The question of revolutionary parties in the UK has been a consistent race to the bottom. Rather than creating a highly class-conscious cell of party members that articulate the problems of contemporary Britain and agitate among the working class, they have been playing at Lenin and worrying about the pedigree of their central committee and – in the worst cases, like the Revolutionary Communist Group – have even sheltered known abusers and utilised their party structure to obfuscate any attempt at justice for the victims. Parties have become simultaneously clandestine and autonomist, all under the banner of Marxism-Leninism; revelling in anonymity and separating themselves from the working class while welcoming as many people as possible and maintaining the pretence of respectability for local elections – combining the worst of these disparate tactics.

Given the history of successful examples, building revolutionary parties should have been the easy part – and once a principled cell had been established the question of workers councils should have been broached, as Gramsci did in Italy following the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. But instead the only tactics we hear are ‘build the party’, ‘build the party’, no matter what the material circumstances, even being overtaken by liberal movements in their demand for citizens’ assemblies and strikes. And although they model themselves on the successes of the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks’ central demand – ‘All power to the Soviets’ – is entirely lost on them, and should they get a sniff of power they would revert to a Blanquism that demands ‘All power to the party.’

Gramsci recognised that it would take the socialist parties and trade unions years, even decades, to absorb the whole of the working class, and that it was the ‘workshops with its internal commissions, the socialist clubs, the peasants communities’ that were the organs of working class life and democracy (Gramsci, Workers’ Democracy). These institutions ‘are organs of workers’ democracy which must be freed from the limitations imposed on them by the entrepreneurs, and infused with new life and energy.’ But decades of impoverishment and cuts to vital community services has left rid these institutions of any social function.

And while British unions’ complicity with the bourgeoisie and imperialism is clear to see, this truth has eliminated the question of workers’ councils almost entirely. British revolutionary parties’ concession of the organised working class to the unions have meant that they fester on the fringes of society, not only resulting in a lack of organisation but – content to remain in this fringe and wait for the revolutionary element of the working class to arise spontaneously and come to them – workers are able to be dismissed for any progressive qualities that exist outside of the party. And so we see communist parties in the UK struggle with basic social problems that are easily resolved elsewhere, condemning trans-struggles as a conspiracy and reverting to homophobia and racism in spite of the slogans on their pamphlets.

But the question of workers’ councils must be broached, and the only single existing organisation that can fulfil the role of the soviet in Britain is the IWW. If revolutionary communists recoil in horror at this suggestion, then they should reassess the relationship between soviets and the Bolsheviks: the soviets were not a revolutionary party but instead the mass of the Russian working class and peasantry, with both its more progressive and reactionary elements. Donald Gluckstein, in his book The Western Soviets, reassess the successes and failures of each apparition of soviets in Europe and Russia at the beginning of the 20th century writes,

‘Even during revolutions the party cannot substitute for the workers’ council. … Though the revolutionary party must be big enough to encompass the leading workers, under capitalism these are a minority. Even at the moment of insurrection the party is not flexible enough to recruit whole factories at a time, with their vase range of opinion from reactionary to revolutionary. Indeed to do so would mean to abandon its political principles. Only the workers’ council can provide the vital link connecting a vanguard party and the masses.’ (Gluckstein, p. 235)

As Lenin asked in ‘Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies’ in 1905: ‘The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies or the party? I think that it is wrong to put the question in this way and that the decision must certainly be: both the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and the party.’ In their confusion, British Marxist-Leninist parties have attempted to take on this function of both a soviet and a party and, if such a soviet did exist today in its most decisive elements, it would be written off by many communists because it isn’t the Bolsheviks themselves in their most decisive and influential form in 1917.

But how do we go from where we are now to fully formed soviets ready to take state-power? Gramsci wrote in his ‘Action Programme of the Turin Socialist Section’ in 1920 that the workers’ councils should first be an extension of trade union action, then direct their attention ‘no longer at winning improvements in hours and wages, but at bringing to the fore of the question of proletarian control over the instruments of labour and over industrial and agricultural production.’ The IWW has had a substantial head-start on its focus on union activity, against the casualisation of work, zero-hour contracts, and unpaid wages.

Building on the IWW’s existing organisation as one that is able to supersede trade and industries, and is able to move without political ties to any party, it should be a priority to establish members in all areas essential to the running of the state, replicated in every county in the country: in housing, healthcare, the environment, education, culture, industry, and infrastructure. Private enterprise should too be organised, with one representative in every department, but public sector should be the utmost priority. Across all the sectors of the working class – who, today in Britain, are overwhelmingly in the service industry. As in the case of Russia, where ‘even before the October revolution, the soviets took over the maintenance of transport, food supplies and public order’, (Gluckstein, p. 234) Communists in Britain must work towards this reality.

