6. The Content of Workers’ Management at Factory Level

It will help us to discuss this problem if we, rather schematically, differentiate between the static and the dynamic aspects of workers’ management, between what will be immediately possible, at the very onset of socialist production, and what will become possible after a relatively short interval, as socialist production develops and as human domination over all stages of the productive process rapidly increases.

For the sake of clarity, we will first describe workers’ management at factory level in a static way. We will then consider how it will develop, and how this development, itself, will constantly expand the areas of local freedom.

a. Immediate Content

Looked at in a static way, the overall plan might allocate to a given enterprise a target to be achieved within a given time (we will examine further on how such targets might be determined under conditions of genuinely democratic planning). The general means to be allocated to the enterprise (to achieve its target) would also be broadly outlined by the plan. For example, the plan might decide that the annual production of a given factory should be so many fridges, and that for this purpose such-and-such a quantity of raw materials, power, machinery, etc., should be made available.

Seen from this angle, workers’ management implies that the workers’ collective will itself be responsible for deciding how a proposed target could best be achieved, given the general means available. The task corresponds to the “positive” functions of the present narrowly-based managerial apparatus, which will have been superseded. The workers will determine the organization of their work in each shop or department. They will ensure coordination between shops. This will take place through direct contacts whenever it is a question of routine problems or of shops engaged in closely related aspects of the productive process. If more important matters arose, they would be discussed and solved by meetings of delegates (or by joint gatherings of workers) of two or more shops or sections. The overall coordination of the work would be undertaken by the Factory Council and by the General Assembly of the Factory. Relations with the rest of the economy, as already stated, would be in the hands of the Factory Council.

As the whole thing becomes real in the hands of the workers of a given plant, a certain “give and take” will undoubtedly occur between “targets set” and “means to be used.” It must be remembered, however, that these “means” are usually the product of some other factory. “Targets set” and “means of production available for achieving them” do not, however, between them rigidly or exhaustively define all the possible methods that could be used. Spelling these methods out in detail, and deciding exactly how an objective will be achieved, given certain material conditions, will be the area in which workers’ management will first operate. It is an important field, but a limited one, and it is essential to be fully aware of its limitations. These limitations stem from (and define) the framework in which the new type of production will have to start. It will be the task of socialist production constantly to expand this framework and constantly to push back these limitations on autonomy.

Autonomy, envisaged in this static way, is limited, first of all, in relation to the fixing of targets. True, the workers of a given enterprise will participate in determining the target of their factory insofar as they participate in the elaboration of the overall plan. But, they are not in total or sole control of the objectives. In a modern economy, where the production of most enterprises both conditions and is conditioned by that of others, the determination of coherent targets cannot as a rule be vested in individual enterprises, acting in isolation. It must be undertaken by (and for) a number of enterprises, general viewpoints prevailing over particular ones. We will return to this point later.

Initial autonomy will also be limited in relation to available material means. The workers of a given enterprise cannot autonomously determine the means of production they would prefer to use, for these are but the products of other enterprises or factories. Total autonomy for every factory, in relation to means, would imply that each factory could determine the output of all the others. These various autonomies would immediately neutralize one another. This limitation is, however, a less rigid one than the first (the limitation in relation to targets). Alterations of its own equipment, proposed by the user-factory, might often be accommodated by the producer-factory, without the latter saddling itself with a heavy extra load. On a small scale, this happens even today, in integrated engineering factories (car factories, for instance) where a substantial part of the tooling utilized in one shop may be made in another shop of the same factory. Close cooperation between plants making machine tools and plants using them, could quickly lead to considerable changes in the means of production actually used.

b. Subsequent Possibilities

Let us now look at workers’ management at factory level as it might develop, i.e., in its dynamic aspect. How would it contribute to transforming socialist production, i.e., to its primary objective? Everything we have suggested so far, will now have to be looked at again. The limits of autonomy will be found to have widened very considerably.

