Ours to Master and to Own

Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present

Dario Azzellini, Immanuel Ness, Dario Azzellini, Immanuel Ness

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781608461707
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions,
fought bitter strikes, and gone so far as to challenge the very premises of the system by creating
institutions of democratic self-management aimed at controlling production without bosses. With
specific examples drawn from every corner of the globe and every period of modern history, this
pathbreaking volume comprehensively traces this often underappreciated historical tradition.
Ripe with lessons drawn from historical and contemporary struggles for workers' control, Ours to
Master and to Own is essential reading for those struggling to create a new world from the ashes
of the old.

Immanuel Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and edits WorkingUSA.

Dario Azzellini is a writer, documentary director, and political scientist at Johannes Kepler University in Linz.

Part I

Workers’ Councils

Historical Overview and Theoretical Debate

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1

Workers’ Control and Revolution

Victor Wallis

In the perpetual striving of the left to integrate long-range vision and immediate practice, the idea of workers’ control occupies a special place.¹ On the one hand, its generalized application would satisfy one of the main requirements for a stateless society; on the other, the basic units and the specific measures involved are such that it can sometimes be implemented within particular enterprises in an otherwise capitalist framework. From the first of these perspectives, workers’ control has always been one of the most radical possible demands, indistinguishable in effect from the communist ideal, while from the second it has been perceived as limited, innocuous, and easily co-optable.

How can a single demand appear at once so easy and so difficult, so harmless and so explosive? The contradiction lies, of course, in the system that has given rise to the demand. Prior to the development of capitalism, the concept of “workers’ control of the production process” could not have been a demand; it was a simple fact of life (within the limits allowed by nature). Hence the apparent accessibility of workers’ control, which on principle reflects no more than the capacity of all humans to think as well as to do. In these terms, it should not be surprising that workers on occasion take over and run productive enterprises without necessarily having an explicit socialist consciousness or political strategy. The faculties they draw upon for such initiatives are not so much new as they are long-suppressed—for the majority of the population.

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It is the overcoming of this suppression, as old as capitalism itself, that constitutes the explosive side of workers’ control. What workers’ control points to is more than just a new way of organizing production; it is also the release of human creative energy on a vast scale. As such it is inherently revolutionary. But at the same time, because of the very weight of what it must overcome, it appears correspondingly remote from day-to-day struggles. As a political rallying point, it has two specific drawbacks. First, its urgency in many situations is not likely to be as great as that of survival demands; second, its full application will remain limited as long as there are economic forces beyond the reach of the workers—whether within a given country or outside it (Dallemagne 1976, 114). Concern with these dimensions is often seen as precluding an emphasis on workers’ control and, as a result, the self-management impulse, despite its original naturalness, is consigned to utopia.

Such a dismissal is altogether unjustified. The growing interest in workers’ control since the late 1960s cannot be explained merely by its timeless qualities. As in Marx’s critique of capitalism, it reflects a definite historical juncture. The countries with extreme physical privation are no longer the only ones in which the system’s breakdown is manifest. The advanced capitalist regimes are likewise in question, if not for the first time. A new feature of the post-1960s crisis is precisely a redefinition of the concept of basic needs. The “environment,” after all, exists inside as well as outside the workplace, and the old distinction between survival needs (identified with wages) and other demands (self-determination, participation, and control) is becoming increasingly blurred. Linked to this is the fact that the fragmentation of the capitalist work process has reached a limit in the leading industrial sectors and is fast approaching it in clerical and sales operations (Bourdet and Guillerm 1975, ch. 7). As the reaction proceeds, there is no reason for it to stop halfway. Finally, with the rightward evolution of the Chinese leadership (the major international model in the third quarter of the twentieth century), new space has opened on the left to reexamine longheld assumptions about revolutionary organization.

But despite all such arguments for placing workers’ control on the agenda, one may well remain skeptical as to its real promise. Consider first the potential significance of isolated self-managed or cooperative enterprises. Their usefulness as models is limited in several ways. They are generally small, and if they grow, they tend to take on traditional capitalistic incentives and administrative practices.² They are unlikely to emerge in core industries simply because the terms of a negotiated property transfer would be beyond the financial reach of the workers. A second possibility to consider would be some of the West European reform models. These seem to have stopped short of all but the most token worker input except in the Swedish case. In Sweden, the results are more impressive, extending to major changes in the work process, flexibility in scheduling, and even the beginnings of a collective input into production decisions (Peterson 1977). However, this is still not control; it does not reflect a decisive shift of power.

