Captain, sorry I didn't get around to posting a response to this till today.

The kind of government socialists envision is a government of elected workers' councils.

At various times in world history, workers have actually put up -- thrown up -- in situations of great labor insurgency workers' councils.

This has happened here and in other countries as well.

It happened here in Seattle, Washington, in 1919.  A great labor strike that was a general labor strike which occupied the entire city of Seattle that year led at one point to the formation by all the workers and their organizations that year of an elected workers council that actually for a short period of time governed the city, distributed the goods to the people of the city, replaced the police with the workers who policed the city, did everything which governments have historically done.

These sorts of elected workers' councils have also emerged in other situations of labor insurgency in many, many, many countries at many times in world history.

The first recorded instance of this happening in modern history was the Paris Commune of 1872, an elected workers' council that actually governed the entire city of Paris, France, in 1872 for about  3 months during a labor takeover of the entire city.  Prussian troops had stationed themselves outside Paris and were preparing to take over Paris, and the French bourgeois and propertied and possessing classes fled the city and the working class people of Paris were organized into the Paris National Guard, and the rank-and-file people of the Paris National Guard decided they had to simultaneously defend the city of Paris from the Prussian troops stationed outside the city and also govern the city.  Workers from factories all over the city elected delegates to the Commune or workers' council.  They governed the city for 3 months.

The propertied and possessing classes were so enraged that they basically became traitors to their own country, France, and requested the Prussian troops massacre the Paris workers once the Prussian troops got into the inside of the city of Paris.  The Prussian troops, however, came into the city with French troops, and some of the historical evidence suggests the Prussian troops were actually less barbaric in how many of the Paris workers involved in formation of the Commune were slaughtered by Prussians than were slaughtered by the troops of the French military man, Thiers.

20 thousand Paris working people were slaughtered in cold blood in order for the Paris and French capitalist propertied and possessing classes to reestablish the rule inside Paris of the capitalist propertied and possessing classes.  The violence was entirely done by the capitalist propertied and possessing classes and the troops at their disposal.

Marx wrote a book on the Paris Commune, and it was entitled, The Civil War in France.  Later, a Frenchman who was an adherent of socialism named Lissagaray wrote a History of the Commune.  He wrote it in 1876, some years after the 1872 Paris Commune.

The next major instance in world recorded history of the establishment by working class people of elected councils as the form of the kind of workers' government they anticipated was elected workers' councils in the Russian Revolution of 1905-1906.  The Russian word for "council" is "soviet."  The workers of the major Russian cities elected councils in 1905.  The peasants in the countryside elected councils in 1905.  Some of the sailors on some of the ships elected sailors' councils.  The main council or soviet was the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, and it was the main council because St. Petersburg was the capitol at that time of the country.  (Moscow only much later became the capitol of Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of November 7, 1917, some years later.)

The elected councils of the working people became, in effect, two things in one.

1.  One thing they became were the organizations of struggle of all the working people.  The councils included in them delegates representing not only workers in unions, but workers not in unions.  The councils included all elements of the working classes -- from the skilled through the unskilled workers, the semi-skilled workers, workers of all nationalities, all religions, no religion, all colors, all heritages.  They were seen as the primary organs through which the working people would struggle for their rights.

2.  They were also seen, in embryo, as the organizations of a future government of the working classes of the country.

This idea of the councils in Russia as the organizations of the future workers' government emerged over time, and it was not at first seen by all as that kind of thing, because in the Russian Revolution of 1905-1906, most of the major socialists who were the workers and intellectuals who tended to get elected by the rank-and-file workers and working people to leadership of the councils did not have as their perspective a workers' government in Russia, but mainly had as their perspective simply a bourgeois-democratic republican revolution in Russia and the establishment of a capitalist bourgeois democratic republican type of Russian society, and ousting czarism and medievalism and semi-feudalism in Russia and replacing it with some kind of capitalist bourgeois democratic republican government.  In that sort of situation, as most of the more middle-of-the-road socialists saw it, workers' councils or soviets would not be the kind of parliament existing in a capitalist bourgeois-democratic-republican government, but, instead, the kind of elected parliament or legislative assembly would be more along the lines of what we are familiar with here in the U.S., or what exists in England or in France or in Germany today, sort of a congress or house of commons or legislative assembly or that sort of bourgeois parliamentary body.

