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Title: Workers Councils
Author: John Harper
Date: 1936
Language: en
Topics: Council Communism, introductory
Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/councils.htm
Notes: Published: First published in English in the International Council Correspondence, Vol.II, No.5, April 1936.  Source: Endpage.com.  Transcription/Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.  Proofreading/Reformatting: Andy Carloff, 2010 (proofreading); Micah Muer, 2019 (reformatting).  Note by Endpage.com: This article was first published in English in the American journal International Council Correspondence (Vol. II No. 5 April 1936). (Pannekoek wrote a book with this title some years later). The text was published over the initials J.H (John Harper), a pen name Pannekoek often used and the translation may have been by Pannekoek himself. There are a couple of obvious errors in the published text which we have not attempted to correct. The article is in two parts — it would be interesting to know if it was originally two short texts which were then joined together.

John Harper

Workers Councils

1.

In its revolutionary struggles, the working class needs organization.

When great masses have to act as a unit, a mechanism is needed for

understanding and discussion, for the making and issuing of decisions,

and for the proclaiming of actions and aims.

This does not mean, of course, that all great actions and universal

strikes are carried out with soldierlike discipline, after the decisions

of a central board. Such cases will occur, it is true, but more often,

through their eager fighting spirit, their solidarity and passion,

masses will break out in strikes to help their comrades, or to protest

against some capitalist atrocity, with no general plan. Then such a

strike will spread like a prairie fire all over the country.

In the first Russian revolution, the strike waves went up and down.

Often the most successful were those that had not been decided in

advance, while the strikes that had been proclaimed by the central

committees often failed.

The strikers, once they are fighting, want mutual contact and

understanding in order to unite in an organized force. Here a difficulty

presents itself. Without strong organization, without joining forces and

binding their will in one solid body, without uniting their action in

one common deed, they cannot win against the strong organization of

capitalist power. But when thousands and millions of workers are united

in one body, this can only be managed by functionaries acting as

representatives of the members. And we have seen that then these

officials become masters of the organization, with interests different

from the revolutionary interests of the workers.

How can the working class, in revolutionary fights, unite its force into

a big organization without falling into the pit of officialdom? The

answer is given by putting another question: if all that the workers do

is to pay their fees and to obey when their leaders order them out and

order them in, are they themselves then really fighting their fight for

freedom?

Fighting for freedom is not letting your leaders think for you and

decide, and following obediently behind them, or from time to time

scolding them. Fighting for freedom is partaking to the full of one’s

capacity, thinking and deciding for oneself, taking all the

responsibilities as a self-relying individual amidst equal comrades. It

is true that to think for oneself, to think out what is true and right,

with a head dulled by fatigue, is the hardest, the most difficult task;

it is much harder than to pay and to obey. But it is the only way to

freedom. To be liberated by others, whose leadership is the essential

part of the liberation, means the getting of new masters instead of the

old ones.

Freedom, the goal of the workers, means that they shall be able, man for

man, to manage the world, to use and deal with the treasures of the

earth, so as to make it a happy home for all. How can they ensure this

if they are not able to conquer and defend this themselves?

The proletarian revolution is not simply the vanquishing of capitalist

power. It is the rise of the whole working people out of dependence and

ignorance into independence and clear consciousness of how to make their

life.

True organization, as the workers need it in the revolution, implies

that everyone takes part in it, body and soul and brains; that everyone

takes part in leadership as well as in action, and has to think out, to

decide and to perform to the full of his capacities. Such an

organization is a body of self-determining people. There is no place for

professional leaders. Certainly there is obeying; everybody has to

follow the decisions which he himself has taken part in making. But the

full power always rests with the workers themselves.

Can such a form of organization be realized? What must be its structure?

