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As the influence of labor unions declines in many industrialized nations, particularly the United States, the influence of workers has decreased. Because of the need for greater involvement of workers in changing production systems, as well as frustration with existing structures of workplace regulation, the search has begun for new ways of providing a voice for workers outside the traditional collective bargaining relationship. Works councils—institutionalized bodies for representative communication between an employer and employees in a single workplace—are rare in the Anglo-American world, but are well-established in other industrialized countries. The contributors to this volume survey the history, structure, and functions of works councils in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Poland, Canada, and the United States. Special attention is paid to the relations between works councils and unions and collective bargaining, works councils and management, and the role and interest of governments in works councils. On the basis of extensive comparative data from other Western countries, the book demonstrates powerfully that well-designed works councils may be more effective than labor unions at solving management-labor problems.
Anton Pannekoek discusses the viability of workers' councils as an effective means of administrating a socialist society, as contrasted to the centralized doctrines of state communism or state capitalism. Conceived as an alternative way to establish and sustain socialism, the workers councils have so far never been successfully established at a national scale. Part of the problem was disagreements among revolutionaries about their size and responsibilities; while Lenin supported the notion during the revolutionary period, the councils were phased out in favor of a centralized state, rather than diffused through the strata of society. Pannekoek draws on history for his ideas, noting the deficiencies of previous revolutions and the major objectives a future revolution should hold. The various tasks a state of worker's councils must accomplish, and the enemies that must be overcome - notably fascists, bourgeois elements and big business - are listed.
Wild Socialism examines the rise, development, and decline of revolutionary councils of industrial workers in Berlin at the end of the First World War. This popular movement spread throughout Germany, and was without precedent in either the theory or practice of the Social Democratic party and the trade unions allied to it. These workers councils were most highly developed in Berlin, within its particular industrial, political, and cultural milieu. The Berlin Shop Stewards group provided a hard core of militant revolutionaries within the movement, many of whose adherents were more moderate or ambiguous in their views. Externally, the councilists faced a hostile Social Democratic-trade union bureaucracy who characterized council rule as "wilde Sozialismus," a reconstituted and repressive state power, and a revolutionary rival in the rise of German Bolshevism. This work considers the experience of the Berlin councils as alternative institutions outside of traditional union, party, and governmental structures.
From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions, fought bitter strikes, and gone so far as to challenge the very premises of the system by creating institutions of democratic self-management aimed at controlling production without bosses. With specific examples drawn from every corner of the globe and every period of modern history, this pathbreaking volume comprehensively traces this often underappreciated historical tradition. Ripe with lessons drawn from historical and contemporary struggles for workers’ control, Ours to Master and to Own is essential reading for those struggling to create a new world from the ashes of the old. Immanuel Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and edits WorkingUSA. Dario Azzellini is a writer, documentary director, and political scientist at Johannes Kepler University in Linz.
This title was first published in 2001. The emergence of the European Works Councils (EWCs) is one of the most important developments in international industrial relations and the most significant intervention by the European Union in the industrial relations field. This volume is the second of three studies into the establishment and operation of EWCs conducted by the authors. It examines the development of a typology of EWCs and explores the prospects for establishing networks of EWCs, using case studies drawn from the food, banking and insurance sectors. The book is an informative text for researchers, academics and practitioners who wish to locate empirical material and practical experience in a developmental and theoretical framework.
Workers Councils Versus Parliament 1915-20.
" 'Workers' councils' does not designate a fixed form of organization, elaborated once and for all and for which all that remains is to perfect its details; it concerns a principle, that of workers' self management of the enterprise and of production. The realization of this principle can never occur through a theoretical discussion concerning the best means of execution. It is a question of the practical struggle against the apparatus of capitalist domination." - Anton Pannekoek The Council Communist Reader is a collection of selected writings from a few council communists. Council Communism emerged in Holland and Germany in the 1920's as an alternative to Bolshevik and Marxist-Leninist thought up to the Third International. Council Communist theory was derived from workers' experiences in the German Revolution of 1918, the early years of the Weimar Republic, and the study of the early council movements in Russia in 1905 and 1917. They sought not to impose a kind of organization upon the workers' movement, but instead to uplift the form of "councils" as spontaneous and self-emancipatory for the working class. This was a throughline for the council communists to connect back to Marx's understanding of proletarian revolution in maintaining "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves." Council communism was not to be a new ideology for the working class, but to take a critique of state socialism back to the roots of self-emancipation towards theoretical coherence which can combat all forms that hinder emancipation and move this theoretical coherence into practice. From this, and their understanding revolutionary consciousness develops as a result of crisis, revolution is not a choice but a necessity. The works included in this book have been chosen to reflect the developments of Council Communism over decades; this is not an exhaustive, encyclopedic collection of all councilist texts, but a collection of key texts. This book in the Radical Reprint series from Pattern Books is made to be accessible and as close to manufacturing cost as possible.
Making Parish Councils Pastoral traces the historical development of the ôpastoralö style of council and shows how councils can more effectively embrace the church's vision of studying and reflecting on parish matters and recommending their conclusions to the pastor.
The German Revolution erupted out of the ashes of World War I, triggered by mutinying sailors refusing to be sacrificed in the final carnage of the war. While the Social Democrats grabbed power, radicals across the country rallied to establish a communist society under the slogan “All Power to the Councils!” The Spartacus League launched an uprising in Berlin, council republics were proclaimed in Bremen and Bavaria, and workers' revolts shook numerous German towns. Yet in an act that would tragically shape the course of history, the Social Democratic government crushed the rebellions with the help of right-wing militias, paving the way for the ill-fated Weimar Republic—and ultimately the ascension of the Nazis. This definitive documentary history collects manifestos, speeches, articles, and letters from the German Revolution—Rosa Luxemburg, the Revolutionary Stewards, and Gustav Landauer amongst others—introduced and annotated by the editor. Many documents, such as the anarchist Erich Mühsam's comprehensive account of the Bavarian Council Republic, are presented here in English for the first time. The volume also includes materials from the Red Ruhr Army that repelled the reactionary Kapp Putsch in 1920 and the communist bandits that roamed Eastern Germany until 1921. All Power to the Councils! provides a dynamic and vivid picture of a time of great hope and devastating betrayal.
The recent collapse of the Soviet Union made clear the weaknesses and deficiencies in Leninist theory and practice. In the period between the World Wars, however, an entirely different trend of socialist thought had briefly flowered in Europe, a trend which rejected the Leninist model of centralized party and state, and instead affirmed the democratic self-emancipation of the working class. This movement was "council communism." "Non-Leninist Marxism" presents a selection of the most influential writings from the council communists, including Hermann Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, Sylvia Pankhurst, and Otto Ruhl.