Obstacles to Council Communism

What is keeping us from organizing worker councils and what can we do to overcome it?

Mainly that we can't organize Workers' Councils, that rather they are aspects of Historical Conditions. The People's Assemblies, Neighborhood Committees and Independent Unions arising everywhere from Tunisa, Egypt to Greece and Spain I think are reminiscent of the Soviet Form of Workers' Councils, mainly class wide associations representing Workers Geographically/Politically.

As for economic Workers' Councils more in line with what Council Communists envision, I think these are products of a certain stage of the revolution, namely its highest stage.

Do you see the Political Councils and Economic Councils as two different entities?

Yes

Paulappaul, could you please explain and/or suggest some literature for me so I can understand why you consider political and economic councils as two different entities?

By "two different entities" do you mean they're two separate entities, or that at a certain point in the development of the revolution, the workers councils could conceivably take control of production and would thus emerge as an economic council as well as a political council?

Thanks!

The Soviet Form of Workers' Councils which existed as basically forums for Workers and Revolutionaries existed to forward Political Demands. They were basically Popular Assemblies elected on the basis of 1 delegate to every 1000 Proletarians or in some cases they were directly democratic. What made them Workers' Councils and basically the DOTP was that they were fundamentally Proletarian and rejected the right to vote to other Classes.

The Factory Councils in the Soviet Union were separate units to the soviets and were really only economic units. In 1918 they meet in an Industrial Council Congress for inter coordination of affairs during the Russian Revolution. This was before they were centralized under the authority of the Soviets and therein, the Bolsheviks.

So you had Economic and Political Units. Two different forms of Workers' Councils. Council Communists focus alot on the Economic Units and "Workers Control" as opposed to State Socialism.

I think there are two different formulas for how Workers' Councils arise. This is because of flexibility of the term. The German Workers' Councils and the Soviets of 1905 started out basically as Strike Committees coming together for greater coordination of struggle and in times of Mass Strikes. The Hungarian Workers' Councils formed similarly. Generally these Strike Committees would take control of production and form into dual economic and political units. The Iranian Shoras did not develop out of Workplaces I believe but assumed a similar function. The Workers' Councils of 1917, The Chilean Workers' Councils and the Iranian Workers' Councils were more Political and Geographically. More organized around Social-Political affairs in a community or city then in Industry. These take on the practical task of managing city affairs and are more similar to Communes then organizations which facilitate and regulate production.

Parecon Councilists also imagine Community Councils facilitating production in accordance to Common plane while Economic Councils rooted in industry would carry out the demands of the community through Workplace Council.

Does that answer your question? I can send you some literature if you'd like as well.

What is keeping us from organizing worker councils and what can we do to overcome it?

I would argue that it is because of an international, corporatist hegemony that controls our oligarchical, voting process. In other words, huge companies took over the governments of the world. This allows them to call the shots as they see fit, because in their minds, they deserve to hold power over "lesser" people. So, when any truly democratic movement starts to build, they try to undermine it at every chance they get. Plus, we socialists are still stuck in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It's time we start to think about things in terms of the twenty-first century and global politics.

There's a number of reasons I see that inherently block the formation of workers' councils (both political and economic).

1. The advancement of the global economic and political structures since the Cold War's hyper-industrialisation and the rise of globalisation place many theoretical implementations of such councils as inadequate, failing to take into account the modern nature of society. Most data references attempts in the first fifth of the Twentieth Century, which is purely unacceptable to modern standards. A massive revision must occur.

2. The nature of society prevents a revolution from occurring. Like it or not, most of the world is either in the Capitalist or Feudalist phase of history currently, and none of the Capitalist nations are particularly in danger of sparking a proletarian revolution (though some are starting to show signs). Because of this, the notion of establishing political councils is outright impossible; it would interfere with the sovereignty of current nations. Likewise, economic councils are highly improbable. Furthermore, economic councils would be defeated by powerful corporate CEOs through competition (this represents the improbability of the success of reform). Frankly, conditions in the Capitalist World are not bad enough to prompt a proletarian revolution and the Feudalist World has yet to experience capitalisation to advance it to a remotely similar point.

3. The business structure of the status quo would overrun the new structure. Whereas we could legitimately establish a string of co-operatives administrated by elected, recallable councillors, it would hardly stand a chance of starting off against the wealthy and well-established corporate model of economy. They would recognise the threat and run down the experimental model.

