Richard Müller (1880–1943) was a German lathe operator, union organiser, and revolutionary who led the Revolutionary Shop Stewards during World War I. In November 1918, he became Chairman of the Executive Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, effectively serving as head of state of the short-lived Socialist Republic of Germany. After losing influence in the Communist Party by 1921, he turned to writing, producing the classic three-volume history Vom Kaiserreich zur Republik (1924–25). Withdrawing from politics after 1925, he became a businessman and died in relative obscurity. For further discussion of Müller’s life and work, see the book by Ralf Hoffrogge, Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution: Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement.
This essay, published in Die Befreiung der Menschheit: Freiheitsideen in der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (1921), an edited collection on the history of socialism, synthesizes Müller’s ideas on the council system, including its historical basis.
Translated by Ryan Breeden
- The Genesis of the Council Idea
The council idea and workers’ councils are often described as a specifically Russian phenomenon. This rests upon a misunderstanding of the objective causes of this new idea. The council idea is an expression of the proletarian class struggle, of the proletarian revolution at its decisive stage. Similar developments can indeed be traced back to earlier revolutions in previous centuries; however, I will refrain from pursuing that line of history here.
The first period of the Russian Revolution began in 1905. Until then, Tsarism tolerated no workers’ organisations of any kind, suppressing both trade unions and political parties. Yet it could not suppress the forms of workers’ organisation that capitalism itself had generated inside large enterprises. The capitalist mode of production concentrated workers into large masses. Though they lacked formal organisation, the shared interests of workers in the big factories produced unified expressions of will. Despite Tsarism’s unprecedented violence in suppressing every stir of worker activity—even inside large enterprises themselves—the revolutionary workers’ movement flared up in 1905 when the first signs of Tsarism’s collapse became visible. In the large enterprises, factory committees and Councils of Workers’ Deputies were elected, forming the core of the revolutionary movement. Thus, the proletarian revolution in Russia created its own organ of struggle; without preparation, it sprang directly from the conditions themselves
It is often argued today that what emerged in Russia is irrelevant to Western Europe with its well-developed trade-union movements. But, in those countries, the same causes and the same phenomena can be observed. Even in England, home to the world’s oldest and strongest trade-union movement, economic struggles are today often carried out with the help of shop stewards who stand in opposition to the old union organisations. Here, too, the working class creates new organs of struggle suited to revolutionary conditions. Even in England, the council idea emerges as a new form of expression of the proletarian class struggle.
The old trade unions also describe themselves as organs of proletarian class struggle. Undoubtedly, they are that as well. Yet they fail to meet the needs of the revolutionary class struggle, which is beginning to assert itself—whether more strongly or more weakly—in all capitalist states. These new revolutionary organs of struggle are appearing in Western Europe not only against the resistance of bourgeois society, but also against the opposition of the leaders of the existing workers’ organisations—an aspect to which I will return later.
Although the same circumstances present in Russia and England also developed in Germany, their outward form looked different. In November 1918, when workers’ councils arose in Germany as a new organ of proletarian struggle, they were denounced as mere imitations of “Bolshevik methods”. Yet these councils did not appear as a simple result of the November events. They had already taken shape during the War. They were born from the War’s economic effects, from the suppression of every free expression of workers under the state of siege, and from the complete failure of both trade unions and political parties. On the one hand, the unions were shackled by the emergency regime and subordinated to war policy by their own bureaucracy. On the other hand, the workers’ political party was divided: one faction gave unconditional support to the government’s war policy, while the other was too weak to resist. In the large enterprises, politically mature and revolutionary-minded workers searched for new forms of class struggle, for new organs of combat, and there these new forms took firmer shape.
