Revolutionary Workers’ Committees (Türkiye)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” begins the Communist Manifesto.
This striking formulation, put forward 150 years ago, is validated once again today by all developments unfolding across the world. Far from coming to an end, the class struggle has grown increasingly fierce, and the 21st century opened its curtains with uprising. The developments that justify the anxious assessments made in imperialist centers—predicting that this century would be a “Century of Uprisings”—have manifested themselves in the very first quarter of the new century. Countless events have demonstrated the necessity of replacing the capitalist system with a new one: socialism.
The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will advance far beyond its current stage, and humanity and our planet will bear witness to the foundation of a new world.
Imperialist-capitalist states cause millions of people to be unemployed, homeless, and hungry for the sake of their profit; these implemented policies rapidly deepen poverty and devastation. The “New Phase” that the capitalist system entered toward the end of the last century is a process of chain-reaction collapse (sıçramalı çöküş). From this point on, capitalism has nothing left to offer humanity but misery, pain, and tears. The capitalists’ ambition for profit and ever-greater profit has brought nature and humanity to the brink of destruction.
The imperialist-capitalist system dreams of prolonging its lifespan through the Third World War, which it initiated under the pretext of the Twin Towers attack conspiracy. In this New Phase, what awaits the imperialist-capitalist system is the dustbin of history. It is possible to see the signs of this today. The system as a whole has arrived at the brink of bankruptcy and will never escape the end that awaits it.
To delay, or if possible, slow down this end, and to reclaim their lost hegemony, the imperialists—chiefly the US and the EU—and their war organization NATO, are striving to expand the Third World War that they have launched against all workers, laborers, and poor peoples in every corner of the world. The Russia-NATO war over Ukraine, followed by the conflicts in Western Asia and Iran, are efforts to regain this slipping hegemony. Every move made to return to the old days produces an irreversible consequence; this is identical to what happens to someone floundering in a swamp. The more they thrash about to escape, the deeper they sink; this is a road of no return. At this precise juncture, a conscious/subjective intervention (iradi müdahale) is required; it is necessary to bring the imperialist-capitalist system to the end that awaits it.
This total assault must be opposed as a whole. To halt and eliminate this offensive, the international struggle of the working class is indispensable. To stop the Third World War unleashed by the imperialists against the exploited, oppressed working class and the peoples of the world, the expropriated (mülksüzler) of the entire world must fight against their own ruling classes. Because international solidarity is not limited to solidarity alone; it entails fighting in common. Only a fighting working class can build its own future and bring the bourgeoisie to its impending end.
Whoever desires the goal creates the means.
The force that will prepare this end is the practical and political struggle of the working class and its vanguard mind, the communist party. One of the instruments of struggle will be the committee and council organizations of the workers.
When the workers’ movements and experiences of many countries are analyzed, the following is revealed: Committees and councils have emerged as direct organs of mass struggle during periods of social upheaval and under conditions of a revolutionary situation—not where the class struggle proceeds in its ordinary course, but where these conditions radically change, and where the class struggle intensifies, spreads, and sharpens to the point of taking the form of a civil war.
Committees and councils directly represent the collective will, social liberation, and aspirations for freedom of the working class and other oppressed, exploited laboring masses. Emerging during revolutionary periods when the revolutionary mass struggle is on the rise, committees and councils act as the organs of struggle for the proletariat and the laboring classes.
Under such conditions, committees and councils, as non-party mass organizations, primarily serve to unite the masses, rally them for struggle, convey the views of the political leadership to the people, arouse their interest, and draw them into the struggle.
As the class struggle sharpens, intensifies, and advances toward an uprising, the committees and councils assume the role of organs of uprising; they fulfill the duty of organs of power during and after the seizure of power. As the ruling class, they are responsible for the organization of power and the struggle for the establishment of the new socialist order; they unleash the revolutionary energy, initiative, and creativity of the proletarian masses.
To the extent that they secure the unity of the workers, poor peasants, and laboring people, they are organs of alliance and organs of unity in struggle.
Committees and councils are not party organizations, but the most comprehensive non-party mass organizations of the proletariat. They are organizations in which all members of the class, whether party members or non-party workers, can freely express themselves. The working-class party or non-party workers stand a chance to carry their policies to the masses here, in proportion to the trust they earn within the class. Without ever clouding or narrowing this mass perspective, and without falling into the narrow-mindedness of viewing committees and councils as mere auxiliary organs of the party, they strive to influence and guide them ideologically, politically, practically, and organizationally.
Committees and councils are organizations that encompass not only the working class, but also all other oppressed strata, poor peasants, laborers, and students. They include not only those who are currently employed, but also the unemployed. By uniting all spheres through representatives, they weave the common struggle.
Committees and councils are organs of social initiative that intervene in every sphere of life. They represent a clear rupture from the system; they will transform into organs of struggle, revolt, and progressively, organs of power.
Committees, emerging as the product of the revolutionary crisis conditions of capitalism, must also be considered in light of conditions where the working class will be forced to carry out its work illegally, and where all opportunities for legal work and organization are eliminated under the heavy terror of fascism. Committees and councils do not limit themselves by laws. The embodied form of the committee and council organization in power is the “Soviets.”
Everything outside power is nothing!
Long Live the Proletarian International!