Workers’ control over production was one of the most important demands in the platform of the Bolshevik Party on the eve of the October Revolution. Its importance was all the greater at a time when capitalist economy was in a state of complete bankruptcy and the employers were resorting to a policy of sabotage, lockouts and dislocation of production. Like the other demands in the economic platform, workers’ control was a slogan of the fight for power. The Bolsheviks never regarded it apart from the fundamental thing: the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In his historic article “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” Lenin stresses the fact that “when we say ‘workers’ control,” we do so “always associating that slogan with the dictatorship of the proletariat, and always putting it after the latter.”(1)
The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were bitterly hostile to workers’ control. Their newspapers declared that it would only lead to anarchy and that the worker was incapable of controlling economic life. They asserted everywhere that if control was necessary at all, it should be State control, and since the power of the State (before the October Revolution) was in the hands of the bourgeoisie, this in practice meant surrendering control to the latter. On this, as on other questions, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries opposed the working class and defended the capitalists.
A conference of employees was held in Moscow at the beginning of July. It passed a resolution calling for the adoption of every possible measure to prevent the passing of Socialist legislation and especially to resist interference by the workers in the management of production.
This decision was confirmed by a second conference of employers. The Provincial Government and its organs, like the organisations of the employers and the capitalists themselves, vigorously resisted workers’ control. But this Bolshevik slogan, like the others, met with the ardent support of the workers. Workers’ control would be exercised by the workers and employers themselves through their representatives elected at general meetings. Without the consent of the workers’ control commissions production could not be interrupted or output reduced. The workers’ control commissions would examine the books and records of the firms, bring to light the speculative manipulations of the owners and keep a check on stocks of raw materials, products and other articles. The commissions would form armed squads to protect the factories from the destructive activities of the capitalists, from the attempts of the latter to destroy their own property with the sole object of preventing it from falling into the hands of the new master—the working class.
“Workers’ control,” the resolution of the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party ran, “must be developed by means of gradual measures into the complete regulation of production.
“In order to establish control, the following preliminary measures must be adopted: commercial secrets must be abolished and the books of merchants, industrialists and banks made available to control. Concealment of documents must be proclaimed punishable as a criminal offence. Periodical inventories of stocks must be taken and the amount of stocks published, indicating the firm possessing the stocks.”(2)
Workers’ control would be a blow at capitalist methods of production. It would leave no room for commercial secrets, which were instruments of plunder. The resolution of the Sixth Congress stated:
“In order to combat open and secret lockouts, a law must be passed forbidding the closing down of factories or the curtailment of production except with the permission of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, the trade unions and the central factory committees.”(3)
After the victory of the proletariat the workers’ control bodies could be developed into organs for the management of industry. Exercised on a wide scale, workers’ control would train the workers to manage industry and would promote thousands of excellent organisers and executives from the ranks of the working class.
[1] Lenin, “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” Selected Works (Eng. ed.), Vol. VI, p. 285.
[2] The Sixth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks), August, 1917, Moscow, 1934, p. 243.
[3] Ibid., p. 243.
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