In July 1916, when 55,000 Berlin workers suddenly went on strike[1]—not for economic improvements, but for political reasons—bourgeois society, and even more so the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party and the unions, could not comprehend this unprecedented fact. It overturned all previous experience of the workers’ movement. What caused it? Who had prepared and led it? To bourgeois society and to the union leaders, these questions hardly mattered. They either failed, or refused, to see the revolutionary impulses triggered by the war and by brutal repression. Instead, they concentrated all efforts on capturing the leaders of the movement, concentrated in the large enterprises—at Ludwig Loewe, at Schwarzkopf, and so forth. These leaders were workers who, without prior recognition, had organised themselves into “factory committees” resembling those of St. Petersburg’s factories in 1905. The political strike of July 1916 could not be conducted with the help of parties or unions, whose leaders were in fact its opponents. After the strike, those leaders even helped deliver the strike organisers into the hands of the military authorities. These so-called “factory committees”—though the term is not entirely accurate—can be regarded as forerunners of today’s revolutionary workers’ councils in Germany. Out of these circumstances, the council idea first took root in Germany. What began in July 1916 developed further in the great political general strike of April 1917, which involved 300,000 workers, and in the even larger general strike of January–February 1918, which mobilised more than half a million.
These struggles were neither supported nor led by the existing party or union organisations. Instead, they revealed the beginnings of a third organisation: the workers’ councils. Large enterprises carried the movement. Its leaders—though often still members or even officials of unions and parties—were nevertheless compelled to turn toward creating new proletarian organs of struggle. In none of these struggles was the language of “workers’ councils”, “council system”, or “council organisation” used.
After the great general strike of January and February 1918, preparations began for the violent overthrow of the old regime. Yet, by this, I do not mean that the November Revolution was “made”. The objective causes of the revolution, which could already be seen at the beginning of 1918, lay in Germany’s military, political, and economic collapse. The task was to concentrate the revolutionary energies of the workers, not let them fragment into isolated actions, but hold them together, and in the given moment hurl them collectively against the old order. Once again, it became clear that the large enterprise was the most suitable ground for concentrating the workers’ revolutionary energies. During all these preparations, no thought was given to which form of organisation should follow the victorious struggle, should succeed the old order; little attention was paid to what would happen after the fight. The first priority was to prepare for the struggle and to carry it out successfully. When then the November collapse came, workers’ councils sprang forth from the revolutionary conditions, even in places where no such upheaval had ever been imagined before.
This brief sketch shows that the council idea is not a uniquely Russian phenomenon. It arose from economic and political developments as a new form of proletarian class struggle. The working class’s struggle for existence did not nurture solidarity and community within the old organisations, but rather in the large enterprises, where great masses endured the same pressures. The workers’ organisations were constrained both by outside repression and by internal contradictions, and, in any case, never encompassed the entire working class. Things stood differently in the large factories created by capitalism itself. There, proletarians—regardless of religion or political conviction—were thrust together into a shared destiny. In this, the roots of the new form of organisation lay: the council idea.
Although the collective interests of the proletariat gave rise to a new idea with elemental force, its practical effect at first remained unclear, and over the essence and aims of the workers’ councils—as the expression of this new idea—there flared a struggle which, to this day, has brought no clarification. In the following section, I will attempt to explain why this is so, and why, indeed, it must be so.
2. Democracy or the Council System
Although German Social Democracy, for decades, taught socialism; although it gave itself a programme demanding the abolition of all class rule and recognising the proletarian class struggle as its means; although it grew into the strongest political party and was greatly feared by the bourgeoisie — it nonetheless proved unable to realise its programme when, in November 1918, political power fell into the hands of the proletariat. It became the terrible confirmation of what Friedrich Engels predicted in his critique of the draft of the Erfurt Programme, dated 29 July 1891. Engels pointed to the opportunism already manifest in Social Democracy, and to the weakness of the Erfurt Programme, which left room for the notion that a peaceful development toward socialism in Germany was possible. “In the long run such a policy can only lead one’s own party astray. They push general, abstract political questions into the foreground, thereby concealing the immediate concrete questions, which at the moment of the first great events, the first political crisis automatically pose themselves. What can result from this except that at the decisive moment the party suddenly proves helpless and that uncertainty and discord on the most decisive issues reign in it because these issues have never been discussed?”[2]
The opportunistic war policy of the Majority Social Democrats (MSPD) revealed with startling clarity the renunciation of the revolutionary principles of socialism, led to the splitting of the party, and thus to the paralysis of proletarian action. This opportunistic war policy showed how closely the MSPD leaned towards the bourgeoisie, seeking to justify this with a pseudo-socialist ideology.
