50 Years Ago: When the Workers Ran the Factories (2001)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently the Trade Unions International of Metal and Engineering Workers (which is part of the World Federation of Trade Unions) issued a pamphlet describing how the Italian steel workers refused to allow the owners to close steel factories during 1949 and 1950, and instead continued at their work without wages and without professional management, electing temporary managers from their own ranks. While the workers ran the factories themselves, they built ships, aeroplanes, furnaces; they improved efficiently; and by introducing new processes, they economised considerably on production costs–for example, at the Ilva-Bolzaneto works at Genoa, they reduced the price of a kilogram of metal from 44 to 28 lire, and in order to economise on oil, they invented a process which saved 500 kilograms of oil in every eight hours of work.

It Can be Done

This episode in Italy has a number of useful lessons for all socialists. First, that workers can run the factories by themselves; and that they can not only maintain but improve efficiency. Second, that this kind of movement, which consists of industrial action alone cannot permanently put the workers in control of the factories. As the pamphlet itself says, “there was no point in cherishing the illusion of stable and lasting working-class management in a capitalist regime.” Like all such experiments, this one would have ended immediately had the Government decided to employ resolutely the coercive forces at its disposal. Italy thus reinforces the lesson of Russia after 1917, where the system of worker-elected managements, which operated for a short time after the Revolution, was soon abolished by the Bolsheviks in favour of State-appointed managements when the former system was seen to be incompatible with State-capitalism.

[From “Passing Comment”, Socialist Standard, November 1951]

Worker co-operatives in the capitalist system (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Proponents of capitalism would have you believe that there is no alternative, that the free market provides the most efficient system of exchange and that any deviation risks endangering freedom and prosperity. This is a falsehood, for humans have demonstrated throughout history a remarkable capacity to co-operate without private ownership and the insatiable need for profit. Closer examination of worker co-operatives, despite their long-standing orientation towards generating wealth within the capitalist system, offers a glimpse at how humanity may one day succeed in recasting incentivisation to meet people’s needs rather than to make a profit.

The history of worker co-operatives and self-management is deeply rooted in the 19th-century efforts to address the socio-economic challenges brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Robert Owen, a visionary social reformer and industrialist in the early 1800s, laid the groundwork for the co-operative movement. Owen championed the idea that workers should collectively own and manage the means of production to ensure fair wages and better working conditions. His experiments at New Lanark in Scotland and later at New Harmony in the United States provided early models of co-operative living and working. Others like Charles Fourier, a French social theorist, contributed to the co-operative movement by proposing the concept of phalansteries—self-sustaining communities where individuals could live and work co-operatively. Although Fourier’s ideas were not widely implemented, they inspired later developments in the co-operative movement.

Elsewhere, the Rochdale Society of Pioneers, formed in 1844 in England, played a pivotal role in shaping the co-operative principles that persist today. They established a successful consumer co-operative, emphasising open membership, democratic control, and distribution of surplus based on patronage. Indeed, the so-called ‘Rochdale Principles’ became a blueprint for subsequent co-operative endeavours.

The modest successes of the co-operative movement led Marx to pronounce that worker self-management proved the superfluousness of capitalist managerialism; a statement ostensibly corroborated decades later during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Worker co-operatives and self-management gained prominence across the Republican zone as a means for labourers to assert control over their workplaces. In Catalonia, particularly in the city of Barcelona, workers took over factories and implemented self-management practices. Notable examples include the textile industry with enterprises like Fabrica de Hilaturas Fabra i Coats and the metal industry with companies like Talleres Roca. These initiatives were characterised by worker assemblies, decision-making through consensus, and the elimination of hierarchical structures. The success of these worker co-operatives during the Spanish Civil War was evident in increased productivity and improved working conditions. The textile co-operative, Fabra i Coats, for instance, not only maintained production levels but also witnessed enhanced efficiency under worker control. Similarly, in the metal industry, Talleres Roca thrived under self-management, showcasing the viability of co-operative principles in sustaining economic activity during a tumultuous period.

Contradictions

However, the existence of worker co-operatives within a capitalist system has inevitably led to certain contradictions. Notwithstanding the inculcation of workplace democracy and equality, the necessity to compete and accumulate in the broader system persists, and in face of these structural demands, worker co-operatives have often proven ineffective and unreliable.

Despite his visionary ideals, Owen’s experiments at New Lanark and New Harmony faced internal strife and financial difficulties. The co-operative model struggled with issues of governance, as decision-making by consensus often led to slow and inefficient processes. In New Harmony, the lack of a clear organisational structure and the imposition of Owen’s communal ideas contributed to the ultimate failure of the experiment.

Similarly, during the Spanish Civil War, worker co-operatives in Barcelona faced both internal and external challenges. While some co-operatives thrived, others struggled with management issues, as decision-making by assembly sometimes hindered effective responses to rapidly changing circumstances. Even the relatively successful Fabrica de Hilaturas Fabra i Coats faced difficulties due to disagreements among workers on key decisions, highlighting the challenges of implementing democratic practices in high-stakes situations. External factors too, such as wartime pressures and political instability, also impacted the sustainability of these initiatives. The Barcelona co-operatives, despite notable successes, faced challenges in the broader socio-political context of the Spanish Civil War, ultimately contributing to their limitations and demonstrating the complexity of implementing worker self-management in tumultuous times.

