The number one goal of the revolutionary workers...

The number one goal of the revolutionary workers : the soviets and their seizure of power

No other perspective for the world than the revolutionary power of workers organized in soviets (which requires the destruction of capitalist state power)

With all due respect to the lackeys of capitalism, the reactionaries, the reformists, the pessimists, the skeptics, the anti-communists, the anti-Bolsheviks, the anti-Trotskyists, the false Trotskyists, the opportunists, the leftists and the anarchists, the only way out for the working people of the world is to organize themselves into soviets with a view to seizing state power and destroying all state powers in the world, starting with those of the imperialist powers.

Some will say that the revolution is not yet topical and that this question is not of burning urgency. For them, it is useless to utter ultra-radical sentences, far too advanced in relation to the situation and misunderstood by the workers, and they are mistaken (and deceive us) seriously and gravely. On the contrary, what must constantly guide our daily political, union and social activity as well as our action is to guide the working class towards its principal task : to seize state power. How can we conceive that this is topical when workers’ struggles are not at all insurrectional and the union apparatuses do not even have difficulty controlling them ? Well, even simple strikes, demonstrations or rallies, but even any problem in the company must be the occasion for meetings, even informal, of employees, even the writing of a leaflet by employees can be the occasion for collective discussions and decisions. However, as Pierre Bois, a Trotskyist activist in the Barta group, a worker at Renault Billancourt and organizer of the 1947 strike committee that defeated the French Stalinist bureaucracy at the highest level of its power, explained, "every revolutionary worker must consider every meeting of workers as a soviet and the soviet is nothing other than the embryo of the workers’ state." This is exactly what we no longer understand at all and what we no longer defend in the false opportunist extreme left (including the false heir of Pierre Bois, linked to the union apparatuses (which leave them a small place and a small role) and to bourgeois elections (which allow the bourgeois State to finance them and them to make people believe in democratic expression under capitalism !) In conclusion, there is no need for insurrectional situations to constantly campaign for the self-organization of workers, on the contrary, this must be the compass of the daily life of the worker activist, the one which first distinguishes the revolutionary from the reformist and the opportunist, the worker activist from the bureaucrat or guarantor of the bureaucrats : no leaflet without discussion between workers, no strike without a decision by workers organized at the base, no demonstration or other action without the most organized collective decision possible by workers on the goals, methods, slogans, demands, no support for the bureaucracy, no guarantor for the Negotiators. Those who spend their time in meetings with our enemies are not our friends. Those who ignore the workers’ point of view and collective decision-making are our false friends.The strategies of conquest of the trade union apparatuses by small so-called revolutionary groups are camouflages of opportunism (defined by Engels as the betrayal of revolutionary goals due to the attempt to succeed faster than the progress of the exploited class allows).

It will be noted that the opportunist pseudo-revolutionaries talk a lot about the general denunciation of capitalism, about the revolution to be made (while remaining vague about the consequences in militant activity), about communism for distant days, about the need to overthrow capitalism at a later date, about the revolutionary party to be built now and, on all this, they have no direct contradiction with the trade union and state apparatuses. They are careful not to reason as we do above : to center their compass on the North (the role of workers’ councils as future leaders of the workers’ state).

What also characterizes bourgeois politicians, from the right as well as the left or the left of the left, or union or association leaders, is their attachment to the state apparatus : no more statist than Mélenchon ! And none of them in any way envisages the objective of overthrowing the bourgeois state, not to mention its replacement by the state of workers’ soviets (they prefer to pretend that defending this would be Stalinism and that they are hostile to it because they are democrats !).

And curiously, it turns out that on one point, from the most reactionary to the most "left-wing," they happen to converge with the false revolutionaries... It is on the question, fundamental above all, of the workers’ state. The extreme left are also its adversaries, in fact even more so than in theory. For them, the state necessarily has the character of a power outside the working class and, if they try to take power there, is bound to turn against it, as was the case with Stalinism. Bureaucratization seems to them to flow naturally from the constitution of the soviets as the basis of the state. This is the case whether they are bourgeois politicians, anarchists, left communists, councilists, Luxemburgists, Bordigists, supporters of Pannekoek or Korsch, etc... In any case, all call on workers to turn away from any objective of a workers’ state. Others, like the fake Trotskyists, say they are in favor but assert that it is not time to talk about a Soviet state or about soviets, that we must talk about a revolutionary party that campaigns to overthrow capitalism, without talking about building soviets, without talking about breaking the capitalist state, without talking about giving power to workers’ councils, implying that a party that leads the unions and manages to seize the reins of the state could be perfectly fine. The French organization Lutte Ouvrière, falsely Trotskyist, is, for example, navigating in this type of murky waters.

Of course, being in favor of the Soviet state does not guarantee against all problems, especially against the risks of bureaucratization. There is no magic formula that can protect against real problems, especially the isolation of the proletarian revolution in one of the most backward countries in the capitalist world.

Of course, state power in the hands of the workers means that we are still in barbarism, that the exploiting social classes still exist and that a class war must still be waged against them and that the workers’ state is the instrument of this fight. But to overcome the barbaric stages, we must not reject the only weapons that the proletariat can have, state power. Nevertheless, we revolutionary Marxists have always agreed on one point with the anarchists : the existence of the state, even the workers’ state, is still barbarism and the final objective is the total disappearance of the state. It is for Stalinism that the workers’ state is not, as for Lenin, a state in the process of disappearing, that the "socialist" state is the nec plus ultra, that communism is combined with the strengthening of state power and not with its weakening with the undisguised objective of its disappearance, as Lenin explained more than clearly in "The State and Revolution." And the workers’ state is a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and not a dictatorship against the proletariat. It is a dictatorship only against the tiny minority of capitalists and their armed supporters.