But the experience of the 1905-1906 Russian Revolution persuaded some of the leading socialists, such as, for instance, Leon Trotsky, who in 1905 had been one of the socialists elected to lead the St. Petersburg of Workers' Deputies, that a workers' government could form in Russia, and become the spark for an all-European workers' takeover of power in all capitalist countries.  Trotsky put down his perspective in his 1906 book summing up his idea of the lessons of the 1905-1906 Russian Revolution entitled, Results and Prospects.  In 1917, there were two Russian Revolutions, the first in March, and the second in November, but in the months in between, workers and peasants and soldiers and sailors threw up all over the country elected councils or, in the Russian language, soviets, as the Russian people called councils.  The Bolsheviks, Lenin's political party, was the one party in that period between the two Revolutions that decided they would work in the councils, because the councils were the organizations to which the workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors -- 98 percent of the people of the country -- gave their allegiance and gave their adherence.  They were, in practical and de facto and real effective terms, the real organizations to which the masses of the country paid attention and whose authority the masses of the people obeyed.  The old bourgeois parliament established in the period between the March 1917 overturn of czarism, and the November 1917 overturn of bourgeois capitalism, got no obedience from the great mass of the Russian people.  The great mass of the Russian people paid attention to and gave their allegiance to the elected councils.  The peasants gave their allegiance to their elected councils of peasants' delegates, their soviets of peasants' delegates.  The farm laborers gave their allegiance to or their obedience to orders from their elected councils or soviets of farm laborers' delegates.  The rank-and-file armed forces soldiers gave their allegiance to and paid attention to and gave their obedience to orders from their own elected councils or soviets of elected delegates of the rank-and-file armed forces soldiers.  The rank-and-file sailors on the ships and in the navy gave their allegiance to and paid attention to and gave their obedience to orders from their own elected councils or soviets of elected delegates from their elected councils or soviets of sailors' delegates.  The workers in the factories gave their allegiance to or paid attention to or obeyed orders from their own elected councils or soviets of delegates of factory workers.  The workers of the mines gave their allegiance to or paid attention to or obeyed orders from their own elected councils or soviets of delegates of mine workers.  The workers of the department and retail stores gave their allegiance to or paid attention to or obeyed orders from their own elected councils of elected delegates of workers from the stores and shops.  The office workers gave their allegiance to or paid attention to or obeyed orders from their own elected delegates of the councils of office workers. 

The councils or soviets taken  together were the representative, democratic bodies of the overwhelming majority of the people of Russia, as in Paris in 1872, the Commune or council had been the democratically representative organ of the overwhelming majority of the people of Paris, the working people of Paris.

In 1905, roughly at the same time as the Russian Revolution was happening in Russia and the working people were throwing up elected councils of delegates of the workers, farm laborers, peasants, sailors all over the country, the first convention of a major American industrial labor union calling itself the Industrial Workers of the World was convening and meeting in Chicago, Illinois.  The Industrial Workers of the World, IWW, for short, became one of the most militant labor unions in American history, and it spread from America into other countries.  And its leadership in 1905, at least, at its founding convention, tended to be workers influenced by some variety of militant socialist program.  The workers who elected the delegates to the first convention of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 were very class conscious workers.  That is, they were very conscious of their class position in society and they were very much interested in making a workers' world, a world in which the workers governed the whole world.

These workers and their elected delegates developed the idea of the kind of government they wanted.  And the kind of government they wanted was very similar in nature to a government of elected workers' councils.  They even had an idea of how an industrial working class governed country and industrial working class governed world would be established, and they established a pretty detailed plan in their own minds of the kind of government of the workers they envisioned.  They even divided up all the industries and kinds of workers and showed how all the workers would elected delegates to their own industrial governing organizations in a workers' governed world.  They categorized all workers they envisioned as being the government.

It was envisioned essentially as a direct democracy, much like the Paris Commune of 1872 had been, and like the Russian Soviets of 1905-1906 were.

And as the Russian workers were establishing their own elected councils in 1905-1906, the American Industrial Workers of the World meeting at its founding convention in Chicago, Illinois, in 1905, sent comradely and brotherly greetings to the workers and the people of Russia whom the American workers who created the Industrial Workers of the World saw fighting for their, the Russian working peoples', liberation and freedom and emancipation.

So the Industrial Workers of the World had a similar concept of the kind of government of the workers which emerged in practice out of the Paris Commune of 1872, then out of the elected Soviets of working people first in 1905-1906 in Russia, then in 1917 in Russia.

Many other countries' working people took the road of electing workers' councils over many years in struggles for the emancipation and freedom and liberation of the working classes from wage slavery.

For instance, in 1918, at the defeat of Germany in World War One, the German workers of field and farm and factory and mine and mill and office and the German rank-and-file soldiers and rank-and-file sailors elected councils just as the Russian working people had done a year earlier in 1917 as their, the German workers', organizations of struggle, and as embryonic governments of the working classes.

The same thing happened in Hungary in 1919.  The same thing happened in Italy in the years of 1920-1921 in a great upsurge of the Italian workers there.  This movement spread into China and the Chinese workers established and elected workers' councils in Peking (which is today called Beijing), and in Shanghai and in other working class industrial centers in 1925-1926 during periods of great labor upsurge in those years. 

The working people of Vietnam again did this in 1945-1946 in their struggle for both national liberation and for an independent and socialist Vietnam.  They called their elected councils "peoples' committees" or "peoples' assemblies," but these committees or assemblies were exactly the same sorts of elected councils of workers and peasants as earlier had been elected at other times in other countries.

In the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against the Stalinist repression and the Stalinist government of Hungary, the Hungarian workers threw up workers' councils all over the country, and the main center of working class resistance there against Stalinism and against the Russian tanks sent into Hungary to crush the working peoples' resistance was the Budapest Workers' Council in Budapest, the capitol of the country.