Mondragon

That said, worker co-operatives endure today. The Mondragon Co-operative Corporation, based in the Basque region of Spain, is an often-cited example. Founded in 1956 by a group of visionary individuals led by Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, Mondragon has grown into one of the world’s largest and most successful co-operative networks. Proponents point to the active participation of employees in decision-making processes through a system of co-determination, where major decisions are made collectively by the workers and management, as well as the commitment to equality of income. While wage differentials exist based on skills and responsibilities, the ratio between the highest and lowest-paid worker is significantly lower than in traditional corporations. This approach promotes a more equitable distribution of wealth among the co-operative members. In terms of profit distribution, a portion of the profits is reinvested in the co-operative, another portion is allocated to social and cultural activities, and the rest is distributed among the members.

Critics, however, argue that Mondragon, while often lauded as a successful worker co-operative, still operates within the broader capitalist system, raising concerns about its limitations and contradictions. One major criticism is that, despite its co-operative structure, Mondragon has adopted certain hierarchical elements, resembling a conventional corporation. While the co-operative members elect management, there exists a professional managerial class that holds considerable decision-making power, potentially diluting the essence of true workplace democracy.

Additionally, Mondragon’s global expansion has led to accusations of replicating conventional corporate practices, including outsourcing and wage differentials, especially in its international subsidiaries. Critics contend that this compromises the co-operative’s commitment to equality, as the wage gaps between the highest and lowest-paid workers have widened in some instances.

Furthermore, the co-operative has faced challenges in maintaining its founding principles as it expanded. In certain situations, Mondragon has implemented cost-cutting measures and layoffs, contradicting the ideal of job security within a co-operative framework. The co-operative’s financial structure has also been a subject of scrutiny, with some arguing that it still operates within the capitalistic framework, reliant on traditional banking and financial institutions. These criticisms highlight the complexities and challenges of attempting to establish a fully co-operative model within the capitalist system, revealing that Mondragon, despite its successes, does not represent a complete departure from capitalist structures and practices.

World co-operative commonwealth

Thus, it is evident that simply introducing a system of worker co-operatives cannot expunge capitalism. The worker co-operative in its current form is not a panacea. Like other workplaces it is geared towards the generation of wealth within the capitalist system. However, the worker co-operative endures as an ideal, an alternative framework where decision-making is collective and understanding one’s role in a larger societal context becomes paramount, fostering a spirit of co-operation and shared responsibility.

If humans across the globe were to adopt worker co-operatives within the confines of capitalism, it would likely serve to mitigate some of the exploitation associated with the current economic system by redistributing wealth and cultivating workplace democracy. That said, an integral component of the capitalist system would remain in the form of surplus value and money exchange, and so there would persist a means to profit through the exploitation of workers. The ideal of a global system of co-operatives could only reach its full potential on the basis of world socialism, a system in which production is geared not towards sale and the accumulation of private wealth but towards using one’s abilities to meet both individual and community needs.

John Elliston

Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories: What Next? (2005)

From the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

“cooperatives will never be able to outcompete ordinary capitalist enterprises”

In November anti-capitalists were urged, via email, to send a letter of protest to the President of Argentina about the threat to evict the workers cooperative, set up by former employees, that took over the bankrupt Bauen Hotel in the centre of Buenos Aires two years ago and has been running it ever since.  When in December 2001 the Argentine economy and currency began a melt-down many small and medium-sized enterprises went bankrupt or were simply abandoned by their owners. Faced with joining the already huge and growing army of unemployed, workers in some of these businesses took matters into their own hands. They occupied the workplace and resumed production on their own account.

At the time some saw this as the beginning of a social revolution in which the  workers take over the factories and organise production without the bosses. A more sober assessment was that this was workers, in a crisis situation, reacting in a pragmatic fashion to try to ensure that they had some source of income to maintain themselves and their families. But it did at least show, to any who might not have realised it, that workers can organise production without bosses.

This was not really a mass movement, but it currently involves some 200 enterprises employing in total a maximum of 10,000 people, i.e. the average “recuperated enterprise” as they call themselves (recuperated, that is, from bosses regarded as undeserving or even thieving) is one employing about 50 workers. And 10,000 less unemployed is a drop in the ocean compared with the total number of unemployed in Argentina which, even today, is still over 2 million.

The authorities, not wishing to aggravate an already disastrous economic and financial crisis, accepted this situation as a fait accompli and passed a law allowing workers cooperatives to play a part in rescuing failed businesses. Under this law, local and regional authorities were empowered to compulsorily acquire a failed business and authorise it to be run by a workers cooperative for up to two years pending a settlement with other creditors (the workers themselves were often also creditors in respect of unpaid wages) or the former owners. Some recuperated enterprises went down this road. Others negotiated a lease with the former owners, which of course involved paying them a share of any profits. Others continued to operate outside the law.

The two years are now coming up, and with the Argentine economy having recovered a little and the social and political situation stabilised, the authorities are beginning to enforce the law, which gives property rights over a business either to the former owners or their creditors. A number of businesses taken over by the workers in 2002 have already been recuperated back from them. Now, it appears, it is the turn of the Bauen Hotel. 

Evicting the bosses and organising production without them is one thing; escaping from the economic laws of the market is another – as, within capitalism, it is not just a question of organising production, but also of selling what is produced. Because of their precarious legal position, the workers cooperatives running a recuperated enterprise have been at a competitive disadvantage. They can’t get proper bank loans and, because ordinary capitalist businesses are not too keen to deal with them, often have to sell to them via a go-between (who naturally demands a share of the profits).

What the workers cooperatives, some of which  are organised in a Movimento Nacional de Empresas Recuperadas, are now demanding is a stable legal framework; basically, that the state or regional or local authorities compulsorily purchase the business they are running and legally hand it over to them. Thus, the petition to the President of Argentina on behalf of the Bauen Hotel cooperative calls upon “the Argentinian government and its legislators to act  immediately to . . . pass a law of definitive expropriation in favour of the Workplace cooperative B.A.U.E.N.”

