Anarchic update news all over the world - 28 April 2017

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Greece, counter working Sheet # 158 by ESE - Athens (gr)
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  alasbarricadas.org: CNT in Villalar 2017: Your world
      destroys us, we build ours (ca) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  Greece, ESE, The Libertarian Syndicalist Union pays respect
      to comrade Savas Metikoidis (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  Patras, Greece: 2 days for anarchy and libertarian communism
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  Czech, afed: First of May - The end of a bad job ----
      Invitation to the May Day rally, which will include anarchist
      block. (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  US, black rose fed: WORKERS POWER AND THE 
     RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1




On Sunday, April 9, 2017, as part of a strike in the trade sector, the Coordinating action 
against the abolition of Sunday and on holidays, the 'liberated' hours  proceeded in a 
series of strike safeguard shops on the pedestrian street of Ermou. The strike safeguard 
already startedfrom 6:30 a.m. of the two branches of the chain H & M, at the junction of 
Ermou Street & House and pl. Kapnikareas. These two points, which took place both our 
strike meetings, held from early strike guard and ZARA stores, Stradivarius & Fiftysix. 
The strike lasted guard for 10 hours and concluded on 4.30pm, when it ensured that at 
least the two stores of H & M will not be opened at all for today. During the strike 
action distributed to workers and employees in the trade sector and the world moved on 
Ermou hundreds texts Coordinating Action on the fight for the Sunday holiday and the 
workers collective trade (standing), which referred to developments in H & M

20 banners at key points in the city from the Libertarian Syndicalist Union of Ioannina on 
the issue of redundant from clinical Hippocratic Ioannina. None alone against the bosses. 
Immediate reinstatement of the worker in Hippocrates. See related photos from the action 
of the SSC Ioannina HERE .

The cost of our lives! says statement of the SSC Education. The notice specifically: In 
recent years, special education has become the guinea pig of education at the expense of 
workers, students, parents. All the previous and the current ministries laugh with 
nomination promises, set up and maintain the precarious working conditions of eternal 
replenishment. This way is the responsibility of quality discount of education and work of 
those who make hostage. Every year students with disabilities and special educational 
needs are not stable environment, stable teacher and then stopped them in any educational 
program concerns. Gaps (in primary and secondary) clipped into full gear with economic 
policies. Licenses, insurance, social benefits, unemployment benefits all in harmony with 
the costs that would have in the State of the employee. The school becomes a profitability 
and competitiveness losing business altogether to any pedagogic character was left. In 
special education, the last attack, another economic experiment begins in August last year 
when the ministry with the law ......... eliminates labor positions such as The operator 
of all- day resulting in change in the times. In the sudden volume of supernumerary 
teacher responds with solutions grocer sending them to compensate hours of specialties and 
of course in special education. So we go back many years back when the teacher was also an 
artist, theatropaidagogos, special educator and trainer. Particularly where they have 
never been permanent appointments as the area of special education, the holding of such 
gaps in parts integration and parallel support hours are easy filling.

Besides the sieved gaps manual addresses and often remain a closely guarded secret of 
their distribution. Wednesday 29/3 summarily ministry in assessment rates and inter 
negotiation with institutions passed the amendment that both those who have any expertise 
in special education (seminars, master etc.) can hope for a place in school. Besides, hope 
dies last. But let die dignity first. The points awarded are the recipe for being happy 
all at no cost. It will be "problem" the graduate; It's "problem" knowledge; It's 
"problem" the need to work; Definitely no. The "problem" is that for several years have 
created public university education departments to cover positions in special education to 
graduates with an undergraduate degree. This can not be negotiable professional rights 
guaranteed by the degree can not be awards points for someone and not for someone else 
(teachers of special education can not be included in the general education boards). The 
any doubts ask yourself how you were appointed teachers and teachers all previous years. 
Magical recipes do not exist. The crowns for egalitarianism sound cacophony as the 
commercialization of leading the way. The acquisition postgraduate cost from 2,000 to 
10,000 euros without scientific criteria sets class barriers to those who are users of 
special needs clients. Leads naturally to an education without rights without pedagogical 
consequence, no trade union demands need to first complete service, the contract will 
handle and will not become headache ministry. Easy, versatile potential. Responsibility in 
this plight is and PSE with their school counselors beneficiaries trainers who will take 
to the Communion "special education qualification" teachers need time to coverage. The 
paramagaza education are endless. Seminars coming back on the market and individuals that 
guarantee the fulfillment of parallel support posts. Those certainly believe that the 
changes do not photograph them separate themselves from the combative education community. 
The bureaucratic syndicalism showed its limits as well xemprostiazetai with indecision, 
trying to caress the ears "new" colleagues. Is one that over the years created different 
speeds in education, representing ministries and policies that do not include the world of 
work. Crawl requests from clubs not interested in the end the school actually considering 
colleagues numbers. We can and we want to overthrow him. Attacks aimed at our trade union 
rights, in attacks that have targeted sensitive for us pieces of society such as the 
disabled people, refugees and those victimized by such policies will not be alone. Stop 
the flexibilisation of our work, of our animals! Officials and mass appointments! Not in 
the school market, ignorance! For a school of emancipation! We want a public and free. A 
school for everyone. A school of equality, solidarity without ethnic, racial, gender 
discrimination. School without misery, scorn, poverty and unemployment.

It - like working counter-statement - also mention that the ERC Teachers participated in 
panekpaideftiki demonstration Wednesday 5/4 in Thessaloniki. About see HERE .

Now stop collecting money for the cash deficits of the employees in public. This refers 
poster 's Book Club Officers - Paper - Digital Media Attica (SYVCHPSA). As the SYVCHPSA: 
it has already spent more than a month since the club as we brought the issue of cash 
deficits in public. After the relevant trilateral meeting we had with the employers in the 
Ministry of Labor, we conducted a cycle trips in workplaces by sharing communication we 
mention again below. However, and despite what is expressly mentioned in the "practical 
reconciliation", which co-signed on 30/01/17 at the Labor Ministry, this provocative and 
unacceptable employer practice continues. We demand to stop now collecting money from 
employees for cash deficits in public.

Win the employee and the union in case employer arbitrariness joinery company in 
Heraklion, said in a statement the Association of Technical Employees-Annex Heraklion. The 
notice states inter alia: Wednesday 5/4 the employers of this company paid the accrued 
colleague who owed him before proceeding to carry out the labor dispute labor inspection. 
While fellow engineer worked as employed, the employers had signed the contract and had no 
force to cut notepad, working status similar to that experienced by the vast majority of 
workers in the industry. The vindication marks a victory for all of us: it proved that 
workers and must and can assert their rights and standing up against the bosses. It proved 
that the path of collective claims is the one who always led and continues to lead in 
victories employees especially at a time that is approached the legalization of labor with 
notepad status through government regulation and the employer is looking for ways to 
further burden on workers refusing to cover the employer of costs (reduction or 
withholding wages, imposing new unfavorable contracts or undeclared work). More HERE or HERE .

