What exactly is a workers’ council?

The First Regional Caucasian Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, Russia 1917 (Pic: Wikimedia Commons)

Millions of people feel disenfranchised by the failures of mainstream parliamentary democracy.

The ruling class has been forced to allow elections and some civil liberties, like a free press and the right to organise in trade unions.

But individual rights have little power in the face of entrenched interests and inequality. Wealth buys power and influence over formal democratic processes.

More fundamentally, the ruling class systematically frustrates any attempt to exert real control from below.

Karl Marx called this the “democratic swindle”. The swindle exists because neither economic power nor the repressive institutions of the state can be controlled from parliament.

But there is an alternative, one based on the radical extension of democratic control. Modern revolutions depend on mass strike movements. Mass strikes combine economic demands, such as higher wages, with political demands, such as an end to police violence.

Such strike movements depend on workers organising in new ways. Managers and bosses run away or are driven out. Workers begin to use their knowledge to run things collectively through factory committees.

But there must also be coordination across workplaces and communities. Workers need to make sure their strikes are effective against their bosses while also ensuring that the working class has access to the goods and services it needs.

Every revolution, or attempted revolution, has created a similar solution—the workers’ council, or soviet.

The first soviets developed in St Petersburg, Russia, during the 1905 revolution and they emerged on an enormous scale during the revolution of 1917.

Workers’ councils were set up in Germany in 1918–19, and in Budapest in 1956. Embryonic councils were seen in Italy in 1919–20 and the Chilean cordones in 1972.

These diverse examples shared common features. Parliamentary elections are based on people voting as atomised individuals. But councils were based where workers were strong and organised collectively, where they could debate and argue together.

Elected delegates could be instantly recalled and dismissed. This ensured councils were very responsive to the radicalising ideas of the workers. 

For British writer Arthur Ransome, the instant recall of deputies meant, “The country is freed from the danger of finding itself governed by the ghosts of dead opinions.” 

The soviet system created a centralised decision-making body. But this derived its authority from a decentralised system of “raions”, or local soviets, which could represent the great diversity of Russian society.

US socialist John Reed argued, “The local soviets create the central government, not the central government the local soviets.” 

The workers’ councils created the possibility that the producers of wealth could have democratic control over what they produced.

The councils also provided a structure within which producers could debate their priorities with those who needed their goods and services. This is far more democratic than voting once every five years for which politicians will lie to us next.

The councils depended on active commitment from the working class. Lenin called this participation the “magic ingredient” of the workers’ state.

Workers’ councils did not exclude workers in less organised jobs. Reed noted that “cooks and waiters, street sweepers, courtyard servants or cab drivers” were represented in the councils. 

Workers’ councils have the potential to form the basis of a socialist society. But realising that potential depends on revolutionary politics winning out over caution, moderation and compromise.

In Russia, the Bolshevik party was able to win the majority in the soviets. They were able to smash the old state and usher in a new era of working class control and real democracy.