#workers councils

[jocrude]

Statement of the Workers’ Councils of Arak: All power to the councils!

Huge news. Workers in the city of Arak have allegedly formed workers councils and seized several factories.

[workerscontrol]

Solidarity -- As We See It

[russia-libertaire]

The Soviets

'The workers, naturally enough, were the first to react to Bloody Sunday. Abandoning any hope of support from church or tsar, they turned for advice and organizational support to the opposition, especially to the socialists. The Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries were slow to respond: their leaders were still in emigration, cut off from their potential constituents and preoccupied by heated polemics with one another. Local activists did what they could to improvise meetings, protests, and strikes, and gradually their contact with the workers improved and assumed more organized forms. The result was a new type of workers' association, the Soviet (Council) of Workers' Deputies. First set up in the textile town of Ivanovo-Voznesensk to coordinate a general strike, the soviets were usually elected by the workers of the major enterprises in any given town, at the rate of one deputy for every 500 or so workers. They would meet in a large building, or even in the open air, where not only deputies but also their electors could attend and contribute to discussions. This was a close approach to direct democracy, since, at least in principle, any deputy could be recalled at any time if he failed to satisfy his constituents and be replaced by someone else. The members of each soviet elected an executive committee to deal with day-to-day business and to negotiate with employers, municipality, and police: often they would choose professional people, seeing them as more skillful spokesmen than they themselves could be. Through the executive committees the socialist activists gained influence over the soviets and sometimes directly organized them. The soviets were the best forum for radical intellectuals and workers to cooperate with each other at a time of political crisis. For the workers, they took a familiar form: their general meetings resembled overgrown and disorderly village assemblies, in which everyone tried to speak and mass enthusiasm welled up. On the other hand, the executive committees supplied the element of conscious policy and organization. The soviets' greatest moment came in St. Petersburg in October 1905, when they organized a general strike which disrupted normal production and communications not only in the capital city but over much of the empire. This was the decisive blow which compelled the tsar to grant the October Manifesto, promising civil liberties and an elected legislative assembly.'

Russia and the Russians, by Geoffrey Hosking

[solarpunksocialism]

"Labor is a social process. Each Enterprise is part of the productive body of society. The total social production is formed by their connection and collaboration. Like the cells are constitute a living organism, they cannot exist isolated and cut off from the body. So the organization of the work inside the shop is only one half of the task of the workers. Over it, a still more important task, stands the joining of the separate enterprises, their combination into a social organization. Whereas organization within the shop already existed under capitalism, and had only to be replaced by another, based on a new foundation, social organization of all the shops into one whole is, or was until recent years, something entirely new, without precedent. So utterly new, that during the entire 19th century the establishing of this organization, under the name of "Socialism" was considered the main task of the working class. Capitalism consisted of an unorganized mass of independent enterprises --- "a jostling crowd of separate privates employers", as the program of the labor party expresses it connected only by the chance relations of Market in competition, resulting in bankruptcies, overproduction in crises, unemployment and an enormous waste of materials and labor power. To abolish it the working class should conquer the political power and use it to organize industry and production. This state socialism was considered then at the first step into a new development"

- Anton Pannekoek, Workers Councils

[probablyasocialecologist]

Whoever makes a detailed study of any of the great discoveries in science, technics or what else is surprised by the great number of names associated with it. In the later popular and abridged historical text books, however, the source of so many superficial misconceptions, only a few prominent names are preserved and exalted, as if theirs was the sole credit. So these were coined exceptional geniuses. In reality every great progress proceeded from a social surrounding pregnant with it, where from all sides the new ideas, the suggestions, the glimpses of insight sprang up. None of the great men, extolled in history, because they took the decisive and salient steps, could have done so but for the work of a large number of precursors on whose achievements his are based. And besides, these most talented thinkers, praised in later centuries as the authors of the world’s progress, were not at all the spiritual leaders of their time. They were often unknown to their contemporaries, quietly working in retirement; they mostly belonged to the subjected class, sometimes even they were persecuted by the rulers. Their present-day equivalents are not those noisy claimants for intellectual leadership, but silent workers again, hardly known, derided perhaps or persecuted. Only in a society of free producers, who are able to appreciate the importance of spiritual achievements and eager to apply them to the well-being of all, the creative genius will be recognized and estimated by his fellow-men at the full value.

Anton Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils

[taco-pal]

The capitalist ownership of the means of production stood between the workers and the machines. This ownership, affirmed if necessary by the power of police and State, forbade the workers to touch the machines and to produce all that they themselves and society needed for their existence. The machines had to stand and rust, the workers had to hang around and suffer want. Why? Because capitalism is unable to manage the mighty technical and productive powers of mankind to conform to their original aim, to provide for the needs of society.

Anton Pannekoek, "Workers Councils"

[criticiseafterdinner-blog]

1917-1921

interesting project by Bundowiec Zos and others: "Trying to create an interactive map of workers' councils that followed the revolutionary wave of 1917.", collecting data at the moment.

[criticiseafterdinner-blog]

"Now the goal becomes distinct; opposite to the stronger domination by state-directed planned economy of the new capitalism stands what Marx called the association of free and equal producers. So the call for unity must be supplemented by indication of the goal: take the factories and machines ; assert your mastery over the productive apparatus; organize production by means of workers' councils."

Anton Pannekoek. Workers Councils.