El Che
27th March 2004, 23:38
http://www.zmag.org/WITBU/witbu11.html
Anton Pannekoek and Council Communism
Anton Pannekoek was perhaps the most famous of the European Council Communists and was the principle target of Lenin's derogatory polemic, Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. Pannekoek was one of many libertarian Marxists who shared Gramsci's general concerns, but where the others (Lukacs, Bloch, etc.) put most of their time into studying culture, Pannekoek emphasized issues of state power, workers' management, and workers' councils. His work thus continued the Gramscian corrective to old ideology by specifically furthering the understanding of authority, hierarchy, and workers' institutions.
Pannekoek's vision of a revolutionary society thus rested first and foremost on desires for workers' self-management without any accompanying party coercive apparatuses. He felt that workers' powers could only reach maturity in context of a parallel decline in traditional state power.
Governments were necessary, during the entire period of civilization up to now, as instruments of the ruling class to keep down the exploited masses. They also assumed administrative functions in increasing measure; but their chief character as power structures was determined by the necessity of upholding class domination. Now that that necessity has vanished, the instrument, too, has disappeared. What remains is administration, one of the many kinds of work, the task of special kinds of workers; what comes in its stead, the life spirit of organization, is the constant deliberation of the workers, in common thinking attending to their common cause. What enforces the accomplishment of the decisions of the councils is their moral authority. But moral authority in such a society has a more stringent power than any command or constraint from a government.
Thus Pannekoek's goal is an active working-class administering its own collective life through self-organized councils. Collaboration is to replace command, solidarity is to replace fear:
Thus council organization weaves a variegated net of collaborating bodies through society, regulating its life and progress according to their own free initiative. And all that in the councils is discussed and decided draws its actual power from the understanding, the will, the action of working mankind itself.
Obviously this is in sharp contrast with Bolshevik desires for discipline and the subordination of workers to managers and the state. For the Bolsheviks the economy must be set right by imposition of authority. For Pannekoek the economy can only thrive if workers take the initiative, thereby contributing incomparably to the powers of production. For Pannekoek the Bolshevik mistake was in subjugating workers rather than propelling them, and in destroying their organs of power rather than fostering them, not only for reasons of freedom and prevention of bureaucracy, as important as those are, but also for reasons of economic efficiency.
State socialism is a design for constructing society on the basis of a working class such as the middle class sees it and knows it under capitalism. In what is called a socialistic system of production the basic fabric of capitalism is preserved, the workers running the machines at the command of the leaders; but it is provided with a new improved upper story, a ruling class of humane reformers instead of profit-hungry capitalists.
History has of course demonstrated the plight of these well-motivated new ruling reformers under the pressures of maintaining their own powers and self-conceptions.
Pannekoek understood revolution as a process wherein workers continually develop ever-widening revolutionary awarenesses. Struggle after struggle would perpetually enhance awareness of capitalist injustices and revolutionary alternatives until such time as the councils could command power themselves. He felt that the key to revolutionary victory was to avoid taking reactionary roads within capitalist-based institutions:
The old forms of organization, the trade unions and political party, and the new forms of councils (soviets) belong to different phases in the development of society and have different functions. The first was to secure the position of the working class among other classes within capitalism and belongs to the period of expanding capitalism. The latter has to conquer complete dominance for the workers, to destroy capitalism and its class divisions, and belongs the period of declining capitalism.
The sin of hierarchical parties should be avoided: "The belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working class.... we avoid forming a new party not because we are too few, but because a party is an organization that aims to lead and control the working class..." 13 The education of the masses should take place in context with their continual ever growing spontaneous rebelliousness, and in ways that depend upon and foster self-activity. "The insight needed cannot be obtained as instruction of an arrogant mass by learned teachers, possessors of science.... It can only be acquired by self-education, strenuous self-activity. [There should not be] the one sided teaching of doctrines that can only serve to breed obedient followers."
Pannekoek believed mass action carried on through workers' councils was the best way for workers to develop their own awarenesses. He felt that during unstable times self-preservation instincts dictate worker acquiescence to societal rules and lead to general worker passivity, but that in troubled, disrupted times, especially when well-posed alternatives seem better than old ways, the reverse phenomenon becomes true and preservation instincts push workers toward rebellion. Thus the miracle of the revolutionary energy of aroused masses, and thus also the importance of capitalist "breakdown" to Pannekoek's view.
