ABSTRACT
This chapter reassesses Cornelius Castoriadis’ engagement with the worker council phenomenon in order to articulate an underappreciated ontological content embedded within council democracy. Castoriadis’ early theorisation of council organisation, initially undertaken within the context of his critique of bureaucratic management in the Soviet Union and the advanced capitalist countries, takes on an additional significance in light of his later philosophical turn, and in particular his effort to elaborate the ontology of the social-historical and locate the potential for democratic autonomy in the chaotic flux of the human psyche. I argue that the democratic council as an institutional form can ultimately be interpreted as a concrete medium for the expression of that non-determinate creative desire that is the foundation of Castoriadis’ philosophical anthropology. Contrary to all forms of representative and liberal government, the councils are an institutional order that have the potential to collectively affirm human autonomy and creativity through sublimating psychic desire. In the final instance this analysis will construct a new ethical defence for both radical democratic organisation and the councils as an institutional form for such organisation.
