On Workers' Council

I would like to make a few critical and supplementary comments on Comrade Kondor's remarks on “Bourgeois or Socialist Organization?” in issue 7 of Funken in December 1951.

First of all, he is quite right to criticize the current role of the trade unions (and parties). With the changes in the economic structure, the function of the various social structures must also change. The trade unions were and are indispensable as organs of struggle for the working class under private capitalism. Under monopoly and state capitalism, towards which capitalist development is increasingly heading, they become part of the leading bureaucratic apparatus which has to integrate the working class into the whole. As organizations built and maintained by the workers themselves, they are better suited than any coercive apparatus to integrate the working class as smoothly as possible into the social structure. In today's transitional period, the new character is becoming more and more apparent. This realization shows that it will be a fruitless effort to re-establish the old relationship. But at the same time it can serve to give the workers greater freedom in their choice of forms of struggle against capitalism.

The development towards state capitalism - often propagated in Western Europe under the name of socialism - does not mean liberation of the working class but greater lack of freedom. What the working class strives for in its struggle, freedom and security, mastery over its own life, is only possible through domination over the means of production. State socialism is not the rule of the workers, but of the organs of the state over the means of production. If it is also democratic, it means that the workers themselves may choose their masters. Direct power of the workers over production, on the other hand, means that the workforces direct the enterprises and build up the higher and central organizations from below. This is what is called the system of workers' councils. The author is therefore absolutely right when he emphasizes this as the new and future organizational principle of the working class. As the organized self-management of the productive masses, it stands in sharp contrast to the organization from above in state socialism. But one should keep one thing in mind. “Workers' councils” does not mean a certain carefully thought-out form of organization that would now have to be worked out in further detail; it means a principle, the principle of the workers' own power of disposal over enterprise and production. Its realization is not a matter of theoretical discussion about the best practical implementation; it is a matter of practical struggle against the ruling apparatus of capitalism. The slogan of the workers' councils today does not mean fraternal coming together for cooperative work; it means class struggle - fraternity finds its place in this struggle - it means revolutionary action of the masses against state power. However, revolutions are not made; they arise spontaneously from untenable conditions, from states of crisis. They only arise when this feeling of untenability is alive in the masses, and when at the same time there is a certain unified awareness of what needs to be done. This is the task of propaganda, of public discussion. And these actions can only have lasting success if broad sections of the workers understand the nature and aim of their struggle. Therein lies the necessity of making the workers' councils the subject of discussion.

Thus the idea of workers' councils does not appear as a program for practical implementation - tomorrow or in a few years - but as a guideline for the long and difficult liberation struggle that still lies ahead of the working class. It is true that Marx once characterized it with the words: the hour of capitalism has struck; but he left no doubt that this hour signifies an entire epoch of history.