A workers' council, or labor council,[1] is a type of council or popular assembly in a workplace or a locality made up of workers or of temporary and instantly revocable delegates elected by the workers in a locality's workplaces.[2] In such a system of political and economic organization, the workers themselves are able to exercise decision-making power. Furthermore, the workers within each council decide on what their agenda is and what their needs are. The council communist Antonie Pannekoek describes shop-committees and sectional assemblies as the basis for workers' management of the industrial system.[3] A variation is a soldiers' council, where soldiers direct a mutiny. Workers and soldiers have also operated councils in conjunction (like the 1918 German Arbeiter- und Soldatenrat). Workers' councils may in turn elect delegates to central committees, such as the Congress of Soviets.
Supporters of workers' councils (such as council communists,[4] libertarian socialists,[5] Leninists,[6] anarchists,[7] and Marxists[8]) argue that they are the most natural form of working-class organization, and believe that workers' councils are necessary for the organization of a proletarian revolution and the implementation of an anarchist or communist society.
The Paris Commune of 1871 became a model for how future workers' councils would be organised for revolution and socialist governance.[citation needed] Workers' councils have played a significant role in the communist revolutions of the 20th century; they were established in the lands of the Russian Empire (including Congress Poland and Latvia) in 1905, with the workers' councils (soviets) acting as labor committees which coordinated strike activities throughout the cities due to repression of trade unions. During the Revolutions of 1917–1923, councils of socialist workers were able to exercise political authority. In the workers' councils organized as part of the 1918 German revolution, factory organizations such as the General Workers' Union of Germany formed the basis for region-wide councils.
In Political Theory
Anarchism
Anarchists historically have endorsed the use of workers' councils for organising an anarchist revolution. Writing for the journal Les Temps nouveaux, Russian philosopher Peter Kropotkin has praised the workers of Russia for using this form of organisation during the Revolution of 1905.[9] Proponants of participatory economics have also advocated for the use of workers' councils as a means for participatory urban planning as well as decentralised planning of the economy.[10]
Council Communism
Council Communism is a libertarian Marxist current that advocates for a system of workers councils, as opposed to a communist party or trade union, to coordinate class struggle. Workers directly control production and construct higher organizational bodies from below. Recall-able delegates can be elected from individual workplaces to represent workers on a societal level. Council communists, such as the Dutch-German current of left communists, believe that their nature means that workers' councils do away with bureaucratic form of the state and instead give power directly to workers through a soviet democracy. Council communists view this organization of a revolutionary government as an anti-authoritarian approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat.[citation needed]
The council communists in the Communist Workers' Party of Germany advocated organizing "on the basis of places of work, not trades, and to establish a National Federation of Works Committees."[11] The Central Workers Council of Greater Budapest occupied this role in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, between late October and early January 1957, where it grew out of local factory committees.[12]
Orthodox Marxism
Leninism
Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin proposed that the dictatorship of the proletariat should come in the form of a soviet republic. He proposed that the revolutionary party should seize state power and establish a socialist state based on soviet democracy.[6]
Some academics and socialists disputed the commitments Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky had toward workers' councils after the Russian Revolution of 1917, noting that workers' councils "were never meant to become a permanent political form of self-governance" and were therefore sidelined by the Communist Party.[5][13][14][15] Some socialists have argued this as an example of the Bolsheviks' betrayal of socialist principles,[5] while others have defended it as necessary for the social conditions at the time to maintain and advance the Revolution.[16]
Luxemburgism
Rosa Luxemburg was a vocal proponant of radical socialist democracy, and advocated for the revolution to be led by workers' and soldiers' councils.[17] She was also openly critical of the actions of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, arguing that their approach was anti-democratic and totalitarian.[18]
Historical examples
At several times, both in late modern and in recent history, socialists and communists have organized workers' councils during periods of unrest. Examples include:
- Russia in 1905 and during 1917-1921 (soviets);[19]
- Poland during 1905, 1918–1919, 1944–1947 and 1956, 1970, 1980–1981 (rady robotnicze);[20][page needed]
- Mexiko during 1910–1920[20][page needed]
- Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities during 1994–present[20][page needed]
- Cherán during 2011 (comités trabajadores);[citation needed]
- Glasgow, Scotland during 1915 (Rent Strikes)[20][page needed]
- Austria during 1918[citation needed]
- Finland during the 1918 (Central Workers' Council of Finland)[citation needed]
- Germany during 1918–1919 (räte);[20][page needed]
- Ukraine during 1918–1921 (vilni rady, "free soviets");[citation needed]
- Hungary during 1919 and 1956 (szovjetek);[citation needed]
- Italy during 1919–1920 and 1968 (consigli di fabbrica);[citation needed]
- Ireland during 1920–1921 (comhairle oibrithe);[citation needed]
- China during 1920–1927, in 1967 (sūwéiāi), and in 1989;[citation needed]
- Korea during 1929–1931 (hyeob-uihoe) and 1945–1946 (inmin wiwǒnhoe) ;[citation needed]
- Spain during 1934 and 1936–1937 (comités trabajadores);[citation needed]
- Indonesia during 1945–1946[20][page needed]
- Vietnam during 1930-1931 and 1945[citation needed]
- Algeria during 1962–1965[20][page needed]
- France during 1968 (comités d'entreprise);[citation needed]
- Czechoslovakia in 1968 ;[citation needed]
- Sri Lanka during the 1970–75 United Front government[21]
- Australia during 1971–1980 and 1990[22]
- Chile during 1973 (cordones);[citation needed]
- Argentina during 1973 and 2001[20][page needed]
- Northern Ireland during 1969-1972, (Free Derry), and 1974 (Ulster Workers' Council's Strike)[citation needed]
- Portugal during 1974–1976[20][page needed]
- Iran during 1978–1979 (shoras);[23]
- Canada during 1981[20]
- Rojava from 2012 onward[24]
See also
- Anarchism
- Antonie Pannekoek
- The Civil War in France
- Co-determination
- Council communism
- Kronstadt rebellion
- Factory committee
- Free association of producers
- Guild socialism
- Libertarian socialism
- Marxism
- Paris Commune
- Participatory democracy
- Rosa Luxemburg
- Soviet democracy
- Soviet republic (system of government)
- Soviet (council)
- Supreme Soviet
- Works council
- Workers' control
- Workers' self-management
- Workers' Council of the United States
References
- ^ Rocker, Rudolf (2004). Anarcho-syndicalism: Theory and Practice. AK Press. p. 63. ISBN 1902593928.
