Date: Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:15:05 +0200
Subject: State, class and democracy


By mistake I sent this to Marxism 1 - but here it is:
------------------------

I think the debate about the coming socialist democracy is getting a little
"utopian". What I think is missing is some links to how workers actually
have been organizing their - small attempts at - class rule, in the real
world.

I know this started as a debate pro & contra the need for a state in a
classless society, but now it has for good reasons also moved to a debate
about democracy in a workers state. "For good reasons" I think, because
what is (almost) common ground here is that all participants in the debate
seem to agree that a classless society will come only after a period where
the working class will be the ruling class.

This gives us the opportunity to get a link back to the world as we know
it. But what has been only touched briefly upon are the experiences from
this real world. No matter what schemes we can think out, I think there are
some experiences from workers trying to implement *their* democracy which
are relevant here.

It strikes me that when workers (from very different parts of the world -
and decades apart) have seen themselves in a situation where they actually
had a chance (or were forced) to rule over at least a part of society -
they took basically the same model: Workers' councils.

Of course this was most developed in the soviets of Sct. Petersburg in 1905
and in most of the big cities of Russia in 1917, but the experience is much
more general than that - in a more or less developed form. So far apart in
time and space as Torino 1920, Germany at the same time, Chile in 1973,
Iran in 1979 and Poland in 1980-81 have workers organized a form which were
characterized by the same basic features.

This happened when the struggle generalized further than to the level of
one factory or one industry. When workers' unity not only manifested itself
during occasional demonstrations or a two-day strike - but instead
developed through a much more wide-spread feeling that the fight is not
*only* about bread and butter but about the future for their lives.

These workers' councils -  whatever their concrete names - were
characterized by at least these common features:

1. They developed from sectional to general organs for workers' struggles.
Often they started as a coordination of strike commitees in a few
factories, which were then joined by others to be a city-wide strike
leadership. They hereby took some decisive steps in breaking the
divide-and-rule policy of the capitalist class. Not only did they unite
workers from different industries, but also workers of different sex,
skilled and unskilled, higher and low paid workers, public and private etc.

2. They developed from the concrete "bread-and-butter" struggles, and -
depending on how far things came - into highly political forums. I.e. they
united economy and politics. They had hereby in them in embryo a direct
threat to reformism, which always tries to separate the two.

The fact that they united workers from different backgrounds made it much
easier to deal with wider issues from harassment of women or apprentices to
living conditions in general (rent strikes, the lousy and expensive food
etc.) - i.e. "political" issues.

3. They were the highest expression of working class democracy - in the
true sense of the word. This is to be understood on several levels:

- they were basically confined to the working class (they arose out of
working class struggle against its class enemy). No universal suffrage, but
workers debating and deciding in concrete debates at the base of society:
the workplace. (But workers' councils are flexible in form, so they were
often able to incorporate groups on the fringe of the organized working
class.)

- they did not assume that all are equal, like bourgeois democracy and
bourgeois justice does while we are not. It was a democracy of workers who
might have different conditions, but who nevertheless were united against
an enomy which had qualitatively different conditions. This is important
because real unity has to build on knowing that we are different, but on
the other hand that we have to join together. So the majority rules, but it
can only do this by building on the strengths of very different parts of
the class. Unity is always relative.

- this was also reflected in another feature of this democracy: Delegates
were increasingly elected on a political platform. To begin with - when
they were mere coordinating forums for essentially local struggles - they
often consisted of the activist minority, be they reformists,
revolutionaries or whatever. But as the struggle developed, it got more
political and this was reflected in the elections of delegates. Political
line was debated not only in the workers councils but increasingly also on
the shop floor.

- they were democratic also in form: Delegates were subject to recall
without delay, no priviligees were given to them. They were a direct
expression of the mood of workers at each given moment - by the workers
themselves.

4. Of course such a united working class eventually will go into a decisive
clash with the ruling class and the existing order. Usually that is where
most of them were smashed. The reason for this was that most of the workers
joined the struggle still with the old ideas in their heads, which
basically is that they wanted to get *more* from the bosses, but not *all*.
Only with a strong organization of revolutionary socialists in its ranks is
it possible for the working class to overcome this built-in problem of a
workers revolution.

But leave that point aside for now. What is more interesting in *this*
debate is that:

5. During their often quite short life these workers' councils had to deal
not only with the direct problems of the struggle. Very soon they had to
take on them the problems of the administration of (at least parts) of
society as such. If f.x. there is a general strike this does not mean that
people do not have to eat, that kids and old folks do not have to be taken
care of, that transport is not important etc.
The old rulers will often quite soon be unable to deal with - or will care
little about  - such things (except in their rhetoric) - and it becomes a
task for the workers councils to organize society anew.

Such organization - even in conditions of chaos in society - is dealt with
by the workers council much better than the old rulers could. It builds on
quite different principles, principles of solidarity and insight rather
than of force and contempt. Workers know that certain things are important
and has to be done - it is only when the movement is weak that workers
don't work during a strike. Also the insight in how production and
distribution is maintained is much higher on the shop floor than in the
board rooms.


Of course there are a lot of problems in this. The most severe, of course,
is to actually *win* not only a few factories, but society as such. But I
have tried to outline this in an attempt to take the discussion from - what
I think is - the abstarct heights of utopianism to the more concrete: How
we have seen workers develop forms of democracy which could lay the base
for a new society.

What is interesting in this is that even in a situation which was far from
these historical highlights, namely in France last year, we saw workers
democracy develop *in an embryonic form*: The december strikes in France
actually had a very high level of active participation from the rank and
file, not only as demonstrators or pickets, but also as organizors and
political activists.

It is these forms of democracy, which arise *in the struggle* from *within
capitalism itself* which constitutes the hopes for a future where the
abolition of class society as such can be put on the agenda. It is here, in
the workers councils, that the embryo of the new state develops, a state of
a very different character or form than any other state in history.


Shane Mage finishes by saying:
> Much more could be said, but [un]fortunately we have a *very* long time to
> pursue this sort of discussion before any of it becomes politically
> relevant.  

Shane, I basically disagree with you. Not because I think that we will have
workers' power next year or anything like that. But because I think the
question rises everytime workers are on the offensive. In France in
december it was highly relevant to discuss which sort of democracy should
rule: The democracy of Juppé or the deomcracy of the striking workers.

In France in december such discussions would have as it main purpose to
draw a minority towards socialist politics and organization. As they would
in Russia in january 1917. We live in a period of crisis and revolt. Only
if we are clear on which ideas we are fighting for can we hope to win these
discuccions among a wider audience. That would have made a very concrete
difference in France last december.


In solidarity

Jorn



--
Jorn Andersen

Internationale Socialister
Copenhagen, Denmark
IS-WWW: http://www2.dk-online.dk/users/is-dk/



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