Nevertheless, with this strategy, the IWW would then act as both a factory council and a more broad workers’ council, offering two advantages. Firstly, it offers concrete benefits to workers that factory councils – organised as collectives in each workplace, only limited to that workplace, starting from scratch – would be unable to offer; they would have protections and additional weight and legitimacy under the increasingly strict striking laws introduced in 1992. If we were to embark on establishing soviets from scratch, without this union base, any difficulty in gaining new members would increase dramatically. Secondly, this minimises the contradictions of the July Days as experienced in the Russian Revolution. As representative bodies of the working class, the soviets began to lag behind the consciousness of the factory councils established in the workplaces themselves and instead began to cooperate with the provisional government that sought to keep Russia in the First World War. A speech by a factory delegate epitomised this contradiction when he said that ‘We demand the departure of the ten capitalist ministers [from the Provisional Government]. We trust the Soviet, but not those whom the Soviet trusts.’ (Gluckstein, p. 36) With the IWW simultaneously acting as a representative body and the factory council, the distance from the demands of the working class should be minimised and able to keep pace with the changing demands necessary as history moves forward.

But the necessity of factory councils, of workers organising into cells in workplaces across the UK, will ultimately depend on the swiftness of the IWW to fulfil this new role as a soviet. If workers are able to organise within the IWW, then this will be an unnecessary step as the IWW will be able to move at the rate of the class-consciousness of the workers. If the IWW solely retains the function of a union, however, then factory councils will be necessary as the motor of the working class while retaining the protections offered by the IWW. It is therefore decisive that the IWW fulfil these decisive roles.

If we can decisively eliminate this potential contradiction and move forward at some speed, we will be able to make the appropriate demands – yet while the events and contradictions we see today necessitates the most strict and decisive action by all communists, the pace and starting point of these actions are dictated by the previous inaction and lack of strategy.

The only way to guarantee workers’ rights is the establishment of workers’ councils and aiming for Dual Power. When this has been established, and the contradictions of capitalism make itself clear that a Labour government cannot resolve them, a vanguard party can make its influence felt most keenly and decisively. As we have come so late to the question of building soviets, we are behind and unprepared for the tasks ahead. Nevertheless, adapting Lenin’s ‘The Stages, the trend, and the prospects of the revolution’, in which he outlines the necessary stages the revolution must undertake from 1906, we can outline a strategy that makes best use of the soviets in the coming years:

1. The Tories take us out of the EU without a deal.

2. Cuts worse than those we saw under austerity further decimate services as Britain’s finance industry continues to decline.

3. Revolting against this, the Labour Party offer mild reforms and are voted into power but they cannot resolve the fundamental contradictions of British capitalism.

4. The revolutionary potential that was frustrated with social democracy turns against the Labour Party, and this is crystallised in the organisation of workers’ soviets as Extinction Rebellion and other liberal organisations continue to hedge their bets on progressive candidates.

5. Having established itself in every branch of the public sector, the question of dual power and the workers’ councils is raised by the new revolutionary party as it is clear that no other organisation can fulfil this demand.

6. The government forgoes any notions of progressive elements in order to save capitalism and maintain its class position, intensifying the repression against communists and the workers’ councils as they fight back with organised industrial action and general strikes.

7. A revolutionary party will crystallise the demands of the workers’ councils and, amid intense government repression, guide the workers’ councils to power.

If Marxist-Leninist parties continue to overlook the function of workers' councils in existing industrial revolutions, we remain in the same position that we are in today: the working class will ignore revolutionary parties, and, in turn, the revolutionary parties will condemn the working class for its lack of organisation and class consciousness. British communists have failed to recognise is that it is through the workers’ councils that so much of the working class can come to class consciousness, and that, in Russia, this turned the working class and peasantry towards the Bolsheviks. We also saw this guiding to class consciousness during the shop stewards’ strike in with the origins of the Clyde Workers’ Committee during the First World War. As Donny Gluckstein writes:

‘The majority of workers accepted the war and the resultant social truce between workers and employers. Only socialists, who believed there was nothing to gain from imperialist war, would fight to save the workers’ movement from strangulation in the name of “King and Country”. But very few workers shared their opinion. These socialist stewards would have had no impact if they had campaigned on their ideas alone. Yet they were able to lead thousands out on strike, because they had a reputation among the rank and file as fighters on bread and butter issues.’

One advantage that will aid the efforts of Marxist-Leninists today is this immediate connection between particular and general issues, and the transparency between peoples’ livelihoods in their everyday jobs and wage struggles and the Britain’s larger political issues with Brexit. This links bread and butter issues to class questions for the whole of Britain, and even exposes the political class as a bourgeois class increasingly incapable of running the country.

The decisive question will be whether the IWW, or any other similar organisation, will be able to fulfil this function. But we come to the question of workers' councils so late that starting workers’ councils from scratch will be infinitely more difficult, and citizen’s assemblies have no executive power of their own but can only exist as an advisory body to Parliament – repeating to them what it already knows but chooses not to acknowledge. A citizen’s assembly, taken at random, or even taken while acknowledging racial and class disparities in Britain, will have no say or weight over the power of the state or the organisation of labour – and without this base will vanish out of existence as quickly as it came into it. Workers organised through radical unions and organised into workers’ councils, controlling the functions of the state, will not be so difficult to ignore.

Luca Wright writes on Marx and historical communist movements and from time to time helps out at Ebb Magazine.