Abstract

This paper re-examines and discusses Gramsci's approach to workers' councils in an attempt to decide if it can be harmonised with modern theories of producer cooperatives. In Marx's (rather than Gramsci's) view, to avert the chaos that would ensue upon the abolition of capitalism, after the revolution it is necessary to keep going a market economy (with employee-controlled firms) for a comparatively long period of time. This is an idea which can contribute to put Gramsci's theory in harmony with the modern theories of producer cooperatives arguing that workers could receive the right to appropriate the residual by a Parliament's resolution without having to fight a violent revolution or establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. The paper discusses if this simple finding is enough to bring the greater part of Gramsci's approach into line with Ward's and Vanek's.