Abstract
The major revolutions of the twentieth century all included initiatives on the part of workers to take direct control of the production process. How does this worker-control dimension relate in practice to the transfer of state power? Detailed analyses are presented of (1) Russia 1917–18, (2) Italy 1919–20, (3) Spain during the Civil War period (1936–39), and (4) Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–73). Discussion then addresses various possible patterns in the relationship between revolutionary political parties and enterprise-level working-class initiatives, looking also at the cases of Cuba and Venezuela. Neither worker-control nor the conquest of state power suffices on its own to bring the desired and needed transformation. The two dimensions must be integrally combined from the start.
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Notes
- 1.
Unless otherwise specified, the term “workers’ control” will be taken as synonymous with “self-management.” Each term may be applied, depending on context, either to particular workplaces or to an entire society.
- 2.
Jean-Luc Dallemagne, Autogestion ou dictature du prolétariat (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1976), 114.
- 3.
Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).
- 4.
See Timothy Kerswell and Jake Lin, “Capitalism Denied with Chinese Characteristics,” Socialism and Democracy, 31:2 (2017).
- 5.
See Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini, eds., Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011); also Dario Azzellini, ed., An Alternative Labour History: Worker Control and Workplace Democracy (London: Zed Books, 2015).
- 6.
The evolution of the Mondragón cooperatives is instructive in this respect. For a nuanced account, see Tim Huet, “Can Coops Go Global? Mondragón Is Trying,” Dollars and Sense, Nov./Dec., 1997.
- 7.
See Martin Peterson, ed., Special issue of Scandinavian Review (1977), on “Industrial Democracy.”
- 8.
See Barry M. Richman, Industrial Society in Communist China (New York: Random House, 1969), ch. IX; the key body ranking above the director is the party committee, and “a majority of the enterprises did not have any workers on their party committees” (762). On Yugoslavia, see Darko Suvin, Splendour, Misery, and Possibilities: An X-ray of Socialist Yugoslavia (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
- 9.
On Cuba’s place in this epochal sequence, see D.L. Raby, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today (London: Pluto Press, 2006), 111–131. The historical basis for Cuba’s eventual institutionalization of worker-control structures is discussed in Victor Wallis, “Workers’ Control: Cases from Latin America and the Caribbean” in Jack W. Hopkins, ed., Latin America and Caribbean Contemporary Record, Vol. 3 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 254–257. On subsequent advances in Cuba, see Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, ed., Cooperatives and Socialism: A View from Cuba (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
- 10.
It was along these lines that Jean-François Revel (in La tentation totalitaire. Paris: Laffont, 1976, 167–174) tried to dismiss self-management as a non-existent alternative to social democracy and Stalinism. It should be noted that his remarks on the dynamics of self-management (169) tacitly assume a capitalist environment.
- 11.
For a more comprehensive listing and discussion, not limited to revolutionary moments, see Assef Bayat, Work, Politics and Power: An International Perspective on Workers’ Control and Self-Management (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991). A cogent general exposition of the place of workers’ councils in socialist revolution is Ernest Mandel’s Introduction to his collection, Contrôle ouvrier, conseils ouvriers, autogestion, 3 vols. (Paris: François Maspéro. 1973), I: 5–54.
- 12.
On the key role of workers in the October Revolution, see, for example, David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power (London: Macmillan Press, 1984), esp. 260–263.
- 13.
See, for example, his expression of support for the factory committees, quoted in Tony Cliff, Lenin, vol. 2. (London: Pluto Press, 1976), 244. For background on this issue, see E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923, vol. 2 (London: Penguin, 1952), 62–79.
- 14.
V.I. Lenin, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government” (April 1918), Selected Works. 1-vol. ed. (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 424 (Lenin’s emphasis).
- 15.
Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control: The State and Counterrevolution (London: Solidarity, 1970), 12.
- 16.
V.I. Lenin, “The Taylor System – Man’s Enslavement by the Machine” (1914), in Lenin, On Workers’ Control and the Nationalization of Industry (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), 17. Lenin’s critique of Taylorism refers to the allocation of labor and of the product rather than to the way the work is carried out. For a fuller discussion of alternative approaches, see Carmen Sirianni, Workers Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience (London: Verso, 1982), 256–260.
