1
Workers’ Control and Revolution
Victor Wallis
 
 
In the perpetual striving of the left to integrate long-range vision and immediate practice, the idea of workers’ control occupies a special place.1 On the one hand, its generalized application would satisfy one of the main requirements for a stateless society; on the other, the basic units and the specific measures involved are such that it can sometimes be implemented within particular enterprises in an otherwise capitalist framework. From the first of these perspectives, workers’ control has always been one of the most radical possible demands, indistinguishable in effect from the communist ideal, while from the second it has been perceived as limited, innocuous, and easily co-optable.
How can a single demand appear at once so easy and so difficult, so harmless and so explosive? The contradiction lies, of course, in the system that has given rise to the demand. Prior to the development of capitalism, the concept of “workers’ control of the production process” could not have been a demand; it was a simple fact of life (within the limits allowed by nature). Hence the apparent accessibility of workers’ control, which on principle reflects no more than the capacity of all humans to think as well as to do. In these terms, it should not be surprising that workers on occasion take over and run productive enterprises without necessarily having an explicit socialist consciousness or political strategy. The faculties they draw upon for such initiatives are not so much new as they are long-suppressed—for the majority of the population.
It is the overcoming of this suppression, as old as capitalism itself, that constitutes the explosive side of workers’ control. What workers’ control points to is more than just a new way of organizing production; it is also the release of human creative energy on a vast scale. As such it is inherently revolutionary. But at the same time, because of the very weight of what it must overcome, it appears correspondingly remote from day-to-day struggles. As a political rallying point, it has two specific drawbacks. First, its urgency in many situations is not likely to be as great as that of survival demands; second, its full application will remain limited as long as there are economic forces beyond the reach of the workers—whether within a given country or outside it (Dallemagne 1976, 114). Concern with these dimensions is often seen as precluding an emphasis on workers’ control and, as a result, the self-management impulse, despite its original naturalness, is consigned to utopia.
Such a dismissal is altogether unjustified. The growing interest in workers’ control since the late 1960s cannot be explained merely by its timeless qualities. As in Marx’s critique of capitalism, it reflects a definite historical juncture. The countries with extreme physical privation are no longer the only ones in which the system’s breakdown is manifest. The advanced capitalist regimes are likewise in question, if not for the first time. A new feature of the post-1960s crisis is precisely a redefinition of the concept of basic needs. The “environment,” after all, exists inside as well as outside the workplace, and the old distinction between survival needs (identified with wages) and other demands (self-determination, participation, and control) is becoming increasingly blurred. Linked to this is the fact that the fragmentation of the capitalist work process has reached a limit in the leading industrial sectors and is fast approaching it in clerical and sales operations (Bourdet and Guillerm 1975, ch. 7). As the reaction proceeds, there is no reason for it to stop halfway. Finally, with the rightward evolution of the Chinese leadership (the major international model in the third quarter of the twentieth century), new space has opened on the left to reexamine longheld assumptions about revolutionary organization.
But despite all such arguments for placing workers’ control on the agenda, one may well remain skeptical as to its real promise. Consider first the potential significance of isolated self-managed or cooperative enterprises. Their usefulness as models is limited in several ways. They are generally small, and if they grow, they tend to take on traditional capitalistic incentives and administrative practices.2 They are unlikely to emerge in core industries simply because the terms of a negotiated property transfer would be beyond the financial reach of the workers. A second possibility to consider would be some of the West European reform models. These seem to have stopped short of all but the most token worker input except in the Swedish case. In Sweden, the results are more impressive, extending to major changes in the work process, flexibility in scheduling, and even the beginnings of a collective input into production decisions (Peterson 1977). However, this is still not control; it does not reflect a decisive shift of power.
As a third alternative, we might consider those post-capitalist societies that instituted some form of elective principle at the factory level. As of the late 1970s, the two major cases in point were Yugoslavia and China. But in both countries the measures were limited in their scope3 and were subsequently offset by decisive reversions to earlier practice: market-oriented in the case of Yugoslavia; bureaucratic in the case of China. More generally, however, the regimes and leaderships of first-epoch socialism tended to view their own political rule as obviating the need for democratic restructuring of the workplace. Cuba, in more recent years, would become the first country with a broad socialist agenda to gradually implement worker-control measures following an initial transfer of class power at the level of the state.
The Cuban Revolution constitutes a kind of historical bridge between, on the one hand, the revolutions and regimes precipitated by imperialist invasions (1914–1945) and led by vanguard parties, and, on the other, the post-1989 wave of grassroots movements—most evident in Latin America—which from the outset accorded new emphasis to mechanisms of popular participation.4 This latter development heralds a fresh chapter in the global history of workers’ control. Until this most recent period, however, workers’ participation in management normally fell very far short of control except in very isolated cases—even where considerable social upheaval had intervened. While workers’ control thus did not appear impossible, it at least seemed to require unusual conditions for its success.
There is one type of experience, however, that transcends all boundaries: the experience of the revolutionary periods themselves. Workers’ control has gone further and deeper during such periods than at any other times, whether pre- or post-revolutionary. Moreover, far from being peculiar to this or that crisis, workers’ control initiatives have arisen during all such moments. Clearly, we are dealing with a phenomenon of universal force and appeal, as suggested by two immediate considerations. First is the range of settings in which the initiatives arose. Without setting any comprehensive criteria as to the depth or thrust of the crises, a listing would have to include: Russia 1917–18, Germany 1918–19, Hungary 1919, Italy 1920, Spain 1936–39, Czechoslovakia 1945–47, Hungary and Poland 1956, Algeria 1962–65, China 1966–69, France and Czechoslovakia 1968, Chile 1970–73, and Portugal 1974–75.4 Second and more decisive is the fact that in no case did the radical initiative die a natural death. Although there may have been natural disadvantages (inexperience, excesses, or abuses), what killed the initiative in every case was not any loss of momentum, but rather the threat or use of armed force.
If we grant, then, that workers’ control has displayed a core of viability, it remains for us to ask what all these experiences imply as to its possible institutionalization under stable conditions. Focusing first on the Russian case and then on three cases (Italy, Spain, Chile) more directly pertinent to advanced capitalist democracies, we shall explore such matters as the capacities of the workers, the ripeness of surrounding conditions, and the role of political leadership. We shall then consider possible new configurations suggested by more recent developments in Cuba and Venezuela.

