Council Communism
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Author : Paul Mattick

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Source: Kurasje Archive;Published: as Chapter V of Anti-Bolshevik Communism, Merlin Press 1978; originally published as "Groups of Council Communists" in The Social Frontier, vol. 5, no. 45, May 1939, pp. 248-253;Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003;Proofed: and corrected by Geoff Traugh, July 2005.

There can be no doubt that those social forces generally known
as the ‘labor movement’ which rose during the last hundred years
and, quantitatively, reached their widest expansion shortly before and after
the world war, are now definitely on the decline. Though this situation is
either happily or reluctantly acknowledged by people concerned with labor
questions, realistic explanations of this phenomenon are scarce. Where the
labor movement was destroyed by outside forces there remains the problem of
how it was eliminated despite the apparent strength that it had acquired in its
long period of development. Where it disintegrated of its own accord there
remains the question why a new labor movement did not appear, since the social
conditions that produce such movements still exist.

I

Most of the explanations offered fail to convince, because they are offered
solely with the purpose of serving the specific, immediate interests of the
partisans involved in labor problems, not to mention their limitations in
theoretical and empirical knowledge. But worse than a false or inadequate
position on the question of responsibility for the present impasse of the
labor movement is the resulting inability to formulate courses leading to new
independent working class action. There is no dearth of proposals as
to how to revive the labor movement; however, the serious investigator cannot
help noticing that all such proposals for a ‘new beginning’ are in
reality but the restatement and rediscovery of ideas and forms of activity
developed with much greater clarity and consistency during the beginnings of
the modern labor movement. In refuting the idea of successful application of
these rediscovered and – in comparison with later developments –
radical principles, it must be considered nor only that these principles must
be inadequate, since they were necessarily bound to a quite different stage of
development of capitalist society, but that they no longer fit, and can no
longer be made to fit, a labor movement which has based its philosophy, forms
of organization and activities for too long a time, and with too much success,
on aspirations quite contrary to the content of these earlier principles.

A revival of the old labor movement is not to be expected; that
workers’ movement which may be considered new will have to destroy the
very features of the old labor movement that were considered its strength. It
must avoid its successes, and it cannot aspire merely to a
‘better-than-before’ organizational expression; it must understand
all the implications of the present stage of capitalistic development and
organize accordingly; it must base its forms of action not on traditional
ideas, but on the given possibilities and necessities. To return to the ideals
of the past, under the present general social conditions, would only mean an
earlier death for the labor movement. Not merely the cowardice of the masters
of labor organizations and the labor bureaucracy attached to them brought
about the many defeats suffered in recent conflicts with the ruling classes,
and determined the outcome of the ‘general’ strike in France, but,
more so, a clear or instinctive recognition that the present labor movement
cannot operate against capitalistic needs, can in one way or another only serve
specific and historically determined capitalistic interests.

Disregarding those organizations and officials who from the beginning
conceived their function to be no more than their participation in the
distribution of the wealth created by the workers, either by open racketeering
or by organizing the labor market, this much is obvious: today the leaders of
labor as well as the workers themselves are more or less conscious of their
inability to operate against capitalism, and the cynicism displayed by so many
labor leaders in such practical policies as are still possible, i.e. to
‘sell out’, may be regarded also as the most realistic attitude,
derived from a full recognition of a changed situation. The sense of futility
predominant in the labor movement of today cannot be dispelled by a more
lavish use of radical phraseology, nor by a complete subordination to the
ruling classes, as is attempted in many countries where labor leaders clamor
for ‘national planning’ and a solution of the social problem within
the present conditions of production. On such a basis of action, the old labor
movement cannot help copying from the vague proposals of fascistic movements,
and as imitators they will have even less success than the originators.
Fascism, and the abolition of the present labor movement connected therewith,
cannot be arrested with fascistic methods and the adoption of fascistic goals
by the labor movement itself.

