Beyond organization: institutionalization and regimentalization?

[Die Neue Zeit]

There's endless debate here on the role of parties, workers councils, and so on. However, regarding the debate on spontaneity vs. organization, one or two elements on the side of the latter haven't been discussed more fully.

To what extent should the organization of the working class be institutional and, during revolutionary periods, regimentalized? [Neither of which, by definition, workers councils could become.]

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

To the extent that the workers decide.

There can be no 'one size fits all' policy.

Perhaps in a larger nation, that is in the third world and has a less 'mature' Capitalism, a more centralised organisation or as you say, 'institutionalisation' might be necessary. In somewhere like the UK, a de-centralised, non-institutionalised organisational practice might be more desirable.

If a revolution starts in several geographic areas and across several causes (i.e., through economic self-empowerment by students, clerical/support staff and factory workers, separately organised), whose interests should take hegemony? Or rather, how do such interests marry up into a coherent movement?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I think that the debate between spontaneity and organization is bunk, to be honest. Workers Councils, for example, don't spring out of nowhere, but reflect concrete relationships and organization among those who put them into practice. Even riots (or, at least, good ones) are only possible insofar as crews, gangs, and groups have created the capacity to go on the attack.
The question, therefore, doesn't seem to be so much one of institutionalization, but of communication: How can we reliably know what different tasks are being carried out in order to work in ways that are complimentary?

"Coherent movements" are ripe for co-optation or disruption by "beheading": I think our pressing question is how we can organize ourselves to defeat capital and the state without coalescing into a body that is comprehensible within the existing logic. How can we avoid fighting on the terrain of the military, the political, etc. on which defeat is inevitable?

[blake 3:17]

To what extent should the organization of the working class be institutionalized and, during revolutionary periods, regimentalized? [Neither of which, by definition, workers councils could become.]

What kind of institutionalization? Should we assume that there will be any singular organization?


If a revolution starts in several geographic areas and across several causes (i.e., through economic self-empowerment by students, clerical/support staff and factory workers, separately organised), whose interests should take hegemony? Or rather, how do such interests marry up into a coherent movement?

"Should"? Under real scrutiny, revolutionary processes have been wildly uneven, without totally clear class distinctions. I've often teased my IS friends with their naive idea that on a magical day the majority of the working class will square off against the bourgeousie and there'll be the battle to end all battles and real socialism will happen...

The interests of people within different layers of the stratified working class will be all over the place.

During the Russian revolution, the most combative section of the working class was also that most tied to the peasantry. I can't comment on the Chinese revolution, my knowledge is way too limited. A lot of discussion about the Cuban revolution ignores the role that urban workers played. The official Communist were fairly conservative, but their membership did engage in often fairly anarchist tactics -- industrial sabotage most importantly.