Proletariat and Dictatorship in Revolutionary Russia

The Russian experience inescapably sets the terms for any comparative discussion. In its combination of hopes and disappointments, it was certainly a prototype. Its uniqueness is that—despite the immensity of the country’s peasant population—it was the only revolution to have triumphed on the basis of an industrial working class.5 This feature, combined with the forcefulness of Lenin’s writings, has given the Bolshevik approach a historic influence on discussions of workers’ control that far exceeds the revolution’s long-term attainments in that area.
In fact, the Bolshevik leadership, from the moment it took power in October 1917, entered upon a collision course with workers’ self-management initiatives. Although Lenin applauded such initiatives during the whole pre-October period,6 his position after October is unambiguous: “large-scale machine industry—which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism—calls for absolute and strict unity of will.
.... But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one” (Lenin 1971a, 424; Lenin’s emphasis).
Despite the unprecedented surge of factory takeovers that occurred throughout 1917, the Bolshevik leadership looked upon such actions as at most an expression of revolt against the bourgeoisie. It did not treat them as a form to build upon in the course of a transition to socialism. Instead, going along with the emphasis on obedience, Lenin repeatedly urged a prominent managerial role for former capitalists. When the Bolsheviks adopted the slogan of “workers’ control,” therefore, they made clear that they understood “control” in the limited European sense of “checking” (Brinton 1970, 12). While the performance of the ex-capitalists was thus indeed to be “controlled,” Lenin never spelled out what aspects of the production process the workers would be empowered to judge. What this meant in practice, however, is clearly suggested in his remarks about Taylorism, namely, that if a given method can quadruple productivity for the benefit of the capitalists, it can just as well do so for the benefit of the working class.7
In line with this approach, the Soviet government reacted with consistent disfavor to worker-control initiatives, even where the alternative was a factory shutdown (Voline 1974, 289ff). Lenin defended this overall position by referring to the urgency of the country’s economic tasks and to the inexperience of the workers (Lenin 1971b, 451). He did not consider the possibility of using the old managers merely as consultants, but instead accepted the idea that they should retain prime authority. In defense of this stance, one can point out that many workers escaping the old discipline abused their freedom of action (Avrich 1967, 162f); however, the widespread heroism displayed by workers in the civil war suggests that if given a meaningful opportunity, they might well have acted differently. While critics of self-management are correct in stressing the need for coordination, there is no reason to view this as ruling out—particularly in periods of revolutionary mobilization—an increased reliance on rank-and-file activism.
What was at issue, in effect, was an entire approach to the transitional process. The acceptance of Taylorist methods was just one component—albeit a central one—of Lenin’s larger view of the Russian economy as still requiring full development of the capitalist production process even if under (presumed) working-class leadership. Lenin referred to this contradictory stage as “state capitalism,” which he saw as a necessary prerequisite to socialism (Lenin 1971b, 440). Its essence was a continuous increase of economic concentration. Lenin labeled opponents of this process petty bourgeois, even though the associated rationalization of industry might just as well be resisted by workers. He denounced such resistance in “‘Left Wing’ Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality” (May 1918), in which he treats workers’ self-management as being not only premature but even counterproductive to his overall strategy of reaching socialism by way of state capitalism. The either/or nature of his position is emphatic: “Our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not to shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it” (1971b, 444; Lenin’s emphasis).
If the workers, however, are so ill-equipped for self-management, how can their party be justified in taking state power? Lenin takes up this question of prematurity in general terms in the same essay, arguing convincingly against the kind of purism that requires a perfect evenness in the development of all forces before any step forward can be taken (1971b, 448). But this properly dialectical response is offset by Lenin’s decidedly undialectical exaltation of state capitalism. For while the latter approach could and did kill workers’ self-management, the dialectical approach, with its recognition that people’s faculties develop in conjunction with their responsibilities, prompts precisely the opposite suggestion: namely, if it was not too soon for the workers (through their parties) to seize state power, why was it too soon for them to start using it to transform production relations?8
What is at issue here is not in the nature of an “error” on Lenin’s part. In terms of the immediate priority of defeating the counterrevolution, he was undeniably successful, although whether his approach was the only one possible remains an open question. Two things are certain, however. First, the supposedly temporary restraints upon workers’ initiatives were never removed (Holubenko 1975, 23); second, the economic assumptions that seemed to justify them were not peculiar to Lenin but were widely shared in his time, even among Marxists. Briefly put, the assumptions are (1) growth is good; (2) results are more important than processes; and (3) capitalists get results. Linked to them in Lenin’s thinking was a more specific belief in the neutrality of capitalist management techniques (Taylorism) and, with it, the implicit conclusion that Communists can play the capitalist game without getting drawn into it.
The irony of all this is that while Lenin’s approach may have been necessary to prevent the immediate counterrevolution, it undoubtedly worked to facilitate the longer-term restoration of traditional hierarchical management practices. The negative lesson of the Soviet experience is therefore clear: socialist revolution will not lead directly to the establishment of workers’ control unless the appropriate measures are incorporated into the process through all its stages. What the Russian workers accomplished in 1917 was of unparalleled importance in raising this possibility. If their efforts failed, it was not due to any inherent flaw in what they were striving for, but rather to historical circumstances specific to the Russian case.
The circumstances in question all relate to Russia’s position as pacesetter. First, as already suggested, the period itself was one in which the impressiveness of capitalism’s productive attainments was still largely unquestioned. Second, the very economic backwardness that made Russian society so explosive also required that any revolutionary government place a premium upon growth. Third, the workers themselves operated under a series of specific disadvantages, the most decisive of which was the lack of sufficient tradition and organization to enable them to coordinate their self-management initiatives. And finally, in response to the civil war (an externally supported counterrevolution), huge numbers of the most dedicated workers—two hundred thousand by April 1918 from Moscow alone—departed for the front (Murphy 2005, 65f ). For any who may have returned, the moment of their potential collective strength was lost.