- ^ Castoriadis, Cornelius (2014). Workers' Councils and the Economics of Self-Managed Society. Thought Crime Ink. ISBN 9780981289762.
- ^ Pannekoek, Anton (1946). Workers' Councils. Wageningen, Netherlands: Communistenbond Spartacus. ISBN 9781902593562.
- ^ Mattick, Paul (1967). "Workers' Control". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ a b c Albert, Michael; Hahnel, Robin (1991). Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty First Century. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. p. 9. ISBN 0-89608-405-1.
- ^ a b "The State and Revolution" (PDF).
- ^ "A Brief History of Popular Assemblies and Worker Councils". The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ Smaldone, William (March 17, 2023). "Otto Bauer and the Austro-Marxists Wanted a Socialist Revolution in Democracy". Jacobin. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ McKay, Iain (July 11, 2019). "Precursors of Syndicalism III". Anarchist Writers.
- ^ Albert, Michael (2004). Parecon: Life after Capitalism. Verso Books. ISBN 185984698X.
- ^ Bernhard Reichenbach, The KAPD in Retrospect: An Interview with a Member of the Communist Workers Party of Germany
- ^ "Balazs Nagy: Budapest 1956 - the Central Workers' Council (Autumn 1964)".
- ^ Popp-Madsen, Benjamin Ask; Kets, Gaard (2021-01-01). "Workers' Councils and Radical Democracy: Toward a Conceptual History of Council Democracy from Marx to Occupy". Polity. 53 (1): 160–188. doi:10.1086/711750. hdl:2066/228676. ISSN 0032-3497. S2CID 228852799.
- ^ Brown, Tom (2012). wojtek (ed.). "Lenin and workers' control". libcom.org. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ https://jsis.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Russian_Revolutions.pdf
- ^ "The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control: The State and Counter-Revolution". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ Luxemburg, Rosa. "Our Program and the Political Situation". Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
- ^ Luxemburg, Rosa (1940) [1918]. "The Problem of Dictatorship". The Russian Revolution. Translated by Wolfe, Bertram. New York: Workers Age Publishers.
- ^ Maurice Brinton, pseud. (Christopher Agamemnon Pallis). The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control. (Orig: Solidarity UK, London, 1970), The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control introduction
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Ness, Immanuel (2010). Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present.
- ^ Goonewardena, Leslie (1975). "Employees Councils and Self Management in Sri Lanka". State. 1: 32–37.
- ^ Ness, Immanuel (2014). New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class Struggle Unionism. pp. 184–203.
- ^ Poya, Maryam (2002) [1987]. "Iran 1979: Long live the Revolution! ... Long Live Islam?". In Barker, Colin (ed.). Revolutionary Rehearsals. Chicago: Haymarket Books. pp. 143–149. ISBN 1-931859-02-7.
- ^ A Small Key Can Open a Large Door: The Rojava Revolution (1st ed.). Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. 4 March 2015. According to Dr. Ahmad Yousef, an economic co-minister, three-quarters of traditional private property is being used as commons and one quarter is still being owned by use of individuals...According to the Ministry of Economics, worker councils have only been set up for about one third of the enterprises in Rojava so far.
Bibliography
- Bonnet, Alberto R. (2011). "The Political Form at Last Discovered: Workers' Councils against the Capitalist State". In Ness, Immanuel; Azzellini, Dario (eds.). Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present. Haymarket Books. pp. 66–83. ISBN 978-1-60846-119-6.
- Cohen, Sheila (2011). "The Red Mole: Workers' Councils as a Means of Revolutionary Transformation". In Ness, Immanuel; Azzellini, Dario (eds.). Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present. Haymarket Books. pp. 48–65. ISBN 978-1-60846-119-6.
- Gluckstein, Donny (2011). "Workers' Councils in Europe: A Century of Experience". In Ness, Immanuel; Azzellini, Dario (eds.). Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present. Haymarket Books. pp. 32–47. ISBN 978-1-60846-119-6.