Theory and Opinion

Wanted: Council Communism, Dead or Alive

Starting from the proposition that council communism is dead, the author asks whether it can and should be revived. To this end, he examines the relationship between organizations and programs of the workers' movement and changes in capitalism and class struggle. The weakness of the present small council communist milieu (especially in the face of the current imperialist war) and the theoretical rigidity and sectarian practices of the groups of the Italian Left are both seen as manifestations of the weakness of the workers' struggle. Starting from the current low level of workers' struggle, he formulates immediate tasks for an organized activity based on programmatic positions. In the course of discussion and cooperation with the other proletarian internationalist groups, differences of views are inevitable, both on questions brought to clarity by history and questions whose solution will be clear only when the proletarian equals or even exceeds 1917-1923.