The Politics of Revolutionary Workers’ Control: Three Cases

The Russian experience, although the first of its kind, was also the one in which the anticapitalist struggle came closest to success. We have seen, though, how distant it still was from a genuine victory. The capitalists were politically and militarily defeated, but their conception of workplace hierarchy survived. The subsequent trajectories of Italy, Spain, and Chile demonstrate almost the exact opposite dynamic. The capitalist class in all three cases recovered its position in the most thoroughgoing and brutal form possible, via fascism. But the workers in each case made unprecedented advances which, taken together, go far toward mapping the place of workers’ control in current and future revolutions.

Italy, 1920

The Italian factory occupations of September 1920 were in some ways more limited than their crisis counterparts elsewhere. They lasted less than a month, during which time a liberal bourgeois government remained in place, and the immediate withdrawal of the workers was based on a compromise. There was no doubt on either side, however, that class and state power were at issue throughout (Spriano 1975, 105, 131). This was the first instance of factory seizures in a capitalist democracy, and it also gave rise for the first time to the idea that the workers could make the revolution not by bringing production to a halt—the general strike—but rather by taking charge of it themselves.
If the short-run scope of the episode remained limited, it was partly because the workers lacked a strategy for going beyond the factory seizures and partly because of the reluctant patience of the capitalist class in waiting them out. The seizures themselves reflected an ad hoc decision. Although they climaxed more than a year of dramatic advances by the workers—including an election in which the Socialists emerged as the top vote-getting party—the immediate occasion for the factory seizures was a lockout (ibid., 57). The unity of the workers’ direct response was not matched by thoroughness or consensus in their prior planning. As for the capitalists, their patience at that moment was prompted not only by their unwillingness to destroy the factories but also by two contingent factors: a cyclical downturn in the demand for their products (ibid., 44), and, in the person of Giovanni Giolitti, a shrewd political leadership at the national level.
These factors, however, served only to delay the more fundamental capitalist response. The full reaction began with the Fascist takeover of the government in 1922. The connection between Italy’s “first” in the sphere of fascism and its “first” in the sphere of factory seizures is by no means accidental. The actual experience of the factory seizures constituted a trauma for the bourgeoisie (Salvemini 1973, 278). Giolitti’s temporizing strategy had proved a sufficient palliative in only one sense: it gave short-run results simply because the workers had no way of extending their leverage beyond the factories themselves. But Giolitti had had higher hopes than just winning the immediate battle; as he admitted in his memoirs, he had assumed—in a manner doubtless common to the class he represented—that if he simply let the occupation run its course, the workers would soon realize that they were incapable of managing production (Cammett 1967, 117). This comfortable assumption was shattered once and for all. The working-class threat was clearly more profound than Giolitti had thought, and for the bourgeoisie this justified new methods of repression (ibid., 121).
Despite their brevity, the Italian factory occupations signaled a major step forward for the workers compared to the Russian experience. In Russia, the workers had displayed considerable disorganization and indiscipline, sometimes degenerating into outright corruption, all of which had provided the element of justification for Lenin’s repressive approach. In the Italian factories, by contrast, “Absenteeism among workers was negligible, discipline effective, combativity widely diffused” (Spriano 1975, 84). Moreover, unlike the Russian situation, where worker-run factories had related to the market on a one-by-one basis, in Italy the workers set in motion the rudiments of a coordinated sales policy (Williams 1975, 246f). The Italian workers thus demonstrated that one-man rule in the factory is not the only alternative to chaos.
It may seem paradoxical that the workers’ revolutionary self-discipline should have advanced more in a situation in which they were remote from power than in one in which they could think of themselves as a ruling class. This is not necessarily implausible, however, for the Italian workers were encouraged in their self-discipline by two practical requirements: (a) guarding against provocation in a setting where the factories were surrounded by hostile armed forces, and (b) building up support in new sectors of the population.
But one must look deeper in order to see what enabled the Italian workers to respond to these requirements in the appropriate way. Italy’s political development is characterized by a unique combination of features not found together elsewhere. At the broadest level, it combines the late-industrialization traits of Germany and Russia with some of the constitutionalist traits of Northern and Western Europe. While late industrialization gave a revolutionary thrust to the working class, the possibility of incorporating democratic demands into labor struggles made the unions less “economistic” than they were in the other industrializing countries (Cammett 1967, 22). As a result, there was less of a basis in Italy than elsewhere for the radical dichotomy between trade-union consciousness and class consciousness that at certain points shaped Lenin’s thinking.
As a more direct expression of Italy’s uniqueness in these respects, we may note a tradition dating back to the 1860s that linked socialism very closely with anarchism (Procacci 1971, 395). Less than a year before the factory occupations, Antonio Gramsci gave a clear example of such a link when he wrote: “The proletarian dictatorship can only be embodied in a type of organization that is specific to the activity of producers, not wage-earners, the slaves of capital. The factory council is the nucleus of this organization. . . . The factory council is the model of the proletarian State” (Gramsci 1977, 100).