When, in November 1918, bourgeois society was forced to hand power to the socialist parties, the opportunist wing triumphed once again, declaring its commitment to democracy and demanding its political expression in the National Assembly, while only a small fraction sharply opposed democracy and viewed the council system necessary as the means to overcome the capitalist state and to realise socialism.
Once more, the truth of Engels’s words was demonstrated: Social Democracy had indeed conducted proletarian class struggle, but had always focused on abstract questions, while the great questions that naturally arise in a political crisis were never discussed. And, in November 1918, this decisive issue suddenly stood before Social Democracy. It was not decided in the spirit of Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels; the MSPD opted for formal democracy, and therefore for a bourgeois ideal.
In general, the concept of democracy is synonymous with political equality. This makes it the culmination of the political ideology of the bourgeoisie and intellectuals, who see in it the realisation of their political ideal of freedom and equality. For these classes, democracy signifies the fulfilment of social solidarity, which is presumed to follow from political equality. This ideology encompasses not only the bourgeoisie, but also large sections of the proletariat under the leadership of the old Social Democracy.
Democracy — political equality — does not bring humanity freedom and equality. When, more than 130 years ago, the democratic ideals of the great French Revolution—liberty, equality, fraternity— filled all of humanity new hope, they may have possessed their historical justification. Humanity was freed from the fetters of feudalism, only to be bound in the still heavier chains of capitalism. For centuries, we saw the nightmarish conditions among the broad masses and the most terrible class struggles; under capitalist economy political equality remains an empty illusion. Can one speak of freedom, when workers must sell their labour-power to employers, when the propertied exploit the propertyless? Does the idea of democracy not reveal itself to be a fraud when equality before the law becomes, at best, the freedom of capitalism to dominate and exploit the working population? Does freedom not under the capitalist state become the freedom to starve, and does fraternity not become hypocritical, shameful displays of charity? Karl Marx aptly castigated capitalist democracy in his analysis of the Commune, when he said that, every few years, the oppressed class is allowed to decide which representatives of the ruling class are to “trample” it in parliament.[3]
The proletariat must seek to overcome formal democracy. It cannot content itself with political equality; it must aim at economic equality, at the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. This goal is not to be attained through parliamentary struggle, but only through class struggle, through the activity of the masses. The proletariat must fight for socialist democracy, for political and economic equality; only then will a classless socialist society and the full emancipation of humanity be possible.
But the struggle against formal democracy is, at the same time, the struggle against the democratic state, which uses formal democracy as the means of class oppression. Even in a democratic state, we see the organ of domination of the propertied class, which must be broken.
In a democratic state, democracy remains restricted by exploitation and becomes the dictatorship of the propertied class over and against the majority of the people. The proletariat is prevented from making use of political equality and is degraded to a mere herd of voters by the power of the capitalist daily press. As Marx so aptly said, it may every few years elect representatives to Parliament, who then “trample upon” proletarian interests.[4]
In November 1918, the revolutionary socialists recognised that the realisation of formal democracy, of political equality, the convening of the National Assembly, was tantamount to the re-establishment of the shaken class rule of the bourgeoisie, to the stabilisation of exploitation and oppression of the majority by a minority. They opposed democracy with the council system and the National Assembly with the Reich Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils. They opposed the class rule of the propertied to the class rule of the propertyless. The state is not yet abolished but becomes an instrument of rule for the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat suppresses the freedom to exploit and breaks the resistance of the exploiters is broken by force.
