Council Communist

[Gnat60]

Does any one know of any current council Communist publications?

[Црвена]

I don't think council communism really exists as a distinct tendency anymore. There aren't any organisations I can think of which describe themselves as such. You could check out some of the left communist publications; the Internationalist Communist Tendency publishes a paper called Aurora (http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles).

[#FF0000]

Doesn't the ICT take its cues more from Italian left-communism than german-dutch (read: council) communism?

To be honest I don't think there are any explicitly council-communist organizations anymore, but there are a lot that are informed by council communism. SolFed is probably the closest thing I can think of.

[Durruti's friend]

Doesn't the ICT take its cues more from Italian left-communism than german-dutch (read: council) communism?
The ICT considers itself the heir to Onorato Damen's (anti-Bordigist) split from the Internationalist Communist Party. So yeah, they're in line with the Italian left-com tradition and have almost nothing in common with the councilists.

(The split itself was over national liberation struggles and the role of unions, if I remember correctly, with the Damenists being against both natlib and fighting through unions.)

[Црвена]

Doesn't the ICT take its cues more from Italian left-communism than german-dutch (read: council) communism?

To be honest I don't think there are any explicitly council-communist organizations anymore, but there are a lot that are informed by council communism. SolFed is probably the closest thing I can think of.

It does, but I don't know any organisations with politics more inspired by German-Dutch left communism, and some Italian left strands (autonomism etc.) do slightly resemble council communism. Council communism may have evolved from the German-Dutch tradition but it doesn't necessarily resemble it more - apart from the Bordigists, not all of the Italian ultra-left tradition was so politically different from councilism.

The IWA is anarcho-syndicalist, and I was under the impression that council communists opposed involvement in unions, though I may be wrong.

[#FF0000]

The IWA is anarcho-syndicalist, and I was under the impression that council communists opposed involvement in unions, though I may be wrong.

I'm not sure, but I know that at least some council communists flirted w/ syndicalism at times. Paul Mattick was in the IWW, for example.

[Durruti's friend]

I'm pretty sure the ICC tried to synthesize the german-dutch and the italian left in their politics, at least at the time of its founding. Though they have always distanced themselves from the councilist movement per se and only took into account the KAPD and similar groups but not what came after them (the dutch GIK, for example).

(Bourrinet's book on the German-Dutch communist left gave me that impression)

The anarcho-syndicalists I'm acquainted with are mostly very receptive of Pannekoek. His Workers' Councils were published by AK Press, heh.

[Blake's Baby]

The ICT considers itself the heir to Onorato Damen's (anti-Bordigist) split from the Internationalist Communist Party...

This isn't quite correct, I don't think. The ICT includes the Internationalist Communist Party. In 1952 the Bordigists split and formed the International Communist Party.

That's my understanding anyway.


But yeah, I think the last Council Communist organisation was Daad en Gedacht and folded in the late 1990s.