Spain, 1936–1939

The Spanish Civil War provided the occasion, in certain regions of the country, for the closest approach yet made to a society fully based on workers’ control. Largely hidden from world opinion at the time, the innovations in question have nonetheless been well recorded by eyewitnesses, and they constitute a vital reference point for any revolutionary strategy that looks beyond the mere seizure of state power.
The most notable aspects of the Spanish experience may be summarized as follows.9 First, workers’ control was practiced in every sector of the economy. While it went furthest in agriculture, in at least one city (Barcelona) it was introduced in all industries and services. Second, the structural changes were very radical, often entailing the elimination of certain mana-gerial positions, the equalization of wages, and, in some peasant collectives, the abolition of money. Particularly impressive is the fact that, where land expropriations took place, the peasants almost invariably preferred communal ownership to parcelization. Third, even the most radical of the changes were introduced directly and immediately, placing maximum reliance on the participation of the masses to the highest level of their abilities. Fourth, contrary to many stereotypes, the changes in question were not necessarily made at the expense of efficiency, but instead often involved advances in technology or coordination, as in the consolidation of the Barcelona bakeries and the vertical integration of the Catalan lumber industry. Finally, it was close to three years in some places before the self-managed operations were suppressed by force. There was thus ample time for them to prove themselves as practical arrangements.
The full scope of the mass initiative in Spain was so great that one hesitates to offer a schematic explanation, but we may at least sketch in some of the contours.10
In Spain as in Italy, we find an anarchist component to working-class culture, and we also find a constitutional political framework. But Spain was economically more backward; its constitution was newer and its anarchism stronger. Anarchist and socialist movements had already developed two rival union federations by the time the republic was established in 1931. In the sphere of government the anarchists were naturally unrepresented, but the left parties doubtless benefited from their votes. By the time of the February 1936 elections, the general polarization of Spanish society exceeded that of postwar Italy, and the Popular Front coalition won a majority in parliament. The workers and peasants could thus make their first moves under a government that, though not revolutionary, could be seen at least to some extent as their own.
The real catalyst, however, was provided by the reactionary forces. This reflected another unique aspect of the Spanish case. In Italy, as in Germany, fascism had intervened only after the high tide of the workers’ movement had already passed—outlasted in the former case by a relatively unified bourgeoisie, crushed in the latter by an unholy alliance of Social Democrats and generals. In Spain of the 1930s, the bourgeoisie was still something of a rising class. An important sector of it was represented in the leadership of the Popular Front: again, an unusual circumstance in that all previous late-developing bourgeoisies had carefully avoided any political alliance with the working class. But the liberalism of the Republican bourgeoisie could not be viewed even as a temporary expedient by the rest of the Spanish ruling class. Hence the rapidly improvised military response of Franco in July 1936—the least prepared of all Fascist risings in terms of any prior pacification of the masses.
The counterattack from below was instantaneous, massive, and revolutionary. The popular resistance far outstripped anything that could have been organized by the bourgeois republic, but by the same token it involved the immediate implementation of measures that even the most progressive of the governing parties could envisage only for a distant future. The military insurgency had hobbled the Republican power structure, and in so doing had confronted workers and peasants not only with a mortal threat, but also with an undreamed-of opportunity. They rushed to fill the vacuum. In a two-week period they collectivized industries, services, and farm villages throughout the eastern half of Spain (Broué and Témime 1972, ch. 5). With communities now authentically their own to defend, they gave themselves in full force to the military struggle against fascism.
