Cornelius Castoriadis

Workers' Councils

and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society

1972

Published: Originally as "Sur le contenu du socialisme, II," S. ou B., 22 (July 1957). Translated into English by Solidarity (London, 1972), with "Our Preface." See annotation 2.

Translation: Chris Pallis

Transcription: Class Against Class

HTML-markup: Jonas Holmgren

Proofed: and corrected by Paul Germanotta in 2011.

Table of Contents:

To the best of our knowledge there have been no serious attempts by modern libertarian revolutionaries to grapple with the economic and political problems of a totally self-managed society.

What might the structure, social relations and decision-making institutions of such a society look like, in an advanced industrial country, in the second half of the twentieth century? Is the technological basis of modern life so complex that all talk of workers' management of production can be dismissed as pure "utopia" (as both the beneficiaries – and most of the victims – of the present social order would have us believe)?

Or, on the contrary, isn't this allegation itself the real mystification? Doesn't historical experience, and in particular the working class experience of recent decades, prove the very opposite? Don't the very advances of science enhance the feasibility of a rational form of social organization, where real power would lie in the hands of the producers themselves?

This pamphlet seeks to deal with some of these questions. The events of the last few years show quite clearly that this is no longer a "theoretical" preoccupation, relating to some remote and problematic future. On the contrary, it is a real, immediate and down-to-earth concern. At any time between now and the end of the century, hundreds of thousands – nay, millions – of men and women may well be confronted with problems of the kind here discussed. And on the solutions ordinary people may collectively provide to these problems will depend whether humanity really moves to something new, or whether we just exchange one servitude for another.

Let us immediately circumscribe the relevant area. We are not concerned with the recipes and double-talk of various "reformed" or "partially reformed" bureaucracies. We are not concerned with "workers control" seen as an adjunct or decoration to nationalization and the political power of some vanguard Party. We are not discussing how to run, from above, a system of workers-management-from-below (as in Yugoslavia). We want to go a little deeper than those Polish bureaucrats, the only recent addition to whose wisdom seems to be that one shouldn't increase prices, without warning, the week before Christmas. We won't be examining what happened in Spain in 1936, firstly because this has been done before, and better than we could, and secondly, because it only has limited relevance to the problems of an advanced industrial country, in the last third of the twentieth century.

Nor, for much the same reasons, will we examine the withered remains of what may briefly have flowered in the Algerian countryside, before being swept away in 1965 by Boumedienne's theocratic putsch (to the plaudits, be it remembered, of the rulers of "Communist" China). Nor will we echo Castro's paeans to the "socialist" work ethic, his exhortations to his followers to "cut yet more sugar cane", or his fulminations against sundry slackers, uttered without ever seeking to discover the real source of their "slackness": their lack of involvement in the fundamental decisions and their refusal to participate in their own exploitation.

At the other end of the political spectrum, we will only deal in passing with those who believe that all work and all sorrow, all limitations on human freedom, and all compulsion could immediately be swept away, and that socialism implies the immediate transcending of the human condition. With the decay of every social order, various millenarial doctrines tend to flourish. We endorse the vision but are concerned with the steps for making it reality.

Those whom we might call "cornucopian socialists"[1*] will probably denounce us for discussing the organization and transformation of work (instead of its abolition). But, such is the capacity of our minds for mutually incompatible ideas that the very comrades who talk of abolishing all work will take it for granted that, under socialism, lights will go on when they press switches, and water flow when they turn on taps. We would gently ask them how the light or water will get there, who will lay the cables or pipes – and who, before that, will make them. We are not of those who believe that reservoirs and power stations are divine dispensations to socialist humanity – or that there is no human or social cost involved in their creation. We are intensely concerned, on the other hand, about how collectively to determine whether the cost is acceptable, and how it should be shared.

In considering various aspects of a self-managed society we will not be discussing the insights, however shrewd, of various writers of science fiction. Their undoubted merit it is that they, at least, have perceived the fantastic scope of what could be possible, even today. Unlike Jules Verne, we aren't planning to proceed " 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea " or even to undertake a " Journey to the Centre of the Earth ". We just want to walk widely and freely on its surface, in the here-and-now. In this, we will immediately differentiate ourselves from most modern revolutionaries, who under pretext of "keeping their feet on earth" remain waist-deep in concrete.

This pamphlet is based on a text by P. Chaulieu ("Sur Le Contenu du Socialisme") which first appeared in the summer of 1957 (in issue Number 22 of the French journal, Socialisme ou Barbarie).[2*] It is important to keep the date in mind. The text was written just after the Hungarian Workers' Councils had been ruthlessly suppressed, following a prolonged and heroic struggle in which hundreds of thousands of workers had put forward demands for the abolition of norms, for the equalization of wages, for workers' management of production, for a Federation of Workers' Councils, and for control from below of all institutions exercising any kind of decisional authority.[3*]

The text was written before the momentous developments of the sixties, before the massive growth of "do-it-yourself" politics, and before the Berkeley events of 1964 (which showed the explosive new tensions modern capitalist society was busily producing). It was written before the vast spread – at least in Europe – of the "youth revolt" (with its deep questioning of the "work ethic" as such – and of so many other aspects of bourgeois culture and before the development of the women's liberation movement (with its widespread critique not only of the economic exploitation of women, but of the more subtle forms of exploitation inherent in the attribution of fixed polarities and roles to the two sexes). Finally, it was written more than a decade before the great events of May 1968 (despite the fact that the movement's demands for "autogestion", or "self-management", at times, sound like the reverberating echoes of what the text is talking about).

Way ahead of its time in 1957, the text seems dated, in some respects, in 1972 – not so much in what it says, which retains great freshness and originality, but in what it does not and could not say. Why, in view of all this, is Solidarity publishing this document at this particular time? The answer is twofold. Firstly, because the text remains, in our opinion, the most cogent, lucid and comprehensive vision of the economic structure of a modern self-managed society ever to have been published. Secondly, because we feel that a discussion on this theme is now fairly urgent.

The text does not evade difficulties, but faces them honestly and openly. Its scope is wide. How could institutions be made comprehensible? How could they be effectively controlled from below? How could relevant information be made available to all, so that meaningful decisions might be taken collectively? How could genuinely democratic planning function, in an advanced industrial society? But the text deals with much more: with the essential changes a socialist society would have to introduce into the very structure of work, with how a genuine consumer "market" might function, with problems of agriculture, with the political representation of those who do not work in large enterprises and with the meaning of politics in a society based on Workers' Councils.

Revolutionaries usually react to all this in one of three ways:

1. For the Leninists of all ilk there is no problem. They may pay lip service to "proletarian democracy", "Workers Councils", and "workers' control", but know in their bones that, wherever necessary, their Party (which has as great a role to play after the revolution as before) will take the appropriate decisions. They dismiss workers' self-management with derogatory comments about "socialism in one factory" or with profundities like "you can't have groups of workers doing whatever they like, without taking into account the requirements of the economy as a whole". In this, they are tilting at men of straw, for libertarian revolutionaries have never claimed any such thing. Moreover, the Leninists utterly fail to understand what is here being proposed: we are not discussing "workers control" (seen as some adjunct or decoration to a hierarchy of political organs, which would genuinely embody decisional authority, and which would not be directly based on the producers themselves). What we are proposing and discussing is something much more fundamental, a total reorganization of society, a reorganization involving every one of its social relations and basic institutions.

Non-Leninist revolutionaries will react to what we say in two different ways. Either,

2. "Why worry about such things? Blueprints are a waste of time. The workers themselves will decide when the time comes".