Collection of workers 'darkness' in Elefsina, held Tuesday, April 11. Recall that as of 
December 15, 2016, the bosses of the "darkness" has imposed on workers a measure of job 
rotation, in the most extreme and abusive form: THREE DAYS WORK THE MONTH!!! Neither one 
nor two nor three. VOID ex 'job rotation, wrote the banner of the Association of Workers 
"darkness." Read on HERE .

We support the ongoing struggle of the worker and the company's workers 'darkness', 
against the employer for permanent and stable job and repealing job rotation stated in the 
call Tier Societies Initiative Coordination.

Class Solidarity with the workers 'Darkness' said in their call collectivity " Prolet 
Connec t ", while emphasizing that: one-way, the fight for the annulment of 'job rotation 
and have steady work, all of the employees' darkness ".

Concentration under. Work on the case of the clinic "New Athenaeum" was held Tuesday 11/4. 
Workers demanding to be paid their accrued, stamps and communicated their dismissal to 
enable them to join the unemployment fund. Representatives of the Ministry of Labor made 
unprecedented kolotoumpa argued - contrary to what was bound until yesterday - that they 
can not do anything and there is no bankruptcy, but ... abandonment employer. The 
concentration involved the ERT-open, the open assembly Peristerioy the Front Petralona 
Assembly, unmediated Byron Action Assembly Pangration, Painter and Libertarian union.

Released the pamphlet WANT wages and no "doulitsa"! the Unemployed Workers-Assembly of 
Syntagma Square. The brochure focuses on capitalist restructuring of labor relations and 
the domestic capitalist accumulation regime, the situation of the working class today and 
the class request for salary.

Positive acceptance and expression of class solidarity met Saturday, April 8, 2017 the 
motoporeia held in the main streets of Iliou, Petersburg and Anargyroi, by scheming space 
& rollover Thersites and Assembly Base Workers Driving bicyclo  (SVEOD). The occasion was 
the intensifying lately "accidents" in the workplace, the most recent event ntelivera 
worker death at Mikel on April 2. In the course , which started from the central square of 
Ilion, attended by around 65 people. Initially the course went to St Petersburg where made 
stops banner posting, sharing text and display slogans to Mikel and Everest of Petersburg 
street.

Meanwhile, there had been Thursday afternoon 30/3, mobilization of libertarian figures 
from schools of Athens and Piraeus and the Autonomous Figures NTUA in stores Mikel 
(Metropolis University) for the accident that claimed the lives of a 22 year old 
distributor and H & M (Ermou, Aeolus Stage) with respect to shame contracts promoted by 
the company to / the worker / s of. Mobilizing supported the Waiters Chefs Association and 
others working in food supply, students / mation from other schools of Athens and 
companions / compas from labor collectives and neighborhood assemblies.

Saturday 08/04/2017 was held massive intervention by labor "workers-s trade" , the 
"Coordinating Action against the elimination of Sunday and holiday hours liberated" and 
local collectives, in front of the store H & M Group in Agia Paraskevi , the day the group 
had planned fiesta for the inauguration. The relevant information listed and the 
following: Our mobilization constitutes yet another link in the chain of labor 
interventions in the group H & M stores in order to talk with colleagues and female 
counterparts to actively support their resistance, to give a strong message to employers 
and organize joint further readiness of the working side. Our intervention ended with a 
massive information campaign in shops of Agia Paraskevi Center for the strike Sunday, 
April 9 against the abolition of the Sunday holiday.

In updating the strike Sunday 9 / 4stin Thessaloniki, the Occupation Libertatia (who 
participated in the mobilization) says: On Sunday 9/4 held scheduled, the "coordination 
against Sunday work and released hours' march in Thessaloniki . From morning started 
exclusions in various large stores of the center, and then followed a short course at 2 
most commercial streets of the city. In gathering attended by about 150 people, there was 
participation from clubs across sectors.

Revoking the dismissals - trade unionist in Igoumenitsa, succeeded last week with 
mobilization, the gentlemen, with the assistance of trade unions in the region. This 
contractor working on cleanliness of Nursing Igoumenitsa, who was sacked for the second 
time in 15 days, the employer of the contractor company. The employers, targeting the 
worker because of union action, while was intended to terrorize and all her colleagues to 
not assert their rights.

Concentration and protests show the administration against the dismissal of two Hospital 
Lefkada working women was held Tuesday, April 11, from hospital workers and unions and 
associations of the island. Note that the two employees were working on individual 
contracts, which expired with the administration of the hospital not to proceed to their 
renewal.

Illustration protest the Decentralized Administration Peloponnese Corinth held Tuesday, 
April 11 contract staff of the Municipality employees. Denounced the delay in a decision 
based on the complaint lodged against the decision of the City Council Corinthians, 
unlawfully refused to extend the contract until 31/12.

protest gig Corfu City held Thursday, April 13, unpaid contractors on cleanliness. The 10 
contract workers- cleanliness, protested because for three months, they remain unpaid, 
unable to meet the most basic needs of their families.

Mobilization Wednesday, April 12 outside the Thessaloniki Courts for payment of the 
accrued, made by contract workers of the Municipality of Evosmos - Kordelio Thessaloniki. 
The 45 contractors working in the municipality are unpaid from 3 to 5 months.

Complaints factory workers' CHITOS SA "took place last week for trying to get the 
employers signed business contract with wage cuts, with" compensation "payment voucher to 
super market chains. Many companies - and then like an epidemic grow - in many branches of 
the private sector, they use this way to reduce the wages and to cut their costs. 
Sometimes a non-transparent, sometimes by "semi-legal" and sometimes illegally as for 
example in "CHITOS SA '.

Concentration made by employees of the former supermarket "Karipidis" Friday, April 14 at 
Almyros Volos, outside the company store that is now renamed 'Market In ". Claimed once 
again, the immediate payment of their accrued and safeguard their jobs.

Reactions to the educational community caused by the decision of the city council of 
Moschato-Tavros Municipality to grant the building of former workshops of EPAL Taurus, 
located inside the school complex high schools in the region, the NGO "Mission" of the 
Holy Archdiocese of Athens. Teachers, but also denounced area players the scandalous 
decision and declare that they will not allow it to be implemented. More on this subject 
you can see HERE .

