Council communism in the 1960s and 70s

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Skraeling
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Jul 6 2009 23:59
Council communism in the 1960s and 70s

I was wondering about 1960s and 1970s groups such as Solidarity (UK), Socialisme ou Barbarie, the Situationist International, News and Letters, and the Facing Reality group. Is it fair to call them council communists? I am writing an article in which I am tending to want to call them council communists, but having done a bit of reading, it seems that many don't describe them as council communists, so I am pondering about it.

'Steve Wright' wrote:
Like many other tendencies of the old communist movement, council communism would be 'rediscovered' by the radical politics of the sixties and seventies. Whilst never attracting the sorts of numbers who flocked to the leninist groups, the current nonetheless exerted a significant influence upon the outlook of the post-1968 libertarian left. Even here, however, its reach was largely indirect, via other groupings and thinkers - the situationists, Socialisme ou Barbarie, the Johnson-Forest Tendency - whose earlier break with leninism had brought them into contact with the surviving council communists during the fifties.

from http://libcom.org/library/radical-traditions-council-communism-steve-wright

which infers to me that the SI, SouB and JFT (Johnson Forest Tendency) were coming from outside the council communist orbit, maybe dabbling in it a bit, but never fully councilist. But how come the SI were all for universal self-management and all power to the workers' councils then? And didn't SouB espouse councils too eg. in many of Castoriadis' pamphlets? Following Castoriadis, Brinton did as well.

'Chris Wright' wrote:
The 1956 preface to their [Johnson Forest Tendency]
1950 text State Capitalism and World Revolution(excerpt) was signed by Cornelius Castoriadas and Cajo Brendel, indicating some links with both the new ideas abroad and the older Council Communist tradition, though no direct influence of Council Communism ever seemed apparent in the offshoots of the JFT, maybe due to their critical espousal of Lenin as one of the greatest revolutionary theorists.

from http://libcom.org/library/libertarian-marxist-tendency-map

subsequently, on his libertarian marxist tendency map, he sees the JFT and its subsequent splits as coming out of Leninism rather than council communism. But when I flicked thru Facing Reality, it seemed fairly council communist to me, seeing workers' councils as the centrepiece of the new society, and anti-Bolshevik vanguardism too. CLR James and Grace Lee seem pretty taken by Hungary 1956.

Some claim that only certain strands of splits from SouB and JFT were closer to council communism -- the Castoriadis wing of SouB is often seen as Leninist or semi-Leninist, while the ICO/Echanges split off is seen as council communist; and of the JFT split, the News and Letters group/Marxist Humanism is seen as semi-Leninist, while James' Facing Reality grouping is seen as more councilist. But this seems to be based on dubious definitions: eg. Bourrinet in his book on the Dutch and German Communist Left seems to think that councilism is inherently anti-formal organisaiton and pro-spontaneity and for revolutionary waiting and as such any organisation of a more formal nature is not councilist. But, as Mark Shipway notes, haven't council communists disagreed as much as class struggle anarchists on organisation? (I mean some are for formal organisation, like the platformists, some not, like Bonnano, others in between).

Am I getting confused here? Any help or links to texts appreciated.

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Angelus Novus
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Jul 7 2009 08:24

Trotskyists are also for councils, but that doesn't make them council communists (I'm not getting into the issue of what Trotskyists might or not not do in a situation where they have state power, I'm just pointing out what they themselves proclaim).

I think council communism refers to a very specific Dutch and German phenomenon in the immediate post-1917 era in Germany.

Although in fact, I would like to know the genealogy of the term "council communism", and whether for example groups like the KAPD actually used such a label, or whether it was something applied in retrospect by figures like Brendel and Mattick.

Incidentally, I wouldn't get too hung up on supposedly "libertarian" aspects of the Johnson-Forest Tendency. I have found great use for Martin Glaberman's writings on labor, but the truth is it was a pretty Leninist tendency all the way to the end, and I think one should respect them enough to take their self-proclaimed Leninism at face value. C.L.R. James only regarded the "vanguard party" as an outmoded organizational form for advanced capitalist countries, while continuing to regard it as perfectly valid for the "third world".