Or, more simplistically,

3. "Under socialism there just won't be any problems of this kind. All present problems stem from the material scarcity of capitalism which a "free society" will immediately abolish". The text argues most cogently why these are short-sighted answers and describes what will probably happen if libertarian revolutionaries refrain from discussing these matters as from now .

One may accept or reject what the author proposes (we are not ourselves all agreed on his various views). But it cannot be claimed that s/he fails to tackle a whole range of new problems. We are here firmly in the era of the computer, of the knowledge explosion, of wireless and television, of input-output matrices, and of the problems of today's society. We have left the quieter waters of Owen's New View of Society (1813), of Morris' News from Nowhere (1891), of Blatchford's Clarion , or of sundry other socialist or anarchist utopias of earlier years.

Let us not be misunderstood. We are not passing value judgments. We are not decrying the sensitivity and deep humanity that permeated the vision of many earlier revolutionaries. We are merely claiming that the technological infrastructures of their societies and of ours are so immeasurably different as to make comparisons rather meaningless. Although we hate much that we see around us – and, in particular, many of the products of misapplied science – we don't want to move the clock back (incidentally, a remarkably fruitless occupation). We see no advantage in candles or coke over electricity, or in carrying water from the well when it can be got from a tap. We want to control and humanize this society (by means commensurate with its vastness), not to seek refuge in some mythical golden past. Nor do we use the word "utopia" in any derogatory sense, as contemporary Marxists so often do. We are using it in a purely etymological sense. Strictly speaking, "utopian" means "which exists nowhere". When we say that the author's proposals are not utopian we are saying no more than that his mental constructs are but extrapolations from what already exists here and now, from experiences the working class has already been through and from institutions it has already created.

We would like to contribute this pamphlet to the serious and sustained discussion now taking place among libertarian revolutionaries about all aspects of a self-managed society. This discussion is already ranging widely and fruitfully over such fields as education, conditioning by the family, internalized repression, urbanism, town planning, ecology, new forms of art and communication, new relations between people, and between people and the essential content of their lives. In this surge of questioning one dimension is, however, missing. The dimension is that of economic organization . The silence here is quite deafening. Sure, there are occasional distant echoes of what de Leon said before the First World War about "socialist industrial unions" – or about what various syndicalists have proclaimed, with diminishing credibility, about the need for "one big union". For modern revolutionaries, however, this is totally inadequate. Perhaps what we propose isn't good enough either, but at least it tries to grapple with the problems of our epoch.

Although economic organization isn't the be-all and end-all of life, it is the pre-condition of a great deal else. And it is high time revolutionary libertarians started discussing this subject rationally. They must realize that if they have no views on these matters, others (the trad[itional] rev[olutionarie]s) do. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If we don't want the economic tyranny of bourgeois society to be replaced by the tyranny of Party-dominated structures – masquerading as "socialism" or "workers control" – it is high time we explained, and in some detail, what we mean by workers' management of production and a society genuinely based on Workers Councils.

Conservatives will say that what is here outlined threatens the rights of management. They are dead right. The non-political will proclaim what many left politicos believe (but are reluctant to articulate), namely that all this is "pie in the sky" because in industry as elsewhere there must always be leaders, and that hierarchical organization is both inevitable and intrinsically rational. The liberals and Labor lefts – aware of the increasing cynicism with which people now regard them – will proclaim that what we say is "what they meant all along", when they were talking about "workers' participation". Having failed to grasp the essence of what we are talking about, they will then doubtless start arguing how it could all be introduced by parliamentary legislation!

There will be more subtle criticisms too. Those alarmed at the monstrosities of modern science – or those naturally suspicious of what they do not fully understand – will shy away from the text's bold advocacy of subjugating the most modern techniques to the needs of democracy. They will remember the "plan factory", the matrices and the coefficients, forget who will be determining them, and denounce the text as a "technocratic" view of socialism. The text will be criticized by many anarchists as containing Marxist residues (for instance it still attributes an enormous specific weight, in the process of social change, to the industrial proletariat, a weight which the author himself would probably gauge differently today). Moreover the document still envisages a "transitional" society between capitalism and communism, as Marx did in his Critique of the Gotha Programme . We will be told that the technical capacity of industry has increased so vastly in the last decades as to invalidate the need for such a phase of history. We hope to initiate a wide discussion on this issue.

Many Marxists will denounce the text as an anarchist dream (anarchist dreams are better than Marxist nightmares – but we would prefer, if possible, to remain awake!). Some will see the text as a major contribution to the perpetuation of wage slavery – because it still talks of "wages" and doesn't call for the immediate abolition of "money" (although clearly defining the radically different meanings these terms will acquire in the early stages of a self-managed society).

The text will also be dismissed by many in the underground. They will consider it irrelevant because it does not call for the immediate "abolition" of work. A more sophisticated criticism – but along the same lines – will be directed at us by the Situationists who constantly talk of "workers' (sic) councils ... while demanding the abolition of work! Unfortunately, they seem to confuse attacks on the work ethic [4*] and on alienated labor, both of which are justified and necessary, with attacks on work itself. Such an approach fails to relate to the problems of transforming what exists here and now into what could open the way to a new society, for the construction of which, whether we like it or not, many million man-hours of labor will probably have to be expended.

Finally the more percipient supporters of Women's Liberation will correctly point out that as long as millions of women have to stay at home they will be grossly under-represented in the various schemes the pamphlet envisages. The answer here is neither to consider housework as an "industry" and encourage housewives to organize industrially (which would perpetuate the present state of affairs), nor for all authority to be vested in locality-based units. The position of women will change radically and new forms of representation will undoubtedly be created. All these are areas deserving the widest possible attention.

We hope that what is best in the text will survive the crossfire. We are frequently told: "your critique of modern society is telling enough. But it is negative. These are enormous problems. How would you like to see things organized?". Well, here at least is the draft of an answer, based on a coherent system of ideas. We will tell our questioner that a society, economically organized along the lines here described, would be infinitely preferable to what modern capitalist society has to offer us. And to those on the "far left" we would say that such a society would also be preferable to what they and their "vanguard Parties" are concocting "on our behalf". The ball would then clearly be in their court. They would have to relate to what the libertarians were saying, about economics as well as about other things. That alone, in our opinion, is reason enough for putting forward our views.

The development of modern society and what has happened to the working class movement over the last 100 years (and, in particular, since 1917) have compelled us radically to revise most of the ideas on which that movement had been based.

Several decades have gone by since the Russian Revolution. From that revolution it is not socialism that emerged, but a new and monstrous form of exploiting society in which the bureaucracy replaced the private owners of capital and "the plan" took the place of the "free market".

There are several basic ingredients for the revision we propose. The first is to assimilate the vast experience of the Russian revolution and of what happened to it. The next is to grasp the real significance of the Hungarian Workers' Councils and other uprisings against the bureaucracy. But there are other ingredients to the proposed revision. A look at modern capitalism, and at the type of conflict it breeds, shows that throughout the world working people are faced with the same fundamental problems, often posed in surprisingly similar terms. These problems call for the same answer. This answer is socialism, a social system which is the very opposite both of the bureaucratic capitalism now installed in Russia, China and elsewhere – and of the type of capitalism now prevailing in the West.

The experience of bureaucratic capitalism allows us clearly to perceive what socialism is not and cannot be . A close look both at past proletarian uprisings and at the everyday life and struggles of the working class – both East and West – enables us to posit what socialism could be and should be. Basing ourselves on the experience of a century we can and must now define the positive content of socialism in a much fuller and more accurate way than could previous revolutionaries. In today's vast ideological morass, people who call themselves socialists may be heard to assert that "they are no longer quite sure what the word means". We hope to show that the very opposite is the case. Today, for the first time, one can begin to spell out in concrete and specific terms what socialism could really be like.

