Fundamentals of the Council System

Believe in revolutions. In the turning points of world history. In the great fundamental upheavals in the development of mankind. In the uniqueness, in the new birth of outstanding, unheard-of human deeds. Stars shine before them. Prophets herald them. Nevertheless, when they appear, they are a holy surprise, a religious stirring, a divine gift of grace.

Believe in the revolutions and you will believe in the creative means by which they take effect. — Miquel Angelo's revolutionary means was perspective. Rembrandt's revolutionary means was chiaroscuro. The revolutionary means used by the Futurists was the fragmentation of every context of form. From the closed contour, controllable in every part, to a partial foreshortening in perspective, to the neglect, to the disappearance of entire contour parts, to their complete dissolution, this is — using art history as an example — a construction in revolutions. Each of these revolutions has brought its own revolutionary sign into reality. Complete this example in your own image. Revolutionary music finds its revolutionary interval, its new tempo, its new orchestra. — Revolutionary thought has its revolutionary language. The new religion has its new cult. The revolutionary executive of the political spirit has its new political sign of reality.

Every revolution creates its own revolutionary means of action. No revolution fits into a traditional form, can enter into a ready-made form. It is therefore always a hopeless error of compromising politicians who lack clarity of purpose to try to "anchor" a revolution in the last living principle of action.

The bourgeois national revolution has created parliamentarism, the highest expression of which is universal, equal and direct suffrage. The proletarian world revolution, which wants to break up the bourgeois community of states and bring about the proletarian community of nations, cannot possibly make use of a national revolutionary means to fulfill this goal. A newborn human being cannot be taught to walk on crutches. To "anchor" the proletarian world revolution in the existing system is to imprison it, to shackle it, to prevent it from taking effect and developing creatively. Such an attempt is a means of despair, a last-ditch effort, a last resort, a last-ditch rescue operation for the finished bourgeois world order.

In vain. Useless. The march of the proletarian world revolution is categorical. Unstoppable. Not to be diverted. Not to be diverted. Likewise, the political means by which it enters into a context of action is categorical. At the same time as the political spirit, its political sign is present in reality. There is no difference between content and form. The proletarian world revolution is the council system. Only under the protection of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the bearer of the political spirit is the construction of the council system, the political fulfillment of the revolution, guaranteed.

In the first days of the uprising, when the individuals and bodies responsible for the collapse were chased away or fled, the uprising received its first visible representation in workers' and soldiers' councils from the supporters of the revolution, the workers and soldiers. As in Russia. Not according to the Russian model. For the great human deed of world history needs no mnemonic bridge to come to life. Apart from the fact that in a thousand places there was a lack of knowledge of this process. At every stage of the world revolutionary advance, the political spirit will reveal this form of action anew. It is not objectionable that the demand for a national assembly was also raised in the first days of the revolution, for it emanated from bourgeois non-revolutionary elements of the people, precisely in order to hinder the development of the revolution and prevent the creative construction of the council system as a revolutionary political means. The integration of the revolution into the national-revolutionary political means of parliamentarism with the National Assembly means the dismantling of the revolutionary political means, the council system.

The councils represent the working population down to its smallest unit. All power belongs to them. Economic and political power. Without restriction. As when they first appeared. Anti-council, i.e. anti-revolutionary politics is trying to push the councils away from their political vocation. The soldiers' councils are to be degraded to purely military, the workers' councils to economic advisory bodies. They are fighting against the sting. When the force of the soldiers' uprising drove out the Kaiser and the Kaiser's servants and the commanding officers were replaced by trusted men of the revolting soldiers: was that political or not? When the power of the workers' uprising deposed the exploiters of the workers and took control of the means of production: was that political or not? The Prussian rulers and their parliaments, right up to their last social-democratic epigones, have lived too long under the illusion that politics was the sabre, that political conflict was war. Their fatal error has been sealed by the collapse. The political importance of the national economy has grown to the same extent that the political importance of the military has declined. We are experiencing its final replacement in this upheaval. The decisive political power is no longer the soldier's sábel, but the labor power of the working man. The machine gun will become a harmless weapon when there are no more people to operate it. There is no separation between political and economic power. The system of councils has to develop in the simultaneous capture of both.

The nucleus of the council system, its center and its goal is the working person. The nucleus, center and goal of parliamentarism is the state. The bourgeois ruling class allows the majority of the people, through the rigid system of parliamentarism, to exert a stronger or weaker influence on the state government, depending on the degree of its development up to universal, equal and direct suffrage. There can be no question of a right of self-determination for the working people. The state is the limit of the working people's right to self-determination. Parliamentarism is a gift of grace from the bourgeois state. The council system is the self-created form of government of the proletariat. The absolute prince proclaims: I am the state. The enlightened prince: I am the first servant of the state. A parliament could also call itself the servant of the state. The Congress of Councils: We do not rule, we do not serve. We are the working people. — No specially authorized person represents or serves a state, but the working people as a whole determine the law of working humanity.

The council system is therefore the political world order that overcomes all violence in the development of history. It is completely inflexible. Changeable. It is the political expression of the working people. Not an heirloom passed down from generation to generation. It is the right that is born with the people. It renews itself by blood, alive. History has so far progressed in revolutions. In the council system, revolution is elevated to the principle that orders the world. The constantly renewing workers' council of a factory, a commune, or any other working unit is and remains at every moment the absolutely congruent representation of its voters. Violent upheavals have no causes and no justification.

Through such an eternal rebirth of the proletarian spirit in the representative body of the working people, brought about by the council system, the destiny of this people is not only given into its own hands, but its best forces, its history-making personalities are seized according to plan and can be completely absorbed in this sense without hindrance. By willingly placing itself on the great masses, it relies all the more on personality. The closeness and zeal with which the individual working man is involved in the whole through the council system make possible the utilization of all human values and ensure the unrestrained effectiveness of the history-making personality. Parliamentarism nourished party bigotry, the civil service economy, the post haggling, the politics of diets, the education of a rigid ruling class. The voters become voters. In the council system, the working man becomes an active politician. His own activity, his work, is at the same time his participation in the public, his service to the work of humanity, the expression of his political attitude. The real driving forces of the world revolution, leaders of the executive of the political spirit, are still nameless in the dull masses. With a few exceptions, the leaders now visible are — one might say symbolic leaders. Names that the executive masses knew helped us and prepared the movement. There are still remnants of the spirituality of the bourgeois world age in their thoughts and actions. Remnants of possessiveness. Remnants of the lust for power. They are transitional people. The pure leaders of new humanity will recognize and raise the council system, which is the incarnation of the world revolution.

Humanity walks the earth. Triumphant. Its next stop is Germany.