The Council Communist Reader

by Paul Mattick (Contributor), Otto Rühle (Contributor), Karl Korsch (Contributor)

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

342 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Paul Mattick, Sr. (March 13, 1904 – February 7, 1981) was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions.

Father of author Paul Mattick Jr..

Reviews

[sube · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a collection of council communist writings who specifically discuss the structure of proletarian power, as well as the things to have been struggled with (though the last article discusses the marxist theory of crisis).

I cannot really judge on the value of the selection vs. other potential ones, so I'll judge the articles: the articles by Paul Mattick Sr., specifically "Workers' Control" I found a good summary of the council communist position. The articles by Otto Rühle were awful and really not worth reading, Karl Korsch's articles were midly interesting but not really remarkable, Herman Gorter's long pamphlet "The World Revolution" was readable and well-written, but not really all that insightful (and its central comment on both sides of imperialism being equally bad I think is wrong in the vacuum, it was admissible in WW1, but there was for ex. a difference in Soviet social-imperialism and US imperialism, one was far less developed than the other and the conflict made the USSR willing to support anti-systemic forces).

Anton Pannekoek's very long pamphlet "World Revolution and Communist Tactics" really did not need to be so long (~70 pages), as it mostly just goes on and on when it makes some fundamental assertions: opportunism is not willing to make a clear dividing line, parliamentarianism inhibits overcoming the mentality of dependence on leaders and trade-unions is that mentality's material basis. The rest is just on and on, and doesn't really say much substantial.

His last essay "The Theory of the Collapse of Capitalism" was an intriguing critique of the collapse theory of Henryk Grossman's theory of crisis. I have not read the book, so could not judge how true it is, but it's statement of the kind of reformism inherent to such "final collapse" theories I think was quite correct and it bracketing out class struggle (despite the usual arguments to the contrary).

All in all, they were not awful, but also not really worth reading / a must, really. But it is an important overview of what council communism is (which I guess is why I didn't find this so useful, as someone who is not a big fan of such theories).

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of great writing on council communism, different schools of thought within this great council roof, just like it had many different perspectives on collaboration or confrontation, reform or revolution, the Soviet Union system, and more.

[Zoe M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird ass selection of texts