The task we are about to undertake does not only lead us to challenge many widely held ideas about socialism, many of which go back to Lenin and some to Marx. It also leads us to question widely held ideas about capitalism, about the way it works and about the real nature of its crises, ideas many of which have reached us (with or without distortion) from Marx himself. The two analyses are complementary and, in fact, the one necessitates the other. One cannot understand the deepest essence of capitalism and its crises without a total conception of socialism. For socialism implies human autonomy, the conscious management by people of their own lives. Capitalism – both private and bureaucratic – is the ultimate negation of this autonomy, and its crises stem from the fact that the system necessarily creates this drive to autonomy, while simultaneously being compelled to suppress it.

The revision we propose did not of course start today. Various strands of the revolutionary movement – and a number of individual revolutionaries – have contributed to it over a period. In the very first issue of Socialisme ou Barbarie[5*] we claimed that the fundamental division in contemporary societies was the division into order-givers (dirigeants) and order-takers (exécutants). We attempted to show how the working class's own development would lead it to a socialist consciousness. We stated that socialism could only be the product of the autonomous action of the working class. We stressed that a socialist society implied the abolition of any separate stratum of order-givers and that it therefore implied power at the base and workers' management of production.

But, in a sense, we ourselves have failed to develop our own ideas to the full. It would hardly be worth mentioning this fact were it not that it reflected – at its own level – the influence of factors which have dominated the evolution of revolutionary theory for a century, namely the enormous dead-weight of the ideology of exploiting society, the paralyzing legacy of traditional concepts and the difficulty of freeing oneself from inherited methods of thought.

In one sense, our revision consists of making more explicit and precise what has always been the deepest content of working class struggles – whether at their dramatic and culminating moments (revolution) or in the anonymity of working class life in the factory. In another sense, our revision consists in freeing revolutionary thought from the accumulated clinker of a century. We want to break the deforming prisms through which so many revolutionaries have become used to looking at the society around them.

Socialism aims at giving a meaning to the life and work of people; at enabling their freedom, their creativity and the most positive aspects of their personality to flourish; at creating organic links between the individual and those around him, and between the group and society; at overcoming the barriers between manual and mental work; at reconciling people with themselves and with nature. It thereby rejoins the most deeply felt aspirations of the working class in its daily struggles against capitalist alienation. These are not longings relating to some hazy and distant future. They are feelings and tendencies existing and manifesting themselves today, both in revolutionary struggles and in everyday life. To understand this is to understand that, for the worker , the final problem of history is an everyday problem .

To grasp this is also to perceive that socialism is not "nationalization" or "planning" or even an "increase in living standards". It is to understand that the real crisis of capitalism is not due to "the anarchy of the market", or to "overproduction" or to "the falling rate of profit". Taken to their logical conclusion, and grasped in all their implications, these ideas alter one's concepts of revolutionary theory, action and organization. They transform one's vision of society and of the world.

The capitalist organization of social life (both East and West) creates a constantly renewed crisis in every aspect of human activity. This crisis appears most intensely in the realm of production,[1] although in its essence, the problem is the same in other fields, i.e., whether one is dealing with the family, with education, with culture, with politics or with international relations.

Everywhere, the capitalist structure of society imposes on people an organization of their lives that is external to them. It organizes things in the absence of those most directly concerned and often against their aspirations and interests. This is but another way of saying that capitalism divides society into a narrow stratum of order-givers (whose function is to decide and organize everything) and the vast majority of the population who are reduced to carrying out (executing) the decisions of those in power. As a result of this very fact, most people experience their own lives as something alien to them.

This pattern of organization is profoundly irrational and full of contradictions. Under it, repeated crises of one kind or another are absolutely inevitable. It is nonsensical to seek to organize people, either in production or in politics, as if they were mere objects, ignoring systematically what they themselves wish or how they themselves think things should be done. In real life, capitalism is obliged to base itself on people's capacity for self organization, on the individual and collective creativity of the producers. Without these it could not survive for a day. But the whole "official" organization of modern society both ignores and seeks to suppress these abilities to the utmost. The result is not only an enormous waste due to untapped capacity. The system does more: it necessarily engenders opposition, a struggle against it by those upon whom it seeks to impose itself. Long before one can speak of revolution or of political consciousness, people refuse in their everyday working life to be treated as objects. The capitalist organization of society is thereby compelled not only to structure itself in the absence of those most directly concerned, but to take shape against them. The net result is not only waste but perpetual conflict.

If a thousand individuals have amongst them a given capacity for self-organization, capitalism consists in more or less arbitrarily choosing fifty of these individuals, of vesting them with managerial authority and of deciding that the others should just be cogs. Metaphorically speaking, this is already a 95 % loss of social initiative and drive. But there is more to it. As the 950 ignored individuals are not cogs, and as capitalism is obliged up to a point to base itself on their human capacities and in fact to develop them, these individuals will react and struggle against what the system imposes upon them.

The creative faculties which they are not allowed to exercise on behalf of a social order which rejects them (and which they reject) are now utilized against that social order. A permanent struggle develops at the very kernel of social life. It soon becomes the source of further waste. The narrow stratum of order-givers has henceforth to divide its time between organizing the work of those "below" and seeking to counteract, neutralize, deflect or manipulate their resistance. The function of the managerial apparatus ceases to be merely organization and soon assumes all sorts of coercive aspects. Those in authority in a large modern factory in fact spend less of their time in organization of production than in coping, directly or indirectly, with the resistance of the exploited – whether it be a question of supervision, of quality control, of determining piece rates, of "human relations", of discussions with shop stewards or union representatives. On top of all this there is of course the permanent preoccupation of those in power with making sure that everything is measurable, quantifiable, verifiable, controllable, so as to deal in advance with any counteraction the workers might launch against new methods of exploitation. The same applies, with all due corrections, to the total organization of social life and to all the essential activities of any modern state.

The irrationality and contradictions of capitalism do not only show up in the way social life is organized. They appear even more clearly when one looks at the real content of the life which the system proposes. More than any other social order, capitalism has made of work the center of human activity and more than any other social order capitalism makes of work something that is absurd (absurd not from the viewpoint of the philosopher or of the moralist, but from the point of view of those who have to perform it). What is challenged today is not only the "human organization" of work, but its nature, its methods, its objectives, the very instruments and purpose of capitalist production. The two aspects are of course inseparable, but it is the second that needs stressing.

As a result of the nature of work in a capitalist enterprise, and however it may be organized, the activity of the worker instead of being the organic expression of his human faculties becomes something which dominates him as an alien and hostile force. In theory, the worker is only tied to this activity by a thin (but unbreakable) thread: the need to earn a living. But this ensures that even the day that is about to start dawns before him as something hostile. Work under capitalism therefore implies a permanent mutilation, a perpetual waste of creative capacity, and a constant struggle between the worker and his own activity, between what s/he would like to do and what s/he has to do.

From this angle too, capitalism can only survive to the extent that it cannot fashion reality to its moulds. The system only functions to the extent that the "official" organization of production and of society are constantly resisted, thwarted, corrected and completed by the effective self-organization of people. Work processes can only be efficient under capitalism to the extent that the real attitudes of workers towards their work differ from what is prescribed. Working people succeed in appropriating the general principles relating to their work – to which, according to the spirit of the system, they should have no access and concerning which the system seeks to keep them in the dark. They then apply these principles to the specific conditions in which they find themselves whereas in theory this practical application can only be spelled out by the managerial apparatus.