Apart from wanting to secure their own position, the broader vision of those behind the Bauen cooperative seems to be an economy based on a network of worker-owned businesses. Even anarchists in Argentina, who might be expected to look favourably on this, have criticised it:

“Cooperativism does not provide a real solution to the workers’ situation. It is incapable of providing an answer in the interests of all workers. At no time does it question the capitalist production relationships – it questions only superficial features (monopolies, competition, etc.). Even less can a network of cooperatives create a parallel subsystem to capitalism” (www.zabalaza.net/phorum/read.php?f=2&i=156&t=156).

Yes, cooperatives can only ever involve a minority of workers, and the more they are integrated into the capitalist economy and its profit-seeking, the more their members will have to discipline and pressurise themselves in the way the old bosses did – what used to be known as “self-managed exploitation”.

The Trotskyists have another solution. According to an article in the October Le Monde Diplomatique:

“During 2002 there was a lively debate on whether revived businesses should get involved in capitalist markets. A Trotskyist minority called for nationalisation under worker control. It took over four businesses, including Brukman, a garment factory in Buenos Aires, and Zenon, a tile manufacturer in Neuquén. The workers involved saw the rescue as a first step towards a socialist system in which the state would control economic planning. The hard-left parties associated with them did not believe that cooperatives could survive in a capitalist market” (mondediplo.com/2005/10/13survey).

It is certainly true that cooperatives will never be able to outcompete ordinary capitalist enterprises, but the Trotskyists’ alternative of the state subsidising the recuperated enterprises, without requiring them to compete in the marketplace, just to provide jobs is even more unrealistic – and has nothing to do with socialism. (It is more than likely, however, that this is just another of the Trotskyists’ dishonest “transitional demands” which they know can’t be achieved under capitalism but offered as bait to obtain a following for their vanguard party.)

The fact is that there is no way out for workers within the capitalist system. Not cooperatives, not reforms, not trade unions. At most these can only make their situation a little less unbearable. As long as capitalism lasts workers will have to find a source of money one way or another and so will always be in a dependent and precarious position. 

But a number of lessons can be drawn from the recuperated enterprises movement in Argentina.

Firstly, that built into capitalism is a class struggle between those who own the means of wealth production and those who don’t and who are therefore forced by economic necessity to sell their ability to work to those who do. This class struggle is not just over the price and conditions of sale of the commodity workers are selling.

Ultimately, it’s about control over the means of production.  If, as happened in Argentina after the economic melt-down of December 2001, capitalists abandon their factories or, as happened in Russia in 1917, Spain in 1936, and Hungary in 1956, the capitalist state is temporarily incapable of protecting capitalist property, then the workers more or less spontaneously take over their workplaces and keep production going.

Workers are not going to let themselves starve: if the means of production are there, and there’s no state to stop them using them, they’ll go ahead and use them, even if they have no revolutionary pretensions. However, as soon as the state has got its act together again, then it is in a position to confront the workers and re-impose access to the means of production only on its terms.

Which leads to the second lesson: the importance of who controls the state. At the moment, in Argentina as elsewhere, this is in the hands of people favourable to the continuation of capitalism, itself a reflection of the fact that most workers too don’t see any alternative to capitalism. The state, therefore, upholds legal private property rights. The importance of political power is in fact fully recognised by the recuperated enterprises movement.  This is why they are calling for the law on property rights to be changed so as to recognise the property rights of the workers cooperatives which are running recuperated enterprises; which will only happen if they can get the elected law-makers to do so, either by pressuring them from outside or by electing ones  favourable to a change in the law. This is why, too, they want people to petition the President of Argentina.

The end of capitalism can only come as a result of a consciously socialist political movement winning control of political power with a view to abolishing all capitalist property rights and ushering in the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. The preconditions for ending capitalism are a majority socialist consciousness and workers democratically self-organised in a large-scale socialist party. Neither of which, unfortunately, existed in Argentina.

Which is why the recuperated enterprises movement there has proved a dead-end and why the workers cooperatives it gave rise to are now forced to compromise and integrate themselves into capitalism to survive.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Elitism still haunts disenchanted Bolsheviks (2019)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are active wherever workers are developing their ideas through discussion. So a few of us turned up at the weekend conference of ‘Libertarian Marxists’ in Manchester. This was organised mainly by people who had become disenchanted with Bolshevism in the shape of the so-called ‘International Socialism’ group.

It was encouraging to find a number of workers, formerly committed to the extreme centralism of the Vanguard Party, who have seen through that fraud and come out against leadership. Unfortunately it soon became clear that elitist ideas were not dead. The conference was dominated by three speakers (R. Sumner, S. James, M. Orr), who together took up 90 per cent of the time. The air was thick with talk of ‘the intellectuals’ and their relationship to ‘the workers’, and the notion that workers learnt only from personal experience whilst abstract ideas were beyond them—the usual leftist claptrap.

Among the gems were S. James’s announcement that she was a black nationalist, after she had denounced racism(!), and her revelation that ‘workers can’t read big books’. R. Sumner wanted ‘all Socialists’ to unite in bringing out a newspaper, without any ‘contentious arguments’ about what Socialism was. And M. Orr, an advocate of ‘self-management,’ when pushed, said that he was in favour of abolishing wages, but not in favour of abolishing money!

They looked to incidents like the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and the May events in France, to bring ‘Socialism.’ We should not, therefore, take them too seriously, particularly as Mrs. James’s model of a revolution without leaders was Castro’s takeover in Cuba, and Mr. Orr insisted that the socialist revolution would be carried out by a minority, while the majority of the population was passive.