Work in supermarkets conditions .... Construction, denouncing the workers at the 
supermarkets «My Market» Messinia. Specifically complained that the employers in order to 
prepare the store for the Easter holidays, forced employees to work "in a stuffy 
atmosphere between wires, debris and mechanical tools, with a direct risk to health and 
safety" .Ston altar profit and while memories of the tragic accident-dolofonia- for us to 
Everest, the employer forced workers to work while the work was done. It is a miracle not 
mourn victims.

24hr repeated strikes on the branch of Larissa enterprise "Archer" (Kalogritsas 
interests), made workers the past week, seeking the payment of all accrued. It is worth 
mentioning that the company, which engages in contracted projects of PPC and Larissa, 
still has unpaid workers for nine months and owes and balances from previous periods 
(2014-2015), although receives money from PPC .

But on strike they have gone from 7/4 and workers in construction company "DOMOTECHNIKI" 
employed in the work undertaken by the company for PPC, as it is unpaid since last 
October. Workers claim to be paid accrued due to them and normalize payments from now on.

In a two-hour strike progressed Wednesday, April 12 workers at «Vodafone». Employees react 
to the wave of redundancies has unleashed the employers. Persecution made for union 
activities of workers and to replace older workers with new, low in 'flexible forms of 
employment. "

Grotesque!!! In ... apology called union-why hark-hark-photographed bus!!! But the 
incredible and true incident occurred in Thessaloniki. Management of Urban Transport 
Organization of Thessaloniki, sent a call for apology to employee-syndicalist OASTH, 
accusing him of unduly entered the area of the Depot Stavropol - while they service sixth 
- and held an illegal taking pictures!!!

Finally, a word on the international arena. They freed after eight years the 6 anarcho 
Serbs. The "six Belgrade 'face terrorism charges related to the attack on Greek embassy in 
Belgrade in 2009. This decision put an end to almost eight years of harassment and 
comrades in this state form of pressure against the organization.

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Message: 2



In recent years several events of the so-called " transition " are being fulfilled . The 
bombardment of the political parties around them raises the tone the closer they are 
geographically to those struggles, and make them theirs as if the repression they were 
subjected had something to do with some patriotic concept. When we stop to analyze 
minimally The events that occurred during those dates (the strikes in Vitoria in 1976, 
Reinosa in 1987 or in the sectors of automotive, construction, etc.), have little or 
nothing to do with a concept of frontiers, but with the defense of the interests of Our 
social class. ---- These strikes ended with a brutal repression exercised by state 
apparatus, no matter what the regime and the political color it ruled. The reason is 
because they contained in themselves a clear critique of the continuist system which, of 
course, was based on the more rancid values of savage capitalism.

Not only were labor struggles brutally repressed, struggles for the preservation of the 
environment were also answered savagely, since they posed a threat to the speculative 
aspirations that the system had planned for all the territories encompassed by the Spanish 
state.

They know from the power that the greatest threat hanging over them is a system where they 
are not necessary, a system where decisions are freely agreed and between equals, a system 
that guarantees a decent life for all people outside private interests Of bankers and 
patrons and a system, in fact, so real that when they have seen it come they have crushed 
it even assassinating unpunished unarmed civilians.

Villalar is a village of Valladolid where every 23rd of April the community festival is 
held in memory of the Castilian communities that rose against the empire. The CNT goes to 
Villalar to try to ensure that this horizontal, assem- bly and deeply democratic system 
goes back to the factories, goes out to the street and is a real opposition to the 
domesticated political sweets that from the power they put us so that each four years some 
metamos The vote in an urn. They want us to leave all our capacity for transformation 
asleep while they are thoroughly employed to usurp the conquered rights, indulging in the 
widespread corruption that springs from each and every one of the cardinal points of the 
Iberian peninsula.

We are betting to open a space on April 23 to serve as a meeting to discuss the different 
sensitivities that exist in the libertarian movement and the labor movement in general. To 
this end, as in previous calls, we opened our tent to distributors who from day to day 
combat the endemic problems suffered by our social class, both in the rural world and in 
urban spaces. These collective brothers are more than welcome.

In the political act that will be held around 3:00 p.m., workers' struggles will be voiced 
through fellow workers of this union and various platforms that are fighting against the 
degradation of our environment. Speakers: members of the anti-nuclear platform of 
Salamanca, the platform against Garoña and the platform in defense of the Tagus River of 
Toledo.

Throughout the day there will be various performances of traditional music, ending with a 
rock concert (as usual) that will end the call that this union makes for April 23 in the 
campaign of Villalar. We also encourage from these lines to support all the mobilizations 
that the social groups and the CNT itself call for May Day , in defense of the rights that 
are for everyone and against the tremendous social cuts that we have been suffering for a 
decade.

Health and freedom
*
Program of the CNT tent in Villalar 2017

Opening of the tent, 10.30 am

Throughout the day: several distributors of the libertarian movement

 From 12.00 am: dulzaineros of the cultural association Tarambana -Palencia-

15.00 am: union and social rally presented by Rubén Ruiz with the participation of Gaspar 
-CNT-, Alejandro Cano - Toledo Platform in Defense of the Tajo River - Assembly Salamanca 
Antinuclear and Andrés Amayuelas - Coordinator Against Garoña -.

18.00: Narcocorridos The lynxes of the plateau

20.00 till close: Debakle , Brea Bastard and Alpaka

http://alasbarricadas.org/noticias/node/38384

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Message: 3




The Libertarian Syndicalist Union (ESE Athens) pays respect to the memory of the comrade 
Savvas Metikoidis who left this world on April 21 of 2012. He was a fighter of far-left 
political views, always on the side of every fair struggle of the working class and also 
an ally of the immigrants. He was a school teacher by profession and he was working as a 
volunteer  in the Immigrants school of greek language for 5 years, having 100 students. 
---- Below is a text that he wrote about the uprising of 2008 in Athens. From this day 
forward, every sentence of this text has become a slogan and a banner to the libertarian 
and anarchist protest marches. ---- We will remember you comrade Savvas Metikoidis. ---- a 
text of Savvas for the uprising of December 2008 ---- Who are, after all, the hoodlums? 
---- Violence is to work for 40 years for crumbs and to wonder whether you will get to retire.

Violence are the financial bonds, the looted insurance funds, the stock exchange scam.

Violence is to be forced to take out a mortgage which you end up paying as if it was made 
out of gold.

Violence is your boss' right to sack you at any moment they please to do so.

Violence is unemployment, precarity, the 700 euros[monthly wage]with or without insurance 
contributions.