Exploiting societies persist because those whom they exploit help them to survive. But capitalism differs from all previous exploiting societies. Slave-owning and feudal societies perpetuated themselves because ancient slaves and medieval serfs worked according to the norms of those societies. The working class enables capitalism to continue by acting against the system. But capitalism can only function to the extent that those it exploits actively oppose everything the system seeks to impose upon them.[6*] The final outcome of this struggle is socialism namely the elimination of all externally-imposed norms, methods and patterns of organization and the total liberation of the creative and self-organizing capacities of the masses.

Socialist society implies the organization by people themselves of every aspect of their social life. The establishment of socialism therefore entails the immediate abolition of the fundamental division of society into a stratum of order-givers and a mass of order-takers.

The content of the socialist reorganization of society is first of all workers' management of production. The working class has repeatedly staked its claim to such management and struggled to achieve it at the high points of its historic actions: in Russia in 1917-18, in Italy in 1920, in Spain in 1936, in Hungary in 1956.

Workers' Councils, based on the place of work, are the form workers' self-management will probably take and the institution most likely to foster its growth. Workers' management means the power of the local Workers' Councils and ultimately, at the level of society as a whole, the power of the Central Assembly of Workers Council Delegates.[7*] Factory Councils (or Councils based on any other place of work such as a plant, building site, mine, railway yard, office, etc.) will be composed of delegates elected by the workers and revocable by them, at any time, and will unite the functions of deliberation, decision and execution. Such Councils are historic creations of the working class. They have come to the forefront every time the question of power has been posed in modern society. The Russian Factory Committees of 1917, the German Workers' Councils of 1919, the Hungarian Councils of 1956 all sought to express (whatever their name) the same original, organic and characteristic working class pattern of self-organization.[8*]

Concretely to define the socialist organization of society is amongst other things to draw all the possible conclusions from two basic ideas: workers' management of production and the rule of the Councils. But such a definition can only come to life and be given flesh and blood if combined with an account of how the institutions of a free, socialist society might function in practice.

There is no question of us here trying to draw up "statutes", "rules", or an "ideal constitution" for socialist society. Statutes, as such, mean nothing. The best of statutes can only have meaning to the extent that people are permanently prepared to defend what is best in them, to make up what they lack, and to change whatever they may contain that has become inadequate or outdated. From this point of view we must obviously avoid any fetishism of the "Council" type of organization. The "constant eligibility and revocability of representatives" are of themselves quite insufficient to "guarantee" that a Council will remain the expression of working class interests. The Council will remain such an expression for as long as people are prepared to do whatever may be necessary for it to remain so. The achievement of socialism is not a question of better legislation. It depends on the constant self-activity of people and on their capacity to find within themselves the necessary awareness of ends and means, the necessary solidarity and determination.

But to be socially effective this autonomous mass action cannot remain amorphous, fragmented and dispersed. It will find expression in patterns of action and forms of organization, in ways of doing things and ultimately in institutions which embody and reflect its purpose. Just as we must avoid the fetishism of "statutes" we should also see the shortcomings of various types of "anarchist" or "spontaneist" fetishism, which in the belief that in the last resort working class consciousness will determine everything, takes little or no interest in the forms such consciousness should take, if it is really to change reality. The Council is not a gift bestowed by some libertarian God. It is not a miraculous institution. It cannot be a popular mouthpiece if the people do not wish to express themselves through its medium. But the Council is an adequate form of organization: its whole structure is such that it enables working class aspirations to come to light and find expression. Parliamentary-type institutions, on the other hand, whether called "House of Commons", or "Supreme Soviet of the USSR", are by definition types of institutions that cannot be socialist. They are founded on a radical separation between the people, "consulted" from time to time, and those who are deemed to "represent" them, but who are in fact beyond meaningful popular control. A Workers' Council is designed so as to represent working people, but may cease to fulfill this function. Parliament is designed so as not to represent the people and never ceases to fulfill this function.[2]

The question of adequate and meaningful institutions is central to socialist society. It is particularly important as socialism can only come about through a revolution, that is to say, as the result of a social crisis in the course of which the consciousness and activity of the masses reach extremely high levels. Under these conditions the masses become capable of breaking the power of the ruling class and of its armed forces, of bypassing the political and economic institutions of established society, and of transcending within themselves the heavy legacy of centuries of oppression. This state of affairs should not be thought of as some kind of paroxysm, but on the contrary as the prefiguration of the level of both activity and awareness demanded of men in a free society.

The "ebbing" of revolutionary activity has nothing inevitable about it. It will always remain a threat however, given the sheer enormity of the tasks to be tackled. Everything which adds to the innumerable problems facing popular mass action will enhance the tendency to such a reflux. It is, therefore, crucial for the revolution to provide itself, from its very first days, with a network of adequate structures to express its will and for revolutionaries to have some idea as to how these structures might function and interrelate. There can be no organizational or ideological vacuum in this respect and if libertarian revolutionaries remain blissfully unaware of these problems and have not discussed or even envisaged them they can rest assured that others have. It is essential that revolutionary society should create for itself, at each stage, those structures that can most readily become effective "normal" mechanisms for the expression of popular will, both in "important affairs" and in everyday life (which is of course the first and foremost of all "important affairs").

The definition of socialist society that we are attempting therefore requires of us some description of how we visualize its institutions, and the way they will function. This endeavor is not "utopian", for it is but the elaboration and extrapolation of historical creations of the working class, and in particular of the concept of workers' management. The ideas we propose to develop are only the theoretical formulation of the experience of a century of working class struggles. They embody real experiences (both positive and negative), conclusions (both direct and indirect) that have already been drawn, answers given to problems actually posed or answers which would have had to be given if such and such a revolution had developed a little further. Every sentence in this text is linked to questions which implicitly or explicitly have already been met in the course of working class struggles. This should put a stop once and for all to allegations of "utopianism".[3]

Self-management will only be possible if people's attitudes to social organization alter radically. This in turn, will only take place if social institutions become a meaningful part of their real daily life. Just as work will only have a meaning when people understand and dominate it, so will the institutions of socialist society only become meaningful when people both understand and control them.[4]

Modern society is a dark and incomprehensible jungle, a confusion of apparatuses, structures and institutions whose workings almost no one understands or takes any interest in. Socialist society will only be possible if it brings about a radical change in this state of affairs and massively simplifies social organization. Socialism implies that the organization of a society will have become transparent for those who make up that society.

To say that the workings and institutions of socialist society must be easy to understand implies that people must have a maximum of information. This "maximum of information" is something quite different from an enormous mass of data. The problem isn't to equip everybody with portable microfilms of everything that's in the British Museum. On the contrary, the maximum of information depends first and foremost in a reduction of data to their essentials , so that they can readily be handled by all. This will be possible because socialism will result in an immediate and enormous simplification of problems and the disappearance, pure and simple, of most current rules and regulations which will have become quite meaningless. To this will be added a systematic effort to gather and disseminate information about social reality, and to present facts both adequately and simply. Further on, when discussing the functioning of socialist economy, we will give examples of the enormous possibilities that already exist in this field.

Under socialism people will dominate the working and institutions of society. Socialism will therefore have, for the first time in human history, to institute democracy. Etymologically, the word democracy means domination by the masses. We are not here concerned with the formal aspects of this domination. Real domination must not be confused with voting. A vote, even a "free" vote, may only be – and often only is – a parody of democracy. Real democracy is not the right to vote on secondary issues. It is not the right to appoint rulers who will then decide, without control from below, on all the essential questions. Nor does democracy consist in calling upon people electorally to comment upon incomprehensible questions or upon questions which have no meaning for them. Real domination consists in being able to decide for oneself , on all essential questions , in full knowledge of the relevant facts .