The Republican government faced a dilemma. On the one hand, it would have fallen instantly without the popular counterattack, but on the other, it could in no way identify with the social revolution that this involved. So while it gathered some of its forces to resist Franco’s Nationalist army, it mobilized others to suppress the very movement that had made such resistance possible. The government was to gain a decisive counter-revolutionary success in the Barcelona May Days of 1937 (ibid., 288).
The response from the side of the workers and peasants was ambivalent. Their dilemma was essentially the converse of that of the government: while they were tenacious about preserving their social gains, they were reluctant to aggravate divisions among the antifascist forces. At any level above that of their immediate communities, they tended to accept defeat, although this often meant that they were disarmed for the common military effort. To some extent, however, this element of resignation had shown itself even while the revolution was still at the crest of its initial upsurge. A key moment had occurred in Barcelona on July 21, 1936. The armed workers, having routed the bourgeoisie, were offered power by the Catalan president. They declined. As explained by one of their anarchist leaders: “We could have remained alone, imposed our absolute will, declared the [Catalan state] null and void, and imposed the true power of the people in its place, but we did not believe in dictatorship when it was being exercised against us, and we did not want it when we could exercise it ourselves only at the expense of others” (ibid., 131).
Considering the final outcome of the conflict, it is hard not to view such a statement as either tragic or absurd. But the tragedy/absurdity is compounded by the position of those who did think in terms of state power. For while the anarchists backed the workers but refused to accept their mandate, the Communists welcomed a role in the government but used it—with even greater insistence than their bourgeois partners—to undo the revolutionary gains of the workers (Thomas 1961, 436). Santiago Carrillo’s later “Eurocommunist” position had its roots at the beginning of his career; already in January 1937 he was saying, as secretary-general of the Socialist-Communist Youth, “We are not Marxist youth. We fight for a democratic, parliamentary republic” (ibid., 366). The practical meaning of such statements was revealed after May 1937, when the Republican government (with Communist participation) began the systematic restoration of private ownership in agriculture and industry. 11 This was almost two years before the final victory of fascism.
The Spanish workers and peasants thus experienced, within the lifespan of the republic, a compressed and intensified version of what the Russian workers went through after 1917. The rationales, however, were different. Lenin’s reservations about self-management had rested above all on the question of expertise. In Spain, by contrast, perhaps thanks to anarchism’s cultural impact, there was no lack of highly trained individuals ready to contribute their skills without demanding special privileges.
The argument for suppressing workers’ control was found not in any failures of the workers themselves but rather in the international situation—a factor that became critical when Nazi and Italian Fascist forces intervened on Franco’s side. The Soviet Union was the only outside power willing to aid the republic, but Stalin did not wish to jeopardize his defensive alliance with France by supporting revolution in Spain. More generally, the Communist parties argued that the only hope of additional support against Franco would come from portraying the battle strictly as one of “democracy versus fascism.” For our present purposes, it is enough to make three points about this argument. First, the assumption that bourgeois governments might be swayed by such an ideological appeal proved to be totally unfounded. Second, it imposed a major limitation on the nature of foreign working-class support, for while thousands of highly politicized workers came to Spain as volunteers, the millions who stayed at home had no reason to see the issue as one of class interest, and as a result stayed aloof from the struggle. Finally, within Spain, the consequences for the workers’ and peasants’ fighting ability were disastrous.

