Cornelius Castoriadis/Paul Cardan's proposals for the workings of a society based on the principle of self-management by workers' councils, originally published in English by Solidarity in 1972. We have significant disagreements with it as it retains the key features of capitalism, but we reproduce it for reference.
Submitted by Steven. on August 20, 2013
Taken from http://www.lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/WorkersCouncilsAndEconomics/WorkersCouncilsAndEconomics.htm
workers-councils-Cornelius-Castoriadis.pdf (4.02 MB)
workers-councils-Cornelius-Castoriadis.mobi (5.09 MB)
workers-councils-Cornelius-Castoriadis.epub (6.32 MB)
FASCIMILE PDF https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-3740/mode/2up
Spikymike
9 years ago
In reply to Welcome by libcom.org
So here is an extract from a short book review I wrote way back in 1972:
''This...is an honest and well thought out attempt at dealing with the problems of transition from capitalist to communist society (a phrase misleadingly described as 'socialism'). it's main objective is to disprove the arguments against communism which state that people cannot freely and democractically run their own social affairs, and that it is impossible to carry on production without a specially trained section of workers whose main task is to organise the rest along authoritarian lines.
Whilst dealing with the technical and organisational tasks in a realistic fashion avoiding the faults of both anarchism and bolshevism (if not of the De-Leonist SLP) they show an amazing ignoranceof capitalist economics. They warn that a certain group of readers will react emotionally to the use of terms such as money and wages in relation to 'socialism' and we must surely be amongst that group. But our response isn't just emotional - at first site it appears that these terms are used to describe something similar to Marx's non-circulating labour vouchers, one method Marx suggested might be used to deal with shortages at the beginning of communism. Their discussion of 'value' however shows that this is not just a terminological dispute. Solidarity seem to have taken Marx's model of 'pure' capitalism in volume 1 of CAPITAL and wish to apply it in practice. For instance Marx states that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time embododied in it. Price on the other hand fluctuates about this point and with monoply conditions (and the averaging of the rate of profit) may stay permanently above or below its value. Solidarity seem to want to rationalise this system so that prices always equal value rather than abolish commodity production alltogether.....''
Looking back at this I was too generous in my interpretation of Castoriadis approach which was still stuck in a rather trotskyist understanding of 'socialism' as a distinct society from communism and omitted a more fundamental critique of it's democratic fetish. Unfortunately a longer more critical article we published shortly after this does not appear on-line but it went into more detail on the changes made by (an embarassed?) Brinton/Palace in his translation of the original which certainly came accross as a form of democratic 'market socialism' - actually a form of capitalism. In other ways this pamplets model has some of the same faults as other more modern abstract models for a claimed alternative society such as 'Parecon' and 'Inclusive Democracy' which are criticsed elswhere on libcom.
A slightly one-sided critique (by a party with it's own democratic fetish), which non-the-less still contains some valid points, can be found here:
and another relevant one here:
Other discussions on this site relating to Council Communism and 'labour-time vouchers' are also relevent.
In relation to Castoriadis and Solidarity's lack of understanding of Marx's critique of the 'Value Form' it's also worth looking at David Brown's text 'The illusion of 'Solidarity' ' in the library here:
https://libcom.org/library/illusion-solidarity-david-brown
Spikymike
9 years ago
In reply to Welcome by libcom.org
So here is an extract from a short book review I wrote way back in 1972:
''This...is an honest and well thought out attempt at dealing with the problems of transition from capitalist to communist society (a phrase misleadingly described as 'socialism'). it's main objective is to disprove the arguments against communism which state that people cannot freely and democractically run their own social affairs, and that it is impossible to carry on production without a specially trained section of workers whose main task is to organise the rest along authoritarian lines.
Whilst dealing with the technical and organisational tasks in a realistic fashion avoiding the faults of both anarchism and bolshevism (if not of the De-Leonist SLP) they show an amazing ignoranceof capitalist economics. They warn that a certain group of readers will react emotionally to the use of terms such as money and wages in relation to 'socialism' and we must surely be amongst that group. But our response isn't just emotional - at first site it appears that these terms are used to describe something similar to Marx's non-circulating labour vouchers, one method Marx suggested might be used to deal with shortages at the beginning of communism. Their discussion of 'value' however shows that this is not just a terminological dispute. Solidarity seem to have taken Marx's model of 'pure' capitalism in volume 1 of CAPITAL and wish to apply it in practice. For instance Marx states that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time embododied in it. Price on the other hand fluctuates about this point and with monoply conditions (and the averaging of the rate of profit) may stay permanently above or below its value. Solidarity seem to want to rationalise this system so that prices always equal value rather than abolish commodity production alltogether.....''
Looking back at this I was too generous in my interpretation of Castoriadis approach which was still stuck in a rather trotskyist understanding of 'socialism' as a distinct society from communism and omitted a more fundamental critique of it's democratic fetish. Unfortunately a longer more critical article we published shortly after this does not appear on-line but it went into more detail on the changes made by (an embarassed?) Brinton/Palace in his translation of the original which certainly came accross as a form of democratic 'market socialism' - actually a form of capitalism. In other ways this pamplets model has some of the same faults as other more modern abstract models for a claimed alternative society such as 'Parecon' and 'Inclusive Democracy' which are criticsed elswhere on libcom.
A slightly one-sided critique (by a party with it's own democratic fetish), which non-the-less still contains some valid points, can be found here:
and another relevant one here:
Other discussions on this site relating to Council Communism and 'labour-time vouchers' are also relevent.
In relation to Castoriadis and Solidarity's lack of understanding of Marx's critique of the 'Value Form' it's also worth looking at David Brown's text 'The illusion of 'Solidarity' ' in the library here:
https://libcom.org/library/illusion-solidarity-david-brown
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