The theory of workers' councils emerged as a sub-variety of “left” communism immediately after the First World War amidst a set of new forms of labour struggles including wildcat strikes, factory occupations and the formation of committees of shop-floor delegates. Council communism is was made up as a tendency by Marxists who supported the 1917 Russian Revolution, but differed with Lenin and Trotsky over a number of tactical issues. These included the formation of the Soviet government in the U.S.S.R., the tactics of the Comintern in Europe and America, the role to be given to autonomous and spontaneous organisations of the working class as opposed to the working class political parties, participation in Parliament, the relationship with the trade unions and the trade union leadership. The Council Communists (the term used by the Dutch and German Left Communists after 1928) criticised the “elitist” practices of the Bolshevik Party, and increasingly emphasized the autonomus organisations of the working class, reminiscent in some ways of the anarcho-syndicalists and left communists of the pre-World War One period, rejecting “compromise” with the institutions of bourgeois society, while rejecting the new forms of working class rule created by the Russian Revolution.
The main point of difference with the Bolsheviks was over the role of the Party and a workers’ state. On the other hand, there were “Ultra-Left” communists (especially some of the English and the Italians) who upheld the role of a Party in leading the working class and the aim of a workers’ state, but criticised the Bolsheviks for various forms of compromise, such as advocating participation in Parliament and the conservative trade unions. Lenin strongly critique this tendency from an orthodox position in his1920 book: “Left-Wing” Communism – An Infantile Disorder. Important figures within Left Communism were: Karl Korsch, Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick, Herman Gorter, David Wijnkoop, Otto Rühle and Willie Gallacher; Amadeo Bordiga, Sylvia and Adela Pankhurst represent other ultra-left currents.
Autonomist
Marxism
Antonio Negri
Bifo
Disobedients
Archive
of left communism/council communism:
http://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/index.htm
Amadeo Bordiga: Towards the Establishment
of Workers' Councils in Italy (1920)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1920/workers-councils.htm
Anton Pannekoek: Workers Councils (1936)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/councils.htm
Paul Mattick: Council Communism (1939)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1939/council-communism.htm
E. Sylvia Pankhurst: Communism and its Tactics
(1921-1923)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/communism-tactics/index.htm
Otto Rühle: The Revolution Is Not A Party
Affair
http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/misc/ruhle01.htm