C.L.R. James: Facing Reality

FACING REALITY by C. L. R. James, Grace C. Lee, Pierre Chaulieu ,'.� BEWICK/ED 1974 CONTENTS Introduction . 5 Copyright c 1974 I The Workers Councils 7 Bewick Editi ons The Whole World 20 1443 Bewick n III The Self -Confessed Bankruptcy Detroit, Mich. 48214 of Official Society 42 IV End of a Philosophy 65 . V New Society: New People 71 Published 1958 by The Marxist Organization : 1903-1958 86 Correspondence Publishing Company VI VII What To Do and How To Do It 106 Conclusion 161 Appendix . 167 INTRODUCTION The whole world today lives in the shadow of the state power. This state power is an ever-present self perpetuating body over and above society. It transforms the human personality into a ma'Ss of economic needs to be satisfied by decimal points of economic progress. It robs everyone of initiative and clogs the free develop ment of society. This state power, by whatever name it Is called, One-Party state or Welfare state, destroys aU pretense of government by the peopie, of the people. that remains is government for the people. /,11 Against this monster, people all over the world, particularly ordinary working people in factorieB, mines,!3,l1d fields, and offices, are rebelling every day in ways of their own invention. Sometimes their struggles are on small personal scale. More effectively, they are the aca of groups, formal or informal, but always unof- ----------- -------------------.JfU.jtJOnsc;C 8} .. around their WO'I'k and their place of work.j� 1.l, -'Qll:r:gg:.2aAlways.llnl.ijzZJA�d the aim is to regain control over their ovm conditions of life and their relations with one another. Their strivings, their struggles, their methods have few chroniclers. They themselves are constantly attempting various forms of organization, uncertain of where the struggle is going to end. Nevertheless, they are imbued with one fundamental certainty, that they l1ave to destroy the continuously mounting bureaucratic mass be themselves destroyed by it. Foror some years after the war it seemed that the to talitarian state, by its control of every aspect of human 11fe, had crushed forever all hopes for freedom, for lib erty and socialism. Men struggled, but under the belief that the Welfare State was in reality only a half-way house to the ultimate totalitarian domination. A sym bolical date was even fixed when this would be achieved all over the world, 1984. Now, however, the Hungarian Revolution has un covered, for the whole world to see, the goal to which the struggles against bureaucracy are moving. The Hun garian people have restored the belief of the Nineteenth century in progress. They have restored to the revolu tionary soci.alist movement the conviction that the fu ture lies with the power of the working class and the great masses of the people. It must never be forgotten that the Hungarian Revo lution was successful as no other revolution in hiBtory 'was successful. The totalitarian state was not merely defeated. It was totally destroyed and the counter rEvolution crushed. It is the totality of the success which 5 6 INTRODUCTION e labled � the workers to do so much before the revolu tlOn was robbed of its . victory by Russian tanks I. THE 'WORKERS COUNCILS outsIde from What then was the HUNGAR Y : great achievement of revolutlOn? th e The secret of the Workers Councils is this. From the By he total uprising � of a people, the Hungarian RevolutIOn very start of the Hungarian Revolution, these shop floor has disclosed the political form which not organizations of the workers demonstrated such con only �est 'oyS the bureaucratic 7 state power, but substi �utes In scious mastery of the needs, processes, and inter-rela Its place a socialist democracy, based not on tions of production, that they did not have to exercise the ontrol of eople . � l? but on the mastery of thill.gs. polltIcal This any domination over people. That mastery is the only form IS the Workers Cou ncils, embracing the basis of political power against the bureaucratic state W 10le of the working . population from bottom � . to top, It is the very essence of any government which is to be oma Ized at th e source ? o! all power, the place of wol.'k, makmg . based upon general consent and not on force . The ad all deCIsions in the shop or in the office. ministration of things by the Workers Councils estab lIshed a basic coherence in society and from this coher ence they derived automatically their right to govern. ,\Vorkers' management of production, government from below, and government by consent have thus been shown to be one and the same thing . The actual resort to arms has obscured the social transformation that took place from the first day of the revolution. Along with the fighting the workers took over immediate control of