Violence are the labour "accidents" because bosses cut down their running costs at the 
expense of the safety of the workers.

Violence is to take psychiatric drugs and vitamins in order to cope with the exhaustive 
schedules.

Violence is for you to be a female migrant, to live with the fear that you might be kicked 
out of the country at any moment and to live through a constant insecurity.

Violence is for you to be a worker, housewife and mother at the same time.

Violence is for you to be groped at work and for them to tell you, ‘smile dammit, is that 
too much to ask?'

What we lived through I call a revolt. And just like any revolt it looks like a Civil War 
rehearsal; it smells of smokiness, tear gas and blood. It cannot easily be harnessed or 
controlled. It ignites consciousnesses, it reveals and polarises contradictions, it 
promises, at least, moments of camraderie and solidarity. It traces paths toward social 
emancipation.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the metropolises of chaos! Install secure doors and alarm 
systems to your homes, turn on the TV and enjoy the spectacle. The next revolt will sure 
be fiercer even, as the rottenness of this society deepens... Or, you can take out to the 
streets on the side of your kids, you can strike, you can dare to assert the life they are 
robbing you of, you can remember you once were young people who wanted to change the world.

Savas Metoikidis

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Message: 4



Friday 28/4 ---- -7p.m. Event-discussion: The destruction and looting of nature and 
society by the state and capital. Centralization and commercialization of water resources. 
---- Prologues from: ---- a) Anarchist group "Cumulonimbus": The value of water and it's 
(indirect) privatization in Corfu. ---- b) Anarchist group "Disinios Ippos": Wars for 
water. The dam of Piros-Parapiros and the exploitation of the water resources in 
northwestern Achaia. ---- c) Initiative of Struggle for Land and Freedom: The on-going 
operation of the hydroelectric dam of Mesochora and the struggle for the defense of 
Acheloos river and of the local communities against the disaster plans and the 
annihilation. ---- -Screenings of short films: Abuela Grillo (animation for the struggle 
against the privatization of water in Bolivia) Felony (science fiction from a dystopic future)

-10p.m. Theatrical play: "The cycle of futile actions". The life of Napoleon Soukanjidis, 
a communist and union struggler who was executed in Kessariani on 1st of May 1944.

Saturday 29/4

-7p.m. Event-discussion: "The world of state and bosses in complete bankruptcy. The 
struggle against Fortress Europe, war and modern totalitarianism. Experiences of struggle 
from the fronts of anti-fascism and of solidarity with refugees.

Prologue from the Anarchist Political Organization – Federation of Collectives and its 
members.

-10p.m. Hip Hop live with: Spira, Penthimos/Clown, Daisy Chain, and Repfolk

in Esperos (Georgiou square)

in case of rain, all events will take place in the self-managed place Epi Ta Proso 
(Patreos 87)

*Both days from 18:00, there will be an exhibition of posters and printed materials of the 
anarchist-antiauthoritarian movement, as well as a small book fair.

anarchist group "dissinios ippos
- member of A.P.O. (Anarchist Political Organisation)

ipposd.wordpress.com | apo.squathost.com

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Message: 5



We invite all anarchists and anarchists, as well as other anti-authoritarians to 
participate in a May Day rally entitled "Feast of workers - End the wrong job!". The 
demonstration will begin at two o'clock in the afternoon in Prague's Palacky Square. There 
will be space for publications to be (only) the organizing group discussions and speeches. 
The subsequent process will be finished right on an island, the traditional site of 
anarchist May Day meeting. ---- Among the groups are hosting the next Anarchist Federation 
still Young Greens and the Socialist Solidarity. Joint effort is to maintain the ethos of 
social protest festival, which has undeniable roots in the workers' struggle for the eight 
hour day. The first May Day reminds year 1886 - strikes, demonstrations and other events 
American workers, among which played a leading role just anarchists, including a number of 
"economic immigrants" z Cech who are in their ranks actively involved. We do not want to 
struggle just to remind, but also lead him since then and today the vision anarchist is 
fundamentally different - a free, autonomous and socially just society free of oppression, 
discrimination and exploitation.

Password joint demonstrations "In the end a bad job" is not necessarily well understood. 
For anarchists and anarchists however poor work end connected with the end of capitalism. 
For it is a necessary condition for the work to be "good" - the activities about which 
decisions and the results of which affect just those who perform it; activity which 
fulfills, satisfies and develops; activities that will be performed for the benefit of 
individuals, communities and the entire society, not just for profits narrow group of 
privileged, as it is today.

To anarchist stance vanish in a moment of urgent demands dignifying conditions and 
evaluation work will be part of the event among other anarchist block that reminds how the 
roots of May Day traditions relating to match the Chicago anarchists for the eight hour 
day, and the anarchist critique of wage labor and the ongoing anti-anarchist repression.

Our presence in the streets is proof that their liberal attitudes, anti-authoritarian 
principles and dreams of a better world we are serious. Black-and-red flags, banners and 
pickets along.

Against the state and capitalism! For a free and self-governing society!

Event on FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/257928968011591/

https://www.afed.cz/text/6655/prvni-maj-za-konec-spatne-prace

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Message: 6



We are republishing this review of For Workers Power by Maurice Brinton (available from AK 
Press or full text here) as part of our series of articles and social media postings 
relating to the 100 year anniversary of the Russian Revolution #RussianRev100Years. ---- 
By Tom Wetzel ---- I was attracted to radical politics in the late 1960s/early ‘70s when I 
was in my twenties. Most of the people who were drawn to serious revolutionary politics 
back then ended up in Leninist organizations of some sort, if only for a time. Third World 
revolutions were one influence. Various Marxist-Leninist parties had come to power based 
on guerrilla struggles, in places like China and Cuba, and this augmented the claim of 
Leninism that it was "successful" in charting a way to a post-capitalist future.

But it seemed obvious to me that workers did not have power in production in the various 
Communist countries. They're subordinated to a managerial hierarchy. Thus, I reasoned, 
workers must be a subjugated and exploited class in those countries.

A work I found particularly helpful in the ‘70s was Maurice Brinton's The Bolsheviks and 
Workers Control. This clear-headed and well-researched little book was an indispensable 
source of arguments to explode the myth of the Bolshevik party building "proletarian 
power" in Russia. AK Press has now re-issued this booklet as part of an anthology, For 
Workers Power. Brinton was the main writer for the London libertarian socialist group 
Solidarity. This anthology collects in one place many of Brinton's writings, including The 
Irrational in Politics and Paris: May 1968. In this review I'll mainly focus on the 
Russian revolution.