(Socialist Standard, May 1969)

"Solidarity": Not so Solid (1969)

Pamphlet Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Men will never be free from exploitation and oppression until all work is voluntary and access to all goods and services is free. “Socialism” means a world-wide society, democratically controlled, without profits, wages or money. This is a practical proposition now.

All attempts to solve such problems as war, poverty, loneliness, miserable and degrading toil, inside a society based on wages and profits are sure to fail. We, alone of all political organisations, use Marx’s slogan “Abolition of the wages system!”

Thousands of people come forward with plans to re-arrange the wages system. They imagine that slavery can be operated in the interests of slaves! They are wasting their time.

One such school of thought is the political group which calls itself “Solidarity.” Their case is presented in a pamphlet entitled The Meaning of Socialism, which declares that the root of misery in work is, not wage-slavery, but the system of management.

The author, Paul Cardan, proposes to keep the compulsion to work through threat of starvation. He even quotes approvingly St. Paul’s injunction “He that does not work, neither shall he eat.” Production for the market is to be retained in Cardan’s “Socialism” but it is to be “a genuine market for consumer goods, with consumers’ sovereignty.” The wages system is to be retained. We are still to be hired and fired, disciplined and dragooned—but with a difference which Mr. Cardan sees as important: instead of the majority of workers being supervised by a specially trained section of workers (management) the entire work-force in each place of production will manage itself democratically, through workers’ councils. The key feature of “Socialism” is that it will “eliminate all distinct strata of specialised or permanent managers.”

The Socialist Party rejects “workers’ management” as a solution to workers’ problems. We insist on the abolition of wages.

It is to be feared that the tyranny of your mates might prove as terrible as the tyranny of your manager, if your mates are equally as bound up with production for sale on a market. This is the crucial difference between “Solidarity” and us. We say that tinkering with administrative forms is of no use. Buying and selling must be abolished. The wage packet—the permission to live—must be abolished.

The most crucial error in Cardan’s analysis is his belief that the essential features of capitalism can be retained, and can be guided by “workers’ management” towards humane and liberating ends. The market is to remain, but not, apparently, its laws. It should be obvious that if any enterprise produces to sell, and pays its bills out of its revenue, it will be subject to the same basic market laws as any other enterprise. Of course, at the moment these laws are observed and interpreted by management, which then makes the decisions and’ imposes them on the other workers in the interests of the shareholders. But it should have occurred to Cardan that these same laws might have the same force whoever does the managing and even if the shareholders, so to speak, are the workers. This is a suggestion which members of “Solidarity” ought at least to consider.

Perhaps they will say that the important thing is the removal of the ruling class. It is true that the capitalists, like all ruling classes, live in great luxury and possess immense power. But it is a mistake to think that the workers are poor because the capitalists consume so much. On the contrary, the wealth actually consumed personally by capitalists is an insignificant (and diminishing) fraction of total wealth produced. Taking the consumption of the capitalists and sharing it out amongst the workers would result in a rise for us all of only a few shillings a week. It is a fact that our masters live off the fat of the land, but if they starved in garrets we should still be slaves. Socialists an not primarily concerned, like vulgar moralists and apostles of “fair play,” to indict the caviar and yachts of the Paul Gettys, but rather the misdirection of production: the subordination of consumption to accumulation and the immensity of organized waste and destruction.

Similarly, though the capitalist class has power, we do not merely condemn the arbitrary, irresponsible decisions of those in high places. We condemn also the decisions which capitalists and workers are forced to make as a result of the workings of capitalism’s laws of motion.

“Capitalism without capitalists” could never in fact come about. Should the working-class reach a level of understanding where they could pressurize the ruling class out of existence, they would long since have passed the stage where they would have abolished the wages system and established Socialism. And there are several purely economic arguments why escalating differences in access to wealth would always result from a wages-profits system. But even if we suspend these judgments, and consider “Capitalism without capitalists” in our imaginations, we can see it would be no improvement on capitalism with capitalists. Workers collectively administering their own exploitation not a state of affairs Which Socialist aim for.

Some advocates of “workers’ control” advance the argument that although it wouldn’t solve workers’ problems it should still be supported because workers are too simple-minded to understand the abolition of wages, and must therefore be given “workers’ control” as the sugar on the pill (except that these gentlemen invariably then forget about the pill altogether). Cardan cannot use this line argument, and this is to his credit, for he has quite correct debunked it:

  “The Party . . . “knows” (or believes that it knows) that the sliding scale of wages will never be accepted by capitalism. It believes that this demand, if really fought for by the workers, will lead to a revolutionary situation and eventually to the revolution itself. If it did it would “scare the workers off” who are not “yet” ready to fight for socialism as such. So the apparently innocent demand for a sliding scale of wages is put forward as feasible . . . while “known” to be unfeasible. This is the bait which will make the workers swallow the hook and the revolutionary line. The Party, firmly holding the rod, will drag the class along into the “socialist” frying pan. All this would be a monstrous conception, were it not so utterly ridiculous.”

We would certainly endorse this attack on Vanguardism, but it is hardly enough to compensate for the page loads of absurdities which Cardan peddles.

In order to make credible his notion of “Socialism” (capitalism minus capitalism’s laws) he says that modern techniques of production are introduced under capitalism more to reduce the freedom of workers than to increase profitability:

  “Machines are invented, or selected, according to one fundamental criterion: do they assist in the struggle of management against workers, do they reduce yet further the worker’s margin of autonomy, do they assist in eventually replacing him altogether? . . . No British capitalist, no Russian factory manager would ever introduce into his plant a machine which would increase the freedom of a particular worker or of a group of workers to run the job themselves, even if such a machine increased production.”