In these few words "in full knowledge of the relevant facts" lies the whole problem of democracy.[5] There is little point in asking people to pronounce themselves if they are not aware of the relevant facts. This has long been stressed by the reactionary or fascist critics of bourgeois "democracy", and even by the more cynical Stalinists[6] or Fabians.[9*] It is obvious that bourgeois "democracy" is a farce, if only because literally nobody in contemporary society can express an opinion in full knowledge of the relevant facts, least of all the mass of the people from whom political and economic realities and the real meaning of the questions asked are systematically hidden. But the answer is not to vest power in the hands of an incompetent and uncontrollable bureaucracy. The answer is so to transform social reality that essential data and fundamental problems are understood by all, enabling all to express opinions "in full knowledge of the relevant facts".

To decide means to decide for oneself. To decide who is to decide is already not quite deciding for oneself. The only total form of democracy is therefore direct democracy .

To achieve the widest and most meaningful direct democracy will require that all the economic and political structures of society be based on local groups that are real, organic social units. Direct democracy certainly requires the physical presence of citizens in a given place, when decisions have to be taken. But this is not enough. It also requires that these citizens form an organic community, that they live if possible in the same milieu, that they be familiar through their daily experience with the subjects to be discussed and with the problems to be tackled. It is only in such units that the political participation of individuals can become total, that people can know and feel that their involvement is meaningful and that the real life of the community is being determined by its own members and not by some external agency, acting "on behalf of" the community. There must therefore be the maximum autonomy and self-management for the local units.

Modern social life has already created these collectivities and continues to create them. They are units based on medium-sized or larger enterprises and are to be found in industry, transport, building, commerce, the banks, public administration, etc., where people in hundreds, thousands or tens-of-thousands spend the main part of their life harnessed to common work, coming up against society in its most concrete form. A place of work is not only a unit of production: it has become the primary unit of social life for the vast majority of people. Instead of basing itself on geographical units, which economic development has often rendered highly artificial, the political structure of socialism will be largely based on collectivities involved in similar work. Such collectivities will prove the fertile soil on which direct democracy can nourish as they did (for similar reasons) in the ancient city or in the democratic communities of free farmers in the United States in the 19th century.

Direct democracy gives an idea of the decentralization which socialist society will be able to achieve. But an industrially advanced free society will also have to find a means of democratically integrating these basic units into the social fabric as a whole. It will have to solve the difficult problem of the necessary centralization, without which the life of a modern community would collapse.

It is not centralization as such which has made of modern societies such outstanding examples of political alienation or which has led to minorities politically expropriating the majority. This has been brought about by the development of bodies separate from and "above" the general population, bodies exclusively and specifically concerned with the function of centralization. As long as centralization is conceived of as the specific function of a separate , independent apparatus, bureaucracy is indeed inseparable from centralization. But in a socialist society there will be no conflict between centralization and the autonomy of local organizations, for both functions will be exercised by the same institutions. There will be no separate apparatus whose function it will be to reunite what it has itself smashed up, which absurd task (need we recall it) is precisely the function of a modern bureaucracy.[10*]

Bureaucratic centralization is a feature of all modern exploiting societies. The intimate links between centralization and totalitarian bureaucratic rule, in such class societies, provokes a healthy and understandable aversion to centralization among many contemporary revolutionaries. But this response is often confused and at times it reinforces the very things it seeks to correct. "Centralization, there's the root of all evil" proclaim many honest militants as they break with Stalinism or Leninism in either East or West. But this formulation, at best ambiguous, becomes positively harmful when it leads as it often does – either to formal demands for the "fragmentation of power" or to demands for a limitless extension of the powers of base groupings, neglecting what is to happen at other levels.

When Polish militants, for instance, imagine they have found a solution to the problem of bureaucracy when they advocate a social life organized and led by "several centers" (the State Administration, a Parliamentary Assembly, the Trade Unions, Workers' Councils and Political Parties) they are arguing beside the point. They fail to see that this "polycentrism" is equivalent to the absence of any real and identifiable center, controlled from below. And as modern society has to take certain central decisions the "constitution" they propose will only exist on paper. It will only serve to hide the re-emergence of a real, but this time masked (and therefore, uncontrollable) "center", from amid the ranks of the political bureaucracy.

The reason is obvious: if one fragments any institution accomplishing a significant or vital function one only creates an enhanced need for some other institution to reassemble the fragments. Similarly, if one merely advocates an extension of the powers of local Councils, one is thereby handing them over to domination by a central bureaucracy which alone would "know" or "understand" how to make the economy function as a whole (and modern economies, whether one likes it or not, do function as a whole). For libertarian revolutionaries to duck these difficulties and to refuse to face up to the question of central power is tantamount to leaving the solution of these problems to some bureaucracy or other.

Libertarian society will therefore have to provide a libertarian solution to the problem of centralization. This answer could be the assumption of carefully defined and circumscribed authority by a Federation of Workers' Councils and the creation of a Central Assembly of Councils and of a Council Administration. We will see further on that such an Assembly and such an Administration do not constitute a delegation of popular power but are, on the contrary, an instrument of that power. At this stage we only want to discuss the principles that might govern the relationship of such bodies to the local Councils and other base groups. These principles are important, for they would affect the functioning of nearly all institutions in a libertarian society.

In a society where the people have been robbed of political power, and where this power is in the hands of a centralizing authority the essential relationship between the center and the periphery can be summed up as follows: channels from the periphery to the center only transmit information , whereas channels from the center to the periphery transmit decisions (plus, perhaps, that minimum of information deemed necessary for the understanding and execution of the decisions taken at the center). The whole set-up reflects not only a monopoly of decisional authority , but also a monopoly of the conditions necessary for the exercise of power. The center alone has the "sum total" of information needed to evaluate and decide. In modern society, it can only be by accident that any individual or body gains access to information other than that relating to his immediate milieu. The system seeks to avoid, or at any rate, it doesn't encourage such "accidents".

When we say that in a socialist society the central bodies will not constitute a delegation of power but will be the expression of the power of the people we are implying a radical change in all this. One of the main functions of central bodies will be to collect, transmit and disseminate information collected and conveyed to them by local groups. In all essential fields, decisions will be taken at grassroots level and will be notified to the "center", whose responsibility it will be to help or follow their progress. A two-way flow of information and recommendations will be instituted and this will not only apply to relations between the Administration and the Councils, but will be a model for relations between all institutions and those who comprise them.

We must stress once again that we are not trying to draw up perfect blueprints. It is obvious for instance that to collect and disseminate information is not a socially neutral function. All information cannot be disseminated – it would be the surest way of smothering what is relevant and rendering it incomprehensible and therefore uncontrollable. The role of any central bodies is therefore political, even in this respect.

Socialism will only be brought about by the autonomous action of the majority of the population. Socialist society is nothing other than the self-organization of this autonomy. Socialism both presupposes this autonomy, and helps to develop it.

But if this autonomy is people's conscious domination over all their activities, it is clear that we can't just concern ourselves with political autonomy. Political autonomy is but a derivative aspect of what is the central content and problem of socialism: to institute the domination of mankind over the work process.[7] A purely political autonomy would be meaningless. One can't imagine a society where people would be slaves in production every day of the week, and then enjoy Sundays of political freedom.[8] The idea that socialist production or a socialist economy could be run, at any particular level, by managers (themselves supervised by Councils, or Soviets, or by any other body "incarnating the political power of the working class") is quite nonsensical. Real power in any such society would rapidly fall into the hands of those who managed production. The Councils or Soviets would rapidly wither amid the general indifference of the population. People would stop devoting time, interest, or activity to institutions which no longer really influenced the pattern of their lives.