Brinton believes that the working class cannot have power in society, cannot liberate 
itself from its condition as a subjugated and exploited class, unless it gains direct 
management power over production. He believes that the working class must also gain 
control over the whole structure of the society to ensure its liberation. But he rejects 
the idea that the working class could have power in society if it is subjugated in 
production. This is the heart of Brinton's argument.

The Soviets and the Factory Councils

People sometimes say that "workers councils" were the organizational means for workers 
fighting for and attaining power in the Russian revolution.(1) But there were two 
different types of mass organization supported by workers in the Russian revolution that 
could be called "workers councils": the soviets (soviet is Russian for council) and the 
factory committees. Let's look at each.

The Petrograd soviet was formed during the tumultuous events in February, 1917 that led to 
the abdication of the czar. A group of radical and liberal intellectuals formed the soviet 
top-down when they constituted themselves as the "Executive Committee of the Petrograd 
Soviet" on February 27, 1917. They then sent out a call for election of delegates.(2) 
Moreover, the soviet assemblies were not where the real decisions were made. The executive 
made the real decisions in the backrooms. Some decisions were submitted to the assembled 
delegates for ratification, some were not. The soviet assembly tended to be just an open 
meeting, where anyone could speak. Soviets formed in other Russian cities were similar.

The factory committees, unlike the soviets, were initiated directly by Russian workers 
themselves, and these organizations became the main vehicle of self-organization of 
workers in the revolution. These committees were typically made up of elected worker 
delegates. The most important decisions were made in general assemblies of the rank and file.

On May 30, 1917 there was a meeting of over 400 representatives of factory committees in 
the Petrograd area. They described the situation they faced:

"From the beginning of the revolution the administrative staffs of the factories have 
relinquished their posts. The workmen of the factories have become the masters. To keep 
the factories going, the workers' committees have had to take the management into their 
own hands. In the first days of the revolution, in February and March, the workmen left 
the factories and went into the streets...Later, the workmen returned to their work. They 
found that many factories had been deserted. The managers, engineers, generals, mechanics, 
foremen had reason to believe that the workmen would wreak their vengeance on them, and 
they had disappeared. The workmen had to begin work with no administrative staff to guide 
them. They had to elect committees which gradually re-established a normal system of work. 
The committees had to find the necessary raw materials, and...take upon themselves all 
kinds of unexpected and unaccustomed duties."(3)

The factory committees were described as "fighting organizations, elected on the basis of 
the widest democracy and with collective leadership," with the aim of creating "the 
organization of thorough control by labor over production and distribution."

Russian workers found that neither the soviets nor the industrial unions could be used by 
them to solve their immediate economic problems or help to coordinate activities between 
different workplaces. The soviets were tightly controlled by their executive and were 
taken up with fighting the government over political issues such as continued Russian 
involvement in the world war.

The industrial unions weren't much help either. Unions had been illegal under czarism. The 
unions had been formed top-down by the political parties and continued to be largely an 
appendage of the parties. Throughout most of 1917 most of the unions were controlled by 
the Mensheviks. Although union membership rose from 100,000 to over a million during 1917, 
this was largely an effect of the growth of the factory committees. Radical workers tended 
to join the industrial unions as a matter of principle, not because the unions had a real 
presence in the workplaces. Bill Shatov, an American IWW member who returned to his native 
Russia, described the Russian unions as "living corpses."

 From Soviets to State

By September, 1917 the Bolsheviks had gained majorities in the key Russian soviets. About 
half the delegates in the Petrograd soviet represented personnel in the Russian military. 
With the troops loyal to the soviets, Bolshevik control of the soviets enabled them to 
capture state power at the end of October.

The new governmental structure vested authority in the Russian parliament - the 350-member 
Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. As in other 
parliamentary systems, the government was formed as an executive committee, or cabinet of 
ministers, of the parliament. This executive was the Council of People's Commissars 
(Sovnarkom). Lenin, as chair of this committee, was premier or head of the government.(4) 
The local and regional soviets, which were little more than rubber stamps for their 
party-controlled executives anyway, came to function as an "electoral college" (in the 
American sense) for the indirect election of the parliament. The soviet structure provided 
legitimacy for the new Bolshevik government, based on the widespread support for the 
soviets among Russian workers and military personnel in 1917. But the indirect system of 
election and the tight centralization meant it could not be effectively controlled by 
rank-and-file workers or used by them to initiate and control decisions. By October 1917 a 
complex situation existed in Russian industry. "In practice the implementation of workers' 
control took on a variety of forms in different parts of Russia," Brinton writes. "These 
were partly determined by local conditions but primarily by the degree of resistance shown 
by different sections of the employing class. In some places the employers were 
expropriated forthwith, ‘from below.' In other instances they were merely submitted to a 
supervisory type of ‘control,' exercised by the factory committees." This "supervisor 
control" included, for example, the right to veto management hiring decisions, to prevent 
employment of strikebreakers. After the coming to power of the Bolshevik Party, the 
situation would become even more complex with some enterprises "nationalized from above by 
decree of the Central Government."

The Economy in the New State

At the end of 1917 Lenin did not favor immediate nationalization of the economy. Brinton 
believes that Lenin opposed expropriation of the capitalists "because of his 
underestimation of the technological and administrative maturity of the proletariat." 
Lenin envisioned that the "dual power" situation of "supervisory control" which existed in 
many privately-owned enterprises would continue for some time. The right of the factory 
committees to engage in this supervisory control was legalized in November, 1917 by 
Lenin's decree on "workers control." Lenin was not advocating that workers take over 
management of production or expropriate capitalists on their own initiative.

During 1917 many Russian workers envisioned a division of labor where the factory 
committees would take over the running of the economy while the soviets would become the 
new polity or governmental structure.(5) The Bolsheviks encouraged the factory committee 
movement to restrict its ambitions to "the economy." The "workers party" would take 
political power.

Limiting their aspiration for power to the economy would prove to be the undoing of the 
Russian factory committee movement. Direct management of production may be necessary for 
worker power in society, but it is not sufficient. Workers need to also control the polity 
- the institutions for making the basic rules in society and enforcing them. If they 
don't, they won't be able to defend their power in production.

Russian workers assumed that the Bolshevik seizure of state power through the soviets 
would support their aspirations for economic control. The creation of the new Bolshevik 
government in October thus spurred a new burst of activity by the factory committee 
movement. Although Lenin's "workers control" decree only legalized the degree of control 
the factory committees had already achieved, it encouraged workers to go farther because 
now they believed that their efforts would gain official sanction. Workers didn't put too 
much stock in the boundary Lenin drew between control and management. Moreover, Lenin's 
idea that the situation of "dual power" in the factories could be maintained indefinitely 
was unrealistic. Kritzman, a "left" Communist, criticized the workers control decree:

"Employers would not be inclined to run their businesses with the sole aim of teaching the 
workers how to manage them. Conversely, the workers felt only hatred for the capitalists 
and saw no reason why they should voluntarily remain exploited."

