The Western Soviets

Capitalism is again in crisis. Twenty years ago apologists for the system argued that Marxist predictions of economic breakdown and class war had been disproved by events, and that change could come through the channels of parliamentary democracy. Now these parliamentary channels have proved an abject failure, unable even to defend workers from mass unemployment and falling living standards.

But what is the alternative? East-European style dictatorship, with its puppet trade unions and lengthening food queues, has nothing to offer. But history provides another way. In the years 1915-1920, towards the end of a decade of economic crisis and world war, workers all over Europe set up their own alternative, their own mass democracy. In Germany, Britain, Italy and Russia workers’ councils – or soviets, to use their Russian name – challenged the existing order.

This book looks at the experience of workers’ councils in those crucial five years, bringing together a wealth of information which today’s world economic crisis makes more relevent than ever.