It is not necessary to construct it or think it out. History has already

produced it. It sprang into life out of the practice of the class

struggle. Its prototype, its first trace, is found in the strike

committees. In a big strike, all the workers cannot assemble in one

meeting. They choose delegates to act as a committee. Such a committee

is only the executive organ of the strikers; it is continually in touch

with them and has to carry out the decisions of the strikers. Each

delegate at every moment can be replaced by others; such a committee

never becomes an independent power. In such a way, common action as one

body can be secured, and yet the workers have all decisions in their own

hands. Usually in strikes, the uppermost lead is taken out of the hands

of these committees by the trade unions and their leaders.

In the Russian revolution when strikes broke out irregularly in the

factories, the strikers chose delegates which, for the whole town or for

an industry or railway over the whole state or province, assembled to

bring unity into the fight. They had at once to discuss political

matters and to assume political functions because the strikes were

directed against Czarism. They were called soviets; councils. In these

soviets all the details of the situation, all the workers’ interests,

all political events were discussed. The delegates went to and fro

continually between the assembly and their factories. In the factories

and shops the workers, in general meetings, discussed the same matters,

took their decisions and often sent new delegates. Able socialists were

appointed as secretaries, to give advice based on their wider knowledge.

Often these soviets had to act as political powers, as a kind of

primitive government when the Czarist power was paralyzed, when

officials and officers did not know what to do and left the field to

them. Thus these soviets became the permanent center of the revolution;

they were constituted by delegates of all the factories, striking or

working. They could not think of becoming an independent power. The

members were often changed and sometimes the whole soviet was arrested

and had to be replaced by new delegates. Moreover they knew that all

their force was rooted in the workers will to strike or not to strike;

often their calls were not followed when they did not concur with the

workers’ instinctive feelings of power or weakness, of passion or

prudence. So the soviet system proved to be the appropriate form of

organization for a revolutionary working class. In 1917 it was at once

adopted in Russia, and everywhere workers, and soldiers’ soviets came

into being and were the driving force of the revolution.

The complementary proof was given in Germany. In 1918, after the

breakdown of the military power, workers’ and soldiers’ councils in

imitation of Russia were founded. But the German workers, educated in

party and union discipline, full of social-democratic ideas of republic

and reform as the next political aims, chose their party and

union-officials as delegates into these councils. When fighting and

acting themselves, they acted and fought in the right way, but from lack

of self-confidence they chose leaders filled with capitalist ideas, and

these always spoilt matters. It is natural that a “council congress”

then resolved to abdicate for a new parliament, to be chosen as soon as

possible.

Here it became evident that the council system is the appropriate form

of organization only for a revolutionary working class. If the workers

do not intend to go on with the revolution, they have no use for

soviets. If the workers are not far enough advanced yet to see the way

of revolution, if they are satisfied with the leaders doing all the work

of speechifying and mediating and bargaining for reforms within

capitalism, then parliaments and party and union-congresses, – called

workers parliaments because they work after the same principle – are all

they need. If, however, they fight with all their energy for revolution,

if with intense eagerness and passion they take part in every event, if

they think over and decide for themselves all details of fighting

because they have to do the fighting, then workers’ councils are the

organization they need.

This implies that workers’ councils cannot be formed by revolutionary

groups. Such groups can only propagate the idea by explaining to their

fellow workers the necessity of council-organization, when the working

class as a self-determining power fights for freedom. Councils are the

form of organization only for fighting masses, for the working class as

a whole, not for revolutionary groups.

They originate and grow up along with the first action of a

revolutionary character. With the development of revolution, their

importance and their functions increase. At first they may appear as

simple strike committees, in opposition to the labor leaders when the

strikes go beyond the intentions of the leaders, and rebel against the

unions and their leaders.

In a universal strike the functions of these committees are enlarged.

Now delegates of all the factories and plants have to discuss and to

decide about all the conditions of the fight; they will try to regulate

into consciously devised actions all the fighting power of the workers;

they must see how they will react upon the governments’ measures, the

doings of soldiers or capitalist gangs. By means of this very strike

action, the actual decisions are made by the workers themselves. In the

councils, the opinions, the will, the readiness, the hesitation, or the

eagerness, the energy and the obstacles of all these masses concentrate

and combine into a common line of action. They are the symbols, the

exponents of the workers’ power; but at the same time they are only the

spokesmen who can be replaced at any moment. At one time they are

outlaws to the capitalist world, and at the next, they have to deal as

equal parties with the high functionaries of government.