II

Though often attempted, it is impossible to explain the present miserable
status of the labor movement as the result of the many ‘betrayals’
at the hands of ‘renegades’, or to the ‘lack of
insight’ into the real needs of the working class on the part of its
leaders. Nor is it possible to blame specific forms of organizations, or
certain philosophical trends, for the many defeats that have occurred. Nor is
it possible to explain the decline of the movement by attributing it to
‘national characteristics’ or ‘psychological
peculiarities’. The decline of the labor movement is a general decline;
all organizations, regardless of their specific forms and attitudes, are
thereby affected; and no country and no people have been able to escape this
downward trend. No country, watching the destruction of the labor movement in
other lands, has been able ‘to draw lessons from their defeats’; no
organization, seeing others collapse, was able ‘to learn to avoid this
fate’. The emasculation of all workers’ power in Russia in 1920 was
easily copied in Turkey, in Italy, in China, in Germany, in Austria, in
Czechoslovakia, in Spain, and now in France, and soon in England. It is true
that in each country, because of peculiarities of economic and social
development, the destruction of labor organizations capable of functioning
as such varied from case to case; however, none can deny that in all these
countries the independence of the labor movement was abolished. What
still exists there under the name of labor organization has nothing in common
with the labor movement that developed historically, or that, in the more
backward countries, was in the process of development, and that was founded to
maintain an insuperable opposition to a society divided into powerless workers
and exploiters controlling all the economic and the consequent political power.
What still exists there in the form of parties, trade and industrial
unions, labor fronts and other organizations is so completely integrated
within the existing societal form that it is unable to function other than as
an instrument of that society.

It is, furthermore, not possible to blame the most important theoretical
expression thus far developed in the labor movement – Marxism –
for the many shortcomings of the labor movement and for its present
destruction. That labor movement which is now passing had very little to do
with Marxism. Such a criticism of Marxism can arise only from a lack of all
knowledge as to its contents. Nor was Marxism misunderstood; it was
rejected by both the labor movement and its critics, and was never
taken for what it is: “an undogmatic guide for scientific research and
revolutionary action”[2] In
both cases, by those who adopted it as a meaningless phrase and by those who
fought even this meaningless phrase, it was utilized rather as an instrument to
conceal a practice which, on the one hand, confirmed the scientific soundness
of Marxian social science, and, on the other hand, was strongly opposed to the
corresponding and disturbing reality.

Although developed under the influence of Marxism this declining labor
movement now has completely repudiated its revolutionary beginnings, even where
its adherence has been merely nominal, and operates on entirely bourgeois
grounds. As soon as this fact is recognized, there is no need to look for the
reasons of the decline of the labor movement in some vaguely constucted and
actually disregarded philosophy; instead, this decline becomes a quite obvious
parallel to the decline of capitalism. Bound to an expanding capitalism,
totally integrated into the whole of the social fabric, the old labor
movement can only stagnate with stagnating capitalism and decline with
declining capitalism. It cannot divorce itself from capitalist society,
unless it breaks completely with its own past, which is possible only by
breaking up the old organizations, as far as they still exist. This
possibility, however, is precluded because of the vested interests developed in
those organizations. A rebirth of the labor movement is conceivable only as a
rebellion of the masses against ‘their’ organizations. Just as the
relations of production, to speak in Marxian terms, prevent the further
unfolding of the productive forces of society, and are responsible for the
present capitalistic decline, so the labor organizations of today prevent the
full unfolding of the new proletarian class forces and their attempts at new
actions serving the class interests of the workers. These conflicting
tendencies between working class interests and the predominant labor
organizations were most clearly revealed in Europe, where the capitalist
expansion process was arrested and the economic contraction was felt more
severely, resulting in fascist forms of control over the population. But in
America as well, where the forces of capitalist economy have been less
exhausted than in Europe, the old labor leaders are joined by those of the
newer, apparently more progressive, labor organizations in supporting a
struggling capitalist class to maintain its system even after its social and
historical basis has vanished.

