HAS Do Be NO T In any economy the types of things necessary in production are roughly the same. Under capitalism what is essential about production is that all products are produced by units of production operating independently of each other, and only coming into contact through the market. In short it is an economy based on generalised commodity production which in turn is only made possible by the existence of the commodity labour power. Production is for profit and determined by the unplanned anarchy of the market. Under this sytem of production it is possible, and indeed inevitable, for all sorts of crises to occur which are against the interests of the working class. It is important to note that it is the entire system of social relations which defines the mode of production as capitalist, and not the ownership or running of single factories, firms and industries. For example a nationalised industry operating inside a capitalist economy is just as much a capitalist firm as any other. It still buys and sells on the market and its operations are therefore determined by the capitalist law of value. Ignoring or not understanding this point leads to all sorts of utopian schemes for destroying capitalism inside one factory. Most of these ideas of "workers control' are merely impractical, others suggest ideas to employers which are positively counter-revolutionary. The most extreme cases of this latter variety are a few privately owned capitalist firms where supervision has been abandoned almost completely. Here for example is a description of one such situation ". ....the output and dedication of girls on an assembly line shot up when they were put completely in charge of making the entire electronic product themselves and the controls over their work by the foremen, inspector and industrial engineer were abolished. " (Packard, The Naked Society, p.96). In such cases it is clear that there is absolutely nothing which is socialist about the measures at all. They are manoeuvres by the companies concerned to increase their profits, by utilising the workers knowledge of the stupidities and inefficiency of normal management and by making use of the thousands of dodges and tips that any operative finds out about how to do the job. In a strict sense they do not decrease the exploitation of the worker, but on the contrary heighten it by increasing the amount of profit that the firm makes from each worker. The firms are still prey to the crises of the capitalist economy, and if unable to sell their goods workers will still be laid off, put on short time etc.
workers participation Also in the category of obvious fraud are so-called examples of workers participation in management. A typical example of this can be found in the Steel industry. Here the Steel industry suggested a scheme of "workersdirectors'. Out of fourteen to sixteen members on each regional board it was suggested that three should be selected by the management from lists submitted by the TUC, If the workers recommended were shop stewards, they would have to give up their union positions. They were not to be subject to any form of recall and were to sit on Group Boards outside the Group in which they worked. Here again was another perfectly obvious fiddle. What was clearly intended by the Labour government was to have directors on the boards of the companies who could be termed representatives of the workers so as to strengthen the hand of the Steel corporation when it came to implement its massive programme of closures. Even worse is the system in Sweden. Here on many occasions the management has declared that there are going to be redundancies, but that the union can decide who is going to be fired.
In this situation the trade union does not fight redundancy at all, but just carries naturally become fairly hostile to trade unionism, secondly the management avoids most of the blame for the sackings, and workers instead concentrate on attacking the unions over who has been sacked.
Equally bad are schemes whereby the workers either completely own the company. e.g. the firm of Scott-Bader at Wallaston, or own it in conjunction with, for example, its consumers. The most notable of these examples is of course the Co-Op. Here normal capitalist shareholding is abolished. But in fact the conditions of the workers are not improved in any material way at all, in the long run. The company simply competes with ordinary capitalist firms and in the course of the competition is forced to organise production in much the same way as any other company, and, is unable even to give higher wages than in ordinary capitalist firms.
The mistake in all these ideas and schemes is a confusion of the role of management with the effects of the capitalist system or, put in more technical terms, between the authority relations of the factory and the production relations of society. The reasons for this confusion, which is the most common of all in dealing with the question of workers' control, of course reside in the conditions of the working class under capitalism. It is the company and its management who are the clear "visible" oppressors of the workers while the relations of capitalist production are "invisible" and so to speak work behind the scenes. The most difficult thing in explaining the ideas of workers' control is to get across the essential idea that what is involved is not a struggle against the management, but a struggle against an entire economic system. But as we have seen, any idea of workers" control referring to the management buthority relations)
of the factory, leads to putting forward schemes that cannot solve the problems of the working class and in many cases actually aid the employers. The idea which must be got across is not that the struggle against the manage ment is the main struggle and must be intensified, but on the contrary that the simple struggle against the management settles nothing.
production relations All the theories and schemes we have discussed in this section are mislead by the situation of struggle against management, into confusing the production relations in society with the authority relations (management) within the factory. Even if the authority relations within the factory are completely destroyed, for example, by having complete workers"
management, that does not in the slightest affect the production relations of the society.
The factory or firm still has to buy its raw materials, power, etc. on the capitalist market, and it still has to sell its finished products as commodities on the market.
As the factory or firm is still linked completely by commodity relationships to all the other production going on in society, it is still dominated by the law of value.