As a third alternative, we might consider those post-capitalist societies that instituted some form of elective principle at the factory level. As of the late 1970s, the two major cases in point were Yugoslavia and China. But in both countries the measures were limited in their scope³ and were subsequently offset by decisive reversions to earlier practice: market-oriented in the case of Yugoslavia; bureaucratic in the case of China. More generally, however, the regimes and leaderships of first-epoch socialism tended to view their own political rule as obviating the need for democratic restructuring of the workplace. Cuba, in more recent years, would become the first country with a broad socialist agenda to gradually implement worker-control measures following an initial transfer of class power at the level of the state.

The Cuban Revolution constitutes a kind of historical bridge between, on the one hand, the revolutions and regimes precipitated by imperialist invasions (1914–1945) and led by vanguard parties, and, on the other, the post-1989 wave of grassroots movements—most evident in Latin America—which from the outset accorded new emphasis to mechanisms of popular participation.⁴ This latter development heralds a fresh chapter in the global history of workers’ control. Until this most recent period, however, workers’ participation in management normally fell very far short of control except in very isolated cases—even where considerable social upheaval had intervened. While workers’ control thus did not appear impossible, it at least seemed to require unusual conditions for its success.

There is one type of experience, however, that transcends all boundaries: the experience of the revolutionary periods themselves. Workers’ control has gone further and deeper during such periods than at any other times, whether pre- or post-revolutionary. Moreover, far from being peculiar to this or that crisis, workers’ control initiatives have arisen during all such moments. Clearly, we are dealing with a phenomenon of universal force and appeal, as suggested by two immediate considerations. First is the range of settings in which the initiatives arose. Without setting any comprehensive criteria as to the depth or thrust of the crises, a listing would have to include: Russia 1917–18, Germany 1918–19, Hungary 1919, Italy 1920, Spain 1936–39, Czechoslovakia 1945–47, Hungary and Poland 1956, Algeria 1962–65, China 1966–69, France and Czechoslovakia 1968, Chile 1970–73, and Portugal 1974–75.⁴ Second and more decisive is the fact that in no case did the radical initiative die a natural death. Although there may have been natural disadvantages (inexperience, excesses, or abuses), what killed the initiative in every case was not any loss of momentum, but rather the threat or use of armed force.

If we grant, then, that workers’ control has displayed a core of viability, it remains for us to ask what all these experiences imply as to its possible institutionalization under stable conditions. Focusing first on the Russian case and then on three cases (Italy, Spain, Chile) more directly pertinent to advanced capitalist democracies, we shall explore such matters as the capacities of the workers, the ripeness of surrounding conditions, and the role of political leadership. We shall then consider possible new configurations suggested by more recent developments in Cuba and Venezuela.

Proletariat and Dictatorship in Revolutionary Russia

The Russian experience inescapably sets the terms for any comparative discussion. In its combination of hopes and disappointments, it was certainly a prototype. Its uniqueness is that—despite the immensity of the country’s peasant population—it was the only revolution to have triumphed on the basis of an industrial working class.⁵ This feature, combined with the forcefulness of Lenin’s writings, has given the Bolshevik approach a historic influence on discussions of workers’ control that far exceeds the revolution’s long-term attainments in that area.

In fact, the Bolshevik leadership, from the moment it took power in October 1917, entered upon a collision course with workers’ self-management initiatives. Although Lenin applauded such initiatives during the whole pre-October period,⁶ his position after October is unambiguous: “large-scale machine industry—which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism—calls for absolute and strict unity of will.

.... But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one” (Lenin 1971a, 424; Lenin’s emphasis).

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Despite the unprecedented surge of factory takeovers that occurred throughout 1917, the Bolshevik leadership looked upon such actions as at most an expression of revolt against the bourgeoisie. It did not treat them as a form to build upon in the course of a transition to socialism. Instead, going along with the emphasis on obedience, Lenin repeatedly urged a prominent managerial role for former capitalists. When the Bolsheviks adopted the slogan of “workers’ control,” therefore, they made clear that they understood “control” in the limited European sense of “checking” (Brinton 1970, 12). While the performance of the ex-capitalists was thus indeed to be “controlled,” Lenin never spelled out what aspects of the production process the workers would be empowered to judge. What this meant in practice, however, is clearly suggested in his remarks about Taylorism, namely, that if a given method can quadruple productivity for the benefit of the capitalists, it can just as well do so for the benefit of the working class.⁷