Finally, like Gramsci and in opposition to determinist views, Pannekoek saw that the key to a full victory over all capitalist institutions was a prior conquest of capitalist ideology. Like Gramsci's hegemonic perspective, Pannekoek felt that workers must defeat old ideas and hold new ones if they are to have the initiative, morale, knowledge, and solidarity to practice effectively. Workers must overcome capitalism's spiritual sway over their minds before they can gain the insight and spirit necessary to also throw off its institutional yoke. Thus "capitalism must be beaten theoretically before it can be beaten materially."
But the fight will be long and difficult. For the power of the capitalist class is enormous...firmly entrenched in the fabric of state and government. It disposes of all the treasures of the earth, and can spend unlimited amounts of money...to carry away public opinion. Its ideas and opinions pervade the entire society...and dominate the minds of even the workers.... Against it the working class, certainly, has its numbers.... It has its momentous economic function, its direct hold over the machines, its power to run or stop them.... Number and economic importance alone are as the powers of a sleeping giant; they must first be awakened and activated by practical fight. Knowledge and unity must make them active power. Through the fight for existence... through the fight for mastery over the means of production, the workers must acquire the consciousness of their position, the independence of thought, the knowledge of society, the solidarity and devotion to their community, the strong unity of class that will enable them to defeat capitalist power.
Council Communism is important for its emphasis on revolutionary institutions, for its awareness of the negative effects of capitalist and of all hierarchical institutions, for its insights into the importance of mass revolutionary consciousness, and for beginning the necessary effort of describing socialism and particularly the day-to-day nature of its alternative working relationships. On the negative side, however, Council Communism loses track of Gramscian cultural-consciousness lessons: it overemphasizes the likelihood of capitalist collapse, and underemphasizes the need to understand how capitalism's psycho-social dynamics and social divisions impede possibilities for worker activism. Council Communism relies too much on spontaneous revolution. It doesn't pay sufficient attention to what forms impediments to revolution take, and to discussing tactical means for overcoming those impediments.
Anton Pannekoek and Council Communism
Anton Pannekoek was perhaps the most famous of the European Council Communists and was the principle target of Lenin's derogatory polemic, Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. Pannekoek was one of many libertarian Marxists who shared Gramsci's general concerns, but where the others (Lukacs, Bloch, etc.) put most of their time into studying culture, Pannekoek emphasized issues of state power, workers' management, and workers' councils. His work thus continued the Gramscian corrective to old ideology by specifically furthering the understanding of authority, hierarchy, and workers' institutions.
Pannekoek's vision of a revolutionary society thus rested first and foremost on desires for workers' self-management without any accompanying party coercive apparatuses. He felt that workers' powers could only reach maturity in context of a parallel decline in traditional state power.
Governments were necessary, during the entire period of civilization up to now, as instruments of the ruling class to keep down the exploited masses. They also assumed administrative functions in increasing measure; but their chief character as power structures was determined by the necessity of upholding class domination. Now that that necessity has vanished, the instrument, too, has disappeared. What remains is administration, one of the many kinds of work, the task of special kinds of workers; what comes in its stead, the life spirit of organization, is the constant deliberation of the workers, in common thinking attending to their common cause. What enforces the accomplishment of the decisions of the councils is their moral authority. But moral authority in such a society has a more stringent power than any command or constraint from a government.
Thus Pannekoek's goal is an active working-class administering its own collective life through self-organized councils. Collaboration is to replace command, solidarity is to replace fear:
Thus council organization weaves a variegated net of collaborating bodies through society, regulating its life and progress according to their own free initiative. And all that in the councils is discussed and decided draws its actual power from the understanding, the will, the action of working mankind itself.
Obviously this is in sharp contrast with Bolshevik desires for discipline and the subordination of workers to managers and the state. For the Bolsheviks the economy must be set right by imposition of authority. For Pannekoek the economy can only thrive if workers take the initiative, thereby contributing incomparably to the powers of production. For Pannekoek the Bolshevik mistake was in subjugating workers rather than propelling them, and in destroying their organs of power rather than fostering them, not only for reasons of freedom and prevention of bureaucracy, as important as those are, but also for reasons of economic efficiency.