III

It is a paradox only to the superficial observer that the decline of the
European labor movement was accompanied by a new spurt in labor organizations
in the United States. This situation indicates only the tremendous strength and
reserve that capitalism in America still possesses. However, it is also an
expression of weakness in American capitalism as compared with that of the more
centralized capitalism of European countries. Being both an advantage and a
disadvantage, the present American labor situation illustrates merely the
attempts to utilize the advantage to help eliminate the disadvantage. The
centralization of all possible economic and political powers in the hands of
the State (which, due to the declining economy is impelled to participate in
larger internal and external struggles) is still opposed in the United States
by powerfully individualistic capitalistic interests rightly fearing they will
be victimized by this very process. So arises another paradox, that it is
precisely the persisting strength of private capital, capable of counteracting
state-capitalist trends and of fighting against the organization of labor,
that is largely responsible for the continued existence of these labor
organizations. For the indirect but very forceful support the labor movement
has found in those governmental policies which are directed against anarchic,
individual, capitalistic procedures in an effort to safeguard the present
society, will inevitably serve only the State. The State will then have made
profitable use of the labor organization, not the organization of the State.
The more government fosters the interests of labor, the more labor interests
disappear, the more these labor organizations make themselves superfluous. The
rise in the American labor movement experienced recently is but a veiled
symptom of its decline. As was indicated in the first CIO convention held
recently, the organized workers are completely subordinated to the most
efficient and centralized union leadership. From this complete emasculation of
workers’ initiative within their own organization to the complete
subordination of the whole organization to the State is only a step. Not only
capital, as Marx said, is its own grave digger, but also the labor
organizations, where they are not destroyed from without, destroy themselves.
They destroy themselves in the very attempt to become powerful forces within
the capitalist system. They adopt the methods necessary under capitalistic
conditions to grow in importance, and thereby in turn continuously strengthen
those forces which will eventually ‘take them over’. There is,
therefore, no chance to profit from their efforts, for, in the last analysis,
the real powers in society decide what shall remain and what shall be
eliminated.

Nor is there any hope that, in recognition of the services given to the
exploitative society, the labor organizers and their followers will find their
proper reward in a completely state-controlled economic system; for all social
changes in the present antagonistic society occur by way of struggle. A
harmonizing of interests between two different kinds of bureaucracies is
possible only in exceptional cases, as in the case of war breaking out before
the totalitarian system is completed; otherwise the taking over of the old
labor movement by the state system leaves the old leaden in the streets, or
brings them to the concentration camps, as was so aptly demonstrated in
Germany. Nor could the recognition that such a future is probable cause labor
leaders to avoid preparing it, as there is given to the present
non-revolutionary labor movement no possibility but to pave the way toward it.
The only alternative, revolutionary activity, would exclude all those aspects
of labor activity which are hailed as the painfully won victories of a long
struggle, and would mean the sacrifice of all those values and activities which
today make it worth while to work in labor organizations, and which induce
workers to enter them.

If the recent development of so-called ‘economically’ organized
labor in America is itself an indication of the general decline of the labor
movement of the world, and is tellingly illustrated by John L. Lewis’s
recent declaration that his organization stands ready “to support a war
of defense against Germany,” or, in other words, that he and his
organization are ready to fight for the interests of American capitalism, there
is not even the necessity of proving the decline of the old labor movement in
the United States’ political field. Since specific historical and social
factors excluded the growth of a political labor movement of any consequence
in America, an American political labor movement cannot decline, since it does
not exist. With the exception of a number of spontaneous movements that
disappeared as quickly as they arose, what hitherto was experienced in the form
of a political labor movement in this country was of no significance. The
total absence of class consciousness in the ‘economic’ movements
here is so well recognized that it is superfluous to mention this fact again.
With the exception of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), the labor
organizations in recent history were always considered as complementary to
capitalism – as one of its assets. The objective observer must admit that
all the organized and unorganized working masses are still under the sway of
capitalism, because there developed with expanding capitalism not a labor
movement, but a capitalist movement of laborers.

