Council communism
Under council communism is defined as a Marxist movement, the idea of communism is characterized in workers' councils in particular by the idea of self-government and grassroots democracy.
Conception
The exercise of power in the council communism takes place largely in the councils, which act as the executive, legislative as well as judicial powers in one. The representative / inside of these organs are subject to an imperative mandate, ie they can always be voted out by the electorate again. There is accountability, making a radical democracy is ensured.
Members of the middle class do not have access to the councils, as they were already excluded from the Soviets in the Russian Revolution as a rule. As a model of a democratic councils organizational structure is especially the euphorically welcomed by Karl Marx Paris Commune, in the emergence of the idea of council communism but also syndicalist concepts have been incorporated.
History and influence
Their heyday was the idea of council democracy especially to the November Revolution in 1918 and in its immediate aftermath.
In a narrower sense, council communist organizations developed in the wake of increasing after the November revolution factional struggles within the German left. After the exclusion of many links dissenters from the Communist Party of Germany ( KPD) under the leadership of Paul Levi the end of 1919, the Communist Workers Party of Germany founded ( KAP ) and the left direction union General Workers' Union of Germany ( AAUD ). These organizations possessed at the time of its founding more than a hundred thousand members - and thus had more members than the Communist Party.
The key conceptual difference between the KPD and the council communists was to assess the leadership of the party, which was vehemently rejected by the council communists in favor of the idea of self-government. The assessment of the development in the young Soviet Union was essentially different: the council communists analyzed the party rule in the Soviet Union after the overthrow of the Councils as state capitalism, which they advanced to the fact in the view that the mere means of production not yet led to their socialization have. Instead, the state has taken over the function of the capitalist class within society. An exemption from the wage labor did not take place.
Composed originally have good contacts to III. Communist International, it came soon after the break. Lenin attacked the council communists in his book The Left-Wing, an Infantile Disorder communism sharp.
The end of 1921, parts of AAUD separated from the KAP and existed as General Workers Union - Unit Organization ( AAUE ) on. The council communist movement lost after the re-emerging revolutionary unrest in Germany in 1923 increasing influence.
Councils Communist organizations in the final phase of the Weimar Republic and in the resistance against fascism were the Red fighter, the Communist Councils Union and the Communist Workers Union of Germany ( KAUD ).
Councils Communist ideas had also in the Netherlands, the UK, Bulgaria and Denmark 's influence in the social revolutionary movement.
Among the most important theorists of council communism include Anton Pannekoek (pseudonym Charles Horner ), Paul Mattick, Karl Korsch, Otto Rühle, Herman Gorter, Willy chicken, Caio Brendel, Sylvia Pankhurst, and the subsequent National Bolsheviks Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolff home. The later New Left in 1968 and in particular the Situationists in France were influenced by council communist ideas.