This astonishing claim is made without the smallest shred of evidence being supplied. Whilst it is possible that a few shrewd managers may accept a cut in short-term profits for the sake of insuring long-term profits by fragmenting workplace organization, the intricate conspiracy necessary for Cardan’s sweeping statement to be true would be humorous to contemplate. It borders on paranoia to attribute “ever minute division of labour and tasks” to the management‘s conscious attempts “to combat the resistance of the workers.” Division of labour, and other atomizing and features of modern techniques, are primarily the results of attempting to maintain or increase the level of profits. Modern productive methods are dictated, at a given of technology, by market laws (that is, from the management’s point of view, laws of costs and revenue) and largely outside the will of the capitalists themselves, or that of the managers.

A lot of Cardan’s propositions are developed in contrast to what he calls “Marxism.” It is quite apparent that he is abysmally ignorant of Marx’s theoretical system; the “Marxism” he denounces is the crudest mish-mash of fifth-rate Bolshevism. That is doubtless a further condemnation .of the dire results of Bolshevik confusion-mongering, but it hardly excuses Cardan for making statements about Marx without having read him.

For example, in The Meaning of Socialism, we read:

  “By “Socialism” we mean the historical period which starts with the proletarian revolution and ends with communism. In thus defining it, we adhere very strictly to Marx. This is the only “transitional period” between class society and communism.”

Marx of course, never drew any distinction between Socialism and Communism, and always gave these words identical meanings. “Solidarity,” like the “Communist” Party and Trotskyists, concede that it is necessary to abolish wages and money, but say that this is an “ultimate aim” (translation: not an aim at all).

It is also claimed that Marx has been proved wrong by what happened in Russia, because private property was abolished there without his predicted results. Cardan ought to consider Marx’s statement that as long as power over people exists, private property exists. Cardan further believes that Russia has abolished unemployment, which is admittedly not ignorance of Marx, but of Russia.

It is alleged that Marx saw the domination of men by machines as an inexorable consequence of the advance of technology, as a fact which had to be accepted even in Socialism. This is an outrageous howler. Marx was at great pains to stress that the domination of living labour by dead labour was in point of fact an optical illusion. When the instruments of labour appeared to be outside the control of Man, it was in actuality the case that Man’s social relations were outside his control. Thus when Engels talks about the “mastery of the product over the producer” he does not mean that the products are actually the masters, but simply that they seem to be, as long as producers cannot control their social organization of production. They will remain unable to do so as long as these are commodity relations [1]. Socialists have always emphasised that in Socialism production will be organized not just to make more goods, but also to make work itself enjoyable.

Like most Left-wingers, “Solidarity” believe that the Russian Revolution was Socialist. This belief is not an accident, but is closely related to their other misconceptions. “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living,” wrote Marx. The Nightmare of Leftism, which weighs so heavily on the brains of today’s Romantic Revolutionaries, is the tradition of capitalist revolutions: the glorification of bloody insurrection, a mystical “Peoples Will” or “Proletarian Consciousness” which has no connection with what people actually will, or what workers actually understand, and hence the disparaging of political democracy, and the theory that revolutionary workers can be “held back” by a Party apparatus. “Solidarity” is no exception. Its ideas belong to the past; they have no future.

On the October Revolution Mr. Cardan comments:

  “Many people (various social democrats, various anarchists and the Socialist Party of Great Britain) have said that nothing really happened in Russia except a coup d’état carried out by a Party which, having somehow obtained the support of the working class, sought only to establish its own dictatorship and succeeded in doing so.
   We don’t wish to discuss this question in an academic manner. Our aim is not to decide whether the Russian Revolution warrants the label of proletarian revolution. The questions which are important for us are different ones. Did the Russian working class play a historical role of its own during this period? . . . The independent role played by the proletariat was clear-cut and undeniable.” (From Bolshevism To The Bureaucracy.)”

To this we can only retort that the view attributed to the Socialist Party is surely too silly to have even been held by anyone. All capitalist revolutions are highly complex phenomena, and 1917 was no exception. Cardan’s aim “is not to decide whether the Russian Revolution warrants the label of proletarian revolution,” despite the fact that in his writings he persistently refers to it as such, no less than four times in this particular pamphlet prior to the above excerpt! Of course workers played an independent role in 1917. Workers have played an independent role in every capitalist revolution without exception. That should be elementary.

Two questions have to be asked; they answer themselves. Had Russia in 1917 reached a level of development where abundance for all was possible? And did the Russian working-class in 1917 possess a clear understanding of the need for a wageless, moneyless, stateless society?

To sum up, movements for “workers’ management,” “workers’ participation” and “workers’ control” (though their various adherents distinguish very loudly between these three) will probably be used by capitalism, as in Yugoslavia, to give workers the impression that the enterprise they work for in some way belongs to them. If all employees can be drawn into the process of management, and can be given the illusion of an identity of interests between workers and employers, this helps to muffle the trade union struggle and enhance the process of exploitation. This is not what the members of “Solidarity” want, but then neither is the present structure of the steel industry what Labour Leftists wanted. “Workers’ management” is a cul-de-sac, to replace the cul-de-sac of nationalization. Please, don’t take another fifty years to see through this one. . . .

We say that in an epoch of potential Plenty the cry should be, not “workers’ management,” but “To each according to his wants!”

Steele

[1] This point is made abundantly clear in Marx’s Wage Labour And Capital, and Engels’ Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, and is frequently stressed throughout Marx’s writings.

'Workers Control' in Yugoslavia (1965)

From the July 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the end of the war, the Yugoslav economy has been affected by a number of administrative changes, called by various names (not all of them complimentary). The ruling class have dubbed them “self-management”. To the Western economists they may be better known under the heading of decentralisation. How, when and why was self-management introduced? What does it mean to the working class? How does it work in practice? Is it really a way to Socialism? These are the questions I shall try to answer here.

