The Workers' Councils

Give it a try. Ask an old workmate what a workers' council is. At best, if he was an activist, he'll remember and make the connection with the Russian Soviets of 1917, he'll talk about the sailors' and workers' councils that were at the origin of the German Revolution of 1918-1919, the Spanish Committees of 1936, and he'll probably end this historical reminder with the Workers' Councils of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. But ask a friend under thirty. All he remembers of the crushing of the Hungarian uprising is a story similar to the one just told in Czechoslovakia. Yes, of course, there were Workers' Councils who organized a stubborn resistance. But what do we really know about the workers' struggle and the role of these famous councils?

Your under-thirty interlocutor would really have to belong to some tiny group to tell you a bit more, first about these Hungarian Councils, then possibly about those in Yugoslavia, about the Algerian self-management committees, about workers' management in general and all the problems it raises in revolutionary organizations. Finally, you'd probably be treated to the obligatory rant about the need for a revolutionary party — a real one, the only one capable of guiding and directing these poor grassroots workers' councils.

It is therefore necessary to explain what these Councils have been and what they can be. They are not a theoretical form of organization advocated by revolutionary strategists. On the contrary, they are organizations that have sprung up spontaneously in the course of workers' struggles. To recall this very concrete fact is quite simply to draw one of the most important lessons from the history of the revolutionary workers' movement.

But this is France, and the word "council" has never been widely used to designate those bodies that workers elect during the battles they wage against employers and the state. As in Spain, the word Comité is commonly used to designate the group of delegates charged with the task of organizing any action of any scale.

To understand what a Workers' Council is, let's start with a simple Strike Committee. But a real Strike Committee, i.e. one elected by the workers as a whole at the start of the strike, and whose composition can be modified at general assemblies held during the course of the action, giving it the character of an exclusively executive Committee, not a directing one. This does not mean, however, that a strike committee elected by the entire workforce does not include union activists or members of a political party or organization. All currents of thought influence workers, and an elected Committee can only reflect what is and what changes in the course of the struggle.

When a strike lasts, spreads, and becomes part of a more global assault on the operating system, each Strike Committee is faced with new problems. It has to face up to broader responsibilities, which can go as far as attempting to manage the company, in coordination with all the other committees that have taken over administration, distribution, etc. — in short, the organization and management of the whole new society that is being created.

Initially organizations of struggle, workers' committees, these workers' councils, can thus become organizations of workers' power, and it would be their task to defend this power against the onslaught of all the repressive forces of the threatened ruling class. This is a merciless struggle, as the history of the great revolutionary movements has taught us. This is when workers' committees and councils are joined by soldiers' and sailors' committees, when neighborhood committees are set up in towns and cities, and when the exploited organize themselves and, while fighting the battle, put in place the structures of a new society.

It's understandable that, just as during a strike, the utmost vigilance is required to ensure that workers' committees and councils retain their originality, i.e. that they always remain under the control of those who elected them. History has taught us that no form of organization is guaranteed against bureaucratization or conquest by a hierarchical party, in which case Workers' Councils can become mere instruments in the service of a ruling minority.

This was the fate of the soviets of 1917, when the Bolsheviks became the majority within them, and that of the German Workers' Councils, when the social-democratic party succeeded in controlling them. So, if workers' committees and councils are the best form of organization they have spontaneously created for themselves in the past, and which they recreate for new struggles, must the level of consciousness attained in these struggles be such as to preserve these bodies from degeneration? Here we touch on a problem that deserves to be taken up again. The text by Pannekoek published in our issue 1 will help us to do so. The adaptation of consciousness to social existence takes place in a process of permanent transformation, says Pannekoek, who has endeavored to unravel everything involved in the formation of consciousness. In fact, the level of consciousness can hardly be analyzed; it is verified in and through the class struggle.

To stay with the Councils or Committees that may interest us now or in the near future, i.e. Strike Committees or Action Committees that may emerge in the course of wildcat strikes or new workers' and students' struggles of some scale, we must of course emphasize their enormous advantage as mobilizing and unifying bodies. The multiplicity of tendencies that may be expressed within the Committees, and whose disappearance it would be pointless to wish for, is of little importance. The necessities of action give divergences their true importance, and formations of all kinds their true dimension.

It should also be noted — and this is also a lesson from history — that workers only set up committees or councils when traditional organizations, parties and trade unions, no longer have their confidence, and without being able to rely on extreme left-wing groupings whose multiplicity and weakness are off-putting.

We don't claim to be the only ones to see Councils or Committees as indispensable to any revolutionary action. But what distinguishes us from other Communist currents, and earns us the name "Council Communists", is the fact that we see these Councils as the only truly representative bodies of the workers, and that all our efforts are aimed at helping them preserve their autonomy from all the formations that propose to lead them.

We are attached to, and claim to be part of, the left-wing communism that Lenin tried to eradicate as "the infantile disorder of communism. Since 1920, when Lenin's book was written, we believe that history has made up its mind. The Leninist notion of the ruling party can only lead to a techno-bureaucratic society in which a new ruling class replaces the bourgeoisie to perpetuate the exploitation of the workers.

Leninism leads to State Capitalism, not to socialism, which can only be the work of the workers themselves.

Let's return to the present situation, characterized by the fact that many young workers and students want to "continue the fight" and revive what was spontaneously created in May and June. In the absence of massive participation by workers and students, the desire to prolong the life of organizations born in and for action at all costs, i.e. artificially, runs the risk of leading to the animation of small cenacles whose life is conditioned by the agreement or confrontation of militants of multiple tendencies who seek above all to extend their influence.

But the fact remains that we can't ignore the existence of nuclei in companies and student circles — which can nevertheless be seen as the embryos of the new committees that a revival of the class struggle would bring into being. Let's never forget that reality rarely offers us the example of the creation of organizations as pure as we'd like them to be. Concrete action doesn't unfold in the way we would like it to.

Our role is simply to defend our conceptions through active participation in the battles to which we have committed ourselves as workers.