Workers' Councils: The Libertarian Socialist Philosophy of Workers' Self-Rule in Governing Local Regions
Workers' Councils: The Libertarian Socialist Philosophy of Workers' Self-Rule in Governing Local Regions

Author: Anton Pannekoek

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2018-08-24

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780359046492

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Anton Pannekoek discusses the viability of workers' councils as an effective means of administrating a socialist society, as contrasted to the centralized doctrines of state communism or state capitalism. Conceived as an alternative way to establish and sustain socialism, the workers councils have so far never been successfully established at a national scale. Part of the problem was disagreements among revolutionaries about their size and responsibilities; while Lenin supported the notion during the revolutionary period, the councils were phased out in favor of a centralized state, rather than diffused through the strata of society. Pannekoek draws on history for his ideas, noting the deficiencies of previous revolutions and the major objectives a future revolution should hold. The various tasks a state of worker's councils must accomplish, and the enemies that must be overcome - notably fascists, bourgeois elements and big business - are listed.

Workers' Councils
Workers' Councils

Author: Anton Pannekoek

Publisher:

Published: 2018-08-24

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780359046485

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Anton Pannekoek discusses the viability of workers' councils as an effective means of administrating a socialist society, as contrasted to the centralized doctrines of state communism or state capitalism. Conceived as an alternative way to establish and sustain socialism, the workers councils have so far never been successfully established at a national scale. Part of the problem was disagreements among revolutionaries about their size and responsibilities; while Lenin supported the notion during the revolutionary period, the councils were phased out in favor of a centralized state, rather than diffused through the strata of society. Pannekoek draws on history for his ideas, noting the deficiencies of previous revolutions and the major objectives a future revolution should hold. The various tasks a state of worker's councils must accomplish, and the enemies that must be overcome - notably fascists, bourgeois elements and big business - are listed.

The Council Communist Reader
The Council Communist Reader

Author: Paul Mattick

Publisher: Pattern Books

Published: 2021-05-24

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 5143124174

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" 'Workers' councils' does not designate a fixed form of organization, elaborated once and for all and for which all that remains is to perfect its details; it concerns a principle, that of workers' self management of the enterprise and of production. The realization of this principle can never occur through a theoretical discussion concerning the best means of execution. It is a question of the practical struggle against the apparatus of capitalist domination." - Anton Pannekoek The Council Communist Reader is a collection of selected writings from a few council communists. Council Communism emerged in Holland and Germany in the 1920's as an alternative to Bolshevik and Marxist-Leninist thought up to the Third International. Council Communist theory was derived from workers' experiences in the German Revolution of 1918, the early years of the Weimar Republic, and the study of the early council movements in Russia in 1905 and 1917. They sought not to impose a kind of organization upon the workers' movement, but instead to uplift the form of "councils" as spontaneous and self-emancipatory for the working class. This was a throughline for the council communists to connect back to Marx's understanding of proletarian revolution in maintaining "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves." Council communism was not to be a new ideology for the working class, but to take a critique of state socialism back to the roots of self-emancipation towards theoretical coherence which can combat all forms that hinder emancipation and move this theoretical coherence into practice. From this, and their understanding revolutionary consciousness develops as a result of crisis, revolution is not a choice but a necessity. The works included in this book have been chosen to reflect the developments of Council Communism over decades; this is not an exhaustive, encyclopedic collection of all councilist texts, but a collection of key texts. This book in the Radical Reprint series from Pattern Books is made to be accessible and as close to manufacturing cost as possible.

The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm (Routledge Revivals)
The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm (Routledge Revivals)

Author: David Ellerman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-04-14

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1317484789

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When this book was first published in 1990, there were massive economic changes in the East and significant economic challenges to the West. This critical analysis of democratic theory discusses the principles and forces that push both socialist and capitalist economies toward a common ground of workplace democratization. This book is a comprehensive approach to the theory and practice of the "Democratic firm" – from philosophical first principles to legal theory and finally to some of the details of financial structure. The argument for economic democracy supports private property, free markets and entrepreneurship for instance, but fundamentally it replaces the employer/employee relationship with democratic membership in the firm. For students, teachers, policy makers and others interested in the application of democracy to the workplace, this book will serve as a manifesto and a standard reference on the topic.

The Anarchist Collectives
The Anarchist Collectives

Author: Sam Dolgoff

Publisher: Black Rose Books Ltd.

Published: 1974

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780919618206

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For a brief period, the Spanish people offered the world a glimpse of a future that differs by orders of magnitude from the tendencies inherent in the state capitalist and state socialist societies that exist today.-Noam Chomsky --Book Jacket.

Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina
Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina

Author: Marcelo Vieta

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-01-07

Total Pages: 680

ISBN-13: 9004268952

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In Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina, Marcelo Vieta homes in on the history, consolidation, and socio-political dimensions of Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (worker-recuperated enterprises), a worker-led company occupation movement that has surged since the turn-of-the-millennium and the country’s neo-liberal crisis.

Collectives in the Spanish Revolution
Collectives in the Spanish Revolution

Author: Gaston Leval

Publisher: Freedom

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781629634470

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Gaston Leval's study brings together two aspects that are generally difficult to unite--analysis and testimony. He visited the towns and villages of revolutionary Spain where people had opted to live a libertarian communist lifestyle almost without precedent in history, collectivizing the land, factories, and social services. Collectives in the Spanish Revolution demonstrates clearly that the working class are perfectly capable of running farms, factories, workshops, and health and public services without bosses or managers. It proves that anarchist methods of organizing, with decisions made from the bottom up, can work effectively in large-scale industry, involving the coordination of many thousands of workers in many hundreds of places of work across numerous cities and towns, as well as broad rural areas. Leval's history of anarchy in action also gives insight into the creative and constructive power of ordinary people. The Spanish working class not only kept production going throughout the war, but in many cases managed to achieve increases in output. They improved working conditions and created new techniques. They created, out of nothing, an arms industry without which the war against fascism could not have been fought. The revolution also showed that without the competition bred by capitalism, industry can be run in a much more rational manner. Finally it demonstrated how an organized working class has the power to transform society.

Anarchism
Anarchism

Author: Daniel Guerin

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 1970

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 0853451753

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"One of the ablest leaders and writers of the French New Left describes the two realms of "anarchism"--Its intellectual substance, and its actual practice through the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian Factory Councils, and finally its role in workers' self-management in modern Yugoslavia and Algeria. One sees in "anarchism" a close kinship to libertarianism of the right, with its horror of state bureaucracy and hostility toward bourgeois (liberal) democracy. Noam Chomsky, perhaps Guerin's American political counterpart, has written a concise and effective introduction which will add to the book's campus appeal. An important contemporary definition of New Left aims and their possible directions in the future." -- from back cover

Marxist Theory and Revolutionary Tactics
Marxist Theory and Revolutionary Tactics

Author: Anton Pannekoek

Publisher: Pattern Books

Published: 2020-07-09

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13: 2348252066

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For several years past, profound tactical disagreement has been developing on a succession of issues amongst those who had previously shared common ground as Marxists and together fought against Revisionism in the name of the radical tactic of class struggle. It first came into the open in 1910, in the debate between Kautsky and Luxemburg over the mass strike; then came the dissension over imperialism and the question of disarmament; and finally, with the conflict over the electoral deal made by the Party Executive and the attitude to be adopted towards the liberals, the most important issues of parliamentary politics became the subject of dispute.