- 17.
Voline (V.M. Eichenbaum), The Unknown Revolution, 1917–1921. Trans. Holley Cantine. (New York: Free Life Editions, 1974), 289ff.
- 18.
Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality” (1918), Selected Works, 451.
- 19.
Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 162f.
- 20.
Voline, The Unknown Revolution, 294.
- 21.
Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Childishness,” 440.
- 22.
Ibid., 444 (Lenin’s emphasis).
- 23.
Ibid., 448.
- 24.
Documentation of the workers’ autonomous organization and participation at the factory level became newly available with the post-1991 opening of the Soviet archives. For first-hand testimony on the workers’ commitment, see Kevin Murphy, Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory. Chicago: Haymarket, 2005), esp. 63–74.
- 25.
M. Holubenko, “The Soviet Working Class: Discontent and Opposition,” Critique, No. 4 (1975), 23.
- 26.
Dallemagne, arguing along Leninist lines, defends such assumptions on the ground that capitalist production relations had not yet reached a level at which they could be superseded (Autogestion ou dictature du prolétariat, 122); however, when he comes to the question of how the resulting hierarchical relations might later be overcome (248f), he offers only abstract imperatives.
- 27.
Murphy, Revolution and Counterrevolution, 65f.
- 28.
Paolo Spriano, The Occupation of the Factories: Italy 1920. Trans. Gwyn A. Williams (London: Pluto Press, 1975), 105, 131.
- 29.
Ibid., 57.
- 30.
Ibid., 44.
- 31.
Gaetano Salvemini, The Origins of Fascism in Italy (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 278.
- 32.
John M. Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967), 117.
- 33.
Ibid., 121.
- 34.
Spriano, The Occupation of the Factories, 84.
- 35.
Gwyn A. Williams, Proletarian Order: Antonio Gramsci, Factory Councils, and the Origins of Italian Communism, 1911–1921 (London: Pluto Press, 1975), 246f.
- 36.
Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism, 22.
- 37.
Giuliano Procacci, Storia degli italiani (Bari: Laterza, 1971), 395.
- 38.
Antonio. Gramsci, “Unions and Councils” (1919), in Selections from Political Writings (1910–1920), ed. Quintin Hoare (New York: International Publishers, 1977), 100.
- 39.
Based on Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution. Trans. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1975), and on Sam Dolgoff, ed., The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939 (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1974), esp. chs. 6 and 7.
- 40.
Based on Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1950), Pt. II; Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), ch. 1; and Stanley Payne, The Spanish Revolution (New York: Norton, 1970), ch. 2.
- 41.
Pierre Broué and Emile Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain. Trans. Tony White (London: Faber & Faber, 1972), ch. 5.
- 42.
Ibid., 288.
- 43.
Ibid., 131.
- 44.
Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1961), 436.
- 45.
Ibid., 366.
- 46.
As The Economist wrote in February 1938, “Intervention by the state in industry, as opposed to collectivization and workers’ control, is reestablishing the principle of private property.” Quoted in Broué and Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain, 313.
- 47.
For fuller discussion of the bases of this development, see Maurice Zeitlin, “The Social Determinants of Political Democracy in Chile,” in James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin, eds., Latin America: Reform or Revolution? (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications), and Victor Wallis, “Imperialism and the ‘Via Chilena’,” Latin American Perspectives, No. 2 (1974).
- 48.
See classification of nationalizations in NACLA, New Chile (New York: North American Congress on Latin America, 1973).
- 49.
Andrew Zimbalist and James Petras, “Workers’ Control in Chile during Allende’s Presidency,” Comparative Urban Research, III:3 (1975–76), 25, 27. For a comprehensive treatment of the Chilean case, see Juan Espinosa and Andrew Zimbalist, Economic Democracy: Workers’ Participation in Chilean Industry, 1970–1973 (New York: Academic Press.1978), and, on the relevance of that study to our present concerns, Victor Wallis, “Workers’ Control in Latin America.” Latin American Research Review, XVII:2 (1983).
- 50.