IV

From the negative position developed here it can easily be seen that the
future activity of the working class cannot be denoted as a ‘new
beginning’, but merely as a beginning. The century of class fight behind
us “developed invaluable theoretical knowledge; it found gallant
revolutionary words in defiance of the capitalist claim of being a final social
system; it awakened the workers from the hopelessness of misery. But its actual
fight was within the confines of capitalism; it was action through the medium
of leaders and sought only to place easy masters in the place of hard
ones.”[3] The previous history
of the labor movement must be regarded only as a prelude to future action.
Although there can be no doubt that this prelude has already forecast some of
the implications of the coming struggle, nevertheless, it remained only an
introduction, not a summary, of what is to follow.

The European labor movement disappeared with so little struggle because its
organization had no forward perspective; they knew or felt that there was no
room for them in a socialistic system, and their fear that the class society
would disappear was no less than that of other privileged groups. Capable of
functioning only under capitalistic conditions, they contemplated with
disfavor the end of capitalism; a choice between two ways of dying has never
enlivened anyone. The fact that such labor organizations can function only in
capitalism explains also their rather curious concepts as to what would
constitute a socialist society. Their ‘socialism’ was and is a
‘socialism’ that resembled capitalism; they are
‘progressive’ capitalists rather than socialists. All their
theories, from that of the ‘Marxian’ revisionist, Bernstein, to
those of a ‘market socialism’ in vogue today are only methods of
achieving acquiescence in capitalism.

Therefore it is not surprising that such a clearly discernible
state-capitalist system as exists in Russia is generally accepted by them as a
completed socialistic system, or as a transitory stage to socialism. Criticism
directed against the Russian system considers only the lack of democracy, or an
alleged malice or stupidity of its bureaucracy, and concerns itself little or
not at all with the fact that the relations of production now existing in
Russia do not essentially differ from those of other capitalistic
countries, or the fact that the Russian workers have no voice whatever in
the productive and social affairs of their country, but are subjected
politically and economically to exploitative conditions and individuals like
the workers of any other nation. Though the large majority of the Russian
workers no longer face individual entrepreneurs in their struggle for existence
and better living conditions, their present authorities show that even the old
aspiration of the labor movement, the replacement of hard masters with
benevolent ones, has not been fulfilled there.

They show also that the disappearance of the individual capitalist alone
does not end the capitalist form of exploitation. His transformation into a
state official, or his replacement by state officers, still leaves intact the
system of exploitation which is peculiar to capitalism. The separation of the
workers from the means of production and, with this, class rule, are continued
in Russia, with the addition of a highly centralized, single-minded
exploitative apparatus that now makes more difficult the struggle of the
workers for their objectives, so that Russia reveals itself only as a modified
capitalistic development expressed in a new terminology. Attempts at a greater
national sufficiency, forced upon Russia, as it has been forced upon all other
capitalistic countries, is now celebrated as ‘the building up of
socialism in one country’. The disruption of world economy, which
explains and allows the forced development of state capitalism in Russia, is
now described s ‘a side-by-side existence of two fundamentally different
social systems’. However, the optimism of the labor movement seems to
increase with each defeat it suffers. The greater progress class
differentiation makes in Russia, the more the new ruling class succeeds in
suppressing opposition to an increasing and highly celebrated exploitation, the
more Russia participates in the capitalist world economy and becomes an
imperialistic power among the others, the more socialism is deemed to be fully
realized in that country. Just as the labor movement has been able to see
socialism marching in capitalist accumulation, it celebrate, now the march
toward barbarism as so many steps toward the new society.