To shed some light on the rather obscure and misleading interpretations of the term "Self-management”, you should really start your investigations around 1945, when large doses of state control were administered to the economy and misnamed “Communism". But to play down the uncomfortable reality of capitalism with its wages system, the swindle was justified simply by debasing the old Socialist slogan “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” so that it ran “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work," and calling it Marxism. The privileged class of non-producers existed and operated to a large extent through the state machine, which generally regulated and controlled production, and this seems to be an outstanding feature of some of the newer capitalist countries, taking their example from Soviet Russia.

But whatever the politicians chose to call it, the painful facts of capitalist life in Yugoslavia were what demanded their attention, for the usual signs of the class struggle were appearing. Workers were pushing for better wages and conditions, to be met with the usual dreary reply with which you in England will be all too familiar—that their claims could not be met unless production was increased, which in practice meant harder work and longer hours.

Now workers in Yugoslavia are no different from their brothers elsewhere in that they will support any particular method of running the system, regardless of its name, if they think it will give them a better life. As one writer confessed:

It was impossible to call upon the working class by promising a development of "Socialist" ideas; it was necessary to offer them a material incentive. (Social Self-management in Yugoslavia, by Stane Koneic. Belgrade, 1961)

So Belgrade took action to blunt the edge of workers' demands by setting up workers' councils in all firms, with the avowed aim of reducing and eventually abolishing state interference in production. By 1951 "Self-management” had arrived.

But before we go any further, let us see how the workers’ councils operate. They are elected through secret ballot of all members of a firm or organisation and their duties are varied. They decide what and how much to produce, and eventually the prices. They pay a part of the resulting profit (six percent of the whole turnover) to the State direct every month, and they have the authority to make decisions on investment of their capital. When necessary they can approach the Narodna Banka (state bank) for loans and these are credited according to the value of machinery and plant.

In the sphere of employment, the councils have the right to engage and dismiss workers, and to decide the magnitude of wages according to level of sales. But by present rules, wages must not fall below 75 per cent nor rise above 125 percent of the figure fixed in the wages books. Councils can also make rules about relations between management and men and fix the length of the working day. Finally, they have the right to decide on amalgamation with other firms or on liquidation. Liquidation is in any case compulsory when a firm no longer runs at a profit, and can be avoided only by presenting a report to the state chamber of commerce, with concrete proposals for the firm's recovery.

After fourteen years of operation, self-management is well on its way, but where to? This is doubtless a question which many a worker is asking himself, and the answer is that it is just another variation in the day-to-day running of the capitalist system. True it means that the workers are given a much wider direct responsibility for production, but the net result is no different from any other capitalist country. A small class of parasites still lives well on the surplus value extracted from workers. According to Statisticki Kalendar FNRJ, the total production has risen by 162 percent in the last ten years, but in the last seventeen years, the standard of living has risen by about seven percent.

Yugoslav workers do not have to consult any statistics to see the large difference between their humble homes and the luxury villas of the communist party bigshots. Yugoslav T.U.C. Chairman Vukmanuvic-Tempo has in fact complained bitterly in the daily paper Liberation (14/11/64) that "the standard of living is rising loo slowly and many promises made to the workers have never been kept.” To which Federal Parliament Chairman Edward Kardelj had the impudence to reply:—

The sharp difference between the increase in production and the standard of living is not due to self-management, but to not enough self-management.

This reply was also in the nature of a “strong recommendation" and as such, was taken up at the delegates’ conference of the Peoples' Republic of Slovenia. Croatia and Montenegro, held at the beginning of the year. On March 26th Belgrade Radio announced that similar decisions had been reached at the Macedonia delegates’ conference. At the lime of writing, the Serbia. Bosnia and Herzegovina conferences have yet to meet, but it’s a fair bet they will follow Mr. Kardelj’s “advice”.

These conferences are part of modern Yugoslavia’s machinery for shaping the pattern of its state capitalism. One does not have to be an expert to see who gets the lion's share of the cake. Just like their counterparts elsewhere. Yugoslav workers have a long way to go before they establish a life for themselves really worth living.

Remy Starc (Trieste, Italy).

Elitism still haunts disenchanted Bolsheviks (1969)

Party News from the May 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are active wherever workers are developing their ideas through discussion. So a few of us turned up at the weekend conference of ‘Libertarian Marxists’ in Manchester. This was organised mainly by people who had become disenchanted with Bolshevism in the shape of the so-called ‘International Socialism’ group.

It was encouraging to find a number of workers, formerly committed to the extreme centralism of the Vanguard Party, who have seen through that fraud and come out against leadership. Unfortunately it soon became clear that élitist ideas were not dead.

The conference was dominated by three speakers (R. Sumner, S. James, M. Orr), who together took up 90 per cent of the time. The air was thick with talk of ‘the intellectuals’ and their relationship to ‘the workers’, and the notion that workers learnt only from personal experience whilst abstract ideas were beyond them—the usual leftist claptrap.

Among the gems were S. James’s announcement that she was a black nationalist, after she had denounced racism(!), and her revelation that “workers can’t read big books.” R. Sumner wanted ‘all Socialists’ to unite in bringing out a newspaper, without any ‘contentious arguments’ about what Socialism was. And M. Orr, an advocate of ‘self-management,’ when pushed, said that he was in favour of abolishing wages, but not in favour of abolishing money!

They looked to incidents like the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and the May events in France, to bring ‘Socialism.’ We should not, therefore, take them too seriously, particularly as Mrs. James’s model of a revolution without leaders was Castro’s takeover in Cuba, and Mr. Orr insisted that the socialist revolution would be carried out by a minority, while the majority of the population was passive.