"The spontaneous inclination of the workers to organize factory committees," wrote 
historian E. H. Carr, "was inevitably encouraged by a revolution which led the workers to 
believe that the productive machinery of the country belonged to them and could be 
operated by them at their own discretion and to their own advantage. What had begun to 
happen before the October revolution now happened more frequently and more openly; and for 
the moment nothing would have dammed the tide of revolt."(6)

Out of this upsurge of activity came the first attempt by the factory committee movement 
to form its own national organization, independent of the trade unions and political 
parties. In December the Central Soviet of Factory Committees of the Petrograd Area 
published a Practical Manual for the Implementation of Workers' Control of Industry. The 
manual proposed that "workers control could rapidly be extended into ‘workers' 
management'." The manual also announced the intention of forming the factory committees 
into regional federations and a national federation.

Isaac Deutscher explains what then happened:

"The Factory Committees attempted to form their own national organization, which was to 
secure their virtual economic dictatorship. The Bolsheviks now called upon the trade 
unions to render a special service to the nascent Soviet State and to discipline the 
Factory Committees. The unions came out firmly against the attempt of the Factory 
Committees to form a national organization of their own. They prevented the convocation of 
the planned All-Russian Congress of Factory Committees and demanded total subordination on 
the part of the Committees."(7)

However, the Bolshevik Party had only just taken state power - and their grip on power 
would become even more tenuous with the onset of the Russian civil war in May, 1918. This 
resulted in a compromise in which the party committed itself to trade union control of the 
economy.

This helped the party leadership to gain the cooperation of the party's trade union cadres 
in suppressing the drive of the factory committee movement for direct worker management. 
The trade union control concept would be encapsulated in Point 5 of the program adopted at 
the 1919 Communist Party congress:

"The organizational apparatus of socialized industry must be based primarily on the trade 
unions...Participating already in accordance with the laws of the Soviet Republic and 
established practice in all local and central organs of industrial administration, the 
trade unions must proceed to the actual concentration in their own hands of all the 
administration of the entire economy, as a single economic unit."

The first step in supplanting the workers' drive for economic self-management with central 
planning from above was the decree on December 5, 1917, setting up the Supreme Economic 
Council (Vesenka), under the direct authority of Sovnarkom. Vesenka was made up of 
Bolshevik trade union officials, Bolshevik Party stalwarts and "experts" appointed from 
above by the government. Vesenka was assigned the task of creating "a plan for the 
organization of the economic life of the country" and was to "direct to a uniform end" the 
activities of all existing economic authorities. Here we have the beginnings of a central 
planning apparatus assuming managerial functions. The fate of the factory committee 
movement was fought out at the first All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions in January, 
1918. Here the Bolsheviks put forward their plan to subordinate the factory committees to 
hierarchical union control. The main Russian political tendency with a vision for direct 
workers management were the anarcho-syndicalists. At the congress, the 25 
anarcho-syndicalist delegates, representing Don Basin miners, Moscow railway workers and 
other workers, made a desperate effort to defend the factory committee movement and its 
drive for direct workers' management. They proposed "that the organization of production, 
transport and distribution be immediately transferred to the hands of the toiling people 
themselves, and not to the state or some civil service machine made up of one kind or 
another of class enemy." G.P. Maximov, a prominent anarcho-syndicalist, distinguished 
between horizontal coordination and hierarchical control of the economy:

"The aim of the proletariat was to coordinate all activity,...to create a center, but not 
a center of decrees and ordinances but a center of regulation, of guidance - and only 
through such a center to organize the industrial life of the country."

However, the Bolsheviks got the decision they wanted. They had the majority of delegates, 
and Menshevik and Social Revolutionary Party supporters at the congress also voted for 
subordination of the factory committees to the trade unions.

With control over the government, the armed forces, the trade union apparatus, and 
majorities on many of the factory committees, the Bolshevik Party was able to tame the 
factory committee movement. Any factory committee that didn't go along could be isolated; 
a factory could be denied resources it needed.

"Bolshevik propaganda in later years," Brinton notes, would harp on the theme that the 
factory committees "were not a suitable means for organizing production on a national 
scale." Deutscher, for example, says that "almost from their creation, the Factory 
Committees...aspired to have the...final say on all matters affecting their factory, its 
output, its stocks of raw materials, its conditions of work, etc. and paid little or no 
attention to the needs of industry as a whole." The Leninist argument makes a false 
assumption: Either uncoordinated autonomy of each individual factory, or a central 
planning apparatus to create a plan and then issue orders through a hierarchy. Leninists 
"dismiss workers' self-management with derogatory comments about ‘socialism in one 
factory'," says Brinton, "or with profundities like ‘you can't have groups of workers 
doing whatever they like, without taking into account the requirements of the economy as a 
whole.'" But there is a third alternative: A system of horizontal, self-managed planning 
and coordination. Why can't workers and consumers themselves create the plan? Through 
their own experience the Russian workers themselves had come to realize the need for 
coordination and planning of the economy on a broader scale. This was the point to the 
proposals for regional and national federations of factory committees, and the convening 
of a national factory committee congress. The consumer cooperatives in the Russian 
revolution grew to 12 million members. When workers took over factories in 1917, they 
sometimes developed links with these organizations for distribution of the products of 
their factory. This relationship could have been systematized to provide consumer input to 
some sort of grassroots-controlled, participatory planning system.

The proposal for union management of the economy, endorsed by the Communist Party congress 
in 1919, was never implemented. In exchange for their efforts to suppress the independent 
initiative of factory committees, Communist Party trade union cadres had been appointed to 
various government and management bodies, but this was combined with government 
appointment of managers and control from above. As early as November 9, 1917, the Central 
Soviet of Employees that had taken over the postal system during the revolution was 
abolished. The new minister in charge decreed: "No...committees for the administration of 
the department of Posts and Telegraphs can usurp the functions belonging to the central 
power and to me as People's Commissar."