However divided the old labor movement may be by disagreements on various
topics, on the question of socialism it stands united. Hilferding’s
abstract ‘General-Cartel’, Lenin’s admiration for the German
war socialism and the German postal service, Kautsky’s eternalization of
the value-price-money economy (desiring to do consciously what in capitalism is
performed by blind market laws), Trotsky’s war communism equipped with
supply and demand features, and Stalin’s institutional economics –
all these concepts have at their base the continuation of the existing
conditions of production. As a matter of fact, they are mere reflections of
what is actually going on in capitalist society. Indeed, such
‘socialism’ is discussed today by famous bourgeois economists like
Pigou, Hayek, Robbins, Keynes, to mention only a few, and has created a
considerable literature to which the socialists now turn for their material.
Furthermore, bourgeois economists from Marshall to Mitchell, from the
neoclassicists to the modern institutionalists, have concerned themselves with
the question of how to bring order into the disorderly capitalist system, the
trend of their thought paralleling the trend of an ever greater intrusion of
the State into competitive society, a process resulting in ‘New
Deals’, ‘National-Socialism’, and ‘Bolshevism’,
the various names for the different degrees and variations of the
centralization and concentration process of the capitalist system.

V

It has recently become almost a fad to describe the inconsistencies of the
labor movement as a tragic contradiction between means and ends. However,
such an inconsistency does not exist. Socialism has not been the desired
‘end’ of the old labor movement; it was merely a term employed to
hide an entirely different objective, which was political power within a
society based on rulers and ruled for a share in the created surplus value.
This was the end that determined the means.

The means-and-ends problem is that of ideology and reality based on class
relations in society. However, the problem is artificial because it cannot be
solved without dissolving the class relations. It is also meaningless, as it
exists only in thought; no such contradiction exists in actuality. The actions
of classes and groups may be explained at any time on the basis of the
productive relations existing in society. When actions do not correspond to
proclaimed ends, it is only because those ends really are not fought
for, these apparent ends, instead, reflect a dissatisfaction unable to turn to
action, or a desire to conceal the real ends. No class really can act
incorrectly, i.e., act in any way at variance with determinant social forces,
though it has unlimited possibilities to think incorrectly. Within
capitalism’s social production each class depends upon the other; their
antagonism is their identity of interests; and so long as this society exists,
there can be no choice of action. Only by breaking through the confines of this
society is it possible to co-ordinate means and ends deliberately, to establish
true unity of theory and practice.

In capitalist society there is only an apparent contradiction between means
and ends, the disparity being only a weapon to serve an actual practice not at
all out of harmony with the desires involved. One need only to discover the
actual end behind the ideological end to smooth out the apparent inconsistency.
To use a practical example: if one believes that trade unions are interested in
strikes as a method of minimalising profits and increasing wages, as they
contend, he will be surprised to discover that when trade unions were
apparently most powerful and when the need to increase wages was the greatest,
trade unions were more reluctant than ever to use the strike medium in the
interest of their goal. The unions turned to means less appropriate to the end
aspired to, such as arbitration and governmental regulations. The fact is that
wage increase under all conditions is no longer the end of trade unions; they
are no longer what they were at their start; their true end is now the
maintenance of the organizational apparatus under all conditions; the new means
are those tactics most appropriate to this goal. But to disclose their changed
character would be to alienate the workers from the organization. Thus, the
mere ideological end becomes a weapon for securing the real end, becomes only
an instrument in a quite realistic and well-integrated activity.

Nevertheless, the ends-and-means problem excited the old labor movement
considerably and explains in part why the real character of that movement was
recognized so slowly and why illusions flourished as to the possibilities of
reforming it. The most important attempt to revolutionize the old labor
movement was made when the Russian revolution of 1905 had interrupted the
everyday business in which the labor movement was then engaged and the
question of an actual social change came to the fore again. But even here, in
its apparent opposition, the old labor movement revealed its innate
capitalistic character. Lenin’s serious attempts to solve the problem of
power led him straight back into the camp of the bourgeois revolutionists. This
resulted not only from the backward Russian conditions, but also from the
theoretical development of Western socialism, which had only further emphasized
the bourgeois character it had inherited from earlier revolutions. The
capitalist nature of the labor movement also appeared in its economic theory,
which, following the trend in bourgeois economics, viewed the problems of
society more and more as a question of distribution, as a market problem. Even
the revolutionary onslaught of Rosa Luxemburg in her Akkumulation des
Kapitals against the ‘revisionists’ was still an argument on
the level established by her antagonists. She, too, deduced the limitations of
the capitalist society mainly from its inability, because of limited
markets, to realize the surplus value. Not the sphere of production, but the
sphere of circulation seemed of predominant importance, determining the life
and death of capitalism.

