Is council communism anarchism?

[Louis Proyect]

Rakesh:
>It's really nothing abstract. Anti bolshevik communism is the theoretical
>expression of the practical activity of the Soviets and German Councils,
>destroyed in the German and Boslehvik  counter revolutions in the late
>1910s, to develop bottom up organizations
>arising from the workplace  and by way of these organizations to come up
>with new ways of coordinating production and distributing the ouput on the
>basis of labor hour for labor hour, without regard to skill or
>hierarchy.
> It is a creative attempt to mediate our social relationships
>without money or the  state or the boss or experts and technicians.

Sounds like anarchism to me.

I have never read these folks because there never seemed to be any
compelling reason for me to do so. Rakesh has not strengthened their cause
with the sort of empty phrase-making seen above.

Russian social democracy had as its goal the overthrow of the Czarist state
and replacement with something more democratic. Trotsky, and then Lenin,
argued that the only way to guarantee that the new state be fully
democratic is if it was a dictatorship of the proletariat. The concept of
the dictatorship of the proletariat is as deeply rooted in Marx's thought
as the labor theory of value.

Rakesh's enfatuation with "council communism" will surely lead him away
from Marxism. I suspect that it is only a matter of time. His academic
career will have fewer bumps in the road arguing the sort of ephemeral and
intellectualized stuff above than if he defends the need for a Soviet style
revolution, which is of course the only kind possible. Citing Paul Mattick
or Hannah Arendt won't raise any eyebrows. Lenin and Trotsky citations are
guaranteed tenure-killers.

Which leads me to Doug's complaint about not being able to imagine a
revolution. I recommend the following course of study to enrichen your
imagination:

1) literature about the May-June events in France 1968, as well as the
"creeping May-June" in Italy in 1969.

2) literature about the Yugoslavia student movement in 1968 that called for
a Red University, as well as the Czech movement of the same year. Even
though these were "communist" countries, the worker and student movements
were inspired by the same forces that shook Italy and France. The Yugoslav
students flew Che Guevara portraits over their occupied buildings.

3) Farrel Dobbs's books on the Teamster Rebellion of the 1930s.

4) Fred Halstead's "Out Now," which places the antiwar protests in a
Marxist context and shows the powerful dynamic of a mass movement organized
outside the framework of the 2-party system.

5) Leon Trotsky's "History of the Russian Revolution"

Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)