Factory councils were designed to fuse economics and politics in proletarian self-government

Evidence

Th e factory council, as “an absolutely original institution” of the proletariat, was a strategic vehicle for toppling the pillars of capital accumulation. It was also a venue in which workers could concretely experience politicaleconomic unity: “born from labor, [the council] adheres to the process of industrial production … within it economics and politics merge, in it the exercise of sovereignty is all one with the act of production … in it the proletarian democracy is realized” (Gramsci 1919b, 117). Indeed, within the councils, the organization of the production process was deeply political. Th us, in their proceedings, councils put into practice the core of an alternative society, one in which “the mendacious bourgeois democracy” [menzognera democrazia borghese] and its expression in “parliamentarism” was suppressed in favor of an antiauthoritarian “selfgovernment of the people” embodied in the “proletarian state”-an institution that would no longer be alienated from the people but rather be part and parcel of their daily activities. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 534

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the Gramscian factory council as an institution where production and political sovereignty merge.
• XREF: Sets up the contrast the book later draws when the new order of austerity and hierarchy suppresses exactly this self-government model. — connects to: Italian Red Biennium workers built self-governed production institutions across land and factories — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 186; Factory councils aimed to merge economics and politics through workers’ control — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 581; Postwar labor radicals saw workers’ councils as the seed of a Soviet republic — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 479 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Workers’ self-governance sought to abolish the wage relationship and production for profit #expands (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 186
• The Russian proletariat invented the State of the Councils from its own class experience. #corroborates (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 91
• Organic working-class intellectuals link production roles to political direction #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 248