Chile, 1970–1973

Salvador Allende’s Chile was a direct successor to revolutionary Spain in more ways than one: electoral stimulus, workers’ initiatives, conflicts within the left, decisive foreign support to the right, and crushing defeat. In some ways, of course, Chile never reached the levels attained in Spain. Thus, the Chilean workers and peasants remained for the most part unarmed, and there were no whole regions of the country they controlled. Nevertheless, in one important sense the Chilean case carries the accumulated experience of workers’ control another step forward: namely, in that the interaction between class-conscious workers and the elected government was a great deal more fluid.
The Allende government, unlike the Popular Front government in Spain, was comprised overwhelmingly of working-class parties and was committed, at least programmatically, to workers’ control. The Chilean workers, for their part, did not have the same tradition of anarchism as did their Spanish counterparts, and in fact were most often identified—if only through their unions—with the very parties that made up the government. Only among the peasants had any direct takeovers been carried out prior to 1970. In effect, the autonomous workers’ initiatives were, to a greater extent than in either Italy or Spain, an offshoot of the struggle being conducted at state level. While the Chilean workers never came as close to power as did their Spanish predecessors (especially in Catalonia), they certainly would not have declined the authority if it had been thrust upon them. Their problem was thus the opposite of the one that faced the Spanish workers: after a whole generation of functioning under a stable constitutional regime, and after eighteen years of steady electoral growth for the left, the Chilean workers had become accustomed to relying upon an eventual electoral success for the satisfaction of their demands. It was only after Allende’s narrow electoral victory that they began to see the full extent of their own responsibility in the process.
The direct role of the workers was initially a defensive one. The first factories to be taken over were those whose owners had unilaterally cut back production (NACLA 1973). The workers did not necessarily expect to run such factories on their own; their more likely priority, at this stage, was to protect a government with which they identified. At first, it was only in the countryside that expropriations from below were undertaken on a systematic basis. But even these cases developed according to legal terms consistent with those accepted by Allende, for already on the books was an agrarian reform—passed in 1967 but previously unenforced—that set an eighty-hectare ceiling on individual holdings. In short, both workers and peasants acted in the expectation of official support for their steps.
To a greater extent than in any previous case, the official support did indeed materialize. This was not because the government’s security against the right was any stronger; rather, it was because the government’s dependence on the left was greater, in terms of both its original access to office and its need to confront unanimous bourgeois obstruction of economic activity.
In any case, legal norms were established through the Ministry of Labor for regulating factory organization in the “social area” (nationalized sector) of the economy, and these provided for a majority of worker-elected representatives on the administrative council of each enterprise. Within this framework, the workers again showed that their economic performance increased with the level of their participation; in turn, their participation, far from reflecting narrow sectoral interests or competitive attitudes, related directly to their identification with the overall process of change.12
But the Allende government was never able to free itself of its institutional moorings. The bourgeoisie, through its very obstructionism, was forcing a speedup of the transformation, but only the grassroots workers could mount an appropriate response. With the October 1972 bosses’ stoppage, “business as usual” ceased completely, and expropriation became necessary not solely as a revolutionary goal but simply for the maintenance of essential services. At this point the contradiction between legally installed government and class-conscious workers became decisive. The workers overcame the stoppage and in so doing saved the government, but the government bargained away their victory by agreeing to return seized factories to their former owners in exchange for military guarantees to protect scheduled congressional elections .13
The available alternatives will never be fully known. Significantly, however, even a strong defender of Allende’s concessions admits that the military at that moment was not yet prepared to launch a successful coup (Boorstein 1977, 212). Thus, from the workers’ standpoint, the setback was total. It signaled the end of any official encouragement of workers’ control, except in improvised response to the coup attempt of June 1973, when once again many plants were seized. By that time, however, the military already had the initiative, and from then on until the final coup in September 1973, workers in self-managed factories were subjected to systematic shakedowns and intimidation by the armed forces. The government said nothing, but it was powerless in any case. It had made its choice earlier. As in Spain, the workers’ initiatives had been blocked from their own side—less wholeheartedly, but no less definitively.
Still, Chile had shown that government support for workers’ control was at least a possibility. Some sectors of the governing coalition—especially the left wing of the Socialist Party—favored just such a strategy, though not to the exclusion of a coordinated approach to transition. Within the self-managed factories, the workers with the highest level of participation had no illusions about the sufficiency of their own sphere of activity; rather, they identified precisely with these political sectors (Zimbalist and Petras 1975–76, 25) and thus with an approach that—even if belatedly—had come to see the workplace struggle and the state-level struggle as going hand in hand.