When the revolution develops to such power that the State power is

seriously affected, then the workers’ councils have to assume political

functions. In a political revolution, this is their first and chief

function. They are the central bodies of the workers’ power; they have

to take all measures to weaken and defeat the adversary. Like a power at

war, they have to stand guard over the whole country, controlling the

efforts of the capitalist class to collect and restore their forces and

to subdue the workers. They have to look after a number of public

affairs which otherwise were state affairs : public health, public

security, and the uninterrupted course of social life. They have to take

care of the production itself; the most important and difficult task and

concern of the working class in revolution.

A social revolution in history never began as a simple change of

political rulers who then, after having acquired political power,

carried out the necessary social changes by means of new laws. Already,

before and during the fight, the rising class built up its new social

organs as new sprouting branches within the dead husk of the former

organism. In the French revolution, the new capitalist class, the

citizens, the business men, the artisans, built up in each town and

village their communal boards, their new courts of justice, illegal at

the time, usurping simply the functions of the powerless functionaries

of royalty. While their delegates in Paris discussed and made the new

constitution, the actual constitution was made all over the country by

the citizens holding their political meetings, building up their

political organs afterwards legalized by law.

In the same way during the proletarian revolution, the new rising class

creates its new forms of organization which step by step in the process

of revolution supersede the old State organization. The workers’

councils, as the new form of political organization, take the place of

parliamentarism, the political form of capitalist rule.

2.

Parliamentary democracy is considered by capitalist theorists as well as

by social-democrats as the perfect democracy, conform to justice and

equality. In reality, it is only a disguise for capitalist domination,

and contrary to justice and equality. It is the council system that is

the true workers’ democracy.

Parliamentary democracy is foul democracy. The people are allowed to

vote once in four or five years and to choose their delegates; woe to

them if they do not choose the right man. Only at the polls the voters

can exert their power; thereafter they are powerless. The chosen

delegates are now the rulers of the people; they make laws and

constitute governments, and the people have to obey. Usually, by the

election mechanism, only the big capitalist parties with their powerful

apparatus, with their papers, their noisy advertising, have a chance to

win. Real trustees of discontented groups seldom have a chance to win

some few seats.

In the soviet system, each delegate can be repealed at any moment. Not

only do the workers continually remain in touch with the delegate,

discussing and deciding for themselves, but the delegate is only a

temporary messenger to the council assemblies. Capitalist politicians

denounce this “characterless” role of the delegate, in that he may have

to speak against his personal opinion. They forget that just because

there are no fixed delegates, only those will be sent whose opinions

conform to those of the workers.

The principle of parliamentary representation is that the delegate in

parliament shall act and vote according to his own conscience and

conviction. If on some question he should ask the opinion of his voters,

it is only due to his own prudence. Not the people, but he on his own

responsibility has to decide. The principle of the soviet system is just

the reverse; the delegates only express the opinions of the workers.

In the elections for parliament, the citizens are grouped according to

voting districts and counties; that is to say according to their

dwelling place. Persons of different trades or classes, having nothing

in common, accidentally living near one another, are combined into an

artificial group which has to be represented by one delegate.

In the councils, the workers are represented in their natural groups,

according to factories, shops and plants. The workers of one factory or

one big plant form a unit of production; they belong together by their

collective work. In revolutionary epochs, they are in immediate contact

to interchange opinions; they live under the same conditions and have

the same interests. They must act together; the factory is the unit

which as a unit has to strike or to work, and its workers must decide

what they collectively have to do. So the organization and delegation of

workers in factories and workshops is the necessary form.

It is at the same time the principle of representation of the communist

order growing up in the revolution. Production is the basis of society,

or, more rightly, it is the contents, the essence of society; hence the

order of production is at the same time the order of society. Factories

are the working units, the cells of which the organism of society

consists. The main task of the political organs, which mean nothing else

but the organs managing the totality of society, concerns the productive

work of society. Hence it goes without saying that the working people,

in their councils, discuss these matters and choose their delegates,

collected in their production units.