In line with this approach, the Soviet government reacted with consistent disfavor to worker-control initiatives, even where the alternative was a factory shutdown (Voline 1974, 289ff). Lenin defended this overall position by referring to the urgency of the country’s economic tasks and to the inexperience of the workers (Lenin 1971b, 451). He did not consider the possibility of using the old managers merely as consultants, but instead accepted the idea that they should retain prime authority. In defense of this stance, one can point out that many workers escaping the old discipline abused their freedom of action (Avrich 1967, 162f); however, the widespread heroism displayed by workers in the civil war suggests that if given a meaningful opportunity, they might well have acted differently. While critics of self-management are correct in stressing the need for coordination, there is no reason to view this as ruling out—particularly in periods of revolutionary mobilization—an increased reliance on rank-and-file activism.

What was at issue, in effect, was an entire approach to the transitional process. The acceptance of Taylorist methods was just one component—albeit a central one—of Lenin’s larger view of the Russian economy as still requiring full development of the capitalist production process even if under (presumed) working-class leadership. Lenin referred to this contradictory stage as “state capitalism,” which he saw as a necessary prerequisite to socialism (Lenin 1971b, 440). Its essence was a continuous increase of economic concentration. Lenin labeled opponents of this process petty bourgeois, even though the associated rationalization of industry might just as well be resisted by workers. He denounced such resistance in “‘Left Wing’ Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality” (May 1918), in which he treats workers’ self-management as being not only premature but even counterproductive to his overall strategy of reaching socialism by way of state capitalism. The either/or nature of his position is emphatic: “Our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not to shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it” (1971b, 444; Lenin’s emphasis).

If the workers, however, are so ill-equipped for self-management, how can their party be justified in taking state power? Lenin takes up this question of prematurity in general terms in the same essay, arguing convincingly against the kind of purism that requires a perfect evenness in the development of all forces before any step forward can be taken (1971b, 448). But this properly dialectical response is offset by Lenin’s decidedly undialectical exaltation of state capitalism. For while the latter approach could and did kill workers’ self-management, the dialectical approach, with its recognition that people’s faculties develop in conjunction with their responsibilities, prompts precisely the opposite suggestion: namely, if it was not too soon for the workers (through their parties) to seize state power, why was it too soon for them to start using it to transform production relations?⁸

What is at issue here is not in the nature of an “error” on Lenin’s part. In terms of the immediate priority of defeating the counterrevolution, he was undeniably successful, although whether his approach was the only one possible remains an open question. Two things are certain, however. First, the supposedly temporary restraints upon workers’ initiatives were never removed (Holubenko 1975, 23); second, the economic assumptions that seemed to justify them were not peculiar to Lenin but were widely shared in his time, even among Marxists. Briefly put, the assumptions are (1) growth is good; (2) results are more important than processes; and (3) capitalists get results. Linked to them in Lenin’s thinking was a more specific belief in the neutrality of capitalist management techniques (Taylorism) and, with it, the implicit conclusion that Communists can play the capitalist game without getting drawn into it.

The irony of all this is that while Lenin’s approach may have been necessary to prevent the immediate counterrevolution, it undoubtedly worked to facilitate the longer-term restoration of traditional hierarchical management practices. The negative lesson of the Soviet experience is therefore clear: socialist revolution will not lead directly to the establishment of workers’ control unless the appropriate measures are incorporated into the process through all its stages. What the Russian workers accomplished in 1917 was of unparalleled importance in raising this possibility. If their efforts failed, it was not due to any inherent flaw in what they were striving for, but rather to historical circumstances specific to the Russian case.

The circumstances in question all relate to Russia’s position as pacesetter. First, as already suggested, the period itself was one in which the impressiveness of capitalism’s productive attainments was still largely unquestioned. Second, the very economic backwardness that made Russian society so explosive also required that any revolutionary government place a premium upon growth. Third, the workers themselves operated under a series of specific disadvantages, the most decisive of which was the lack of sufficient tradition and organization to enable them to coordinate their self-management initiatives. And finally, in response to the civil war (an externally supported counterrevolution), huge numbers of the most dedicated workers—two hundred thousand by April 1918 from Moscow alone—departed for the front (Murphy 2005, 65f ). For any who may have returned, the moment of their potential collective strength was lost.

The Politics of Revolutionary Workers’ Control: Three Cases

The Russian experience, although the first of its kind, was also the one in which the anticapitalist struggle came closest to success. We have seen, though, how distant it still was from a genuine victory. ...