Implementing socialism

The working class has to establish the new economy, organise the new society, realise socialism. It has to dismantle the dictatorships, dissolve the state, and create the society without rulers – finally free. Its task is the accomplishment of the socialist idea. The Socialist Party proposes to realise socialism through the conquest of political power, the capture of the State machine by the working class at the ballot box in their respective localities. The Socialist Party strives for power—for power to transform society and achieve socialism.

The ideas, demands and movements of workers’ participation, workers’ control, self-management, direct workers’ rule, workers’ democracy, etc., have a long-standing tradition and are deeply rooted. These ideas imbue and permeate, in one way or another, the entire history of world socialism. Their ideological roots and origins lie in the interaction of two powerful and increasingly - determinating tendencies – socialism and democracy. The ideas, demands and movements of workers participation, workers’ control and self-management manifest themselves today in extremely different milieu and forms, and the roles given them are more different still. The ideas of workers’ participation, workers’ control, self-management, etc., today enjoy more support than ever before. Today it is not so necessary to prove the desirability of direct workers’ democracy as it is its possibility. The primary task no longer lies in fighting to have the socialist legitimacy of the self-management concept of a new society accepted. What is most important is to prove and in practice confirm the possibility and advantage of socialist self-management over other, particularly statist interpretations. the present task is to draw a clear line between socialist self-management as a radical alternative to all existing forms of waged labour, class divisions, exploitation and alienated existence and various aspects of workers’ participation in the decision-making process which are developed and accepted, as an appendage to the existing class society or as a means of alleviating certain contradictions in the system of state capitalism. For concerted efforts are being made to treat self-management as just one of the ways in which to “include” the worker in the process of management. This leads us to a fundamental critique of those who advocate socialist self-management within individual factory units which, in practice, essentially amounts to no more than workers organising production and the allocation of the social surplus at the level of their factories. Proponents of this sort of self-management are, at best, utopians and, at worst, the sort of leaders who, realising what this sort of ‘self-management’ means, use it for their own ends. Obviously, this is an attempt to conceal the profoundly revolutionary nature of the idea of workers’ self-management.

To look at a couple of examples: electrical generating stations which employ 200 or 300 workers and technicians supply electricity to half a million people; one single machine can produce enough paper to satisfy the needs of one and a half to two million people. It is quite untenable to suggest that the economic problems related to this production can be resolved at the level of 200 or 300 people just because they happen to work in this particular factory. In the case of this sort of factory, the way in which its production is distributed and the needs it must satisfy does not only concern the producers but also all the workers who are going to consume its products. There is absolutely no reason why workers in an electrical generating station should be given the right to dictate decisions concerning electricity which will be consumed by millions of workers.

There exists thus today, in the technology that the working class will inherit from capitalism on the day it takes power, a powerful centralising tendency, a tendency which is neither inevitable nor eternal and which can probably be pushed right into the background in the course of constructing a classless society. It is, however, precisely the technology which we inherit from capitalism with which we will have to start building a new society. In this context, it is absolutely utopian to want to fragment economic decision-making to the level of what can be decided in a single factory.

Very many economic decisions concern a whole series of social groups infinitely larger than a single firm; these decisions must be taken at the level of these groups – in other words, they must be centralised in a democratic way. We are proponents of democratically-centralised self-management or, to put it another way, of planned self-management, not because we are centralisers by nature but because it’s a matter of an objective necessity which corresponds to the realities of economic life. This centralisation is inevitable because it is inherent in the anarchy of the present system and independent of our desires. The choice we actually have is a fundamental one: unless economic centralisation is carried out in a conscious, that is to say, a planned and deliberate way, it will arise in a spontaneous, anarchic way behind workers’ backs. The choice, therefore, is not between ‘bureaucratic centralisation’ and ‘decentralised self-management’. The real choice which will confront us in the economic sphere after the overthrow of capitalism will be the choice between democratically-centralised self-management based upon socialist planning. For this reason, we attack the proponents of self-management restricted to such-and-such a factory. We contend that they are lying to the workers when they say that it’s enough to give workers decision-making power at the level of the factory. What is the point of giving workers the power to make decisions when this turns out to be a mere sham and when the decisions taken at factory level are continuously revised and overturned by the operation of market laws – that is, by the spontaneous centralisation which occurs through these laws when it is not effected through the planning of the economy as a whole. This is why we are in favour of democratically-centralised and planned self-management, or, to get to the root of the problem, of economic power exercised at the level of the class as a whole, and not exclusively, or even mainly, by each tiny sub-group of that class. If the decision-making and advantages of each particular factory are left to the workers of that factory to deal with a situation of blatant inequality is created within the working class. It is, thus, to deceive the workers to lead them to believe that they can manage their affairs at the level of the factory. In the present economic system, a whole series of decisions are inevitably taken at higher levels than the factory, and if these decisions are not consciously made by the working class as a whole, then they will be made by other forces in society behind the workers’ backs.

Not only is self-management limited to the level of the factory, workshop or assembly line an illusion from an economic point of view, in that the workers cannot implement decisions taken at this level against the operations of market laws, but, worse still, the decisions taken by the workers become more and more exclusively restricted to decisions about profits. The fundamental principle underlying self-management, which is the liberation of labour, whereby workers dominate the process of production, decide for themselves the speed of the assembly line and the organisation of work in the factory, and which is part and parcel of the sort of socialist society we are trying to build, is unrealisable in an economy which allows the survival of competition.

We support the democratically planned self-management as a manifestation of workers’ democracy organised around interconnected workers’ councils as broadly-based as possible to involve the maximum number of workers in the exercise of power. If we reject the idea that the most democratic form of self-management is that based on the individual factory, it is because it is only in a complex structure where self-management takes place at all levels of economic and social life that it is possible to involve the maximum number of workers at different levels of decision-making. We have a very simple formula to apply in this context: decisions must be taken at the level where this can be done most effectively. It is unnecessary to call a European congress of workers’ councils to work out a bus timetable for Coventry; the workers of Coventry are quite capable of working that out for themselves without the interference of any bureaucratic institutions. There’s no need to organise a national congress of workers’ councils to organise production in a particular. On the other hand, when it comes to making decisions about investment in the shoe industry, or how to fight pollution of waterways, then a national or even international congress of workers’ councils is necessary since this sort of decision can only be taken at a national or international level. This is what we mean when we talk about the articulation of decision-making bodies. In economic matters, each decision must ideally be taken at the level in which it can be most effectively and efficiently implemented. At a workshop: the workers in that workshop are quite capable of sorting that out on their own.

Today we live in a world at a specific level of technology and we must assess the extent to which its various forms could be put to the service of workers’ democracy – of a totally different form of economic organisation. It would be eminently possible, for example, to organise a national conference of workers’ councils in the shoe industry, the proceedings of which could be simultaneously relayed to all factories in that sector. It would then be possible, if one of the delegates said something which didn’t correspond with the mandate given him in his particular factory, for the comrades in that factory to communicate to the conference, and say, ‘Comrade, you’re mistaken’, or equally, ‘You not putting forward the instructions that we gave you as our delegate and so we immediately recall you”. One only has to consider the techniques used in today’s TV reality shows to realise the potential of instant interactive mass communication. What a phenomenal instrument of direct democracy could be.