An American Leninist group, Sojourner Truth Organization, published a special issue on C.L.R. James in the early 1980s. In one interview James emphatically praises Mao, and indeed, I've heard from many that there was a Maoist component to James' thought towards the end of his life. There was even an unfinished paper by Facing Reality, "The Gathering Forces", parts of which were published in Radical America, which is ideologically quasi-Maoist.

Also, it's worth looking specifically at what James said when writing against the "vanguard party". For example, he saw the existence of the post-WWII Italian Communist Party as positive confirmation of his thesis, since a mass party with millions of workers was not a "vanguard" party in his estimation. So it's not the party form as such that he was subjecting to critique.

I think the newfound admiration for the Johnson-Forest Tendency in some anarchist circles is another example of what I'm always pointing out (usually in the context of discussing operaismo) about how anarchists tend to mistakenly regard every anti-parliamentary tendency on the left as somehow anarchist.

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Steven.
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Jul 7 2009 09:32

It wouldn't be accurate to call Solidarity council communists. They refer to themselves usually as "libertarian socialists".

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Hungry56
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Jul 7 2009 09:48

I know some later situationist types said that council communism was an "ideology" and fetishised form over content ( e.g in that "Revolutionary Self-Theory" pamphlet) but I dunno if the SI themselves said anything about it.

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Skraeling
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Jul 7 2009 21:51
Angelus Novus wrote:
Trotskyists are also for councils, but that doesn't make them council communists (I'm not getting into the issue of what Trotskyists might or not not do in a situation where they have state power, I'm just pointing out what they themselves proclaim).

I think council communism refers to a very specific Dutch and German phenomenon in the immediate post-1917 era in Germany.

So does that mean council communism can only exist in the Netherlands and Germany then? And is it only limited to one time period? If not, what 1960s 1970s groups would you then consider council communist?

Anyway, that aside, thanks Angelus for the info. I think I need to read up some more about the JFT, Facing reality etc. But as you note even Leninists can write some useful stuff. I like Glaberman's work muchly.

Actually, Steven, libertarian socialist is prob. an apt description for Solidarity. They definitely weren't communists -- they explicitly rejected communism, although when they merged with a gruppe called Social Revolution they attempted to merge self-managementism with communism, IIRC.

I think the 70s term used by left communists for groups like Solidarity was councilist, as in fetishing organisational form (self-management) over content (communism).

And IIRC the SI's major work on councils was Rene Riesel's 1969 article in IS which is here

(Reply to #2)
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dave c
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Jul 8 2009 06:10

In part it all depends on how you want to define "council communism." Unlike some of the council communists themselves, Bourrinet doesn't extend "council communism" back to 1920 or earlier. It is true that it was only a bit later that anybody in this tradition identified with this label (the Group of International Communists of Holland and the Groups of Council Communists in the US). But these groups could claim some continuity with the KAPD, as key members like Jan Appel or Paul Mattick were previously KAPD members, Pannekoek supported their activities, etc. But it is not a monolithic tradition with no debates or epochal shifts. For example, organizational questions were still hotly debated among the council communists of the 30's, just as they were debated between Ruhle and Gorter over a decade earlier.

I do think there is an identifiable tradition that stretches from the early Dutch-German left to groups like ICO in the 60's, and I think that it is reasonable to exclude certain groups from this tradition if they do not identify with it. JFT or News and Letters should be excluded for this reason, but also I think groups who are seemingly closer to the council communists like SouB or Solidarity. The Situationists are more ambiguous. They considered themselves councilist (I don't think others in the council communist tradition like the word "councilist", however) and Debord read his Pannekoek, etc. At the same time, they disliked other groups like ICO (see http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/beginning.html), who would see the SI as organized like a Leninist sect. One should add to the "tradition", however, the American group Root and Branch, who was in contact with ICO and contained Paul Mattick, Jr. Paul Mattick, Sr. was a sort of mentor to them, I think. They published a book called Root and Branch: The Rise of the Workers' Movement, which has stuff from their journal. (Interestingly, Jeremy Brecher, a member of Root and Branch, clashed with Martin Glaberman on the topic of "spontaneity" in the November-December 1973 issue of Radical America.) I am not sure what else to say, but I would recommend reading Van Der Linden on S ou B and on council communism if you haven't: http://www.left-dis.nl/uk/lindsob.htm , and http://www.kurasje.org/arkiv/15800f.htm.