The change will be most obvious in relation to the means of production. Socialist society will immediately get to grips with the problem of a conscious attack on the technology inherited from capitalism. Under capitalism, the means of production are planned and made independently of the user and of his/her preferences (manufacturers, of course, pretend to take the user’s viewpoint into account, but this has little to do with the real user: the worker on the shop floor). But, equipment is made to be productively used. The viewpoint of the “productive consumers” (i.e., of those who will use the equipment to produce the goods) is of primary importance. As the views of those who make the equipment are also important, the problem of the structure of the means of production will only be solved by the living cooperation of these two categories of workers. In an integrated factory, this would mean permanent liaison between the corresponding shops. At the level of the economy, as a whole, it would take place through normal permanent contacts between factories and between sectors of production.[14]

This cooperation will take two forms. Choosing and popularizing the best methods, and rationalizing and extending their use, will be achieved through the horizontal cooperation of Councils, organized according to branch or sector of industry (for instance, textiles, the chemical industry, building, engineering, electrical supply, etc.). On the other hand, the integration of the viewpoints of those who make, and of those who utilize, equipment (or, more generally, of those who make and those who utilize intermediate products) will require the vertical cooperation of Councils representing the different stages of a productive process (steel industry, machine tool industry and engineering industry, for instance). In both cases, the cooperation will need to find embodiment in stable forms, such as Committees of Factory Council representatives (or wider conferences of producers) organized both horizontally and vertically. There would be room for extreme flexibility and many new forms will almost certainly evolve.

Considering the problem from this dynamic angle – which, in the last resort, is the really fundamental one – one can see, at once, that the areas of autonomy have considerably expanded. Already at the level of individual factories (but more significantly at the level of cooperation between factories), the producers are beginning to influence the structure of the means of production. They are, thereby, reaching a position where they are beginning to dominate the work process: they are not only determining its methods, but are now also modifying its technological structure.

This fact now begins to alter what we have just said about targets. Three-quarters of modern production consists of intermediate products, of “means of production” in the widest sense. When producers decide about the means of production, they are participating, in a very direct and immediate way, in decisions about the targets of production. The remaining limitation, and it is an important one, flows from the fact that these means of production (whatever their exact nature) are destined, in the last analysis, to produce consumer goods. And the overall volume of these can only be determined, in general terms, by the plan.

But, even here, looking at things dynamically, radically alters one’s vision. Modern consumption is characterized by the constant appearance of new products. Factories producing consumer goods will conceive of, receive suggestions about, study, and finally produce such products. This raises the wider problem of contact between producers and consumers. Capitalist society rests on a complete separation of these two aspects of human activity, and on the exploitation of the consumer. This isn’t just monetary exploitation (through overcharging). Capitalism claims that it can satisfy people’s needs better than any other system in history. But, in fact, capitalism influences both these needs themselves, and the method of satisfying them. Consumer preference can be manipulated by modern sales techniques.

The division between producers and consumers appears most glaringly in relation to the quality of goods. This problem is insoluble in any exploiting society. Those who only look at the surface of things only see a commodity as a commodity. They don’t see in it a crystallized moment of the class struggle. They see faults or defects as just faults or defects, instead of seeing in them the resultant of a constant struggle between the worker and himself (“Could I do it better? Why should I? I’m just paid to get on with the job”). Faults or defects embody struggles between the worker and exploitation. They also embody squabbles between different sections of the bureaucracy managing the plant. The elimination of exploitation will of itself bring about a change in all this. At work, people will begin to assert their claims as future consumers of what they are producing. In its early phases socialist society will, however, probably have to institute forms of contact (other than “the market”) between producers and consumers.

We have assumed, as a starting point for all this, the division of labor inherited from capitalism. But, we have also said that socialist society would, from the very beginning, have to tackle this division. This is an enormous subject that we can’t even begin to deal with in this text. The basis of this task can, however, be seen even today. Modern production has destroyed many traditional professional qualifications. It has created many automatic or semi-automatic machines. It has, thereby itself, subverted the traditional framework of the industrial division of labor. It is tending to produce a universal worker, capable after a relatively short apprenticeship, of using most of the existing machines. Once one gets beyond its class aspects, the “posting” of workers to particular jobs in a big modern factory corresponds less and less to a genuine division of labor and more and more to a simple division of tasks. Workers are not allocated to given areas of the productive process because their “professional skills” invariably correspond to “skills required” by management. They are often placed here rather than there because putting a particular worker in a particular place at a particular time happens to suit the personnel officer – or the foreman – or, more prosaically, just because a particular vacancy happened to be going.

Under socialism, factories would have no reason to accept the rigid division of labor now prevailing. There will be every reason to encourage a rotation of workers between shops and departments – and, between production and office areas. Such a rotation will greatly help workers to manage production “in full knowledge of the relevant facts.” [More and more workers will have become familiar at first hand with what goes on where they work.] The same applies to rotation of work between various enterprises, and in particular, between “producing” and “utilizing” units.

The residues of capitalism’s division of labor will have gradually to be eliminated. This overlaps with the general problem of education, education not only of the new generations, but of those adults brought up under the previous system. We can’t go into this problem here.