Clearly, the demand for workers" CORETOI should be at the forefront of a socialist strategy in Britain today: but unless the meaning and implication of this demand is set out with sufficient clarity much of its force will be lost.
Coates and Tony Topham pation or Control, for instance, shop stewards sanctions, constrain employers". In does this state of affairs CONSTELLO workers Certainly. capitalist society there is some degree workers' constraint; but control would involve navine actual hegemonic power Over the capitalists, which, in this society, the workers now lack.
The demand for workers* control is useless unless it is specifically linked to a political strategy and hence to a revolutionary political organisation committed to breaking capitalist power. To a certain extent, Ken Coates and Tony Topham are right when they state: "The case for the positive advance of workers control programme now is that the best form of defence is attack: that unless new positions of workers" are won over property rights, The detence Will, at best, bargaining". The essential test, then, is the strength of the attack on property rights. This involves class struggle; and it is a mistake for anyone on the left to suggest that complete workers" control can be achieved by a strategy of encroaching on the capitalists. Surely no one believes that socialists can sneak up on the ruling class with sophisticated demands. The Institute for Workers" Control needs to be explicit about this.
In the light of this analysis, it is clear that the Labour Party document on Industrial Democracy is basically reactionary. There are parts of it which can be used by socialists, but basically it is a 'heading off, not a socialist.
essentially about 'humanising industrial relations inside the existing structure of society. Its principal and fallacious assumption lies in seeing the State as able and willing to hand over power to the workers via the established trade unions. It is, in fact, our job as socialists to emphasise that the workers will not get power until they take over the State. We need to be sharp in our criticisms of Industrial democracy is indeed all things to all men. The more opportunist politicians, capitalists and trade union officials have produce the old stalemate of pure collective i realised that some of the murmurings about