Autonomy is therefore meaningless unless it implies workers' management of production, and this at the levels of the shop, of the plant, of whole industries, and of the economy as a whole. But, workers' management is not just a new administrative technique. It cannot remain external to the structure of work itself. It doesn't mean keeping work as it is, and just replacing the bureaucratic apparatus which currently manages production by a Workers' Council – however democratic or revocable such a Council might be. It means that for the mass of people, new relations will have to develop with their work, and about their work. The very content of work will immediately have to alter.

Today, the purpose, means, methods, and rhythms of work are determined, from the outside, by the bureaucratic managerial apparatus. This apparatus can only manage through resort to universal, abstract rules, determined "once and for all". These rules cover such matters as norms of production, technical specifications, rates of pay, bonus, and how production areas will be organized. The periodic revision of these rules regularly results in "crises" in the organization of production. Once the bureaucratic managerial apparatus has been eliminated, this sort of structure of production will have to disappear, both in form and content.

In accord with the deepest of working-class aspirations, already tentatively expressed at the heights of working-class struggle, production norms will be abolished altogether, and complete equality in wages will be instituted.[11*] These measures, taken together as a first step, will put an end to exploitation and to all the externally imposed constraints and coercions in production. To the extent that work will still be necessary (and this itself will be a matter for constant review by society as a whole), work discipline will be a matter of relations between the individual work and the group with which s/he works, of relations between groups of workers and the shop as a whole, and of relations between various shops, and the General Assembly of the Factory or Enterprise.

Workers' management is therefore not the "supervision" of a bureaucratic managerial apparatus by representatives of the workers. Nor is it the replacement of this apparatus by another, formed of individuals of working-class origin. It is the abolition of any separate managerial apparatus and the restitution of the functions of such an apparatus to the community of workers. The Factory Council isn't a new managerial apparatus. It is but one of the places in which coordination takes place, a "local headquarters" from which contacts between the factory and the outside world are regulated.

If this is achieved, it will imply that the nature and content of work are already beginning to alter. Today, work consists essentially in obeying instructions initiated elsewhere. Workers' management will mean the reuniting of the functions of decision and execution. But, even this will be insufficient – or rather, it will immediately lead on to something else. The restitution of managerial functions to the workers will inevitably lead them to tackle what is, today, the kernel of alienation, namely the technological structure of work, which results in work dominating the workers instead of being dominated by them. This problem will not be solved overnight, but its solution will be the task of that historical period which we call socialism. Socialism is, first and foremost, the solution of this particular problem .

Between capitalism and communism there aren't 36 types of "transitional society", as some have sought to make us believe. There is but one: socialism. And, the main characteristic of socialism isn't "the development of the productive forces", or "the increasing satisfaction of consumer needs", or "an increase of political freedom". The hallmark of socialism is the change it will bring about in the nature and content of work, through the conscious and deliberate transformation of an inherited technology. For the first time in human history, technology will be subordinated to human needs (not only to the people's needs as consumers but also to their needs as producers ).

The socialist revolution will allow this process to begin. Its completion will mark the entry of humanity into the communist era. Everything else – politics, consumption, etc. – are consequences or implications, which one must certainly look at in their organic unity, but which can only acquire such a unity or meaning through their relation to the key problem: the transformation of work itself. Human freedom will remain an illusion and a mystification if it doesn't mean freedom in people's fundamental activity: the activity which produces. And, this freedom will not be a gift bestowed by nature. It will not automatically arise, out of other developments. It will have to be consciously created . In the last analysis, this is the content of socialism.

Important practical consequences flow from all this. Changing the nature of work will be tackled from both ends. On the one hand, conditions will be created which will allow the fullest possible development of people's human capacities and faculties. This will imply the systematic dismantling, stone by stone, of the whole edifice of the division of labor. On the other hand, people will have to give a whole new orientation to technical developments, and to how they may apply to production. These are but two aspects of the same thing: man's relation to technique.

Let us start by looking at the second, more tangible, point: technical development as such. As a first approximation, one could say that capitalist technology (the current application of technique to production) is rotten at the core because it doesn't help people dominate their work, its aim being the very opposite. Socialists often say that what is basically wrong with capitalist technology is that it seeks to develop production for purposes of profit, or that it develops production for production's sake, independently of human needs (people being conceived of, in these arguments, only as potential consumers of products). The same socialists then tell us that the purpose of socialism is to adapt production to the real consumer needs of society, both in relation to volume and to the nature of the goods produced.

Of course, all this is true, and any society lies condemned in which a single child or adult goes hungry. But the more fundamental problem lies elsewhere.

Capitalism does not utilize a socially neutral technology for capitalist ends. Capitalism has created a capitalist technology, for its own ends, which are by no means neutral. The real essence of capitalist technology is not to develop production for production's sake: it is to subordinate and dominate the producers. Capitalist technology is primarily characterized by its drive to eliminate the human element in productive labor and, in the long run, to eliminate man altogether from the productive process. That here, as elsewhere, capitalism fails to fulfill its deepest tendency – and that it would fall to pieces if it achieved its purpose – does not affect the argument. On the contrary, it only highlights another aspect of the crisis of the system.

Capitalism cannot count on the voluntary cooperation of the producers. On the contrary, it has constantly to face their hostility (or, at best, indifference). This is why it is essential for the machine to impose its rhythm on the work process. Where this isn't possible capitalism seeks at least to measure the work performed. In every productive process, work must therefore be definable, quantifiable, controllable from the outside. As long as capitalism can't dispense with workers altogether, it has to make them as interchangeable as possible and to reduce their work to its simplest expression, that of unskilled labor. There is no conscious conspiracy or plot behind all this.

There is only a process of "natural selection", affecting technical inventions as they are applied to industry. Some are preferred to others and are, on the whole, more widely utilized. These are the ones which slot in with capitalism's basic need to deal with labor-power as a measurable, controllable and interchangeable commodity.

There is no capitalist chemistry or capitalist physics as such – but, there is certainly a capitalist technology, if by this, one means that of the "spectrum" of techniques available at a given point in time (which is determined by the development of science) a given group (or "band") will be selected. From the moment the development of science permits a choice of several possible techniques, a society will regularly choose those methods which have a meaning for it, which are "rational" in the light of its own class rationality. But the "rationality" of an exploiting society is not the rationality of socialism.[9] The conscious transformation of technology will, therefore, be a central task of a society of free workers.

Marx, as is well known, was the first to go beyond the surface of the economic phenomena of capitalism (such as the market, competition, distribution, etc.) and to tackle the analysis of the key area of capitalist social relations: the concrete relations of production in the capitalist factory. But "Volume I" of Capital is still awaiting completion. The most striking feature of the degeneration of the Marxist movement is that this particular concern of Marx's, the most fundamental of all, was soon abandoned, even by the best of Marxists, in favour of the analysis of the "important" phenomena. Through this very fact, these analyses were either totally distorted, or found themselves dealing with very partial aspects of reality, thereby leading to judgments that proved catastrophically wrong.

