It is twentytwenty- or twentythirty-something and shit is bad, it’s worse, it’s what you expect but there is also a greater degree of resistance...
Open Call and Session 4 with Jasper Bernes and Red May: The Biennio Rosso, the Spanish Civil War, and Antifascism
Is it time to form the fuckin' Soviets, or what?
By Jasper Bernes
It is twentytwenty- or twentythirty-something and shit is bad, it’s worse, it’s what you expect but there is also a greater degree of resistance.
Anti-police riots are frequent. Tenant unions (some communist, but most reformist) have covered a significant percentage of the renters in many cities, as rent is everywhere more than half of income for proletarians. Base-unions have organized service-sector workplaces but wages are still stagnant in the face of a new inflationary shock. The shantyfication of the American city is largely complete, with vast homeless encampments occupying every vacant lot and stretching for miles in the interurban periphery.
A new economic shocks hits. Heavily indebted municipal governments (some of them led by social-democrats) are in free-fall, but this time the Federal government and the coalition of capital lack the political will to stabilize them. The president, elected with a mandate to end the US involvement in the Civil War in Mexico, is deposed by a coup, but large parts of the US armed forces refuse to follow the new military leaders. Only the Marines, parts of the Army, and the Air Force, are on the side of the state, but the Navy is staying neutral. The National Guard is mobilized with various objectives, and units are effectively autonomous. The long-awaited 100-year-flood hits California. This is good as it’s gonna get in the US as far as a revolutionary situation goes. In the California Delta, militants on boats loot the flooded arms depots and burn the police stations.
Is it time to form the fucking soviets or what? Some tens of thousands of people seem to think so, convincing hundreds of thousands to follow suit. Something like a 21st century mass strike spreads throughout the US. The government shutdown and infrastructure collapse renders many companies useless. People stop work, take over their workplaces. Shops and warehouses are looted. Managers and owners flee. In some cities, where the local police have collapsed, committees of the renters and houseless form to deal with the problems of houselessness through expropriation. Shop committees emerge in workplaces, either to enforce the strike against employers or in some cases to continue producing for the revolution. Elsewhere, in many of the strongest, capital-intensive sectors of the economy, capitalist reproduction sputters along, unaffected.
Whither communism? How might this self-organization of the proletariat, in its contradiction with capital within this mode of production, abolish capital, therefore all classes and therefore itself; that is to say, produce communism?
What would you and a million other people do, starting from any of these vantage points? Tell the story from the standpoint communism: What will have been successful?
To participate in the activity, submit your response to the following questions via our reading group (here), or share your answers in the comments.
Register
Registration for session 4 of our Worker's Council series with Jasper Bernes is now live!
The session will be on Sunday, January 8th at 12pm PST.
Registration: here.
Readings: here.
[CC English subtitles available in video, ready to activate].
Session 4
The Biennio Rosso, the Spanish Civil War, and Antifascism
The emergence of factory councils in the north of Italy in 1919 provides an important reference point for a comparative study of the council form. The chief difference in the Italian case is that the state and army had not collapsed, placing the councils in a very different role than those of November 1918 in Germany. In Italy, where Malatesta was considered by many the Lenin of the moment, the councils were largely dominated by anarchists and syndicalists, so much so that the group around Gramsci adopted syndicalist positions.
Bordiga’s criticism of the factory-centric model of soviet formation, though doctrinaire and apodictic, grasps something about the particular problems facing soviets in Italy and raises questions about who the soviets comprise, and where they should emerge.
When we move to Spain, and consider worker’s self-organization there, these debates about soviets and syndicalism, factory committees versus regional committees, become highly pertinent. A councilar system did not emerge in Spain, and in fact many anarchists explicitly rejected such a model based on their understanding of the Russian and German revolution, and the possibility of councils being manipulated by petit bourgeois elements. In Spain, where the state had largely collapsed, the revolutionary economy was organized on an industrial basis through the unions. This creates very different problems and opportunities for the Spanish case, that are worth examining comparatively.
Amadeo Bordiga, “The System of Communist Representation”
– “Is This The Time to Form the “Soviets?”
– “Take the Factories or Take Power”
Paul Mattick, “The Barricades Must Be Torn Down.” International Council Correspondence 3, no. 7–8 (August 1937).
Tommy Lawson, “Anarchists in a Workers’ Uprising”
Friends of Durruti, “Toward a Fresh Revolution”
Previous sessions:
Whither communism?
How might this self-organization of the proletariat, in its contradiction with capital within this mode of production, abolish capital, therefore all classes and therefore itself; that is to say, produce communism?
What would you and a million other people do, starting from any of these vantage points? Tell the story from the standpoint communism: What will have been successful?
With these brief paragraphs we place ourselves in an — at times all-too real — scenario to connect theory with practice, and think, in concrete terms, about what organizing looks like in today's world. The present activity provides a rich jumping off point for the upcoming session.
Join the email group discussion here and share your answers and thoughts (or you can share them in the comment section below this post), we will be discussing further on January 8th.
To participate in the open call, submit your response to the following questions via our reading group (here), or share your answers in the comments below.
