BY Nadia Mahmood

The protests in Iraq are not just around a particular demand, but against the whole governmental system. How can an alternative government be won, and what sort of government?

We talk about councils – in place of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, we want councils which establish direct democracy in neighbourhoods and workplaces. When there is a political vacuum, these bodies can take control of cities. However, this kind of idea is unfamiliar to the younger generation in particular, who know little about socialist traditions. The young people in the protests we discuss with often think we just mean something like a muncipal council. There’s also a feeling that if we organise such bodies, they will immediately come under attack from sectarian militias. In fact that happened in a suburb of Nasiriya where we tried it in October and November.

How did that take place?

We work there through a group called the October Uprising Committee, which published a bulletin two or three times a week, calling on people to organise councils locally. Two groups of young people in the city took it up, but they were quickly approached and hassled by Shia militia. To organise in a square is one thing, but to go back and try to organise your neighbourhood is quite another.

Other influential proteesters have rejected the idea, and instead proposed councils of representatives from the occupied squares. This is obviously an important idea, which lacks the key elements of delegation and representation. But to try to relate to other pragmatically, we we agreed. At least that allows some element of coordinated organisation.

What about councils in workplaces?

In some of the key industries, for instance electricity and oil, it is just not possible to get a look in. The oil workers, who could be decisive, have not joined the protests or taken action as an organised force. Some individuals have come as individuals after work, but that’s a different matter. Some protesters have blockaded the oil fields, but it’s not an action by the workers themselves, who know they would be punished. Unions do exist but essentially externally; they do not organise seriously in the workplace itself.

What about universities?

Our student comrades and friends are working to establish student unions; and our other young people are working to set up unemployed unions. We have discussed the idea of councils with student and young people in the squares, but the idea has not taken off widley. I fear there is still a widespread idea of political power as something external, or from above, not flowing from below, from the movement. Of course the bourgeois political parties that are present in the squares constantly reinforce this idea.

Read more from the source: Workers Liberty