Thus, it is striking to see Rosa Luxembourg devote two important volumes to the Accumulation of Capital , in which she totally ignores what this process of accumulation really means as to the relations of production. Her concern in these volumes was solely about the possibility of a global equilibrium between production and consumption and she was finally led to believe she had discovered a process of automatic collapse of capitalism (an idea, needless to say, concretely false and a priori absurd). It is just as striking to see Lenin, in his Imperialism , start from the correct and fundamental observation that the concentration of capital has reached the stage of the domination of the monopolies – and yet, neglect the transformation of the relations of production in the capitalist factory, which results precisely from such a concentration, and ignore the crucial phenomenon of the constitution of an enormous apparatus managing production, which was, henceforth, to incarnate exploitation. He preferred to see the main consequences of the concentration of capital in the transformation of capitalists into "coupon-clipping" rentiers. The working class movement is still paying the price of the consequences of this way of looking at things. In so far as ideas play a role in history, Khrushchev is in power in Russia as a by-product of the conception that exploitation can only take the form of coupon-clipping.

But, we must go further back still. We must go back to Marx himself. Marx threw a great deal of light on the alienation of the producer in the course of capitalist production and on the enslavement of man by the mechanical universe he had created. But Marx's analysis is at times incomplete, in that he sees but alienation in all this.

In Capital – as opposed to Marx's early writings – it is not brought out that the worker is (and can only be) the positive vehicle of capitalist production, which is obliged to base itself on him as such, and to develop him as such, while simultaneously seeking to reduce him to an automaton and, at the limit, to drive him out of production altogether. Because of this, the analysis fails to perceive that the prime crisis of capitalism is the crisis in production, due to the simultaneous existence of two contradictory tendencies, neither of which could disappear without the whole system collapsing. Marx shows in capitalism "despotism in the workshop and anarchy in society" – instead of seeing it as both despotism and anarchy in both workshop and society. This leads him to look for the crisis of capitalism not in production itself (except insofar as capitalist production develops "oppression, misery, degeneration, but also revolt", and the numerical strength and discipline of the proletariat) – but in such factors as overproduction and the fall in the rate of profit. Marx fails to see that as long as this type of work persists, this crisis will persist with all it entails, and this whatever the system not only of property, but whatever the nature of the state, and finally whatever even the system of management of production.

In certain passages of Capital , Marx is thus led to see in modern production only the fact that the producer is mutilated and reduced to a "fragment of a man" – which is true, as much as the contrary[10] – and, what is more serious, to link this aspect to modern production and finally to production as such, instead of linking it to capitalist technology. Marx implies that the basis of this state of affairs is modern production as such, a stage in the development of technique about which nothing can be done, the famous "realm of necessity". Thus, the taking over of society by the producers – socialism – at times comes to mean, for Marx, only an external change in political and economic management, a change that would leave intact the structure of work and simply reform its more "inhuman" aspects. This idea is clearly expressed in the famous passage of "Volume III" of Capital , where speaking of socialist society, Marx says:

"In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus, in the very nature of things, it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. ... Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it ... and, achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of their human nature. But, it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins ... the true realm of freedom, which however can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite."[12*]

If it is true that the "realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases" it is strange to read from the pen of the man who wrote that "industry was the open book of human faculties" that freedom could " thus " only be found outside of work. The proper conclusion – which Marx himself draws in certain other places – is that the realm of freedom starts when work becomes free activity , both in what motivates it and in its content. In the dominant concept, however, freedom is what isn't work, it is what surrounds work, it is either "free time" (reduction of the working day) or "rational regulation" and "common control" of exchanges with Nature, which minimize human effort and preserve human dignity. In this perspective, the reduction of the working day certainly becomes a "basic prerequisite", as mankind would finally only be free in its leisure.

The reduction of the working day is, in fact, important, not for this reason however, but to allow people to achieve a balance between their various types of activity. And, at the limit, the "ideal" (communism) isn't the reduction of the working day to zero, but the free determination by all of the nature and extent of their work. Socialist society will be able to reduce the length of the working day, and will have to do so, but this will not be its fundamental preoccupation. Its first task will be to tackle "the realm of necessity", as such , to transform the very nature of work. The problem is not to leave more and more "free" time to individuals – which might well only be empty time – so that they may fill it at will with "poetry" or the carving of wood. The problem is to make of all time a time of liberty and to allow concrete freedom to find expression in creative activity.

The problem is to put poetry into work.[11] Production isn't something negative, that has to be limited as much as possible for mankind to fulfill itself in its leisure. The institution of autonomy is also – and, in the first place – the institution of autonomy in work .

Underlying the idea that freedom is to be found "outside the realm of material production proper" there lies a double error. Firstly, that the very nature of technique and of modern production renders inevitable the domination of the productive process over the producer, in the course of his work. Secondly, that technology and in particular modern technology follows an autonomous development, before which one can only bow. This modern technology would, moreover, possess the double attribute of, on the one hand, constantly reducing the human role in production and, on the other hand, of constantly increasing the productivity of labor. From these two inexplicably combined attributes would result a miraculous dialectic of technological progress: more and more a slave in the course of work, man would be in a position enormously to reduce the length of work, if only s/he could organize society rationally.

We have already shown however that there is no autonomous development of technology. Of the sum total of technologies which scientific development makes possible at any given point in time, capitalist society brings to fulfillment those which correspond most closely to its class structure, which permit capital best to struggle against labor. It is generally believed that the application of this or that invention to production depends on its economic "profitability". But there is no such thing as a neutral "profitability": the class struggle in the factory is the main factor determining "profitability". A given invention will be preferred to another by a factory management if, other things being equal, it enhances the "independent" progress of production, freeing it from interference by the producers. The increasing enslavement of people in production flows essentially from this process, and not from some mysterious curse, inherent in a given phase of technological development. There is, moreover, no magic dialectic of slavery and productivity: productivity increases in relation to the enormous scientific and technical development which is at the basis of modern production – and it increases despite the slavery, and not because of it. Slavery implies an enormous waste, due to the fact that people only contribute an infinitesimal fraction of their capacities to production. (We are passing no a priori judgment on what these capacities might be. However low they may estimate it, the manager of Fords and the Secretary of the Russian Communist Party would have to admit that their own particular ways of organizing production only tapped an infinitesimal fraction of it).

Socialist society will therefore not be afflicted with any kind of technological curse. Having abolished bureaucratic capitalist relationships it will tackle at the same time the technological structure of production, which is both the basis of these relationships and their ever-renewed product.

Possible Composition and Procedures

- Delegates from various shops, departments, and offices of a given enterprise (say 1 delegate per 100 or 200 workers).

- All delegates elected and immediately revocable by body they represent.

- MOST DELEGATES REMAIN AT THEIR JOBS; a rotating minority would ensure continuity.

- Factory Council meets, say, 1 or 2 half-days each week.

Suggested Functions

- Coordination between shops, departments, and offices of a given enterprise.

- Maintenance of relations with other economic organizations, whether in same industry (vertical cooperation) or same locality (horizontal cooperation).

- Maintenance of relations with outside world, in general.

- Determination of how to achieve given production target, given the general means allocated by the plan.

- Organization of work in each shop or department.

- Eventually, changes in the structure of the means of production.

- All those who work in a given enterprise (manual workers, office workers, technicians, etc.).

- Highest decision-making body for all problems relating to the factory as a whole.

- Meets regularly (say, 2 days a month) or more often if meeting wanted by specified number of workers, delegates, or shops.

- Decides on questions to be submitted to Factory Council for further elaboration, discussion, etc.

- Amends, rejects, refers back, or endorses all but routine decisions of the Factory Council.

- Elects delegates (WHO REMAIN AT WORK) to the central Assembly of Delegates.

- General Assembly is composed of revocable delegates, elected by the General Assemblies of given enterprises, by the General Assemblies of Rural Communes, and by the General Assemblies of professional groupings.

