Council Communism
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Council Communism Or Councilism? - the Period of Transition a Book Review by Fredo Corvo
Council communism or councilism? - The period of transition A book review by Fredo Corvo Book review of Philippe Bourrinet “The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900-68); ‘Neither Lenin nor Trotsky nor Stalin!”, ‘All workers must think for themselves!’”, Leiden/Boston (Brill) ISBN 978-90-04-26977-4. This book in fact is based on a master thesis in French language, defended at the Sorbonne University Paris, 1988. Since then editions in several languages appeared, with or without permission of the author, or of the International Communist Current, who claims to be its ‘collective author’. Therefor it is unfortunately that this new edition by Brill doesn’t explain the differences with the master thesis. For readers that know the Porcupine Press English language edition, I found two additions. A fragment preceding chapter 1, on Religion, Capitalism and colonial Empire: From the ‘Golden Age’ to the Decline, gives a short overview of the history of the Netherlands before industrialization. A text added to chapter 11, International Council-Communists up to the 1970s adds interesting information of studies published since 1987, which can be found in the bibliography. On the other hand, some of the more recent works are missing here as well as in the 58 pages long section ‘Further reading’: for example, Gerber’s and Boekelman's biographies of Anton Pannekoek. No doubt this study is impressive for many reasons, of which its international scope and its internationalist approach are the most important. No coincidence the author identifies with the Communist left, consisting mainly of the German-Dutch left and the Italian left, having published several studies on the latter as well. -
Libertarian Socialism
Libertarian Socialism Politics in Black and Red Editors: Alex Prichard, Ruth Kinna, Saku Pinta, and David Berry The history of anarchist-Marxist relations is usually told as a history of faction- alism and division. These essays, based on original research and written espe- cially for this collection, reveal some of the enduring sores in the revolutionary socialist movement in order to explore the important, too often neglected left- libertarian currents that have thrived in revolutionary socialist movements. By turns, the collection interrogates the theoretical boundaries between Marxism and anarchism and the process of their formation, the overlaps and creative ten- sions that shaped left-libertarian theory and practice, and the stumbling blocks to movement cooperation. Bringing together specialists working from a range of political perspectives, the book charts a history of radical twentieth-century socialism, and opens new vistas for research in the twenty-first. Contributors examine the political and social thought of a number of leading socialists— Marx, Morris, Sorel, Gramsci, Guérin, C.L.R. James, Hardt and Negri—and key movements including the Situationist International, Socialisme ou Barbarie and Council Communism. Analysis of activism in the UK, Australasia, and the U.S. serves as the prism to discuss syndicalism, carnival anarchism, and the anarchistic currents in the U.S. civil rights movement. Contributors include Paul Blackledge, Lewis H. Mates, Renzo Llorente, Carl SUBJECT CATEGORY Levy, Christian Høgsbjerg, Andrew Cornell, Benoît Challand, Jean-Christophe Politics-Anarchism/Politics-Socialism Angaut, Toby Boraman, and David Bates. PRICE ABOUT THE EDITORS $26.95 Alex Prichard is senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Exeter. -
Marxism, Prefigurative Communism, and the Problem of Workers' Control
The Anarchist Library Anti-Copyright Marxism, Prefigurative Communism, and the Problem of Workers’ Control Carl Boggs Carl Boggs Marxism, Prefigurative Communism, and the Problem of Workers’ Control 1977 Boggs, Carl. 1977. “Marxism, Prefigurative Communism, and the Problem of Workers’ Control”. Radical America 11 (November), 100; cf. Boggs Jr., Carl. Revolutionary Process, Political Strategy, and the Dilemma of Power. Theory & Society 4,No. 3 (Fall), 3. Republished in Class Against Class www.oocities.org. Republished again in libcom.org. theanarchistlibrary.org 1977 hegemonic, with the party-state directing the process of revolution- ary transformation from above. An alternative schema would reverse this relationship by assert- ing the prefigurative over the Jacobin. For the party is essentially an instrumental agency preoccupied with concrete political tasks rather than the cultural objectives of changing everyday life and abolishing the capitalist division of labor; it tends naturally to be an agency of domination rather than of prefiguration. Since emancipa- tory goals can be fully carried out only through locs1 structures, it is these organs — rather than the party-state — that must shape the revolutionary process. Centralised structures would not be super- imposed upon mass struggles, but would emerge out of these strug- gles as coordinating mechanisms. Only popular institutions in ev- ery sphere of daily existence, where democratic impulses can be most completely realized, can fight off the repressive incursions of bureaucratic centralism and activate collective involvement that is the life-force of revolutionary practice. 39 between economics and politics is estab1ished in each case: the corparativist councils have restricted decision-making within Specific enterprises but have little or no impact on societal-wide public policy. -