Lessons of the Pre-1989 Experience

It should hardly be necessary to state that the struggles for workers’ control and for socialism are inseparable. And yet the problem that has arisen again and again in practice is that they have found themselves organizationally in conflict. “Socialism” has been the formal monopoly of a political party (or parties), while self-management has been the direct expression of the workers and peasants themselves. Whichever one has prevailed, the result has been a setback in the movement toward a classless society. “Socialism” without self-management has revived or perpetuated rigid social strata, while self-management without a strong political direction has simply been suppressed.
One can go even further to say that the two sets of failures have reinforced each other. Thus, for every defeated workers’ uprising, there are the party officials who will gain credibility by denouncing its spontaneous and undisciplined character. But at the same time, for every disappointment occasioned by a revolutionary government, there are the radical libertarians who will add a further blast to their condemnation of any strategy that doesn’t emanate directly and immediately from the base. Vanguard and mass, party and class: instead of moving closer together, they move farther apart.
On what basis might this separation be overcome? Among the experiences considered here, the closest approach to a synthesis was reached in Italy. But in that case, the revolutionary party was in its earliest formative period and was quite remote from power. In Chile, there was an improvised synthesis, but it came only after the working-class parties had already taken on governmental responsibility under highly restrictive conditions. The result was that as the workers’ initiatives broadened, the parties’ support for them became more and more limited. What remained of such support in Allende’s third year came increasingly from outside the governing coalition. In any case, it was too little and too late. Russia and Spain, for all their differences, seem in the end to display a pattern of polarization that was the trend everywhere.
An effective synthesis between the self-management impulse and a political strategy has yet to be worked out, but our four cases are not without valuable lessons. A major problem is that of technical expertise and coordination. Here we can draw several conclusions. First, a genuine movement toward self-management, far from stressing a “my firm first” attitude, leads naturally—and as a practical matter—toward efforts at mutually beneficial planning between economic units. While these efforts may initially derive only from immediately obvious requirements, the practice they entail will create a natural receptivity to the case made for more long-range or “macro” calculations. Second, workers are both able and willing to learn about technical matters. Third, where the urgency of expertise exceeds the time available to diffuse it, it is increasingly possible to find previously trained professionals (abroad if necessary) who will accept, perhaps even enthusiastically, new terms for their services.14 Finally, looking ahead, we should recognize that technology itself is not entirely an independent factor. On the contrary, for environmental as well as political reasons, it may have to undergo a considerable number of demystifying, simplifying, and decentralizing changes, thereby undercutting pretexts for hierarchy.15
A second major problem area has to do with the conditions under which revolutionary workers’ control can succeed. We have already noted the immediate political condition, namely, that the factory-level and state-level processes come to fruition simultaneously. This is partly a matter of conscious decisions, but it is also a matter of the economic and cultural characteristics of the society in question. Regarding this background dimension, our survey has suggested that there are many possible situations—some of them even mutually exclusive—that may prove favorable to workers’ control. While the self-management impulse has always been a component of urban revolutionary movements, it has sometimes—as in Spain—appeared in even stronger form in rural settings. Within the industrial sector, it has sometimes been associated with heavy industry (Italy) and sometimes with light (Spain). Although usually associated with nondependent economies, workers’ control has also become an issue in countries of the global South (Chile, Algeria, Iran). Within Europe, although the most radical thrusts have occurred in the relatively less prosperous countries (Spain, Portugal), the potential for workers’ control continues to grow even in the foremost welfare state (Sweden). Related to this, if we consider the major political frameworks of military dictatorship, constitutional democracy, and people’s democracy, we find self-management initiatives arising in all three (1918 Germany, 1972 Chile, 1968 Czechoslovakia). Finally, there may be considerable variation in terms of immediate circumstances such as war and peace, economic crisis, and fascist threats.
All this does not add up to a theory as to where workers’ control is most likely, but it does tell us that there is no single factor that automatically excludes it. The role of conscious choice must therefore be substantial. Among the objective factors, the only one that clearly facilitates such a choice is the existence of an established cooperative tradition. This was a reality in many of Spain’s rural areas, and the urban workers were not yet remote from it. The challenge elsewhere, then, is to develop some equivalent to such a culture while still relating to immediate political options.
The question of leadership is the final major problem area that we must consider. What seems to be needed is a revolutionary party that would give priority to workers’ control at every stage of its development. The difficulty of such a project is already clear. Being serious about workers’ control means forgoing a certain type of discipline, while being seriously revolutionary means taking steps that are not limited by workplace perceptions. The possibility of meeting both requirements is suggested by some of the experiences we have surveyed, but a firm synthesis must be more systematic. It must recall Marx’s emphasis on the work process, his interest in cooperative forms, and his distrust of “leaders”16—facets overlooked in the Leninist tradition. This new synthesis must accept the importance of what Spanish Revolution historian Gaston Leval calls “the capacity to organize the new society quickly” (Leval 1975, 354), a process that depends not only on thorough preparation but also on broad human involvement. Insofar as a party is needed, it is primarily for the movement’s cohesion and self-protection; those who shape the party will have to recognize the perils of discipline as well as the risks of spontaneity.