When socialists joined the discussion, it took 20 minutes before this trio realised they had no answer to our arguments, and referred to the socialists present as disrupters. This was rich considering we had sat through two three-hour sessions (of what was supposed to be an open conference) without a peep.

Earlier we had been informed that a ‘new personality’ had come into the world, shown by the fact that the meeting needed no chairman. However, in order to exclude us from the discussion, a chairman materialised in the wink of an eye—self-appointed, not elected. This indicates what socialists have always said: formless, loose organisation does not remove the danger of leadership but increases it.

Whether the other workers involved will continue to let the ‘intellectuals’ do their thinking for them remains to be seen. At least one walked out in disgust at the reception given to the socialist case.

Letters: Solidarity (1970)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always held that the widest possible discussion of conflicting views is desirable. In this issue we publish, together with our replies, a number of letters we have received arising out of recent articles in the “Socialist Standard.”

Solidarity

If to wish to oppose capitalism and have it replaced by a society run by and for the workers themselves, without bosses or leaders, is “anarcho-syndicalism”, then Solidarity members will confess to that heinous deviation.

But as a member of North West Solidarity, I must beg your allowance of a reply to certain points made in the article "Listen Anarchist” (Socialist Standard, March 1970).

Firstly, workers management cannot be dismissed by saying that under Socialism, “all work should be entirely voluntary”. So it should, but even then, someone, some group, will have to organise society, plan the economy, run the towns, factories and farms. Our advocation is based on the proposition that the .Socialist-conscious working class, once they want to change society, are capable of establishing a Socialist system and running it without any orders from above. In other words, will run society without leaders, bosses, managers or any Party claiming to speak for them or represent "their interests". “Workers Management" means no more elitism!

Secondly, Solidarity is a democratic organisation of people united on certain basic beliefs. We have no "Party line” or “sacred texts”, so to try to lump us all with accepting the more obvious of Cardans faults is either a mistake due to misunderstanding of what Solidarity is, or a cheap way of scoring points.

Thirdly, to put down learning by experience as "claptrap" is to make the same wild generalisations as those who only believe in it. The relationship between experience and ideas is an ever-changing, dialectical one. in which either can alter the other. The worker’s experience within production, of having to act collectively, of “unofficially” regulating speed and amount of production so as to share out work and equalise wages, is such an experience that can produce Socialist ideas, as collective action and control are “fundamentally Socialist in content". After all, where do ideas conic from, not, as you point out yourselves, from the fresh air! But "can" produce Socialist ideas does not equal must. So our task is to spread Socialist ideas to the workers, ideas that correspond to their experience, ideas contributed as much as possible by workers themselves.

The last point explains why Solidarity mags have contained a lot of material on “strikes and other activities”, because these are workers’ activities, and we do believe workers should be able to read the truth about strikes and other anti-boss activities. However if any of your readers would like to buy a copy of North West Solidarity, they’ll find that it does cover more than strikes. If they do, they can get it from: Secretary. 96 Doveleys Road, Salford, 6. Lancs.

Paul A. Harris.

Bolton, Lancs.

REPLY: 

“Workers Management", as Paul Harris describes it here, does not seem to mean much different from what we understand by “democratic control" in our definition of Socialism as a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by and in the interests of the whole community. If he only means that, on the basis of common ownership (and the consequent abolition of the wages system, money and buying and selling), free men and women will democratically manage their social affairs including work, then our only objection would be to his choice of words. The word “workers” would be inappropriate since, with common ownership, the working class as well as the capitalist class would have disappeared.

We must say, however, that we had always thought Solidarity to mean something different by this phrase, namely, that a committee elected by the workers should take over the functions (including discipline, fixing wage rates, hiring and firing, price policies) now exercised by managers appointed either by the shareholders or by the government. But, as long as there is production for the market, it will be competition that determines how a factory is run whether the decisions are made by capitalist owners or by a manager he appoints or by an elected workers’ council. It was because we had always thought that Solidarity accepted the continued existence, though maybe temporary, of the wages system (“equal wages”) and production for the market that we said that their "workers management” was “in no way incompatible with capitalist exploitation”. We will stand by this until Paul Harris tells us he accepts our proposition that, on the basis of common ownership, wages and money can be abolished immediately.

We are glad we are not alone in seeing Cardan’s more obvious faults.

What we meant by “‘earning by experience’ claptrap” was, as explained earlier in the article, the view that workers can only learn the futility of reformism or the limitations of trade unionism by their own personal experience. We pointed out that by far the greater part of what people knew came from being taught the experiences of others. Of course, strictly speaking this learning is also experience — but this would not be accepted by the school of thought we were criticizing.

There is enough evidence now, and has been for many years, that only Socialism is the solution to working class problems. The task of a Socialist party is to see that hearing or reading the Socialist case is part of workers’ experience. Hence the vital importance of Socialist propaganda, of spreading Socialist ideas. In fact the ideas set out in our own declaration of principles (that this is a class society, that there is a class struggle, that this can only be ended by conscious majority political action, that a socialist party must be opposed to all other parties) are drawn from the experience of the working class under capitalism.

We must say, however, that Paul Harris’ list of the kind of experience that can, with Socialist propaganda (an important concession on his part to our point of view), lead to Socialist understanding is a bit limited. It is not just experience of factory life (after all many workers do not work in factories), but of generally having to live on a wage or salary and all the problems which lack of money brings in housing, education, health, transport and the rest. It is their general social experience, rather than their narrow experience at the point of production, that can lead workers to Socialist understanding on hearing the Socialist case.

Those who think we might have Solidarity’s position wrong should buy Paul Harris’ magazine and find out for themselves. 

