty and
autonomy as paramount over all else, which Council Communism does not.
Council Communists also believe in diminishing the role of the party to one purely of
agitation and
propaganda; they reject all participation in elections or parliamentary procedures; and they argue that workers should leave the reactionary trade unions and form one big revolutionary union. It is still actively debated whether the
Industrial Workers of the World is a fulfillment of council communist wishes.
The legacy of the council communist movement was taken up by such groups as
Socialisme ou Barbarie,
Solidarity (UK) and the
Situationist International. Most
Libertarian socialists agree with some of the ideas of council communism.
Bordigist theory also retains some features of council communism.
As the
Second International decayed at the beginning of
World War I,
socialists who opposed
nationalism and supported
proletarian internationalism regrouped. In
Germany, two major
communist trends emerged. First, the
Spartacist League was created by the radical socialist
Rosa Luxemburg. The second trend emerged amongst the German rank-and-file unionists who opposed their unions and organized increasingly radical strikes towards the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918. This second trend created the German
Left Communist movement that would become the
KAPD after the abortive German revolution of 1918-1919.
As the
Communist International inspired by the
Bolshevik revolution in
Russia formed, a Left Communist tendency developed in the Comintern's German, Dutch, Bulgarian, and Italian sections. In the
United Kingdom,
Sylvia Pankhurst's theoretically
amorphous group, the Communist Party British Section of the Third International, also identified with the Left Communist tendency.
Alongside these formal Left Communist tendencies, the Italian group led by
Amadeo Bordiga is often commonly recognised as a Left Communist party, although both Bordiga and the Bordigists disputed this and qualified their politics as separate, distinct and more in line with the Third International's positions than the politics of Left Communism. Bordiga also advocated abstention from the trade unions, a position separating him from the more pro-union council communists.
These various assorted groups were all criticized by
Lenin in his booklet
"Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder.[
1]
Despite a common general direction, and despite sharing the criticism of Lenin, there were few politics held in common between these movements. An example of this divergence is that the Italians supported the
Right of Nations to Self Determination, while the Dutch and Germans rejected this policy (seeing it as a form of
bourgeois nationalism). However, all of the Left Communist tendencies opposed what they called "
Frontism". Frontism was a tactic endorsed by Lenin, where Communists sought tactical agreements with reformist (
social democratic) parties in pursuit of a definite, usually defensive, goal. In addition to opposing "Frontism", the Dutch-German tendency, the Bulgarians and British also refused to participate in bourgeois elections, which they denounced as parliamentarism.
In Germany, the Left Communists were expelled from the
Communist Party of Germany, and they formed the Communist Workers Party (
KAPD). Similar parties were formed in the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Britain. The KAPD rapidly lost most of its members and it eventually dissolved. However, some of its militants had been instrumental in organising factory-based unions like the AAUD and AAUD-E, the latter being opposed to separate party organisation (see:
Syndicalism).
The leading theoreticians of the KAPD had developed a new series of ideas based on their opposition to party organisation, and their conception of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia as having been a bourgeois revolution. Their leading figures were
Anton Pannekoek and
Herman Gorter, as well as
Otto Rühle. Rühle later left the KAPD, and was one of the founders of the AAUD-E. Another leading theoretician of Council Communism was
Paul Mattick, who later emigrated to the USA. A minor figure in the Council Communist movement in the Netherlands was
Marinus van der Lubbe, whose name is attached to the burning of the Reichstag in 1933.
The Russian word for council is "soviet," and during the early years of
Bolshevist Russia workers' councils were politically significant. Indeed, the name "
Supreme Soviet," by which the national parliament of the
Soviet Union was later called, as well as the name of the Soviet Union itself, imply that the country was meant to be ruled by workers' councils. This was largely the case in the beginning, but the workers' councils soon lost their power and significance because
Lenin had always envisioned the
Communist Party, not the soviets, as truly entitled to run the State. After the forced dissolution of the
Constituent Assembly, of which Lenin had been the head, after the
October Revolution, the Supreme Soviet was relegated to the role of a
rubber-stamp parliament, and real power was concentrated in the hands of the
Communist Party.
For these reasons, Council Communists described the Soviet Union as a
capitalist state, believing that the
Bolshevik revolution in Russia became a "
bourgeois revolution" when a party bureaucracy replaced the old feudal aristocracy. Although most Council Communists, unlike the anarchists of the time, felt the Russian Revolution was
working class in character, they believed that since capitalist relations still existed (for example, the
New Economic Policy), the Soviet Union ended up as a
state capitalist country, with the state replacing the individual capitalist.
*
Anton Pannekoek,
Workers' Councils, AK Press, 2003
*
Anton Pannekoek,
Anton Pannekoek Archive *
Action Notes A collection of Council Communist and other anti-authoritarian marxist literature
*
Communism or Reforms two articles by Sylvia Pankhurst and Anton Pannekoek, first published in the Workers Dreadnought in 1922. First published as a pamphlet in 1974 by Workers Voice, a Communist group based in Liverpool.
*
Kurasje "The Council Communist Archive"
*
The communist tendency in history*
Libertarian Communist Library Largest online archive of Council Communist texts.
*
Paul Mattick,
Paul Mattick Archive*
Left communism*
Luxemburgism*
List of left communist internationals*
DeLeonism
