In the course of the 1920s, three different positions gradually crystallised. First, there were council communists who believed that the old workers movement had only discredited a certain kind of party, but not the idea of a party as such. The new revolutionary party should not be something separate from the working class, but should dialectically fuse with it. This position was defended by, among others, Herman Gorter, who summarised the line of argument pithily in three points: Firstly, regroupment of all workers, of the great majority of the proletariat in the [revolutionary] union; secondly, regroupment of the most conscious workers in the party; thirdly, unity of union and party. (30) The advocates of unity organisations had a second position. The most important theorist of this intermediate position was Otto Rühle, who had already declared in 1920 that the revolution is not a party affair [Die Revolution ist keine Parteisache]. In Rühles eyes, the division of labour between party and trade union was a legacy of capitalism. The unitary organisation, which workers could use to defend their interests an all fronts and promote council democracy, should replace them both. The starting point of the workers revolutionary learning processes was where they produced surplus-value, that is, in the workplace. There they would have to organise their struggle themselves. Through economic struggle, they would educate themselves and arrive at a higher, political consciousness. These learning processes would find organisational expression in federations of workplace organisations, which would carry an economic and political struggle simultaneously. This standpoint was virtually identical to revolutionary syndicalism. (31) The most radical council communists were those who flatly refused to intervene in the workers movement. Anton Pannekoek, while not the originator, was the most prominent representative of this standpoint. He lays out its logic in his memoirs: [Under the influence of Henk Canne Meijer and othersl new principles gradually became clearer. This one especially: the working masses must themselves make the decisions about their struggle, and themselves carry out and lead it. This seems either a commonplace or evident nonsense; but it means that there is no room for Leaders as such. I remember that I once debated with myself during a great strike what the workers should do, and could not figure out which of two different attitudes should be taken up; and what if one later had to give ones opinion or advice in an article or newspaper? In the end, thanks to an article of Henks, I saw the simple solution all at once: I don t have to figure it out; the workers have to figure it out themselves and themselves take full responsibility for it.(32) The council communists task, according to this approach, was exclusively to study and analyse capitalism and workers struggles. This standpoint, which is still propagated today by Cajo Brendel and a few associates, earned its supporters the sobriquet cloistered friars of Marxism. (33)
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 07:42:12 +0000
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