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Alf
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Jul 8 2009 07:25

Agree with most of what Dave C has written. Bourrinet's book (I have only read the original version which is the one we publish) uses the distinction between council communist and councilist to describe a process of degeneration, with the original council communists of the 30s being much more explicitly marxist and clearer about key issues like internationalism. The issue is not purely a geographical one. A group like Daad en Gedacht was much more influenced by anarchism and much vaguer in the positions it defended, although the continuity with the Dutch left or its proletarian character is not in doubt.

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Farce
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Jul 8 2009 13:17

I think Wildcat and Subversion (or at least members of both groups) certainly regarded themselves as council communists. That's a bit more 80s and 90s, but I think both had members who were in Solidarity. It's all a bit pedantic, tho - can we not just start using the terms "proper communists" and "shit communists"?

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knightrose
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Jul 8 2009 19:22

Farce is right on all counts.

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Skraeling
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Jul 9 2009 22:07

Thanks Dave C for the link to the van der Linden article on council communism -- i've read his one on SouB b4, but didn't know about the c-c one. On the SI, couldn't you place them in wing of council communism (or councilism if you like) who believed in a party or organisation that intervened in struggles, but did not act act as a separate body from the class, like Gorter?

On definitions: what do people think of these definitions:

van der Linden wrote:
In the course of 1921, the council-communist movement thus began to demarcate itself clearly from official Communism. The movement's starting points can be summarised simply. Firstly, capitalism is in decline and should be abolished immediately. Secondly, the only alternative to capitalism is a democracy of workers' councils, based on an economy controlled by the working class. Thirdly, the bourgeoisie and its social-democratic allies are trying to save capitalism from its fate by means of 'democratic' manipulation of the working class. Fourthly, in order to hasten the establishment of a democracy of councils, this manipulation must be consistently resisted. This means, on the one hand, boycotting all parliamentary elections and, on the other hand, systematically fighting against the old trade unions (which are organs for joint management of capitalism). Finally, Soviet-type societies are not an alternative to capitalism but, rather, a new form of capitalism.
Philippe Bourrinet, 2008, p324 wrote:
The history of the Dutch and German communist left appears to present itself as a series of rejections:
• rejection of opportunism and reformism within the 2nd International, as a strategy for the
parliamentary and trade union integration of the proletariat into the state;
• rejection of the strategy of the ‘peaceful conquest’ of the state in the name of a ‘western’,
‘democratic’ path for the ‘developed proletariat’; thus, rejection of any ‘gradual’ evolution towards socialism;
• rejection of all nationalism and all national ideology within the proletariat, and consequently,
rejection of ‘progressive’ national wars and of the world war during the first great war;
• rejection of the trade union and parliamentary tactics, of the ‘United Front’ and support for ‘national liberation movements’ advocated by Lenin and the 3rd International with the aim of more rapidly ‘conquering’ the masses for the revolution;
• rejection of the big mass parties on the model of the 2nd International, and thus rejection of the attempts to form mass communist parties by fusing with the ‘centrist’ currents of social democracy;
• rejection of any party dictatorship over the working class after the seizure of power; rejection of the dictatorship of the communist party over the workers’ councils or of seeing the latter as mere transmission belts for the party; rejection of substitutionism, which sees the communist party as the general staff and the proletariat as a passive mass blindly submitting to the orders of this general staff;
• rejection of state capitalism as a ‘socialist transition’ to communism;
• rejection of the stalinist barbarism and of Russian state capitalism; consequently, rejection of the ‘defence of the USSR’ in the name of the ‘progressive’ character of the ‘degenerated workers’ state’; rejection of the trotskyist political analysis of the USSR;
• rejection of anti-fascist ideology as an ideology of a united front with the left wing of the
bourgeoisie and as a strategy for derailing the class struggle;
• rejection of popular fronts as decisive moments in the ideological defeat of the proletariat and in its integration into the preparations by the ‘democratic states’ for generalised war;
• rejection of any support for the Spanish Republican state during the civil war and the call for its overthrow by the proletariat; rejection of the conceptions and practices of anarchism in Spain, as a form of collaboration with the Republican state and an inevitable path to the defeat and crushing of the Spanish workers;
• rejection of any participation in the second world war in the name of the defence of ‘democracy’ against fascism; proclamation of ‘revolutionary defeatism’ in both camps and the rejection of any participation in the Resistance, which was denounced as a “military instrument of the imperialist war”.

