Current Council Communist groups

http://www.eis-zeit.net/

http://strike.blogsport.de/

http://www.kosmoprolet.org/

http://muckracker.wordpress.com/

oh and i was thinking of Daad en Gedachte but i think they are no more...
http://en.internationalism.org/wr/221_daad.htm
http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/cajo-brendel-1915-2007

also read recently that ICC and ICT could be sorta considered to be continuance from council communism as they originated from council communist/councilist groups but eventually sorta took a left communist pro-party turn?

I wouldn't classify the peopole from "Barrikade" as council communist. they are pretty othodox anarcho syndicalists.

i think they mostly had some interesting things about cc, i'd agree about them being a-s tho

anarcho-syndicalists, for sure

No, that's more or less opposite from the true order of influences. Both the ICC and the ICT have their origins in Bordigism, acquring some CC aspects or themes later in their evolution. But the commitment to the Bordigist conception of party and class are descended from their origins in that tradition, rather than adopted or grafted on at a later stage.

Both the ICC and the ICT, trace their origins to the political evolution of the Italian Bordigist exiles in France through the tendency grouped around the magazine Bilan. It was during this period (while Bordiga himself withdrew from politics) that overtures were made to other tendencies of the "Communist Left", including the trots (abortive) and surving elements of the KAPD. The story is told in detail in Phillipe Bourrinet's "The Bordigist Current" (an earlier version of which was published as the ICC's "History of the Italian Communist Left")

As far as I aware, World Revolution came out of Solidarity's councilism and was initially council communist, before it moved toward left communism and helped form the ICC.

But yes Ocelot is correct I think in saying the ICC and ICT were from their outset explicitly left communist.

For additional confusion Klas, you might be interested to know there is also a group of Spanish bordigists maintaining a red / base union formed from a split from Solidaridad Obrera, the small anarcho-syndicalist union lying somewhere in between the CNT and CGT, and strong in the Madrid underground train system. I've had trouble digging up information on this however, and only picked it up from a libcom thread I can't find at the moment.

The union is called SUT, solidaridad y unidad de los trabajadores. As far as i know it only exists in Madrid and Barcelona. http://www.nodo50.org/sindicatosut/index.php

also though the CWO was made up by former Solidarity people who had went on to form Workers' Voice and Revolutionary Perspectives both of which were strongly influenced or connected to the Dutch German left...

i agree they very much went on to be more influenced by the italian left...but at least in the UK seems they were more influenced or had a line to council communism and/or councilism of Solidarity.

yeah that quote from C is quite interesting because essentially WV who denounced in a classic sense the october revolution and had to be convinced by RP of BC's positions, then went off and became councilist again or whatever...leaving I guess RP people mostly the folks doing CWO? so i assume they were the people that were pro-party?

Workers Voice left in 76, but the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party wasn't founded till 1983 between BC and CWO, which I'm guessing came out of the Conferences that BC had initiated to try and bring the communist left more together in the later half of the 70's.

Revolutionary Perspectives was/is the journal and I just remembered Workers Voice was the paper of CWO up to changing the name to Aurora.

Klas the pamphlet I reproduced 'The Origins of the Movement for Workers’ Councils in Germany - Group of International Communists 1938', Dave Graham wrote the original intro to that and was a member of the Liverpool WV group that split on councilist lines, I did meet him once while at a meeting on the Dockers strike in the 90's and I know he was influenced by Italian autonomism then.

My understanding is that it was not this straightforward. RP was essentially a project of one person who was later joined by two others, one who had been in Solidarity in Glasgow, London and an aborted attempt at a group in Newcastle (Cleishbotham on here, sure he won't mind me outting him!), and another had not been in Solidarity. Whilst WV was grouping of worker-militants as far as I know who came from shop steward and Trotskyist backgrounds toward left communist politics. The two then merged for a short period.

The people who were in RP were initally heavily influenced by the German-Dutch communist left, e.g. it was the founder of RP who translated and published the Ruhle pamphlet 'From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution' after all. As far their evolution from German-Dutch to Italian Left it was a gradual shift. Started out as the perspective of one individual who then convinced others. I actually have the issue of their publication that contains the internal debate on this. Can't exactly remember the details now.

What about Förbundet Allt åt Alla?

They seem in the tradition per se of the other 70s and 90s Swedish council communist groups?

They are federated with no central leadership? Anyone got a clue to their politics? Or are they just eclectic communist?

sindicatosut.org

It seems to vary a bit between cities and local groups, but overall i'd rather say they're mainly inspired by autonomism - thought as everything Negri's ever written. Then again, swedish autonomism has a tendency to organize a lot of varied opinions - say autonomists, but also anarchists, leninists and one or two lonely council communists - in the same groups. So i might be a bit off.

EDIT: okay, so i tried answering # 45 by klas batalo but seems to have failed with that.

ahhh k so they are more eclectic autonome??

There's some German IWWs that are into council communism: http://strike.blogsport.de/

Not particularly informative thread about them here: https://libcom.org/forums/general/contemporary-german-wobbly-council-com...

https://www.echangesetmouvement.fr/
https://www.daadengedachte.nl/

http://www.arbeidersstemmen.nl/

Six years later we can say that their politics are still pretty unclear. Their "chief theoretician" Mathias Wåg was very influenced by the social centers in Italy while he was in exile there, along with a lot of reading of Negri and Hardt, especially in regards to the "commons". Also the focus on the "right to the city" which I think ties into "the commons". This has from my understanding at least remained the core aspect of AåA's vague politics, some other things have come and gone, like they did a campaign for a social strike one year and are still a part of the Transnational social strike platform. They are also a very core part of the solidarity movement for the struggle in Rojava. The only ties to "council communism" I have come across is that the neighborhood organizing efforts and theorizing by some people in Folkmakt, an older council communist group, influenced and laid the foundation for AåA. In a lot of other aspects I think they are very different from Folkmakt, especially in their view on class in relation to organizing.

Though it is worth mentioning that the AåA-federation has gotten a lot smaller since 2014 with only Malmö, Stockholm(which now has one general chapter and one for women and trans people after internal disputes), Göteborg and Umeå(?) remaining. Much like the Syndicalist Youth Federation before it, they managed to have groups of activists in most larger cities and even some smaller cities, something unheard of today when it comes to the "autonomist" groupings.

To my knowledge the only existing organisation in Sweden that has a tie to council communism, both politically and organizationally, is Förbundet Arbetarsolidaritet, which is sort of an independent "strike fund" that helps both workers' struggle but also like getting material published. People from council communist groups like Folkmakt and Arbetarmakt helped found it, which shows in their small program I think. This fact is sort of hidden today but used to be written on their website(probably because the organisations now are gone), though during their recent anniversary celebration they had a lecture held by one of the original Arbetarmakt members, who they said they had learned a lot about.

https://raetekommunismus.wordpress.com/