Anarchists, left-wing communists of all kinds, and other socialist purists do not explain to us how to successfully combat the armed forces of imperialism and capitalism without equipping ourselves with the weapon of the State, how to make the Soviets triumph without the State of Soviets.
What is the workers’ state ?

Whether it is called "dictatorship of the proletariat," "workers’ state," "commune state," "soviet power," or "power to the workers," the goal was affirmed and clearly claimed by Marx and Engels as an inevitable step on the road to socialism. However, this notion is no longer defended in a Marxist manner by today’s so-called Marxist far left.

Karl Marx :

"Between capitalist society and communist society lies the period of revolutionary transformation of the former into the latter. This corresponds to a period of political transition in which the State cannot be anything other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

https://www.marxists.org/francais/lenin/works/1917/08/er5.htm

Friedrich Engels : "The social-democratic philistine was recently seized with a salutary terror on hearing the word dictatorship of the proletariat. Well, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like ? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat."

Karl Marx : "When the Paris Commune took the direction of the revolution into its own hands ; when ordinary workers, for the first time, dared to touch the governmental privilege of their ’natural superiors,’ the propertied class, and, under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty, carried out their work modestly, conscientiously, and efficiently (and carried it out for wages the highest of which barely reached one-fifth of what, according to a high scientific authority, Professor Huxley, is the minimum required for a secretary to the London Board of Education), the old world writhed in convulsions of rage at the sight of the red flag, the symbol of the Republic of Labor, waving over the Hôtel de Ville.
And yet, it was the first revolution in which the working class was openly recognized as the only one still capable of social initiative, even by the great mass of the middle class of Paris—shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants—the rich capitalists being the only ones excepted."

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, on the dictatorship of the proletariat

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6870

Lenin : "The Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’, etc., Deputies remain misunderstood in the sense that most people do not have a clear idea of ​​the class significance, of the role of the Soviets in the Russian Revolution. But what is also not understood is that they represent a new form of state, or more precisely, a new type of state."

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article416

Lenin : "All power to the Soviets"

https://matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7426

https://matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5189

Lenin in "The State and Revolution" : "The workers’ state, that is, the proletariat organized as a ruling class."

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article155

What did the Soviets do when they took power in Russia ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1583

The dictatorship of the proletariat, according to Leon Trotsky

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1465

How workers can organize themselves and decide the future of society as a whole

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7443

"The exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer free itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie) without at the same time and forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggle ; this central idea belongs solely and exclusively to Marx," wrote Engels.

https://www.marxists.org/english/engels/works/1883/06/fe18830628.htm

The historical mission of the proletariat : to seize state power not to preserve it but to move towards socialism by moving towards the abolition of social classes and states.

https://www.marxists.org/francais/loriot/works/1928/04/loriot_19280401.htm

Seize power by establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat

https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/00/dictature/dictature_du_proletariat.pdf

Only one army worth building : the International Workers’ Red Army

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7602

The world of work must govern itself !

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6004

Workers’ power and socialism are vital necessities for humanity

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article8073

The state that the Workers’ Struggle organization wants to establish is not the power of workers’ soviets.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7513

Why rejecting the workers’ state and the bourgeois state together amounts to... supporting the latter

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7492

Our main difference with the French far left : they are not clear about the nature of the capitalist state !

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5462

The question of power is certainly the most important question of any revolution.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5189

Rejecting the workers’ state disarms even the most dynamic of proletarian revolutions.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2430

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4795

Revolution is an open test of strength between social forces struggling for power. The state is not an end in itself. It is only a machine in the hands of the dominant social forces.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1434

The State and Revolution, by Lenin

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article140

Power to the workers after October

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6453

The only possible democracy, in a period of acute crisis of capitalist domination, is to wrest from the bourgeoisie its instruments of domination.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6420

In the face of the current collapse of capitalism, the class politics of the proletariat leads it to take the leadership of the working people in order to seize state power.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5907

This does not mean that socialism is statism.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article373

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article148

Pannekoek and Bourrinet against the workers’ state

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5270

Bordiga against the workers’ state

http://www.pcint.org/04_PC/102/102_programme-revolutionnaire.htm

Michel Olivier against the workers’ state

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5478

Anarchists against the workers’ state

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7433

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article280

The Luxemburgists against the workers’ state

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?breve1280

The NPA against the workers’ state

https://npa-lanticapitaliste.org/actualite/politique/letat-la-democratie-et-la-revolution-retour-sur-lenine-et-1917

The Workers’ Struggle against the Workers’ State organization

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7513

The PCF against the workers’ state

https://www.marxists.org/francais/4int/doc_uc/1976/01/proletariat.html

Mélenchon against the workers’ state

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz-CyIdVdYg

The world’s first experiment with a workers’ state : the Paris Commune of 1871

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3402

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1185

Russia : Soviets in power

https://www.marxists.org/francais/lenin/works/1919/03/vil31031919.pdf

Spain : Soviets who manage but do not move towards power

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2430

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3709

However, it is not enough for the Soviets to take power to move towards socialism.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7423
What is the greatest global danger ? War, nuclear power, climate change, pollution, racism, fascism, immigration ? No ! Let the proletariat miss the opportunity to take control of all of society !