How council communists should organize?
Contrary to a current idea, I believe people inspired by historical council communism should not begin by building factory groups that act as if they are preparing the future workers’ councils. Or join the IWW or other alternative unions. That puts the cart before the horse. Workers’ councils are not small clubs created in advance by a minority. They arise in broad open struggle, when many workers move together, hold mass assemblies, elect delegates, and keep those delegates under direct control.
This was already one of the important lessons drawn by the Group of International Communists (GIC). Looking back at the struggles after the First World War, it argued that older permanent mass organizations such as parliamentary parties and trade unions had lost their old role as real proletarian fighting organs. In their place, new forms appeared in moments of open struggle: assemblies of workers, elected and recallable strike committees, and, in wider revolutionary situations, councils linking struggles across workplaces and regions.
That is why it is mistaken to think that a small workplace nucleus today can simply grow into a workers’ council tomorrow. A council is not a pre-made model. It is a mass form born from real struggle. A minority group can prepare itself, intervene, clarify, and learn lessons, but it cannot manufacture the future organs of class power in miniature.
So what should revolutionaries do? They should organize themselves politically, as groups united by clear communist positions they consider adequate for the present time. Such groups are not above the working class, but they are also not dissolved in every passing mood. They are part of the proletarian movement in a concentrated form: preserving historical memory, sharpening theory, criticizing false roads, spreading propaganda, taking part in struggles, and helping workers see where the real lines of class conflict lie.
The main question is therefore not: “Are you a real worker from a real shop floor?” The real question is: do you clearly understand the movement toward communism, and do you stand for it in practice?
Today, the most important position that separates communist groups from bourgeois politics is proletarian internationalism. This means defending the working class against all bourgeois and imperialist camps in the present wars and in the preparations for a wider world war. It means rejecting the nationalism of one’s “own” country and also rejecting the nationalism of other countries and blocs.
This is decisive because every camp now speaks in false moral language. One side talks about democracy, human rights, or protection of minorities. Another talks about resistance, national liberation, religion, anti-Western struggle, or civilizational defense. But behind these slogans stand capitalist states, military blocs, ruling classes, and strategic interests. Workers are told to suffer, work harder, accept repression, and if needed die for goals that are not their own.
A stronger bloc against a weaker bloc does not end imperialism. It only changes the balance inside imperialism. No bourgeois camp brings freedom to the working class. Not the liberal camp. Not the nationalist camp. Not the religious camp. Not the camp that calls itself anti-imperialist while keeping wage labour, state power, militarism, and bloc politics.
For that reason, communist groups must say clearly: workers must not support foreign imperialist wars in the hope of liberation. But workers must also not defend “their own” state as a lesser evil. The proletariat cannot choose between imperialist scenarios without paying in blood, poverty, trauma, and deeper exploitation.
This internationalist position must shape organization itself. Communist groups should not define themselves by a nation, a flag, a people, or a democratic alliance. They should define themselves by class positions. They should expose the state character of bourgeois organizations, denounce patriotic lies, support workers’ self-organization in defensive struggles, and encourage forms of struggle that move toward assemblies, revocable delegates, extension across sectors, and independence from all bourgeois camps.
This also means avoiding two errors. The first error is reformist adaptation: trusting unions, parties, fronts, or national causes that tie workers to capitalism. The second error is empty maximalism: refusing all real defensive organization because it does not yet look like a council. Communists must reject both traps. They must help workers defend their immediate conditions while pointing beyond the limits of capitalism.
The priority today is therefore simple. Not to pretend to build councils in advance. Not to imitate mass organs with tiny circles in single workplaces. But to organize serious political groups on a clear council communist basis, above all on proletarian internationalism. Only such groups can prepare themselves to intervene usefully when wider struggles return. And only through real mass struggle, not through imitation, can workers’ councils appear again.
Comentários
Enviar um comentário