4. Councils in the status quo threaten the control of the bourgeoisie and nomenklatura of all nations, thus prompting harsh and violent repressive action. There is not enough support to resist this action, and anti-council propaganda would prevent attempts to sway the public in our favour.

Honestly, if Council Communism is to succeed, we need to create a viable, well-reasoned, well-structured alternative to the Capitalist system, not just on a theoretical basis, but as a legitimate proposition to the peoples of the Advanced Capitalist World. We need to show the superiority of workers' political and economic councils to prompt support and response. I've been working on such an alternative of applied Councilist theory, but it's very much raw and needs more structuring and data in support of it.

1. The advancement of the global economic and political structures since the Cold War's hyper-industrialisation and the rise of globalisation place many theoretical implementations of such councils as inadequate, failing to take into account the modern nature of society. Most data references attempts in the first fifth of the Twentieth Century, which is purely unacceptable to modern standards. A massive revision must occur.

You're speaking in purely academic terms, in terms of statistics and "Data". Marxist theory is a rejection of such abstract terms which fail to understand the real movement of society political, economic and social. I suggest you review some Bordiga:

The Marxist critique sees human society in its movement, in its development in time; it utilises a fundamentally historical and dialectical criterion, that is to say, it studies the connection of events in their reciprocal interaction. Instead of taking a snapshot of society at a given moment (like the old metaphysical method) and then studying it in order to distinguish the different categories into which the individuals composing it must be classified, the dialectical method sees history as a film unrolling its successive scenes; the class must be looked for and distinguished in the striking features of this movement. In using the first method we would be the target of a thousand objections from pure statisticians and demographers (short-sighted people if there ever were) who would re-examine our divisions and remark that there are not two classes, nor even three or four, but that there can be ten, a hundred or even a thousand classes separated by successive gradations and indefinable transition zones. With the second method, though, we make use of quite different criteria in order to distinguish that protagonist of historical tragedy, the class, and in order to define its characteristics, its actions and its objectives, which become concretised into obviously uniform features among a multitude of changing facts; meanwhile the poor photographer of statistics only records these as a cold series of lifeless data. Therefore, in order to state that a class exists and acts at a given moment in history, it will not be enough to know, for instance, how many merchants there were in Paris under Louis XIV, or the number of English landlords in the Eighteenth Century, or the number of workers in the Belgian manufacturing industry at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Instead, we will have to submit an entire historical period to our logical investigations; we will have to make out a social, and therefore political, movement which searches for its way through the ups and downs, the errors and successes, all the while obviously adhering to the set of interests of a strata of people who have been placed in a particular situation by the mode of production and by its developments. It is this method of analysis that Frederick Engels used in one of his first classical essays, where he drew the explanation of a series of political movements from the history of the English working class, and thus demonstrated the existence of a class struggle. This dialectical concept of the class allows us to overcome the statistician’s pale objections. He does not have the right any longer to view the opposed classes as being clearly divided on the scene of history as are the different choral groups on a theatre scene. He cannot refute our conclusions by arguing that in the contact zone there are undefinable strata through which an osmosis of individuals takes place, because this fact does not alter the historical physiognomy of the classes facing one another

Like it or not, most of the world is either in the Capitalist or Feudalist phase of history currently

Feudalism ended along time ago. Such a system does not exist anywhere.

none of the Capitalist nations are particularly in danger of sparking a proletarian revolution (though some are starting to show signs).

Hmm I recall seeing such a prophetic sentence from those like Bernstien right before the Russian Revolution and the World Revolution of 1918. I recall seeing this in the writtings of all sorts of Social Democrats who claimed to transcend Marxism, claiming that the revolution was impossible, right before the revolutionary wave inaugurated by May 1968.

Furthermore, economic councils would be defeated by powerful corporate CEOs through competition (this represents the improbability of the success of reform).

Economic Councils would only exist in a Post Revolutionary Society, after an International Revolution. I don't see Proletarians competing economically with Capitalism anytime as being practical at all.

The business structure of the status quo would overrun the new structure. Whereas we could legitimately establish a string of co-operatives administrated by elected, recallable councillors, it would hardly stand a chance of starting off against the wealthy and well-established corporate model of economy. They would recognise the threat and run down the experimental model.