the country. So complete was their mastery of production that large bodies of men, dispersed over wide areas, could exercise their control v;ith the strategy of a general deployill.g troops, and YEt with the flexibility of a single craftsman guiding his tools. The decision to carry out a general strike was not decreed by any center. Simultaneously and spon taneously in all industrial areas of the country, the de CISion not to work was taken, and the strike organized itself immediately according to the objective needs of the revolutionary forces. On the initiative of the Work ers Councils in each plant, it was possible to come to a general decision, immediately acceptable to all, as to who should work and who should not work, where the goods produced should go and where they should not go. No central plan was needed. The plan ,vas within each individual factory. General strikes have played a deci sive role in bringing down governments in every modern revolution, but never before has the general been ini tiated and controlled so completely by the particular. It was not merely unity against the common enemy which made this cohesion possible. The strike, as well as the whole course of the revolution, demonstrated how deep were its roots ill. the mastery over production and social processes, which is the natural and acquired power of modern workers. '1 rpI' THE WORKERS COUNCILS 9 8 FACING REALITY From the moment that they USE increasing them by 10%. PRODUCTION FOR they of industry under their control, great revolutions have obtained arms from took the apparatus . sol the essential off the veils which hide diersAll who joined the revolution, and by taking",them began to tear modern economy. from the police and the arsenals of the state. In this simplicity of the THE PEOPLE the Hungarian Revolution was no exception . The dif GOVERNMENT BY and he pl nners ference is that in Hungary, despite the fact that the The parties, the administrators � � c l without them socIety WIll � whole army came over to the revolution, the Workers have claimed always that . The Workers CouncIls Councils proceeded immediately to manufacture their lapse into anarchy and chaos for for an official center and a own arms . The decision was immediately taken that recognized the need revolution, because they be these newly-produced arms should be distributed to the head of state. Early in the e, they the confidence of the peopl striking workers in other industries who were to with lIeved Nagy to have . the national eadershiP. But draw them�elves into an army of defense. Production proposed that he assume � and for all wlth the delega for use was for them not a theory but an automatic the Councils finished once while the population retreats procedure from the moment they began to govern tion of power'S to a center . the Workers CouncIls and themselves. into passive obedience. Thus not a dual power in the At a certain stage the Miners' Councils decided thE- Nagy government were . The Nagy g vernm�nt work in order to keep the mines from flooding. Atto classical sense of that phrase � ounClI by m another, they informed the Kadar government precisely to legalize the revo!u ionary ? proposed . � eXIstmg� admmlstratlOn. The how much they would produce in exchange for precise corporating them into the clear, in reply, that political concessions. At the same time they opened Workers Councils made it they and that the pow to out to all a vision of the future by stating boldly and were the legal administration, . n afUClal�� confidently that once all their political demands were indeed dis-establish . legalize, incorporate, . drew no dIstmctlOn� be realized, they would produce at a rate that would as center, reBted with them. They and the work of govern tonish the world. Thus they established that the secret tween the work of production should OCCUpy government of higher productivity is self-government in production. ment. They decided who ed, which ministries should Previous revolutions have concentrated on the seiz posts, who should be dismiss dIssolved. ure of political power and only afterwards faced the retained, which should . be attacked WIthout problems of organizing production according new be Evervone knows that the revolution to secret police. But pe ple procedures and method'S. The great lesson of the years mercy the infamous Stalinist with the far re �I 1923-1956 has been this, that degradation in production have not concerned themselves � � . the Workers Coun Ls.� It IS re}ations results in the degradation of political relations portant judicial actIOns of � to place on n al those and from there to the degradation of all relations in traditional with revolutions � . whom popular opmlOn ho ds society.

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