An 'ideal' capitalism could tolerate the self-management of the conditions of production: as long as a normal profit is made by the firm, the organisation of the work can be left to the workers." – Barrot & Martin, ‘Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement’
The most widespread image of a so-called ‘socialism’ is a regime is one of state ownership and planned economy, directed by the ‘revolutionary’ party. Ultimately, this means the virtual fusion of State and party with the unions reduced to the role of a transmission belt for State requirements aimed at the working people. Since the State is axiomatically defined as ‘socialist’ and the party as ‘revolutionary’ the schematic conclusion is that these institutions are the same thing as the power of the working people and citizens. Workers’ self-management such as co-operative production under the joint control of the workers in an enterprise, can also be achieved under capitalism. But under capitalism, it can only lead to workers driving down their own conditions (as a result of capitalist competition) or to the collapse of the enterprise. We do not advocate it under capitalism except as a survival strategy to better the conditions of a few lucky wage-slaves.
Of course, this was never the conception of Marx. However, he only offered only qualified endorsement of alternative methods of organising the economy.
‘the co-operative movement will never transform capitalist society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour general social changes are needed, changes ... never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, namely the state power, from the capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.’
The path to socialism is not through nationalisation, syndicalism or cooperatives. Let there not be any ambiguity about the use of the word socialisation – the means of production and distribution is the common property of all the people. The socialisation of private property is the foundation of a class-free society. Socialists seek to abolish the domination of capital and to construct a new society – a socialist society. The Socialist Party fully supports the idea of self-management but we are alone in demanding it to be real self-management rather than facades which simply give workers the illusion of self-management.
The State is the expression of the collective interests of the ruling class in a particular society. Therefore, to bring something under state ownership does not mean to ‘nationalise’ in the sense of ‘socialisation’, where ownership is transferred to the ‘nation’, the whole society. To bring something under state ownership, simply by having the workers get their wages from the state rather than from private bosses, is not sufficient to transform social relations in a socialist sense.
The idea of self-management is, from the very start, a confused one. What most people instinctively understand by it is a society in which relatively small groups, like workers in a single factory, organise all aspects of the running of their individual units. Health workers or teachers, for example, would thus organise at the local level in their hospitals or schools, while consumers would be organised in neighbourhoods. To restrict the concept of self-management to single factories is a pretence. If socialism cannot exist in one country, how can it survive in even one city much less one enterprise?
It is also a question of social democracy. A power station may well supply electricity to a million people and a single factory can produce enough to satisfy the needs of a million people. It is quite untenable to suggest that the control of those resources should be under the control of 200 or 300 people who just happen to work in that particular power plant or factory. The way in which its energy and goods are produced distributed are not the only concern the producers but also all the workers who are going to consume its products and their needs which must be satisfied. There is absolutely no reason why a select number of workers should be given the right to dictate decisions which will affect millions of workers.
With the arrival of socialism, we will inherit a vast array of technological and logistic tools of capitalism, from networks of retail stores to transnational corporation supply chains. There exists thus today, in the technology that the working class will acquire on the day it takes power, tools of coordination and it would be absolutely utopian to want to fragment economic decision-making to these levels. Decisions can be taken in a flexible centralised manner in a democratic way. Such organisation need not be a command-economy of plans issued from above.
Not only can workers not implement decisions against the operations of market laws which allows the survival of competition and imposes certain unavoidable imperatives on the units of production.
There have been many examples of workers’ self-management that went wrong, there have even been some that have ‘succeeded’ – in capitalist terms that is! All that they have succeeded in, however, has been to transform themselves into profitable capitalist enterprises, operating in the same way as other capitalist firms. There is the evidence of Bolivian mining cooperatives transforming into collectives of capitalists which even go so far as employing workers without letting them enter the cooperative, and paying low wages while keeping for themselves their shares in the prosperity of the cooperative.
For sure, we are not dismissing the workers facing redundancies occupying their factory, seizing the ‘booty’ as it were, either for leverage or simply to provide a livelihood. Or denying some workers who have been very fortunate enough the opportunity to find an escape from conventional employment.
Our case is that for a permanent solution for everyone, is to organise industry at a social level, thus allowing for an effectively planned economy consciously run by all the people as a whole.
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