Toward a New Synthesis

If 1989 marks an endpoint, it also signals a new beginning. November of that year witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and with it, the effective collapse of first-epoch socialism. But less than nine months earlier, a sudden groundswell had come in Venezuela, which opened the way to that country’s Bolivarian Revolution. The Caracazo was a spontaneous uprising of caraqueño slumdwellers, triggered by neoliberal economic policies, out of which emerged the transformative current that would eventually shape itself into a political force under the leadership of Hugo Chávez (Gott 2005). Chávez’s election to the presidency in 1998 and his subsequent initiatives—both substantive and structural—created the setting within which workers’ control would become a defining factor in the larger revolutionary process.
It is important to view this development in its full international setting. Initially this points our attention toward Cuba, in terms of both that country’s own institutional development and its support of the Venezuelan struggle.
The present study, in its original 1978 version, did not include Cuba. The focus was on cases of workers’ control that emerged in direct conjunction with climactic revolutionary moments. This reflected an observed pattern in which most such moments included worker-control initiatives. Cuba, however, did not appear to fit this pattern. Although wageworkers, especially in big foreign-owned enterprises, were among the revolution’s strongest supporters (Zeitlin 1970, 277), the direct takeover of production processes was not what defined their activism during the two-year guerrilla struggle leading up to the 1959 victory. Workplace changes following the triumph were incremental. Formal authority remained in the hands of an appointed management, although particular managers could now be rejected by the workers, who continued to be represented via existing union structures (Harnecker 1980, 26). This was part of a more general evolution, beginning in the late 1960s, toward an institutionalized practice of workplace consultation (Zeitlin 1970, xxxvii-xl). As a culture of equality supplanted hierarchical authority, it became clear that a new model of the link between state-level and factory-level transformations was emerging. The Cuban case showed, in effect, “that workers’ control as a general practice does not have to be just the sudden fruit of revolutionary crisis; it is something that can be deliberately nurtured” (Wallis 1985, 261). It became equally clear, however, that revolution was integral to this process; what varied between the different national cases was only the sequence or timing of the changes implemented at distinct levels of revolutionary activity.
The development of worker-control institutions in Cuba has been continuous. Its underpinnings can be seen in the mass-participation practices—militias, voluntary labor, and the literacy campaign—that marked the early years of the revolution (Fuller 1992, 187–91). By the mid-1980s, “baselevel input into planning” was routine among production workers (ibid., 116). And in the wider institutional debate that has been taking place since 2002, the goal of deepened participation in every sphere of public life has taken center stage (Duharte 2010). In the process, there is a continuous push toward decentralization of power and, at the theoretical level, a sense that the relationship of reform to revolution is, over the long term, not one of antagonism, but rather one of mutual reinforcement (Hernández 2010). Confidence that reform will not undermine revolution reflects the social consciousness developed over five decades, and most distinctively expressed in Cuba’s large-scale programs of international solidarity—ranging from anti-apartheid military combat to disaster relief, and including also long-term educational and medical assistance (Akhtar 2006).
It is hard to conceive the launch of Venezuela’s “twenty-first-century socialism” in the absence of Cuban solidarity. The massive presence in Venezuela of Cuban healthcare workers and teachers was a core component of the gains that could be credited to the Chávez government in its early years. This form of aid is unique in that it does not stem from any great economic or military power. Cubans in Venezuela—unlike Soviets in Cuba in the 1960s and ’70s—are not trying to shape their host country’s development strategy. They are not guides, but participants. Not only have they come by the thousands, but they also work directly in the popular neighborhoods (rather than as technical advisers). Their presence in the country reflects a relationship of equals. Although the power-transfer phases of the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions had little in common, in both cases the popular protagonists became imbued with a culture of commitment and, hence, of participation.
In terms of workers’ control and revolution, the Venezuelan case returns us to the earlier model of contemporaneity between factory-level and state-level struggles, with the difference that for the first time we now find a political leader who not only provides an umbrella for worker protagonism—a key Bolivarian concept—but actively encourages it, promotes a constitutional framework for legitimating it, and ratifies plant takeovers initiated by the workers themselves. The vigilance of Venezuelan workers provided a lifeline to the Chávez government in response to the attempted economic coup (via national lockout) of late 2002. That disruption gave a broad stimulus to factory occupations (Bruce 2008, 98ff), pitting the expertise of the workers—especially in the oil industry—against sabotage carried out by anti-Chavista engineers (GWS 2004). There is thus a clear sense in which a radical power shift in the workplace was dictated as a matter of economic survival, even before Chávez called the Bolivarian revolution socialist. Once the socialist agenda was explicitly articulated, it was a logical step to carry transformative measures even further, as in the case of the valve factory Inveval, whose employees took up Chávez’s 2007 call for the formation of workers’ councils and established a fully worker-controlled enterprise, including measures to overcome the social division of labor (Azzellini 2009, 184f).
Although the Venezuelan Revolution, like its Cuban counterpart, is far from complete, its trajectory epitomizes a new global stage of socialist awareness. Chávez’s acknowledged present-day theoretical mentor is István Mészáros, whose central critique of first-epoch socialism is that it failed to establish “the socialist mode of control, through the self-management of the associated producers” (Mészáros 1995, xvii). This concern meshes fully with that of the grassroots movements that have spread throughout Latin America in recent years. Although there is a strong antistatist thrust to many of these movements (Esteva 2010), the Venezuelan process embodies at least a partial convergence between state and non-state protagonists pursuing a common goal. It is all the more significant that the Venezuelan government has advanced further than the Cuban government did in establishing an international network—encompassing banking and media as well as material aid—to support similar initiatives in other Latin American countries.
In terms of worldwide prospects for a new socialist epoch, it may be of suggestive interest to note that, faced with severe job loss in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, the United Steelworkers of America, the largest U.S. industrial union, signed a long-term cooperation agreement with the Spanish Mondragón cooperative (Davidson 2009). It is of course unwise to entertain illusions about the ease of progressive change within the world’s most unrestrainedly capitalist social order. Nonetheless, so sharp a recognition of the need for an alternative locus of economic power cannot fail to reflect a degree of fragility in that order’s popular acceptance.

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