However, from the pre-war left (which included Luxemburg,
Liebknecht, Pannekoek and Gorter), coupled with the actual struggles of workers
in mass strikes in the East as well as the West, there arose a movement during
the war which continued for a few years as a truly anti-capitalistic trend and
found its organizational expression in various anti-parliamentarian and
anti-trade union groups in a number of countries. In its beginnings and despite
all its inconsistencies, this movement was from the outset strictly opposed to
the whole of capitalism, as well as to the whole of the labor movement that
was a part of the system. Recognizing that the assumption of power by a party
meant only a change of exploiters, it proclaimed that society must be
controlled directly by the workers themselves. The old slogans of
abolition of the classes, abolition of the wage system, abolition of capital
production, ceased to be slogans and became the immediate ends of the new
organizations. Not a new ruling group in society, willing to act ‘for the
workers’ and, with this power, able to act against them, was their aim,
but the direct control by the workers over the means of production through an
organization of production securing this control. These groups[4] refused to distinguish between the
different parties and trade unions, but saw in them remains of a past stage of
struggles within the capitalist society. They were no longer interested in
bringing new life to the old organizations, but in making known the need for
organizations not only of entirely different character – class
organization capable of changing society, but capable also of organizing
the new society in such manner as to make exploitation impossible.

What remains of this movement, as far as it found permanent organizational
expression, exists today under the name of Groups of Council Communists. They
consider themselves Marxist and with that, internationalists. Recognizing that
all problems of today are international problems, they refuse to think in
nationalistic terms, contending that all special national considerations serve
only capitalistic competitive needs. In their own interests the workers must
develop the forces of production further, a condition which presupposes a
consequent internationalism. However, this position does not overlook national
peculiarities and therefore does not lead to attempts to pursue identical
policies in different countries. Each national group must base its activities
on an understanding of its surroundings, without interference from any other
group, though the exchange of experiences is expected to lead to co-ordinated
activities wherever possible. These groups are Marxist because there has not as
yet developed a social science superior to that originated by Marx, and because
the Marxian principles of scientific research still are the most realistic and
allow incorporation of new experiences growing out of continuing capitalistic
development. Marxism is not conceived as a closed system, but as the present
state of a growing social science capable of serving as a theory of the
practical class struggle of the workers.

So far the main functions of these organizations consisted of critique.
However, this critique is no longer directed against the capitalism that
existed at the time of Marx. It includes a critique of that transformation of
capitalism which appears under the name of ‘socialism’. Critique
and propaganda are the only practical activities possible today, and their
apparent fruitlessness only reflects an apparent non-revolutionary situation.
The decline of the old labor movement, involving the difficulty and even
impossibility of bringing forth a new one, is a lamentable prospect only for
the old labor movement; it is neither hailed nor bewailed by the Groups of
Council Communists, but simply recognized as a fact. The latter recognize also
that the disappearance of the organized labor movement changes nothing of the
social class structure; that the class struggle must continue, and will be
forced to operate on the basis of given possibilities. “A class in which
the revolutionary interests of society are concentrated, so soon as it has
risen up, finds directly in its own situation the content and the material of
its revolutionary activity: foes to be laid low; measures (dictated by the
needs of the struggle) to be taken; the consequences of its own deeds to drive
it on. It makes no theoretical inquiries into its own task.”[5] Even a fascist society cannot end
class struggles – the fascist workers will be forced to change the
relations of production. However, there is actually no such thing as a fascist
society just as there is no such thing as a democratic society. Both are only
different stages of the same society, neither higher nor lower, but simply
different, as a result of shifts of class forces within the capitalist society
which have their basis in a number of economic contradictions.