Within the council system, the workers’ councils, the representatives of the working people, are brought together. It excludes from the franchise all who live from the labour of others. Thereby it abolishes the economic antagonism underlying formal democracy, the parliamentary system. The workers’ councils are in close contact with their constituents and are subject to their constant control. They are not elected for a fixed term but are subject to recall at any time; this gives the workers’ councils a far stronger sense of responsibility. The influence of the voters upon legislation and administration also becomes much greater than in the parliament of formal democracy. In the council system, legislation and administration are united in the hands of the workers’ councils, whereby all bureaucracy must disappear of its accord. The council system thus becomes the foundation of a new social order. Politically, it functions, in the period of transition, as the organ of proletarian rule; its organs must assume the functions of political administration. Economically, it becomes the organisation of production.
Thus, in its political functioning, the council system becomes the proletariat’s revolutionary organ of struggle. It unites the proletariat into common actions of struggle against their enemies. This condition is not, and must not be, a permanent one.
Indeed, as soon as socialist democracy has achieved the abolition of ownership in the means of production, the dictatorship of the proletariat ceases. With it, the state itself also falls, and a socialist community takes its place. Of this transitional period Karl Marx wrote: “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”[5]
The council system links the working population together for united action. It thus comes nearer to true democracy, for it excludes only a small minority, and makes of the dictatorship of the proletariat the expression of will of the overwhelming majority. It transforms the means of production into the possession of society as a whole; it inaugurates the first phase of communist society. Yet the council system does not of itself create communism. It still makes use of certain bourgeois legal norms. The transition from capitalist production and bourgeois legal concepts to social production and recognition of social equality can only be achieved through further development. As Marx explained, the principle of “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”, will only be realised when “labour has not only become a means of life, but life’s prime want.”[6]
3. Socialisation and the Council System
By socialisation, we mean the transfer ownership of the means of production into society. Socialisation is not yet socialism, still less communism, but it signifies wresting economic power from capitalist society, something attainable only through political struggle. Socialisation is impossible so long as the democratic state exists; thus, every measure of socialisation undertaken by the democratic state preserves the capitalist mode of production, which merely cloaks itself in a democratic guise. In the most favourable case, the state itself appears alongside the owner of the means of production as joint exploiter of labour-power, and both share in the surplus-value created by labour. The worker is promised “workplace democracy” and he may seemingly have a say, but, in truth, the employers’ right of exploitation is only more firmly cemented and their profits guaranteed.
The council system, in its political activity, must carry on the struggle for socialisation and the abolition of capitalism. At the same time, however, socialisation requires the continuation of production upon the foundations created by capitalism. These foundations must not be destroyed; therefore, anarchic capitalist production must immediately be replaced by a socialist economy that meets people’s needs. This does not mean that socialisation must everywhere begin at the same time on the same day. There are large and comprehensive spheres of production which must be socialised immediately, while others of lesser importance may remain untouched for the time being. Socialisation cannot be left to the workers in the factories alone; it can only be accomplished by the common action of all workers and consumers, in addition to the participation of scholars [Wissenschaftler]. The organisation of these forces lies within the council system in its economic activity. The council system unites two organisations: that of the workers and that of the consumers. Both are distinct, and science [Wissenschaft] must exert its influence on both.
The driving force of capitalist production is profit. Capitalism does not care about the needs of society, and it is this fact that has created the anarchic conditions we see at present, especially in Germany, as capitalism proves its incapacity to restore the shattered economy. It hastens toward complete dissolution, destroying the very economic foundations necessary for the existence of society. Socialization abolishes the haphazardness of capitalist production, strives to prevent any waste of labour and raw materials, and aims to develop the highest productivity with the least expenditure of effort. Needs are determined through the organisation of consumption and in this organisation are concentrated in the communal workers’ councils, where all the forces of the working population participate.
Production itself is supported by the organisation of the works councils. The workers and employees elect works councils from among their ranks, upon whom devolves control of production. Out of the works councils are chosen the controlling bodies for branches of production, culminating in a National Economic Council [Reichswirtschaftsrat], which, in turn, unites the organisation of consumption unites with the organisation of production.
The management of enterprises lies in the hands of the works councils. The are appointed by the district group council, composed of representatives of the works councils of the productive branch within a given economic zone. In both the management of the enterprises and in the controlling bodies of production (district group councils, national group councils, National Economic Council), scholars [actively participate.