This long – and impressive – series of rejections is not unique to the Dutch left and its international counterparts. The same rejection can also be seen in the bordigist’ current organised in the Italian Fraction around Bilan in the 1930s. The position of these small groups can be summarised by the title of a series of articles in Bilan in 1936: “The watchword of the day: don’t betray!” These groups had made a conscious choice, despite their growing isolation, not to betray their original internationalist positions.

The problem as i see with these definitions is that they are a wee bit programmatic: they define council communism negatively, as a frozen set of principled rejections. When i thought a central tenet of council communism was to learn continually from the fight of workers, as Pannekoek put it, the highest form of which was genuine workers' councils. Or maybe it was just council communism was defined by a fixed set of positions frozen in the post WWI period? That seems to me to rule out evolution and modification in the wake of the class struggle and developments in capital somewhat.

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dave c
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Jul 10 2009 06:05

Yeah, I see no great problem in placing the SI in the council communist tradition. It is just important to note that in some sense they are outsiders, because 1) they come out of avant-garde artistic traditions, 2) they distanced themselves from what they thought of as "the old preserved ultraleftism" (Debord article linked to above), and also somewhat from Marxist economics.

Skraeling wrote:
On the SI, couldn't you place them in wing of council communism (or councilism if you like) who believed in a party or organisation that intervened in struggles, but did not act act as a separate body from the class, like Gorter?

Yes, the SI and Gorter both believed in some sort of disciplined party that intervened in struggles. But there is a difference: Gorter believed that the party was to be linked with the class through economic organizations (specifically, the AAU), while the SI only believed in encouraging workers to form councils.

A key part of the Riesel piece touches on this:

Riesel wrote:
The KAPD’s evolution into terrorism and the AAUD’s increasing involvement in “bread and butter” issues led to the split between the factory organization and its party in 1929. In 1931 the corpses of the AAUD and the AAUD-E pathetically and without any sound or explicit bases merged in the face of the rise of Nazism. The revolutionary elements of the two organizations regrouped to form the KAUD (Kommunistische Arbeiter Union Deutschlands — German Communist Workers Union). A consciously minority organization, the KAUD was also the only one in the whole movement for councils in Germany that did not claim to take upon itself the future economic (or economico-political as in the case of the AAUD-E) organization of society. It called on the workers to form autonomous groups and to themselves handle the linkups between those groups. But in Germany the KAUD came much too late; by 1931 the revolutionary movement had been dead for nearly ten years. (http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/councils.html) (my bold)

For an example of how the SI were seen as outsiders, here is an amusing excerpt from some "Biographical notes on Serge Bricianer":

Quote:
For some time the ICO also organized regular international meetings. The first was held on July 29-30, 1966, in Taverny [28] with the English Solidarity group, some Germans and some Belgians; the second in 1967, with the same participants plus Mattick and a situationist by the name of Glou, who had come to cause trouble. In 1968 no meetings were organized, everyone being absorbed by other more urgent matters. But in 1969 a national meeting was held in Taverny with the participation of very different tendencies and groups, among others Révolution Internationale (the new group around Marc Chirik, formed after his return to Paris). Paul Mattick, his wife Ilse and their son Paul [29] were present. This was also the first time Guillaume and Barrot presented their texts on the ideology of the German Ultra-Left and on the Council Communists. Daniel asked Serge and Paul Mattick to answer these kind of allegations, but both estimated that they were are too stupid to be worth the trouble [30]. In 1969 (July 11-12), a new international meeting was organized, this time in Brussels. Among others this meeting was attended by Mattick, Malaquais and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Serge went there with Claude Orsoni, although he had broken with the ICO in an article entitled La différence [31]. (http://www.kurasje.org/arkiv/13700f.htm) (my bold)