The Groups of Council Communists recognize also that no real social change
is possible under present conditions unless the anti-capitalistic forces grow
stronger than the pro-capitalist forces, and that it is impossible to
organize anti-capitalistic forces of such a strength within
capitalistic relations. From the analysis of present-day society and from a
study of previous class struggles it concludes that spontaneous actions of
dissatisfied masses will, in the process of their rebellion, create their own
organizations, and that these organizations, arising out of the social
conditions, alone can end the present social arrangement. The question of
organization as discussed today is regarded as a superfluous question, as the
enterprises, public works, relief stations, armies in the coming war, are
sufficient organizations to allow for mass action-organizations which cannot be
eliminated regardless of what character capitalist society may assume.

As an organizational frame for the new society is proposed a council
organization based on industry and the productive process, and the adoption of
the social average labor time as a measurement for production, reproduction
and distribution in so far as measurements are necessary to secure economic
equality despite the existing division of labor. This society, it is believed,
will be able to plan its production according to the needs and the enjoyment
desired by the people.

The Groups further realize, as already stated, that such a society can
function only with the direct participation of the workers in all decisions
necessary; its concept of socialism is unrealizable on the basis of a
separation between workers and organizers. The Groups do not claim to be acting
for the workers, but consider themselves as those members of the
working class who have, for one reason or another, recognized evolutionary
trends towards capitalism’s downfall, and who attempt to co-ordinate the
present activities of the workers to that end. They know that they are no more
than propaganda groups, able only to suggest necessary courses of action, but
unable to perform them in the ‘interest of the class’. This the
class has to do itself. The present functions of the Groups, though related to
the perspectives of the future, attempt to base themselves entirely on the
present needs of the workers. On all occasions, they try to foster
self-initiative and self-action of the workers. The Groups participate wherever
possible in any action of the working population, not proposing a separate
program, but adopting the program of those workers and endeavoring to
increase the direct participation of those workers, in all decisions. They
demonstrate in word and deed that the labor movement must foster its own
interests exclusively; that society as a whole cannot truly exist until classes
are abolished; that the workers, considering nothing but their specific, most
immediate interests, must and do attack all the other classes and interests of
the exploitative society; that they can do no wrong as long as they do what
helps them economically and socially; that this is possible only as long as
they do this themselves; that they must begin to solve their affairs today and
so prepare themselves to solve the even more urgent problems of the morrow.

NOTES

1. See
Economic Planning and Labor Plans (Paris: International
Federation of Trade Unions, 1936).

2. See
Karl Marx by Karl Korsch. A re-statement of the most important
principles and contents of Marx’s social science. (New York, John Wiley,
1938.)

3. J. Harper,
“General Remarks on the Question of Organization”,
Living Marxism, November, 1938, p 153.

4.
‘Left’, or workers’ communist organizations, trace their
earliest beginnings to the left opposition developing in the Socialist and
Communist parties before, during and shortly after the war, Their concepts of
direct workers’ control assumed real significance with the coming of
‘soviets’ in the Russian Revolution, the shop stewards in England
during the war, and the workers’ factory delegates in Germany during the
war, and the workers’ and soldiers’ councils after the war. These
groups were expelled from the Communist International in 1920. Lenin’s
pamphlet, Left Wing Communism An Infantile Disorder (1920), was
written to destroy the influence of these groups in western Europe. These
groups considered the Bolshevik policies counter-revolutionary as regards the
class interests of the international working class, and it was defeated by this
counter-revolution which combined with the reformist movement and the
capitalist class proper to destroy the first beginnings of a radical movement
directed against all forms of capitalism. What still remains of this movement
today are small groups in America, Germany, Holland, France and Belgium unable
to do more than propaganda work influencing extremely small groups of
workers.

5. Karl Marx,
The Class Struggles in France, 1848-50.


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