If there is a general depression of the capitalist market it will still be unable to sell its goods. If other firms push up the exploitation of the workers to a higher point, the firm will still be forced to follow suit in order to compete.
It is this which means for example that an individual industry nationalised under capitalism in fact is still forced to run like, and indeed still is, a capitalist firm.
It is only the destruction of the general production relations of society and not just the authority relations of the factory which means that firms can run in anything other than a way which is dominated by capitalism. When therefore we talk about workers' control, what we are talking about is not control over the management, but control over the effects of capitalist production the (law of value)
within the factory. The second can of course only be achieved by the first, but we have to be very clear as to the aim, otherwise all sorts of varieties of reformism can emerge.
Apart from the very obvious fraud schemes we have already discussed, there are also schemes for Workers' Directors in the Steel industry was put forward, the IC advanced the idea that instead of being a minority, the workers directors should have made up 50 percent of the numbers on the boards (see Can the Workers run industry p. 147-153). They suggested specifically: "These proposals for fifty-fifty membership of management committees and boards with the senior manage ment official at each level being appointed subject to ratification by the workers del. egates..... the veto on management appointments gives to the workers an important instrument of control". Here is a classic example of the confusion of authority relations and production relations. The strategy put forward by the IC would not in the slightest solve the problems of the steel workers. It would have made no real difference if the workers had been able to appoint every single manager and have 100per percent of the places on the Boards of the Companies. Even if the management were completely replaced and the entire factory or company were run by the workers, that would not in the slightest solve their problems. The company would still be producing within capitalist production relations and would there fore still be a capitalist company even if it were nationalised, the workers took all decisions, took all income etc. Indeed such an experience would be the most demoralising one possible for the workers. The operation of the law of value would impose speed-up, short-time working or redundancies, dangerous working etc. on the factory or it would be forced out of business and the workers themselves would be forced to take these decisions. We are therefore completely opposed to workers taking over and running their factories or industries within capitalism. What occurs when this is tried, for example at UCS, is the demoralisation of the workers and the discrediting of the whole idea of workers' controf. It is not the job of socialists to tell the working class that the organisation of its own conditions of production under capitalism is the solution to its problems, on the contrary it is necessary to point out that this is not in the slightest a solution to its problems. Far from socialists being in favour of workers taking over and running their own factories, they are totally opposed to workers taking any responsibility for the running of firms under capitalism. Socialists must explain that it is not the management itself which oppresses the workers, but the entire production relations of capitalism.
Any propaganda for workers control must therefore have this as its key point. NO WORKERS' RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE RUNNING OF FIRMS UNDER CAPITALISM must be the absolutely central slogan of any campaign for workers control.
the state So far we have only discussed cases in which the capitalist relations of production in society have not been destroyed. In this context control means simply attempts by workers to resist the effects of the oper ation of the law of value within the factory.
It means resistance to things such as speedup, the introduction of machinery involving a deterioration in working conditions, and to dangerous working. However, the way in which workers control has always been understood in Marxist terms is together with the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e. of a workers state.) As Lenin put it in Can the Bolsheviks retain state power: "When we say 'workers"
control', always juxtaposing this slogan to the dictatorship of the proletariat, always putting it immediately after the latter, we thereby explain what kind of state we mean.....if we are speaking of the proletarian state, that is, of the proletarian dictatorship, then workers control can become the country-wide, all embracing, omnipresent, most precise and conscientious accounting of production and distribution of goods". The point that Lenin is clearly making here is that real workers' control is only possible after the destruction of the state machine which defends the capitalist property relations. From that point of view the slogan of workers control is therefore meaningless unless it is coupled with the slogans of a workers' government and a workers' state. This needs to be explored a little more carefully however to fully understand the point.
If the basic idea of workers control is resistance to the effects of the workings of capitalist production relations (the law of valuel, then quite clearly completely generalised workers control actually means that the production relations of the capitalis economy are in fact no longer regulating the economy. Such a situation is of course extremely unlikely to occur, although in situations of mass take-over of factories, etc as in Spain and Russia a situation something like this can be approached. What it means in this situation is that there is actually no mode of production, or to be scientifically accurate there are elements of two modes o production so interlinked that neither is operative. If the workers can refuse the closing down of factories, stop loss of jobs control the speed of production etc. throughout the entire economy then capitalist production relations are not regulating the functioning of the economy. On the other hand neither is production being organised according to a plan and therefore neither is a socialised mode of production in existence. Such a situation is precisely, considered at the economic level the point of transition between the capital and socialised modes of production. Such a situation would be totally unstable. Econor ically production under these conditions would mean the ruin of the bourgeoisie. It would provoke an immediate attempt by the bourgeois state machine to destroy the workers' organisations in the factories.
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