The systematic organisation of production requires the establishment of an economic council organisation, where the self-administration of all professions — industry, trades, commerce, and transport — will be ensured. The foundation of this organisation are the enterprises, the smallest socially productive units of economic life. From the enterprises are elected the delegates of the working people. Through an organic expansion into a central organisation, the councils encompass the whole of social and economic life.
The German Republic forms an economic unit that is centrally administered. It is divided into economic districts, within which those engaged in productive labour are organised into district bodies. Total production is divided into industrial, commercial, and independent occupational groups.
This division results the following groups:
- Agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, forestry, and fisheries;
- Mining, metallurgy, salt works, peat extraction;
- Stone and earth industries, construction;
- Metal industry;
- Chemical industry;
- Textile and garment trades;
- Paper industry, graphic trades;
- Leather and shoe industry;
- Wood and carving trades;
- Food and beverage industries;
- Banking, insurance, and commerce;
- Transport;
- Civil servants and workers in state and municipal enterprises;
- Liberal professions.
Within each of the above groups, the workers’ organisation is based upon the works councils, rising up to the level of a national group organisation.
In every independent enterprise, a works council is elected, taking account of both employees and workers, where the works council supervises, regulates, and manages all matters of the enterprise.
Where an enterprise comprises several plants or autonomous departments, each elects a works council. These councils come together in a general works council, which from its midst elects the supervisory board to direct the whole enterprise.
For independent small and medium enterprises of the same branch of production, the individual enterprises are grouped together geographically into local works or district councils. The works councils of large enterprises in the same industry may also be joined through the district group council.
Independent small businesses and other professional groups that cannot be included in the enterprises elect a joint works council (professional council) in the municipality, district, and large cities on a district basis.
The works councils, local works councils, district councils, or joint works councils of each group within an economic district join together into a district group council and elect an executive committee. The district group council supervises and regulates production in its district according to the directives of the national group council. Within the district, the district group council is the supreme authority for all questions arising from the productive relations of its group.
The district group council of each group elects delegates to the district economic council from within its ranks. This body decides on disputes over jurisdiction among the existing groups in the district; and production and economic questions that can be regulated only within the district also fall under its authority.
In the same way, the district group council of each group elects delegates to a national group council, composed of representatives of the same group from all districts.
The national group council is the central authority of the group. According to the general economic plan of the National Economic Council, it regulates the type and extent of production, the procurement and distribution of raw materials, the disposal of products, and all other matters concerning the group. It may form special commissions for handling all issues that fall within its mandate, supplemented by experts.
The national group councils of the listed industries, trades, etc., elect representatives from their members to the National Economic Council.
Representation of the national group councils in the National Economic Council according to the of the total number of workers employed in each group.
The National Economic Council is composed of equal numbers of representatives of the fourteen economic groups listed and representatives of the organisation of consumption. Its direction is headed by the representatives appointed to the Central Council.
The desire for socialisation, for the transformation of the capitalist order, lies deep in the hearts of the working people. With elemental force, this desire broke forth in November 1918. Everywhere workers, employees, and civil servants elected workers’ and works councils to begin and complete this great task; but the vast problem raised during those days has not yet been solved. The working class approached it wholly unprepared and tore itself apart in the struggle for its emancipation. The counter-offensive of bourgeois society set in, and with it began the social revolution whose course Karl Marx predicted in his Eighteenth Brumaire:
[P]roletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, criticise themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them, and recoil again and again from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out:
Hic Rhodos, hic salta!
Here is the rose, here dance![7]
[1] Ed. Müller is mistaken here. The strike, held to protest the trial of Karl Libeknecht, actually took place on 28 June 1916.
[2] Engels, “A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891,” in MECW Vol. 27, 226-227
[3] Ed. This is a paraphrase of Marx’s The Civil War in France drawn from Lenin’s State and Revolution. The original quote is “Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business.” MECW, Vol. 22, 333.
[4] See previous note.
[5] Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” in MECW, Vol. 24, 95.
[6] Ibid, 87.
[7] Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in MECW, Vol 11, 106-107