State socialism is a design for constructing society on the basis of a working class such as the middle class sees it and knows it under capitalism. In what is called a socialistic system of production the basic fabric of capitalism is preserved, the workers running the machines at the command of the leaders; but it is provided with a new improved upper story, a ruling class of humane reformers instead of profit-hungry capitalists.
History has of course demonstrated the plight of these well-motivated new ruling reformers under the pressures of maintaining their own powers and self-conceptions.
Pannekoek understood revolution as a process wherein workers continually develop ever-widening revolutionary awarenesses. Struggle after struggle would perpetually enhance awareness of capitalist injustices and revolutionary alternatives until such time as the councils could command power themselves. He felt that the key to revolutionary victory was to avoid taking reactionary roads within capitalist-based institutions:
The old forms of organization, the trade unions and political party, and the new forms of councils (soviets) belong to different phases in the development of society and have different functions. The first was to secure the position of the working class among other classes within capitalism and belongs to the period of expanding capitalism. The latter has to conquer complete dominance for the workers, to destroy capitalism and its class divisions, and belongs the period of declining capitalism.
The sin of hierarchical parties should be avoided: "The belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working class.... we avoid forming a new party not because we are too few, but because a party is an organization that aims to lead and control the working class..." 13 The education of the masses should take place in context with their continual ever growing spontaneous rebelliousness, and in ways that depend upon and foster self-activity. "The insight needed cannot be obtained as instruction of an arrogant mass by learned teachers, possessors of science.... It can only be acquired by self-education, strenuous self-activity. [There should not be] the one sided teaching of doctrines that can only serve to breed obedient followers."
Pannekoek believed mass action carried on through workers' councils was the best way for workers to develop their own awarenesses. He felt that during unstable times self-preservation instincts dictate worker acquiescence to societal rules and lead to general worker passivity, but that in troubled, disrupted times, especially when well-posed alternatives seem better than old ways, the reverse phenomenon becomes true and preservation instincts push workers toward rebellion. Thus the miracle of the revolutionary energy of aroused masses, and thus also the importance of capitalist "breakdown" to Pannekoek's view.
Finally, like Gramsci and in opposition to determinist views, Pannekoek saw that the key to a full victory over all capitalist institutions was a prior conquest of capitalist ideology. Like Gramsci's hegemonic perspective, Pannekoek felt that workers must defeat old ideas and hold new ones if they are to have the initiative, morale, knowledge, and solidarity to practice effectively. Workers must overcome capitalism's spiritual sway over their minds before they can gain the insight and spirit necessary to also throw off its institutional yoke. Thus "capitalism must be beaten theoretically before it can be beaten materially."
But the fight will be long and difficult. For the power of the capitalist class is enormous...firmly entrenched in the fabric of state and government. It disposes of all the treasures of the earth, and can spend unlimited amounts of money...to carry away public opinion. Its ideas and opinions pervade the entire society...and dominate the minds of even the workers.... Against it the working class, certainly, has its numbers.... It has its momentous economic function, its direct hold over the machines, its power to run or stop them.... Number and economic importance alone are as the powers of a sleeping giant; they must first be awakened and activated by practical fight. Knowledge and unity must make them active power. Through the fight for existence... through the fight for mastery over the means of production, the workers must acquire the consciousness of their position, the independence of thought, the knowledge of society, the solidarity and devotion to their community, the strong unity of class that will enable them to defeat capitalist power.
Council Communism is important for its emphasis on revolutionary institutions, for its awareness of the negative effects of capitalist and of all hierarchical institutions, for its insights into the importance of mass revolutionary consciousness, and for beginning the necessary effort of describing socialism and particularly the day-to-day nature of its alternative working relationships. On the negative side, however, Council Communism loses track of Gramscian cultural-consciousness lessons: it overemphasizes the likelihood of capitalist collapse, and underemphasizes the need to understand how capitalism's psycho-social dynamics and social divisions impede possibilities for worker activism. Council Communism relies too much on spontaneous revolution. It doesn't pay sufficient attention to what forms impediments to revolution take, and to discussing tactical means for overcoming those impediments.