Libertarian Socialism
Libertarian Socialism PDF generated using the open source mwlib toolkit. See http://code.pediapress.com/ for more information. PDF generated at: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 19:52:27 UTC Contents Articles Libertarian socialism 1 The Venus Project 37 The Zeitgeist Movement 39 References Article Sources and Contributors 42 Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 43 Article Licenses License 44 Libertarian socialism 1 Libertarian socialism Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism,[1][2] and sometimes left libertarianism)[3][4] is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic society without private property in the means of production. Libertarian socialists believe in converting present-day private productive property into the commons or public goods, while retaining respect for personal property[5]. Libertarian socialism is opposed to coercive forms of social organization. It promotes free association in place of government and opposes the social relations of capitalism, such as wage labor.[6] The term libertarian socialism is used by some socialists to differentiate their philosophy from state socialism[7][8] or by some as a synonym for left anarchism.[1][2][9] Adherents of libertarian socialism assert that a society based on freedom and equality can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite.[10] Libertarian socialism also constitutes a tendency of thought that -
Vincenzo Costa
Studi di estetica, anno XLVI, IV serie, 3/2018 ISSN 0585-4733, ISSN digitale 1825-8646, DOI 10.7413/18258646067 Sven Lütticken1 Council aestheticism? Pannekoek, the avant-garde and contemporary art Abstract Focusing on the Marxist theorist Anton Pannekoek, this article left communist im- pulses in 20th and 21st century aesthetic practice. The point of departure is Panne- koek’s theory of revolutionary mass action – centred around the general strike – and its aesthetic as well as political implications and repercussions. The text then proceeds to discuss the workers’ council as the nucleus of socialist self-organization and the avant-garde’s use and indeed fetishization of that concepts, and ends with a more speculative section on the potential contemporary relevance of Panne- koek’s writings on epistemology, the history of science, and evolution. Keywords Marxism, Council communism, Avant-garde 1. The “aesthetic turn” in Marxism Discussions of Marxism and aesthetics have tended to focus on West- ern Marxism since the period between the World Wars – with Lukács, Adorno and others initiating an “aesthetic turn” in Marxism. As Perry Anderson has put it, Western Marxism “paradoxically inverted the tra- jectory of Marx’s own development itself. Where the founder of his- torical materialism moved progressively from philosophy to politics and then economics, as the central terrain of his thought, the succes- sors of the tradition that emerged after 1920 increasingly turned back from economics and politics to philosophy”, and to aesthetics: “Aes- thetics, since the Enlightenment the closest bridge of philosophy to the concrete world, has exercised an especial and constant attraction for 1 [email protected]. -
Reading Capital Politically
Bibliography We have attempted to update the bibliography to reflect the fact that since this book was first published in 1979 some books have been translated and published in English for the first time, others have simply been republished and some articles, which originally appeared in now hard-to-find journals, have been republished in new collections. This bibliography also includes material referred to in the new preface. Besides appearing in conventional printed books, journals or pamphlets, many texts have been scanned and uploaded onto computer archives, and more are continually being added. References marked [M] below are available electronically at the Marxists Internet Archive (see Internet Resources section on page 172). Adelman, Irma Theories of Economic Growth and Development, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961. Adler, Jerry ‘Employee Thievery: A $6 Billion Hand in the Till’, Sunday News Magazine of the New York Daily News (September 11), 1977: 13. Agbon, Ezielen Class and Economic Development in Nigeria 1900–1980, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1985. Aiquati, Romano Sulla Fiat e Altri Scritti, Milan: Feltrinelli Editore, 1975. Althusser, Louis Elements d’autocritique, Paris: Hachette, 1974. [Trans. Grahame Lock, Essays in Self-Criticism, London: New Left Books, 1976.] ———— For Marx, New York: Vintage Books, 1970. [Blackwell: Verso, 1996.] ———— and Etienne Balibar Reading Capital, London: New Left Books, 1970. [Blackwell: Verso, 1998.] Amin, Samir The Accumulation of Capital on a World Scale, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974. Anderson, Perry Considerations on Western Marxism, London: New Left Books, 1976. 163 Bibliography Baldi, Guido ‘Theses on Mass Worker and Social Capital’, Radical America 6:1 (May–June) 1972: 3–21. -
288381679.Pdf