Dangerous Slogans and Syndicalist Deviations

By 1921 worker discontent was widespread and strikes broke out in Petrograd and Moscow. 
The immediate danger posed by foreign embargo and civil war had ended and now the trade 
union base of the party was pushing for a greater say in the running of the economy. This 
debate would come to a head at the Communist Party congress in March, 1921. The Workers 
Opposition charged that the party leaders had failed to carry out the promises in the 1919 
program, and had "reduced to almost nil the influence of the working class." With "the 
Party and economic authorities having been swamped by bourgeois technicians," they argued 
that the solution was union management of the economy. They thus proposed to invoke an 
All-Russian Producers Congress to elect the management of the national economy, with the 
various industrial unions electing the management boards of their respective industries.

Lenin denounced the push for union management as a "syndicalist deviation." "It destroyed 
the need for the Party. If the trade unions, nine-tenths of whose members are non-Party 
workers, appoint the managers of industry, what is the use of the Party?", Lenin asked. 
Here we see Lenin's view of the party as managers, implementing their program through a 
top-down hierarchy. He assumes that the workers themselves are somehow incapable of 
running the economy, that the party intelligentsia must be in charge.

Trotsky denounced the Workers Opposition for raising "dangerous slogans":

"They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to 
elect representatives above the Party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its 
dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' 
democracy."

The party congress ended not only with the defeat of the Workers Opposition but with the 
party banning internal dissent. The officers of the Russian metalworkers union were 
leaders of the Workers Opposition. When the party fraction in the union refused to go 
along with party orders to kick them out of office, the party-state leaders imposed a 
trusteeship (as the AFL-CIO would say). The union's elected officers were replaced with 
party appointees. This was not the first time this tactic had been employed. In 1920, 
Trotsky, as Commissar of Transport, had broken the railway workers union by appointing new 
leaders.

Shortly after the 1921 party congress Bogdanov and his Workers Truth group (of Bolshevik 
origin) were to declare that the revolution had led to "a complete defeat for the working 
class."

Probably the most important condition that made victory difficult for the workers 
revolution in Russia was the fact that the working class in Russia was a small minority of 
the population, no more than 10 percent. Russia in 1917 was still semi-feudal. The vast 
majority of the population were peasants whose concern in the revolution was mainly to 
expropriate the big landlords and gain control of their small farms. Peasants produced 
largely for their own consumption; productivity was low. The poverty, disorganization and 
illiteracy of the Russian peasantry prevented them from imposing their own solution on 
Russian society. In Russia there didn't exist the sort of widespread worker unionism in 
agriculture that enabled the Spanish agricultural workers to play an important role in the 
Spanish revolution in 1936.

Did the minority status of the working class doom it to defeat? G.P. Maximov, who was an 
agronomist, had hoped that czarist war industry could be converted to the manufacture of 
tractors, electrical generating equipment and other things to exchange with the peasantry 
for their products. He hoped that a strategy of investing in the agricultural economy 
would encourage collective organizational methods, a collectivist outlook, and increased 
productivity in the peasant communities. This was Maximov's libertarian socialist path for 
Russian agriculture.(8)

Even if the Bolsheviks had wanted to pursue this peace conversion strategy, the onset of 
the Russian civil war in May, 1918 would have gotten in the way. Virtually the whole of 
Russian industry was converted into a supply organization for the Red Army. The cities 
produced virtually nothing that could be traded to the peasants for their products. So, 
the Bolsheviks resorted to forced requisitions, seizing agricultural products at the point 
of a gun. This strategy was not very effective. The peasants resisted and the cities 
starved. The urban population of Russia was reduced by at least half during the civil war. 
Workers moved in with their country cousins. At least they wouldn't starve in the countryside.

Conjunctural Factors and New Classes

Lenin's solution to the growing peasant discontent was the New Economic Policy, enacted in 
1921. This policy encouraged capitalist development and free trade in agricultural 
products. Eventually it was Stalin who "solved" the problem of low agricultural 
productivity through forced collectivization and mechanization. This allowed much of the 
rural population to be moved to work in urban industry. The state hierarchy could then 
capture the efficiency gains from agricultural investment to build up Russian industry.

Bolshevik apologists usually point to various "conjunctural" factors to explain the defeat 
of the workers revolution in Russia - foreign invasion and civil war, failure of the 
revolution in Germany and other European countries, and so on. But neither these factors 
nor the minority status of the working class in Russia are sufficient to explain why the 
Russian workers' revolution was defeated in the peculiar way it was. Worker revolutions 
have at times been defeated by a violent reaction that saves the property system of the 
capitalist class, as in Italy in the ‘20s, Spain in the ‘30s, and Chile in the ‘70s.

But the capitalist class was expropriated in Russia, and a new economic system emerged, 
based on public ownership, and subordination of the economy to central planning, not 
market governance.

A new class emerged as the rulers of this economic system. Unlike the capitalist class 
they were hired labor, employees of the state. Brinton refers to this class as "the 
bureaucracy." But there are "bureaucracies" in all kinds of organizations. A class, 
however, is distinguished by its particular role in social production.

I think it is helpful here to look at the sort of hierarchy that was being developed in 
capitalist industry in the U.S. in the early 20th century. The emergence of the large 
corporations gave the capitalists sufficient resources to systematically re-design jobs 
and the production process to their advantage, destroying the skill and autonomy of 
workers that had been inherited from the artisan tradition. "Efficiency experts" like 
Frederick Taylor advocated concentration of conceptualization and decision-making in the 
hands of a managerial control hierarchy, removing it from the shopfloor. The point to 
Taylorism was to shift the balance of power on the shopfloor to the advantage of 
management. This attempt to gain greater control over what workers do was justified to the 
owners in terms of the ability of the firm to ensure long-term profitability, but it also 
empowers a new class. The period between the 1890s and 1920s saw the emergence of a new 
class of professional managers, engineers, and other expert advisors to management. These 
were the cadres who made up the new control hierarchies in the corporations and the state. 
As hired employees, the power of this techno-managerial or coordinator class(9) is not 
based on ownership of capital assets, but on concentration of expertise and 
decision-making authority.

The coordinator class was only in its early stages of development in the Russian economy 
in the early 20th century. In the actual situation the Bolshevik party intelligentsia were 
thrown into the breach, along with technicians and managers inherited from the capitalist 
regime. The Russian revolution showed that it was possible to use the state to build an 
economy where the coordinator class was the ruling class. Bolshevik ideology and program 
are an essential part of the explanation for the emergence of this new class system.

Brinton makes a convincing case that neither Lenin nor Trotsky ever believed in or 
advocated workers' management of production. After the Bolshevik takeover in October, 
1917, Lenin's "whole practice," Brinton notes, "was to denounce attempts at workers' 
management as ‘premature,' ‘utopian,' ‘anarchist,' ‘harmful,'" and so on.