Council Communists advocate an International Revolution, not building Cooperative Socialism and competing with Capitalism. I don't think you understand Council Communism at all.

1. "Purely academic terms... Bordiga"

Your view of Marxism rejecting the "abstractions" of statistics and data as failing to understand the true nature of society is inherently flawed and borderline nonsensical (whether you attempt to back it with Bordiga or not). Marxism has and always will be an economic science within the moral and ethical constructs of egalitarianism seen through the lens of class. Furthermore, you fail to actually address the quotation of mine you pull, merely dodging the point, which is that most concrete evaluations through the scientific method. Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky: they all delved into the production figures of the Capitalist world, the massive inequality gaps generated in specific national exemplum. They analysed conditions in the status quo of their times, criticised those conditions through superior ethics, and presented their argument in calculated logic, through figures and numbers. By contrast, nobody in modernity will re-evaluate traditional Marxist economics in a series way. The politics need not change, but the realms of society and economy are inherently intertwined. We know the current divisions of class, but we fail to provide analysis since the rise of the internet, the rise of the media, the techno-domination of production, &c. By systematically rejecting the data to be taken from reality, you are rejecting reality itself and the logical basis that forms it.

"Fedualism ended..."

Political Feudalism did indeed end quite some time ago, being replaced with Liberal Democracies (for the most part). However, I speak more of socio-economic Feudalism, which still persists throughout the world. Feudal constructs of serfdom and peasantry still in Southeast Asia and the Middle East; Capitalist economic colonialism has kept much of Africa and Latin America in a Feudo-Capitalist class caste. This poses a problem similar to the Russian Revolution: should a revolution occur at all in the direction we want it to occur, it will be in an under-developed class system which will result in instability and collapse as seen in the USSR and in the PRC (for the worth of their Leninist ideologies, I suppose). Rather, the First World will be the first to revolt against its bourgeoisie and emerge to Socialism, as the Third World (and to an extent the Second) is not economically or socially sound. This is Marx's historical dialectic in its most basic modern application.

"Hmm I recall..."

I like how you directly attempt to compare me to a Social Democrat. I see that attacking the ethos of others is not beyond us here. Regardless, look at the results of that Revolution: temporary worker control followed by degeneration to the nomenklatura. This can be directly compared to the American or French Revolutions which effectively gave class dominance to the bourgeoisie by eliminating the power of the aristocracy (though the French lapsed several times). The difference is that Russia was an attempt through Marxist-Leninist theory, creating a class genocide on the bourgeoisie, placing the "revolutionary class" of the vanguard into power, which would form the nomenklatura. Left Communists have always viewed the USSR as wrong after 9 November 1917 when the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party took power. The revolution occurred, but it was not ultimately for the proletariat. Now look to modernity in the First World. We have a barter system in Greece, student riots in the UK, and the Occupy Movement in America, the lattermost we will look at specifically. We aren't hardly taxed, we elect our political individuals, and the majority of our rioting movement (which is still opposed by a margin of 4:1) is in favour of Social Democracy and Capitalist reform. They're anti-Wall Street American-style Crony Capitalism, not against the whole notion of Capitalism, entirely unlike the conditions in Russia in 1917.

"Economic councils would only..." and "Council Communists advocate"

The problem here lies back in the historical dialectic and my analysis prior. The developed First World will successfully socialise. However, the less developed Worlds will be incapable by themselves, or at all. The result will either be a system of Socialist Colonialism, in which the political community of the international proletariat attempts to make up for the lack of socio-economic development through policies like the NEP or through Deng Theory, or there will be international co-existence/competition: the simplification of the Three Worlds to Two. In terms of that competition, it is already possible and will be nearly mandatory: Socialist co-operatives will have to prove better on a macroeconomic scale than Capitalist corporations if surplus production or even subsistence production for the whole of international society is to be maintained. We cannot solve our problems by imagining utopia and supporting it with conspiracy theories on the collapse of society.


Oh, and if I don't understand Council Communism at all, you obviously don't understand reality at all. You can sit all day spreading text about how the proletariat will rise in armed rebellion and overthrow their oppressors by establishing a just, perfect, productive, equitable society. But unless you actually put forth how, where, when, and why it will happen, through logos, ethos, and pathos, not even the proletariat will take seriously the Council Communist argument.