What were the Worker councils in the Soviet Union did Karl Marx support Worker counci

[tradeunionsupporter]

What were the Worker councils in the Soviet Union did Karl Marx support Worker councils also did Stalin abolish them ?

[Red Commissar]

I think this would be better suited in learning or history...

The worker's council AKA Soviet was to be the local form of government, filled with workers and other representatives of that area. They were to have a good amount of control of their local affairs, but as the as the USSR progressed they became more and more controlled by the government in Moscow, until eventually the soviets were wholly controlled by the central government and thus were acting as the last chain in a unitary structure. When Stalin had consolidated power the soviets were more or less subservient to Moscow and acted as a rubber-stamp for their decisions.

I am not sure what Karl Marx's stance on it was, as he was dead by then.

[Zanthorus]

I'm pretty sure workers councils had never existed before the 1905 revolution so it would be surprising if Marx had ever written anything on them (Although Bakunin's ideas about "... a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations...organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary delegations" come strikingly close).

[Kléber]

I'm pretty sure workers councils had never existed before the 1905 revolution so it would be surprising if Marx had ever written anything on them
The Paris Commune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune) was one, Marx hailed it as the form of political organization at last developed by the proletariat, while criticizing the conciliatory policies and low level of organization which contributed to its fall. Debates over why it failed were a major factor in the split between anarchism and Marxism.

The Civil War in France (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm)

[Zanthorus]

The Paris Commune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune) was one, Marx hailed it as the form of political organization at last developed by the proletariat, while criticizing the conciliatory policies and low level of organization which contributed to its fall. Debates over why it failed were a major factor in the split between anarchism and Marxism.

The Civil War in France (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm)

The Commune was just the city government that exercised power though. I know that there was workplace democracy in the commune, though I'm not sure to what extent, but from what I remember Marx doesn't go into any detail on that point (Although it has been a couple of months since I read that book).

[ls]

Zanthorus, your point is very much semantic, even the most quick, cursory glance of wikipedia quickly reveals he just referred to them as "communes" instead, which is unsurprising as even you yourself are an "anarchist-communist".

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

This is from Marx in 1847:


Alongside the new official governments they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers’ governments, either in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers’ clubs or committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic governments not only immediately lost the support of the workers but find themselves from the very beginning supervised and threatened by authorities behind which stand the whole mass of the workers.Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_power

[Zanthorus]

Zanthorus, your point is very much semantic, even the most quick, cursory glance of wikipedia quickly reveals he just referred to them as "communes" instead, which is unsurprising as even you yourself are an "anarchist-communist".

Can you show me where on wikipedia? From what I read:


In a formal sense, the Paris Commune was simply the local authority, the city council (in French, the "commune"), which exercised power in Paris for two months in the spring of 1871.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_commune


A workers' council is the phenomenon where a single place of work, such as a factory, school, or farm, is controlled collectively by the workers of that workplace, through the core principle of temporary and instantly revocable delegates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_council

And from what I remember Marx only mentions the word commune in reference to the way its used in the wiki article.

[ls]

Well alright, I suppose it isn't immediately there on wikipedia for all to see, but nonetheless it's implicit in much of Marx and Engel's works, you can pretty much tell what they are saying, observe:

www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm)
isregarding all the miseries which are at present overwhelming the Russian “rural commune”, and considering only its constitutive form and its historical surroundings, it is first of all evident that one of its fundamental characteristics, communal ownership of the land, forms the natural basis of collective production and appropriation. What is more, the Russian peasant’s familiarity with the contract of artel would ease the transition from parcel labour to collective labour, which he already practises to a certain extent in the undivided grasslands, in land drainage and other undertakings of general interest. But for collective labour to supplant parcel labour — the source of private appropriation — in agriculture in the strict sense, two things are required: the economic need for such a change, and the material conditions to bring it about.

Even in anti-durhing you can see hints as to what Engels is talking about in contrast to herr durhing, he might not call them communes so much in there but he attacks his conception of what an "economic commune" is by arguing for greater workplace democracy against durhing's idea of individual production.

SocialismOrBarbarism's link is an even more direct link straight to the truth that Marx supported worker's councils regardless of what he called them anyway, I don't think the use of different words, or as Lenin called it, 'phrase mongering' (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch10.htm) serves any purpose myself.