In fact, interestingly, there was a guy in Hungary, a British supporter of the British Communist Party, named Peter Fryer, and he had originally been sent into Hungary to write about the events.  But what he observed going on there blew him away.  He had earlier been a Stalinist.  But what was happening in front of his eyes were, the Hungarian workers were electing soviets, just like the Russian workers had elected in the 1917 two Russian Revolutions.  So Fryer started writing back to his British Communist Party newspaper honest articles about what he was personally observing and witnessing in Hungary.  The British Communist Party censored all the writings and articles he wrote back to his home Communist Party newspaper.  They would not put in his articles that the Hungarian workers were doing what the Russian workers had done in 1917.  They censored them and prevented them from appearing.

Fryer witnessed, for instance, that the Hungarian workers were not at all interested in returning to a private capitalistic system.  Some of the leading Hungarian revolutionaries in 1956 who opposed the Stalinist "Communist" Party government were themselves members of the Hungarian Communist Party, but viewed the leadership as traitors to communism.  One was a long-time Hungarian Communist, a guy named Pal Maleter.  Maleter had been an anti-Nazi fighter in World War Two, and a long-time Stalinist, but a left-wing Stalinist, left of center in his politics.  He became a fervent supporter of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.  When he was interviewed and asked, "What if the private capitalists and landlords try to use this as an excuse to get the power back in the country?," Maleter would point to the pistol on his belt and say, "We will deal with that if they try it."  This was the attitude of most of the Hungarian working class revolutionaries.  They hated Stalinism and they hated the Stalinist repression of the fake "Communist" Party bureaucracy ruling the country, but they also, for instance, when the first waves of Russian working class troops came into the country, would walk right up to the Russian troops and start to discuss with them and tell them, "You are crushing a working class socialist revolution."  In fact, they were so effective that the first waves of Russian working class troops sent into Hungary became unreliable to the Kremlin Stalinist government; the last thing they wanted was a working class political revolution based on communist principles that might start in Hungary and spread into the Soviet Union and reestablish real soviets in the Soviet Union again!  So the Kremlin got more reliable troops and finally succeeded in crushing the Hungarian Revolution.

But the general labor strike was the central core weapon of the people of Hungary fighting against the Stalinist regime for their workers' liberation movement in 1956 and in 1957, and that general strike still continued for a long time.  The Hungarian Revolution was a real socialist revolution based on socialist principles against the Stalinist regime of a fake "socialist" and fake "Communist" regime.  The overwhelming bulk of the rank-and-file of the Hungarian Communist Party simply dissolved and most of them went over to the side of the Hungarian Revolution, because it was an effort to establish a real workers' government there against the Stalinists.  They didn't want to do away, however, with state planning or the state planned economy, because they saw a lot of good things in that.  They wanted to establish workers' democratic control of it through elected workers' councils of their own.

That is the kind of government socialists see as a workers' government.  We think sooner or later it will be established all over the world.

But we also think to get it, workers need our own party independent of all bourgeois capitalist parties, and also independent of all parties that favor either some kind of bourgeois private capitalism, or some kind of kissing up to private capitalism.  We oppose Stalinism, social-democracy, and other fake "socialist" types of movements and parties, and we favor authentic kinds of socialist movements and parties and programs.  Nothing less, in our view, will do.

A workers' party will be the mobilizing tool of the workers to inspire and induce and organize them to take into their own hands the power of society.  I don't think the working people will simply do that on our own.  We need a party of our own to do that.  But I think the kind of government we establish will be a government of our own elected councils, and that will be what is a workers' government here in the future, as well as in other countries.  And it will be what administers a coming planned economy.

Socialists don't like the institution of the "state" as it is traditionally thought of; we don't, that is, think of the traditional top-down, hierarchical, authoritarian kind of state as the kind of thing we like.

But we do see in collectivized state planning a superior principle over private capitalist market-based economics and the unplanned nature of that kind of economy.  We don't, however, think without a workers' government of elected councils of working people there can be a real workers' government.

That is what socialists of my sort of perspective have historically envisioned as what we mean when we speak of a workers' government or government of the working people, Captain.

Thank you for affording me the opportunity of explaining what we mean by that.

Best for now,

Allan

is capitalist, socialist or communist.

Those labels come into play when discussing who owns inudstries and real property. If these things are publicly/state owned, we have socialism or communism. If they are privately owned, we have capitalism.

Unfortunately, it seems that Republican elected officials, candidates and pundits' reckless use of these words to describe Democrats has caused wide swaths of the people to forget what they mean.

Indeed, if you harken back to 1930s and 1940s Germany. you have private ownership of property and industry but industries took direction and financing from the government to produce the war machine. Add hypernationalism, wars of aggression and genocide and you have a good example of right wing fascism and national-socialism. Dont be fooled by the word "Socialism" being present in "National-Socialism". Nazism had nothing to do with Socialism.

See my site at http://www.opednews.com/author/author75.html