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Loughborough University Institutional Repository This item was submitted to Loughborough University as a PhD thesis by the author and is made available in the Institutional Repository (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/) under the following Creative Commons Licence conditions. For the full text of this licence, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ Towards a Libertarian Communism: A Conceptual History of the Intersections between Anarchisms and Marxisms By Saku Pinta Loughborough University Submitted to the Department of Politics, History and International Relations in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Approximate word count: 102 000 1. CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY This is to certify that I am responsible for the work submitted in this thesis, that the original work is my own except as specified in acknowledgments or in footnotes, and that neither the thesis nor the original work contained therein has been submitted to this or any other institution for a degree. ……………………………………………. ( Signed ) ……………………………………………. ( Date) 2 2. Thesis Access Form Copy No …………...……………………. Location ………………………………………………….……………...… Author …………...………………………………………………………………………………………………..……. Title …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Status of access OPEN / RESTRICTED / CONFIDENTIAL Moratorium Period :…………………………………years, ending…………../…………20………………………. Conditions of access approved by (CAPITALS):…………………………………………………………………… Supervisor (Signature)………………………………………………...…………………………………... Department of ……………………………………………………………………...………………………………… Author's Declaration : I agree the following conditions: Open access work shall be made available (in the University and externally) and reproduced as necessary at the discretion of the University Librarian or Head of Department. It may also be digitised by the British Library and made freely available on the Internet to registered users of the EThOS service subject to the EThOS supply agreements. -
Anarchism and Council-Communism on the Russian Revolution
Anarchist Studies 20.2 30/10/2012 21:36 Page 22 View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Abertay Research Portal Anarchist Studies 20.2 © 2012 ISSN 0967 3393 www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/anarchiststudies/ Anarchism and Council Communism on the Russian Revolution Christos Memos ABSTRACT The Russian Revolution, being part of the revolutionary tradition of the exploited and oppressed, encompasses sufferings, horrors and tragedies, but also unfulfilled promises, hopes and revolutionary inspirations. The subversive heritage includes, among others, the largely neglected radical critiques of the Russian Revolution that preceded analo- gous Trotskyist endeavours. All these forgotten critiques, unrealised potentials and past struggles could act as a constantly renewed point of departure in the fight for human emancipation. This essay examines the two radical currents of anarchism and Council Communism and their critical confrontation with the Russian Revolution and the class character of the Soviet regime. First, it outlines the major anarchist critiques and analyses of the revolution (Kropotkin, Malatesta, Rocker, Goldman, Berkman and Voline). Following this, it explores the critique provided by the Council Communist tradition (Pannekoek, Gorter and Rühle). The essay moves on to provide a critical re-evaluation of both anarchist and councilist appraisals of the Russian Revolution in order to disclose liberating intentions and tendencies that are living possibilities for contemporary radical anti-capitalist struggles all over the world. It also attempts to shed light on the limits, inadequacies and confusions of their approaches, derive lessons for the present social struggles and make explicit the political and theo- retical implications of this anti-critique. -
Libertarian Marxist Tendency Map
The Anarchist Library (Mirror) Anti-Copyright A Libertarian Marxist Tendency Map Chris Wright 2005 Chris Wright A Libertarian Marxist Tendency Map 2005 libcom.org; Subversive Texts Archive at endpage.com. usa.anarchistlibraries.net 2 This tendency map was produced by Chris Wright for end- page.com, now part of the libcom.org library — it is designed to trace some of the important tendencies in libertarian Marxism. Contains a brief written history with links to key individuals, groups and publications, and a graphic map. To help navigate the site, this is a rough, textual “family tree” of libertarian Marxism. Please refer to the Companion Map for a graphical guide to these currents Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, especially Marx’s work. Of interest, though little read, are the minutes from the Interna- tional Working Men’s Association. Out of Social Democracy (1880–1918) arise Rosa Luxemburg and the Council Communists, especially Anton Pannekoek, Otto Ruhle, Herman Gorter, and Sylvia Pankhurst. There seems to have been little cross fertilisation between Luxem- burg and the Councilists and Luxemburg’s ideas are only really picked up and built upon thirty years after her death in 1919. The early councilists are followed later by the G.I.K. (trans: Group of Internationalist Communists), Henk Canne Meijer, Cajo Brendel and Paul Mattick, Sr. Council Communism formed a distinct tendency beginning in WWI and continuing through the current period, though the original councilists had no significant organisational presence after the dissolution of the KAPD (German Communist Workers’ Party). There would be a resurgence of councilist groups and ideas in the 1960’s, however, through the Situationist International, Root and Branch in the United States and the ICL/ICO split from Socialisme ou Barbarie and their various offshoots. -