Editorial Committee

Dear Friends:

The March 1970 Socialist Standard deals with Solidarity and Paul Cardan in an article entitled “Listen Anarchist!” Since my own beliefs have been rather similar to yours for years and now tend to approximate Solidarity’s much more closely, I read the article with interest. Unfortunately, when a group makes “some advances in understanding and on a number of issues (comes) round to views pioneered by” you, as you so patronizingly put it, you seem to exhibit great hostility and defensiveness. An attitude of empathy and open-minded evaluation would seem to be more useful, particularly in the ease of Solidarity which has evidently gone through a period of careful re-examination and whose works exhibit considerable scholarship. They have predicted that they would be attacked as anarchists by Marxists and as Marxists by anarchists. You seem to have fulfilled your half of the prophecy a little too readily.

Much of your critique consists of setting up straw men by exaggerating stated positions and then demolishing them. For example, Cardan criticizes “Marxists” who revise Marx “at their convenience.” You then ignore the clause “at their convenience” and state that Cardan claims that it is wrong to amend a theory. You follow this by satirical remarks re heinous crimes and fiendish tricks. When Solidarity rejects the propagandists approach of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (your wholly educational technique without participation), you make the irrelevant remark that Solidarity and the SPGB are equally concerned with propaganda, “but its propaganda consists overwhelmingly of reports on strikes and other activities (other activities!, a charge that could be levelled against National Geographic magazine), whereas ours consists of posing an alternative form of society and explaining how it can be achieved.” Actually both Solidarity and the SPGB report on “strikes and other activities” although there are deferences on emphasis (and analysis), and both pose an alternative form of society. The real difference is that Solidarity does offer a plausible mechanism for achieving socialism where you rely essentially on pure education although no historic examples of the successful unaided use of this approach exist. Your penchant for exaggerating an opponent’s position shows up in your reference to the “ ‘learning by experience’ clap-trap.” The SPGB of course must feel that experience in the class struggle will cause the workers to give credence to a socialist programme unless it takes the incredible view that unaided SPGB propaganda alone will turn the trick. That Solidarity doesn’t really believe that “learning by experience" is the whole answer is shown first by its existence and second by such statements as, “Many French workers who lived through the events of 1936 are still alive. But how many of them today draw the same lesson from that experience as would a revolutionary organization?” (Cardan, Modern Capitalism and Revolution.)

Mere exaggeration cannot condone your fantastic allegation that the “workers management” programme for socialism “is in no way incompatible with Capitalist exploitation." "Workers Management” means the total participation and control by the people in the making of all decisions regarding production and other areas of life affecting their common interests. This programme specifically rejects hierarchical and leadership concepts. Your statement “that in terms of genuine human freedom, how work is managed is a side issue” represents a serious blind spot. Any form of coercion in production (or elsewhere), or division of the producers into order-takers and order-givers is obviously wholly antithetical to human freedom, and the workers ought to start thinking about it now and not after the revolution. The picture that could be drawn (hopefully unintended) from your remark here, is that socialist production could consist of “voluntary” producers operating without knowledge of or control over orders sent down from socialist bureaucrats belonging to some parliament which has been taken over by socialist ballot.

I am not a member of Solidarity and have no authority to speak officially on their behalf. However, their influence is growing here as well as in Britain and any serious attempt at refutation is going to require a much greater knowledge and much more serious analysis of their views than was demonstrated in your article.

Benson Perry, 

member, Socialist Committee of Correspondence 

(Philadelphia), U.S.A.

REPLY:
Most of the points Benson Perry raises have been covered in the previous reply to Paul Harris. So we will here spell out in more detail our own position.

The idea of Socialism as a solution to working class problems arises out of capitalism partly because it is the solution and partly because people’s experience of capitalism teaches them that it is. The role of a socialist party, at the present time, is to put socialist ideas before the working class to ensure that hearing the socialist ease is a part of their experience. This is our participation, as a party, in the class struggle. Later the socialist party will be the instrument which the working class can use to win power for Socialism and will disappear as soon as Socialism has been established.

Members of the Socialist Party, as workers, are engaged in the day-to-day struggle to live under capitalism. They could not avoid this even if they wanted to. In so far as this struggle is organised our members are active mainly in the trade unions but also in unofficial workers committees, tenants associations and students unions. The real difference between us and organisations like Solidarity is how we assess this day-to-day struggle. We see it as having the practical aim of protecting workers’ living and working conditions under capitalism. The effectiveness of this struggle, we might add, is limited not only by the economic workings of capitalism but also by the ideas of the workers involved (which is why the spread of socialist ideas, in which we are engaged, helps the day-to-day struggle). Solidarity, on the other hand, sees these struggles as “fundamentally socialist in content”. This we deny. The only struggle that warrants this description is the conscious political struggle for Socialism.

We also say that it is not the task of a socialist party to propose reforms of capitalism. In this way we avoid attracting the support of non-socialists and so being turned into a reformist party.

Finally, a word on management. Under capitalism production is not just a technical question; it is also a question of exploitation. Thus, in varying proportions, a manager’s function is partly technical and partly disciplinary (“order-giving”, as Benson Perry puts it). In socialist society production will just be a technical question; there will be no “discipline”. Work will be voluntary and democratically-controlled — though of course we cannot now give a blueprint of the way this will be done.

The division between “order-givers” and “order-takers” arises out of the capitalist exploitation of the workers through the wages system. This is why genuine democratic control of work demands the abolition of the market and working for wages. To retain these is to retain the same economic pressures on the workers even if exercised through a workers’ management committee rather than a capitalist-appointed manager. We throw out the same challenge to Benson Perry as to Paul Harris: Does he accept our proposition that, on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, wages and money can be abolished immediately?

Editorial Committee.