For a narrative overview, see Gabriel Smirnow, The Revolution Disarmed: Chile, 1970–1973 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979); for direct portrayal of worker control, see Patricio Guzmán, The Battle of Chile (documentary film), Part III (1979) (discussed below, Chap. 11).
- 51.
Edward Boorstein, Allende’s Chile: An Inside View (New York: International Publishers, 1977), 212.
- 52.
Zimbalist and Petras, “Workers’ Control in Chile,” 25.
- 53.
This is a phenomenon that I witnessed directly in Nicaragua in 1984. The involvement of professionals as well as workers in autogestion was illustrated in France in 1968. See chapter “The Liberal Professions” in Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville, Red Flag/Black Flag: French Revolution 1968 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968). In some instances, managerial personnel also lent support to worker initiatives (George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 [Boston: South End Press, 1987], 106).
- 54.
This was a persistent theme in Barry Commoner’s brief for solar technology, in The Poverty of Power (New York: Knopf, 1976). The idea is further developed in Victor Wallis, Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Toronto: Political Animal Press, 2018), ch. 3.
- 55.
On the importance Marx attached to the work process, see Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 3–24; on Marx’s interest in cooperatives, Yvon Bourdet, “Karl Marx et l’autogestion,” Autogestion, No. 15 (1971), 102, and Michael Joseph Roberto, “Capitalist Crisis, Cooperative Labor, and the Conquest of Political Power: Marx’s ‘Inaugural Address’ (1864) and Its Relevance in the Current Moment,” Socialism and Democracy, 28:2 (2014); on his view of “leaders,” Karl Marx letter to Kugelmann of April 17, 1871, in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, 1846–1895. Trans. Dona Torr (New York: International Publishers, 1942), 311.
- 56.
Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, 354.
- 57.
See Richard Gott, Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution (London: Verso, 2005).
- 58.
Maurice Zeitlin, Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 277.
- 59.
Marta Harnecker, Cuba: Dictatorship or Democracy? Trans. Patrick Granville (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1980), 26.
- 60.
Zeitlin, Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class, xxxvii–xl.
- 61.
Wallis, “Workers’ Control: Cases from Latin America and the Caribbean” (n. 9), 261.
- 62.
Linda Fuller, Work and Democracy in Socialist Cuba (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 187–191.
- 63.
Ibid., 116.
- 64.
Emilio Duharte Díaz, “Updating the Cuban Political Model: For a Systemic and Democratic-Participatory Transformation” Socialism and Democracy, 30:1 (2016).
- 65.
Rafael Hernández, “Revolution/Reform and Other Cuban Dilemmas.” Socialism and Democracy, 24:1 (2010).
- 66.
See Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, “Cuban Doctors in Pakistan: Why Cuba Still Inspires,” Monthly Review, 58:6 (Nov. 2006).
- 67.
See Hermann Albrecht, “Venezuela: Five iron and steel plants and the Carabobo Ceramics nationalised” (May 28, 2009), http://www.marxist.com/steel-plants-carabobo-ceramics-nationalised.htm.
- 68.
Iain Bruce, The Real Venezuela: Making Socialism in the 21st Century (London: Pluto Press, 2008), 98ff.
- 69.
GWS (Global Women’s Strike), The Bolivarian Revolution: Enter the Oil Workers (documentary film, 2004).
- 70.
Dario Azzellini, “Venezuela’s Solidarity Economy: Collective Ownership, Expropriation, and Workers’ Self-Management,” Working USA, 12:2 (2009), 184f.
- 71.
István Mészáros, Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995), xvii.
- 72.
See Gustavo Esteva, “Another Perspective, Another Democracy.” Socialism and Democracy, 23:3 (2009).
- 73.
See Carl Davidson, “Steelworkers Plan Job Creation via Worker Coops” (November 5, 2009), http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23059.
- 74.
For background, see Richard D. Wolff, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Chicago: Haymarket: 2012).
- 75.
Stephen E. Philion, Workers’ Democracy in China’s Transition from State Socialism (New York: Routledge, 2009).
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Wallis, V. (2020). Workers’ Control and Revolution: History and Theory. In: Socialist Practice. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35066-6_7
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