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Council communism is a Radical Left movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s . Its primary organisation was the Communist Workers Party Of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both Marxism and Libertarian Socialism , and shares many traits with Anarchism . The central argument of Council Communism, in contrast to those of Social Democracy and Leninist Communism , is that Workers' Councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural form of working class organisation and state power. This view is opposed to the Reformist and Bolshevik stress on Vanguard Parties , Parliament s or Government s. The core principle of council communism is that the State and the Economy should be managed by Workers' Councils composed of delegates elected at workplaces and Recall able at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run "bureaucratic socialism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a workers' democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils. Council Communists support workers' revolutions, but oppose one-party dictatorships. This has much in common with Libertarian Communism and most strains of Anarchism , although the latter usually uphold individual liberty as paramount over all else. Council Communists also believe in diminishing the role of the party to one of agitation and propaganda, reject all participation in elections or parliament, and argue that workers should leave the reactionary trade unions and form one big revolutionary union. (It is debated whether the Industrial Workers Of The World is a fulfillment of council communist wishes.) HISTORY OF COUNCIL COMMUNISM As the Second International decayed at the beginning of World War I, socialists who opposed nationalism and supported international proletarian revolution regrouped. In Germany, two major communist trends emerged. First, the Spartacist League was created by the radical socialist Rosa Luxemburg . A second trend emerged amongst the German rank-and-file unionists, who opposed their unions and organized increasingly radical strikes towards the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918. This second trend created the German Left Communist movement that would become the KAPD after the abortive German revolution of 1918-1919. As the Communist International (Comintern) formed, inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, a Left Communist tendency developed in the Comintern's German, Dutch, Bulgarian and Italian sections. In the United Kingdom, Sylvia Pankhurst 's theoretically amorphous group, the Communist Party British Section of the Third International, also identified with the Left Communist tendency. Alongside these formal Left Communist tendencies, the Italian group led by Amadeo Bordiga is often commonly recognised as a Left Communist tendency, although both Bordiga and the Bordigists disputed this and qualified their politics as separate, distinct and more inline with the Third International's positions than Left Communism. Bordiga also advocated abstention from the trade unions, a position separating him from the more pro-union council communists. These various assorted groups were criticized by Lenin in his booklet "Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder". {Link without Title} Despite a common general direction, and despite sharing the criticism of Lenin, there were few politics held in common between these movements. An example of this divergence is that the Italians supported the ''Right of Nations to Self Determination'', while the Dutch and Germans rejected this policy (seeing it as a form of Bourgeois Nationalism ). However, all of the Left Communist tendencies opposed what they called " Frontism ". Frontism was a tactic endorsed by Lenin, where Communists sought tactical agreements with reformist ( Social Democratic ) parties in pursuit of a definite, usually defensive, goal. In addition to opposing "Frontism", the Dutch-German tendency, the Bulgarians and British also refused to participate in bourgeois elections, which they denounced as parliamentarism. In Germany, the Left Communists were expelled from the ). The leading theoreticians of the KAPD had developed a new series of ideas based on their opposition to party organisation, and their conception of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia as having been a bourgeois revolution. Their leading figures were Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter , as well as Otto Rühle . Rühle later left the KAPD, and was one of the founders of the AAUD-E. Another leading theoretician of Council Communism was Paul Mattick , who later emigrated to the USA. A minor figure in the Council Communist movement in the Netherlands was Marinus Van Der Lubbe , whose name is attached to the burning of the Reichstag in 1933. The legacy of the council communist movement was taken up by such groups as Socialisme Ou Barbarie , Solidarity (UK) and the Situationist International . Additionally, many Anarchists agree with some of the ideas of council communism. The Bordigist communist movement also retains some features of council communism. COUNCIL COMMUNISM WITHIN THE SOVIET UNION The Russian word for council is "soviet," and during the early years of Soviet Russia workers' councils were politically significant. Indeed, the name " Supreme Soviet ," by which the national parliament of the Soviet Union was later called, as well as the name of the Soviet Union itself, imply that the country was meant to be ruled by workers' councils. This was largely the case in the beginning, but the workers' councils soon lost their power and significance because Lenin had always envisioned the Communist Party , not the soviets, as truly entitled to run the State. After the forced dissolution of the Constituent Assembly , of which Lenin had been the head, after the October Revolution , the Supreme Soviet was relegated to the role of a Rubber-stamp parliament, and real power was concentrated in the hands of the Communist Party . For these reasons, Council Communists described the Soviet Union as a Capitalist state, believing that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia became a " Bourgeois revolution" when a party bureaucracy replaced the old feudal aristocracy. Although most Council Communists, unlike the anarchists of the time, felt the Russian Revolution was Working Class in character, they believed that since capitalist relations still existed (for example, the New Economic Policy ), the Soviet Union ended up as a State Capitalist country, with the state replacing the individual capitalist. LITERATURE
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