Building Workers’ Power

This chapter argues that council theorists considered it important to shift the balance of power between social classes in order to achieve political transformation. It theorizes differences between those who advocated ‘organization’ (Kautsky) versus those who advocated ‘mobilization’ (Luxemburg, Pannekoek) as the most effective method of developing the independent power of the working class. It claims Karl Kautsky advocated a strategy of developing power through building worker-led organizations such as the party, unions, and the press. His strategy involved the gradual growth of power through organization-building, parliamentary activity, and developing workers’ consciousness within existing organizations. Underlying this strategy of organization lay a conception of power as something that could be incrementally developed and stored through sound organizing, discipline, and patience. In contrast, Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek considered that power could only be developed through political struggle and direct clashes with the ruling class. They argued that previously unorganized workers could be mobilized through the escalating dynamics of political struggle and that consciousness-raising was best conducted in militant action rather than administrative party activities. These two fundamentally different analyses of how workers should develop their power shed light on different aspects of the council movements’ political struggle.

Between Social Democracy and Council Dictatorship

This chapter examines the underlying democratic and socialist impulses in the German council movements of the early twentieth century. It analyses the emergence of council movements in Russia (from the strikes in February 1917 to the crushing of the Kronstadt uprising in 1921) followed by their spread to Germany (from the heightened revolutionary activity of 1917 to the establishment of the Weimar Constitution in August 1919). It examines the council movements through primary documents such as minutes of council meetings, congress reports, newspaper articles, and socialist journals. The typical Cold War framework for interpreting the council movements has been to view them as a transitional phenomenon leading to either liberal democratic institutions or a single-party dictatorship. Moving away from this binary framework, I show that while a diversity of political views were held by participants in the council movements, there was broad support for the deepening and extension of democratic conditions in major political, economic, and social institutions, including the army, civil service, and workplaces.

Introduction

The introduction sets out the overall aim of the book and provides a brief historical snapshot of the German council movements. In addition to sketching some of the key debates that occurred within the council movements and outlining their political programmes, the introduction also presents my interpretive approach. The study has a particular focus on forgotten political alternatives that may not have achieved their full realization in the final institutions of the new republics founded at the end of the war. I attempt to uncover political programmes that were raised during this revolutionary period, particularly those that expressed the democratic and socialist ambitions of rank-and-file council delegates.

Conclusion

The conclusion addresses the council movements’ widespread demands for the radical transformation of German society and for the democratization of politics and the economy. It frames these as the extension of democratic principles throughout society. It then traces the shift from the council movements to the later development of council communist political thought. While many of the underlying conditions that led to the emergence of councils have shifted since their emergence over a century ago, the conclusion outlines how reflection on the councils could influence building workers’ power today. The conclusion also reaffirms the council theorists’ vision of the radical reorganization of social relations towards a self-determining society.

Freedom as Collective Self-Determination

This chapter proposes that Anton Pannekoek espoused a particular conception of freedom that is distinct from both the dominant liberal and republican views of liberty. Pannekoek understood political freedom as a political community’s ongoing struggle against forces of domination and the experimentation with new practices and structures of governance. I call this view of liberty ‘freedom as collective self-determination’. Pannekoek shared the concerns of republican political theorists for combatting structures of domination and the influence of foreign powers. Yet in contrast to most neo-Roman republicans, he identified the bureaucratic state and free market economic relations as two of the principal sources of domination in modern society. He also believed that democratic participation was essential rather than auxiliary to a proper understanding of freedom. To be free, for Pannekoek, meant to actively participate in a political community, to play some direct role in shaping its laws and character; and to influence the direction of its ongoing transformation. This was a conception in which freedom must be exercised rather than enjoyed as a state or condition. This view of freedom contributes an important perspective to our understanding of freedom understood as a practice and constant struggle, which is obscured by purely negative accounts.

Socialist Republicanism

This chapter reconstructs a theory of socialist republicanism from the writings of Karl Kautsky. Comparing it with the theories of the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the SPD leadership, I argue that during the revolution Kautsky proposed an innovative socialist programme that called for the radical transformation of the state and society. The dominance of the ‘National Assembly versus Council Republic’ ideological framework of the revolution has obscured Kautsky’s ‘centrist’ third option. Kautsky argued for the presence of workers’ councils alongside a parliamentary system and understood democracy and socialism as the twin goals of a socialist revolution. He sought to combine the benefits of political democracy and civil rights for minorities with the gradual socialization of the economy. Drawing from overlooked and untranslated (or newly translated) texts written during the early days of the German Revolution, this interpretation challenges the dominant view of Kautsky as a bourgeois reformist who advocated political quietism during the revolution. It theorizes an important socialist action programme that has been neglected within the scholarly literature.

Socialist Civic Virtues

The German council movements struggled not only for the deepening of democracy and the social ownership of the means of production, but also for a broader project of human emancipation couched in terms of ideological transformation and cultural rejuvenation. An overlooked yet significant contribution to this debate was Rosa Luxemburg’s theorization of ‘socialist civic virtues’ as a key element of class struggle and socialist democracy. Luxemburg incorporated republican language and themes into a socialist political ideology of workers’ self-emancipation. She understood that worker-controlled institutions would need to be supported by widespread socialist norms that would be common knowledge and followed as a matter of habit. It would be necessary to direct workers away from the egoism, individualism, and competition that predominated in capitalist societies and towards a socialist culture of self-discipline, public-spiritedness, solidarity, and self-activity. She believed it was primarily through their own political activity and the experience of political struggle that workers could acquire the necessary habits and dispositions of self-government for living in a self-determining society. Her theory of socialist civic virtues helps provide content to the council movements’ vision of the institutional and cultural order of a future socialist society.