On Council Communism
HIMA 12,4_f3_26-50 1/25/05 4:51 PM Page 27 Marcel van der Linden On Council Communism Rise and fall As the society of revolutionary Russia gradually hardened into its new shape in the years after 1918 and political power was increasingly concentrated – due in part to the violence of war and economic crisis – in the hands of a bureaucratic élite, oppositional movements continually emerged, both inside Russia and abroad, that sought to turn the tide.1 Karl Korsch in Germany, Amadeo Bordiga in Italy and Timofei Sapronov in Russia tried and failed to form a new international in 1926, for example.2 From 1930 on, the ‘Bukharinite’ opposition (Heinrich Brandler, Jay Lovestone, M.N. Roy and others) made a similar attempt. Trotsky’s International Left Opposition, whose formation in 1930, eventually led to the foundation of the Fourth International in 1938, became the best known of such projects. One very early protest against the trends in Russia was expressed in the Netherlands and Germany by former Bolshevik sympathisers who would later become known as ‘council communists’ – a term that was probably used from 1921 on.3 The most prominent 1 Thanks to Cajo Brendel, Götz Langkau and the editors of this journal for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. 2 See Riechers 1973, Montaldi 1975, Prat 1984. 3 Kool 1970, p. 575. Historical Materialism, volume 12:4 (27–50) © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004 Also available online – www.brill.nl HIMA 12,4_f3_26-50 1/25/05 4:51 PM Page 28 28 • Marcel van der Linden spokespeople of this protest were the German educator Otto Rühle (1874–1943) and two Dutchmen; the poet and classicist Herman Gorter (1864–1927) and the astronomer Anton(ie) Pannekoek (1873–1960). -
Council Communism Introductions Contents
Council communism introductions contents REVOLUTIONARY TRADITIONS - COUNCIL COMMUNISM Steve Wright .................................. 5 COUNCIL COMMUNISM Neil Fettes - 1999 ...................................................................................... 7 COUNCIL COMMUNISM Mark Shipway - 1987 .............................................................................. 10 COUNCIL COMMUNISM Richard Gombin - 1978........................................................................... 22 ON COUNCIL COMMUNISM Marcel van der Linden - 2004 ............................................................ 49 COUNCIL COMMUNIST THEORY [*] Peter J. Rachleff - 1976 ...................................................... 60 REVOLUTIONARY TRADITIONS - COUNCIL COMMUNISM Steve Wright Asked to characterise the significance of the October Revolution, John Maynard Keynes - always one of capital's most astute thinkers - once suggested that 1917 heralded the victory of 'the Party of Catastrophe'. For many of the revolutionaries who helped to establish the international communist movement, however, the simple, unambiguous demand for 'All Power to the Soviets' had seemed to encapsulate a new class politics finally able to surpass the disasters of war and betrayal. One of them, the poet Hermann Gorter, greeted Lenin at the time as 'the foremost vanguard fighter of the international proletariat', and the soviets themselves in the following terms: 'The working class of the world has found in these Workers' Councils its organisation and its centralisation, -
Communism 1 Communism
Communism 1 Communism Communism (from Latin communis - common, universal) is a revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless, and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production, as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of this social order.[1] This movement, in its Marxist–Leninist interpretations, significantly influenced the history of the 20th century, which saw intense rivalry between the "socialist world" (socialist states ruled by communist parties) and the "western world" (countries with capitalist economies). Marxist theory holds that pure communism or full communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely associated individuals.[2][3] The exact definition of communism varies, and it is often mistakenly, in general political discourse, used interchangeably with socialism; however, Marxist theory contends that socialism is just a transitional stage on the road to communism. Leninism adds to Marxism the notion of a vanguard party to lead the proletarian revolution and to secure all political power after the revolution for the working class, for the development of universal class consciousness and worker participation, in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism. Council communists and non-Marxist libertarian communists and anarcho-communists oppose the ideas of a vanguard party and a transition stage, and advocate for the construction of full communism to begin immediately upon the abolition of capitalism. There is a very wide range of theories amongst those particular communists in regards to how to build the types of institutions that would replace the various economic engines (such as food distribution, education, and hospitals) as they exist under capitalist systems—or even whether to do so at all.