We should not believe, though, that parliamentarism, as the political

form of capitalism, was not founded on production. Always the political

organization is adapted to the character of production as the basis of

society. Representation, according to dwelling place, belongs to the

system of petty capitalist production, where each man is supposed to be

the possessor of his own small business. Then there is a mutual

connection between all these businessmen at one place, dealing with one

another, living as neighbors, knowing one another and therefore sending

one common delegate to parliament. This was the basis of

parliamentarism. We have seen that later on this parliamentary

delegation system proved to be the right system for representing the

growing and changing class interests within capitalism.

At the same time it is clear now why the delegates in parliament had to

take political power in their hands. Their political task was only a

small part of the task of society. The most important part, the

productive work, was the personal task of all the separate producers,

the citizens as business men; it required nearly all their energy and

care. When every individual took care of his own small lot, then society

as their totality went right. The general regulations by law, necessary

conditions, doubtlessly, but of minor extent, could be left to the care

of a special group or trade, the politicians. With communist production

the reverse is true. Here the all important thing, the collective

productive work, is the task of society as a whole; it concerns all the

workers collectively. Their personal work does not claim their whole

energy and care; their mind is turned to the collective task of society.

The general regulation of this collective work cannot be left to a

special group of persons; it is the vital interest of the whole working

people.

There is another difference between parliamentarism and the soviet

system. In parliamentary democracy, one vote is given to every adult man

and sometimes woman on the strength of their supreme, inborn right of

belonging to mankind, as is so beautifully expressed in celebration

speeches. In the soviets, on the other hand, only the workers are

represented. Can the council system then be said to be truly democratic

if it excludes the other classes of society?

The council system embodies the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx

and Engels, more than half a century ago, explained that the social

revolution was to lead to the dictatorship of the working class as the

next political form and that this was essential in order to bring about

the necessary changes in society. Socialists, thinking in terms of

parliamentary representation only, tried to excuse or to criticize the

violation of democracy and the injustice of arbitrarily excluding

persons from the polls because they belong to certain classes. Now we

see how the development of the proletarian class struggle in a natural

way produces the organs of this dictatorship, the soviets.

It is certainly no violation of justice that the councils, as the

fighting centers of a revolutionary working class, do not include

representatives of the opposing class. And thereafter the matter is not

different. In a rising communist society there is no place for

capitalists; they have to disappear and they will disappear. Whoever

takes part in the collective work is a member of the collectivity and

takes part in the decisions. Persons, however, who stand outside the

process of collective production, are, by the structure of the council

system, automatically excluded from influence upon it. Whatever remains

of the former exploiters and robbers has no vote in the regulation of a

production in which they take no part.

There are other classes in society that do not directly belong to the

two chief opposite classes: small farmers, independent artisans,

intellectuals. In the revolutionary fight they may waver to and fro, but

on the whole they are not very important, because they have less

fighting power. Mostly their forms of organization and their aims are

different. To make friends with them or to neutralize them, if this is

possible without impeding the proper aims or to fight them resolutely if

necessary, to decide upon the way of dealing with them with equity and

firmness, will be the concern, often a matter of difficult tactics, of

the fighting working class. In the production-system, insofar as their

work is useful and necessary, they will find their place and they will

exert their influence after the principle that whoever does the work has

a chief vote in regulating the work.

More than half a century ago, Engels said that through the proletarian

revolution the State would disappear; instead of the ruling over men

would come the managing of affairs. This was said at a time when there

could not be any clear idea about how the working class would come into

power. Now we see the truth of this statement confirmed. In the process

of revolution, the old State Power will be destroyed, and the organs

that take its place, the workers’ councils, for the time being, will

certainly have important political functions still to repress the

remnants of capitalist power. Their political function of governing,

however, will be gradually turned into nothing but the economic function

of managing the collective process of production of goods for the needs

of society.

J.H.