Much of the debate within the Communist Party in 1920-21 was over "one-man management." As 
early as April, 1918 Lenin wrote:

"Unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of 
labor processes that are based on large-scale machine industry...today the revolution 
demands, in the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single 
will of the leaders of the labor process."

But the "one-man management" debate was somewhat misleading since the real issue is not 
whether there is a committee in charge or one person but the relationship of the mass of 
workers to the authority of management. Would they possess this authority themselves or not?

As long as the ‘workers party' controls the state

Nonetheless, the logic of central planning does favor having one person in charge. If 
plans are crafted by an elite group of planners and then implemented as a set of orders 
that must be carried out by the workforce, the planning apparatus will want to have the 
ability to enforce their orders. And this is easier if there is just one person who is 
answerable to those above rather than a whole collective.

The Bolshevik leaders assumed that the sort of hierarchical structures in industry evolved 
by capitalism were class-neutral. They maintained that the managerial hierarchy could be 
wielded in the interests of the working class as long as the "workers party" controlled 
the state that owned the economy.

This idea was not unique to Bolshevism but was common among social-democratic Marxists 
prior to World War I. For example, in The Common Sense of Socialism, published in 1911, 
John Spargo, a member of the American Socialist Party, argues that control of the state by 
the labor-based socialist political party is sufficient to ensure working class control of 
a state-owned economy. In Brinton's view, the commitment to the persistence of hierarchy - 
the division of society into those who give orders and those who are expected to obey them 
- is as rooted in social-democracy as it is in Leninism.

When Marx drew up the statutes of the first International Workers Association in 1864, he 
included Flora Tristan's slogan: "The emancipation of the working class must be the work 
of the workers themselves." Brinton's analysis of the Russian revolution shows how the 
Bolsheviks failed to take this principle seriously. Brinton agrees with Marx that the 
class struggle is a process that drives social change, and that through this process the 
working class can liberate itself. The fact that workers must work, not to fulfill their 
own aims, but are forced to act as instruments for the aims of others - our situation in 
capitalist society - is what Marx called "alienated labor." Brinton believes this 
condition of "alienation" is pervasive in existing society, not just in work. Liberation 
presupposes that this condition be replaced by self-determination in production and all 
aspects of life. In order to work out a path to liberation, Marx believed it was necessary 
to be realistic, to "see through" all phony ideology, like the rhetoric in bourgeois 
liberalism about "freedom" and "democracy."

The emphasis upon self-activity, class struggle, and realism about society are the good 
side of Marx, the part that Brinton retains in his own thinking. But in the Marxist 
political tradition this is combined with hierarchical aspects. Why? In Marx's theory of 
"historical materialism," social formations become vulnerable to instability and 
replacement when they "fetter the development of the productive forces." Marx assumes that 
a drive for ever-increasing productive output is a trans-historical force that is the 
gauge of social progress. If Taylorism and the development of hierarchy in industry are 
the particular way that capitalism increases productive output, these must be 
"progressive," some Marxists infer. "We must raise the question of applying much of what 
is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system," Lenin wrote in 1918. Lenin thus 
supported the adoption of Taylor's piecework schemes. "The Soviet Republic...must organize 
in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system." The fallacy in this argument is 
the assumption that productive effectiveness could not be achieved through the development 
of the skill and knowledge of workers, under workers' self-management.

In Marx's analysis of capitalism the division between labor and capital takes center 
stage. Because the working class does not own the means of production, we must sell our 
time to employers. The class power of the owners enables them to rip off the working 
class, accumulating surplus value as private capital.

But there is another systematic rip off of the working class that becomes entrenched once 
capitalism reaches its mature corporate form. The logic of capitalist development then 
systematically under-develops worker potentials, as expertise and decision-making is 
accumulated as the possession of another class, the coordinator class. But Marxism doesn't 
"see" this class.

This failure makes Marxism self-contradictory. The hierarchical dimension of Marxism 
converts it into a coordinator class ideology, a program for the continued subordination 
of the working class. The concept of the "vanguard party" as managers of the movement for 
social change, concentrating expertise and decision-making in their hands; the idea that 
"proletarian power" consists in a particular party leadership controlling a state, 
implementing its program top-down through the state hierarchy; control of the economy by a 
central planning apparatus - these things don't empower the working class.

Hierarchies of the state, like the similar hierarchies in the private corporations, are 
based on the concentration of professional expertise and decision-making power into the 
hands of a coordinatorist elite. A statist strategic orientation that thinks in terms of a 
party leadership capturing a state and then implementing its program top-down through the 
state hierarchy is a stategy that empowers the coordinator class. This contradicts the 
liberatory and egalitarian rhetoric that socialism traditionally appeals to to motivate 
activists.

I'm not here arguing that the empowerment of the working class would not presuppose the 
taking of political power. The working class can't liberate itself from subordination to 
dominating classes if it doesn't take over both the running of industry and the governing 
of the society. This presupposes that it control the polity - the structure through which 
the basic rules in society are made and enforced. But a hierarchical state is not the only 
possible form of polity. We can also envision a self-managed polity, based on institutions 
of grassroots democracy. The point is that it must be the mass of the people themselves 
who "take power," through mass democratic institutions that the people create and directly 
control.

Notes

(1) For example, Alan Maas of the International Socialist Organization writes: "...the 
October revolution of 1917 won power for the workers' councils, or soviets, establishing 
the basic institution of a socialist society." Maas reply to Michael Albert. Maas 
therefore identifies "the basic institution of a socialist society" not with a particular 
economic institution or workers direct management of industry but with the Soviet polity, 
that is, a state controlled by the Bolshevik Party.

(2) Oscar Anweiler, Les Soviets en Rusie, 1905-1921, cited in Rachleff (see note (5)).

(3) Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, pp. 140-141. John Reed provides descriptions of 
some worker takeovers in the article cited in note (4).

(4) John Reed, "The Structure of the Soviet System," Liberation, July, 1918 (reprinted in 
Socialist Viewpoint, Sept. 15, 2002).

(5) Peter Rachleff, Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution.

(6) E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol. II, p. 69, cited in Rachleff.

(7) Quoted in Brinton, p. 320.

(8) G. P. Maximov, Constructive Anarchism.

(9) "Coordinator class" is the term that Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel use for this 
class. Albert and Hahnel, "A Ticket to Ride: More Locations on the Class Map," in Between 
Labor and Capital, Pat Walker, ed.

Tom Wetzel lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, is active with Worker's Solidarity 
Alliance and has organized around housing and transit issues in San Francisco. This piece 
was republished from his personal blog with permission.

http://blackrosefed.org/workers-power-and-the-russian-revolution/

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