| abstract
| - Council communism is a Radical Left movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s. Its primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both left-wing Marxism and Libertarian Socialism, and shares a number of traits with Anarchism. The central argument of Council Communism, in contrast to those of Social democracy and Leninist communism, is that workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural form of working class organisation and governmental power. This view is opposed to both the Reformist and the Bolshevik stress on vanguard parties, parliaments or bureaucratic states. The core principle of council communism is that the government and the economy should be managed by workers' councils composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run "bureaucratic collectivism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a workers' democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils. Council Communists support workers' revolutions, but oppose one-party dictatorships. This has much in common with libertarian communism and most strains of anarchism, although the latter usually upholds individual liberty and autonomy as paramount over all else, which Council Communism does not. Council Communists also believe in diminishing the role of the party to one purely of agitation and propaganda; they reject all participation in elections or parliamentary procedures; and they argue that workers should leave the reactionary trade unions and form one big revolutionary union. It is still actively debated whether the Industrial Workers of the World is a fulfillment of council communist wishes. The legacy of the council communist movement was taken up by such groups as Socialisme ou Barbarie, Solidarity (UK) and the Situationist International. Most Libertarian socialists agree with some of the ideas of council communism. Sometimes Bordigist theory is held to retain some features of council communism- it would be more accurate to say that the Italian Communist Left respected councils as necessary organs of class struggle (a standard Leninist position) but saw the Communist Party as the ultimate wielder of the proletarian dictatorship.
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