Council Communism & The Critique of
Bolshevism
"Suppose the central leadership is able to distribute all of
what has been produced in a righteous way. Even then the fact
remains, that the producers don't have at their disposal the
machinery of production. This machinery is not theirs, it is one used
to dispose of them. The inevitable consequence is that those groups
that oppose the existent leadership will be oppressed with force. The
central economic power is in the hands of those who, at the same
time, exercise the political power. Any opposition thinking in a
different way about political and economic problems will be oppressed
with any possible means. This means that instead of an association of
free and equal producers, as defined by Marx, there is a house of
correction as no one has seen before."
This quotation, freely translated from a seventy year old text,
explains that the relations of production as they were developed in
Russia after October 1917, have nothing to do with what Marx and
Engels understood as communism. At the time the just-quoted pamphlet
was published the terror of the thirties lay ahead. It was only
prophecy. There was not any political event which had caused this
criticism of Soviet society; this criticism arose from an economic
analysis. On this base the rising Stalinism was understood as the
political expression of an economic system that belonged to a state
capitalist exploitation, and this counted not only for Stalinism.
The just-mentioned text was the work of a group whose authors
belonged to a current that arose in the years after the First World
War and won permanent meaning. This current was characterized by a
sharp criticism of social democracy as well as Bolshevism. It was a
current that carefully analyzed the daily experiences of the working
class, and so it came to new ideas about the class struggle. The
current saw social democracy and Bolshevism as the "old labour
movement" ; the contradiction of this was "a new movement of the
workers."
Among the earliest representatives of this current were German and
Dutch Marxists who had always stood on the left wing of social
democracy. In the course of their years long permanent struggle
against reformism they became more and more critical of social
democracy. The best known of this current were two Dutchmen, Anton
Pannekoek (1872-1960) and Herman Gorter (1864-1927) and also two
Germans, Karl Schroder (1884-1950) and Otto Ruhle (1874-1943). Later
the much younger Paul Mattick (1904-1980) became one of its most
important theorists.
Pannekoek's ideas drew attention shortly after the turn of the
century for some Marxist reflections on philosophy. From 1906 up to
the outbreak of the First World War he worked in Germany. First for a
year as a teacher in the SPD party school then after he was
threatened with expulsion from Germany, he worked in Bremen and wrote
articles for different left papers. While in Bremen Pannekoek
witnessed a very important wildcat strike by the dockers there. This
experience influenced his ideas about the class struggle, and his
interpretation of Marxism as well. As a consequence he rejected
Bolshevik theories about organization, strategy and policy at a very
early date.
Otto Ruhle never identified himself with a current in the German
labour movement; however, he never neglected the general interests of
the working class. Like Pannekoek he rejected Bolshevism in the
1920's and was one of the first to argue that the proletarian
revolution was something completely different from a bourgeois
revolution and as a consequence required completely different forms
of organization. For this reason he rejected the fallacy that the
proletarian revolution should be the case of a party. "Revolution" he
said "is not a party affair; politically and economically it is the
affair of the whole working class."
These ideas, which would become far more detailed, were
characteristic of the current which became known as Council
Communism. Council Communism, from the beginning of the twenties was
based on the experiences of the Russian and German Revolutions, and
defended the councilists' democracy and rejected the power of the
party. It sought to distinguish itself from Bolshevism and the
Bolsheviks, and those who claimed the name communist. Nevertheless at
its origin it was very far away from the opinions it later
developed.
2
In the beginning Council Communism was hardly different from
Leninism. Ruhle however did not regard the parties of the Third
International as communist ones. A few years later the Council
Communists were to distinguish themselves much more clearly from
Bolshevism. The so-called October Revolution finished Czarism and put
an end to feudal relations and cleared the way for capitalist
ones.
The Council Communists went further. They pointed to the fact that
an economy such as the Russian one, based on wage labour , that is to
say an economy where the labour force is a commodity, wants nothing
more than the production of surplus value and the exploitation of the
workers; It doesn't matter whether the surplus value goes to private
capitalists or to the state as the proprietor of the means of
production. The Council Communists remembered that Marx had taught
that nationalization of the means of production has nothing to do
with socialism. The Council Communists pointed to the fact that in
Russia, production obeyed the same laws that exist in classical
private capitalism. Exploitation can only come to an end - so said
Marx - when wage labour no longer exists. The Council Communists
explained, referring to Moscow, what communism was not. The
differences between Council Communism and Bolshevism became clearer
and more complete.
3
What has been said before should not be understood as meaning that
Council Communism is a special critique of Stalinism. It is a
critique of Bolshevism in general. Council Communists don't see
Stalinism as a sort of counter-revolution' that deprived
October of its fruits. Rather they see Stalinism just as a fruit of
this revolution, one that opened the door for capitalism in Russia.
Stalin was the heir of Bolshevism and the Bolshevik Revolution. The
development of this theory went slowly, just as the case was with
social development. In their course the Council Communists changed
their opinion and their own practice. Initially in Germany and
Holland Council Communist parties were founded. This contradicted the
opinion of some like Ruhle who, as stated previously, thought that
parties were not an affair of the working class. Ruhle however, saw
these organizations as parties "of a completely new character - a
party that wasn't a party anymore."
Four years later in 1924 Ruhle spoke a different language. "A
party with a revolutionary character in the proletarian meaning of
the word" he said "is an absurdity. Its revolutionary character can
only be in a bourgeois meaning and only when the question is the
changing of feudalism into capitalism." He was perfectly right and
for this reason the so-called absurdities disappeared from the
proletarian theatre within ten years. There was little exception and
soon after the Second World War the expression was no longer
used.
At the same time the Council Communists grew up. They had learned
that the Russian Revolution was nothing more than a bourgeois
revolution and that the Russian economy was nothing more than state
capitalism. They had a clearer understanding of things which were
ripe for new research. Other things not analyzed before, stood now in
a clearer light.
The most important analysis in this respect was completed by
Pannekoek in 1938. He published a pamphlet on Lenin's philosophy and
produced a more profound analysis of Bolshevism. Pannekoek pointed to
the fact that Lenin's Marxism was nothing more than a legend and
contradicted real Marxism. At the same time he explained the cause:
"In Russia," he said "the struggle against Czarism resembled in many
aspects the struggle against feudalism in Europe long before. In
Russia church and religion supported the existing power. For that
reason a struggle against religion was a social necessity." For this
reason what Lenin regarded as historical materialism hardly
distinguished itself from the French bourgeois materialism of the
18th century, a materialism that, in those times , was used as a
spiritual weapon against the church and religion. In the same way,
that is to say, pointing to the similarities of the social relations
in Russia before the revolution and those in the pre-revolutionary
France, the Council Communists pointed to the fact that Lenin and the
members of his party claimed the name Jacobins for themselves. They
meant that their party in the Russian bourgeois revolution had the
same function as the French Jacobins.
That Bolshevism in March 1918, only five months after October
1917, robbed the Soviets from their already minimalized power was -
as the Council Communists said - a logical consequence of the October
Revolution. Soviets were not suitable with a system that was the
political superstructure of state capitalist productive
relations.
What the council Communist movement mean by communism is a
completely different thing from that system. The dictatorship of a
party doesn't fit with social relations based on the abolition of
wage-labour and the end of exploitation of the workers. A society in
which the producers are free and equal can't be something different
from the democracy of the producers.
Cajo Brendel
Originally published in Red & Black Notes #8, Spring
1999
Back to History/Theory
Back to Home Page