- MOST DELEGATES WOULD REMAIN AT WORK. ( Rotating minority might ensure continuity. No one makes a profession out of "representing" others.)

- Central Assembly would meet for two days each week (or for one week each month).

- Delegates report back regularly (say, once a month) to General Assemblies which elected them.

- General Assembly elects its own Council. (Alternatively, groups of members of the Central Assembly might, in rotation , constitute the Council of the Central Assembly, all members being involved at some state or other.)

It is well known that workers can organize their own work at the level of a workshop or of part of a factory. Bourgeois industrial sociologists not only recognize this fact, but point out that "primary groups" of workers often get on with their job better if management leaves them alone, and doesn't constantly try to insert itself into the production process.

How can the work of these various "primary groups" – or of various shops and sections – be coordinated? Bourgeois theoreticians stress that the present managerial apparatus – whose formal job it is to ensure such a coordination – is not really up to the task: it has no real grip on the workers, and is, itself, torn by internal stresses. But having "demolished" the present set-up by their criticisms, modern industrial sociologists have nothing to put in its place. And, as beyond the "primary" organization of production, there has to be a "secondary" organization, they finally fall back on the existing bureaucratic apparatus, exhorting it "to understand", "to improve itself", "to trust people more", etc., etc.[12] The same can be said of "reformed" or "de-Stalinized" leaders in the Eastern Bloc.

What no one seems prepared to recognize (or even to admit) is the capacity of working people to manage their own affairs outside of a very narrow radius. The bureaucratic mind cannot see in the mass of people employed in a factory or office an active subject, capable of managing and organizing. In the eyes of those in authority, both East and West, as soon as one gets beyond a group of ten, fifteen or twenty individuals, the crowd begins – the mob, the thousand-headed Hydra that can't act collectively, or that could only act collectively in the display of collective delirium or hysteria. They believe that only a specially evolved managerial apparatus, endowed, of course, with coercive functions, can dominate and control this mass.

But such are the muddles and shortcomings of the present managerial apparatus that even-today workers (or "primary groups") are obliged to take on quite a number of coordinating tasks. Moreover, historical experience shows that the working class is quite capable of managing whole enterprises. In Spain, in 1936 and 1937, workers ran the factories. In Budapest, in 1956, big bakeries employing hundreds of workers carried on during and immediately after the insurrection. They worked better than ever before, under workers' self-management. Many such examples could be quoted.

The most useful way of discussing this problem is not to weigh up, in the abstract, the "managerial capacities" of the working class. It is to disentangle the specific functions of the present managerial apparatus and to see which of them, under socialism, could be discarded, and which would need to be altered, and in what direction. Present managerial functions are of four main types and we will discuss them in turn:

1. Coercive functions

These functions, and the jobs which go with them (supervisors, foremen, part of the "personnel" department), would be done away with, purely and simply. Each group of workers would be quite capable of disciplining itself. It would also be capable of granting momentary authority from time-to-time to people, drawn from its own ranks, should it feel this to be needed for the carrying out of a particular job.

2. Administrative functions

These relate to jobs, most of which are now carried out in the offices. Among them are accountancy and the "commercial" and "general" services of the enterprise. The development of modern production has fragmented and socialized this work, just as it has done to production itself. Nine-tenths of people working in offices attached to factories carry out tasks of execution. Throughout their life, they will do little else. Important changes will have to be brought about here.

The capitalist structure of the factory generally results in considerable over-staffing of these areas and a socialist reorganization would probably result in a big economy of labor in these fields. Some of these departments would not only diminish in size, but would witness a radical transformation of their functions. In the last few years "commercial sections" have everywhere grown enormously. In a planned socialist economy, they would be mainly concerned with, on the one hand, obtaining supplies, and on the other, with deliveries. They would be in contact with similar departments in supply-factories and with stores, distributing to consumers. Once the necessary transformations had been brought about, offices would be considered "workshops" like any others. They could organize their own work and would relate, for purposes of coordination, with the other shops of the factory. They would enjoy no particular rights by virtue of the nature of their work. They have, in fact, no such rights today, and it is as a result of other factors (the division between manual and "intellectual" work, the more pronounced hierarchy in offices, etc.), that persons from among the office staff may find their way into the ranks of management.

3. "Technical" functions

These are, at present, carried out by people ranging from consultant engineers to draftsmen. Here, too, modern industry has created "collectives" in which work is divided up and socialized, and in which 90 % of those involved do just as they're told. But, while pointing this out in relation to what goes on within these particular departments, we must recognize that these departments carry out managerial functions in relation to the production areas. Once production targets have been defined, it is this collective technical apparatus which selects ways and means, looks into the necessary changes in the tooling, determines the sequence and the details of various operations, etc. In theory, the production areas merely carry out the instructions issued from the technical departments. Under the conditions of modern mass production a complete separation certainly exists between those who draw up the plans and those who have to carry them out.

Up to a point, all this is based on something real. Today, both specialization and technical and scientific competence are the privilege of a minority. But it doesn't follow in the least that the best way of using this expertise would be to leave to "experts" the right to decide the whole of production. Competence is, almost by definition, restricted in its scope. Outside of his/her particular sector, or of the particular process which s/he knows, the technician is no better equipped to take a responsible decision than anyone else. Even within his/her own field, his/her viewpoint is often limited. He/she will often know little of the other sectors and may tend to minimize their importance although these sectors have a definite bearing on his own. Moreover – and this is more important – the technician is separated from the real process of production.

This separation is a source of waste and conflict in capitalist factories. It will only be abolished when "technical" and "productive" staff begin to cooperate in a thorough way. This cooperation will be based on joint decisions taken by the technicians and by those who will be working on a given task. Together, they will decide on the methods to be used.

Will such cooperation work smoothly? There is no intrinsic reason why unsurmountable obstacles should arise. The workers will have no interest in challenging the answers which the technician, in his capacity as technician, may give to purely technical problems. And, if there are disagreements, these will rapidly be resolved in practice. The field of production allows of almost immediate verification of what this or that person proposes. That, for this or that job or tool, this or that type of metal would be preferable (given a certain state of knowledge and certain conditions of production) will seldom be a matter for controversy.

But, the answers provided by technique only establish a general framework. They only suggest some of the elements which will, in practice, influence production. Within this given framework, there will probably be a number of ways of organizing a particular job. The choice will have to take into account on the one hand certain general considerations of "economy" (economy of labor, of energy, of raw materials, of plant) and on the other hand – and this is much more important – considerations relating to the fate of man in production. And on these questions, by definition, the only people who can decide are those directly involved. In this area, the specific competence of the technician, as a technician, is nil.[13]

The ultimate organization of production can, therefore, only be vested in the hands of the producers themselves. The producers will obviously take into account various technical points suggested by competent technicians. In fact, there will probably be a constant to-and-fro, if only because the producers themselves will envisage new ways of organizing the manufacture of products. These suggestions will pose new technical problems, about which the technicians will, in turn, have to put forward their comments and evaluations before a joint decision could be taken "in full knowledge of the relevant facts". But the decision – in this case as in others – will be in the hands of the producers (including the technicians) of a given shop (if it only affects a shop) – or of the factory as a whole (if it affects the whole factory).

The roots of possible conflict between workers and technicians would therefore not be technical. If such a conflict emerged it would be a social conflict, arising from a possible tendency of the technicians to assume a dominating role, thereby constituting anew a bureaucratic managerial apparatus. What would be the strength and possible evolution of such a tendency?

We can't here discuss this problem in any depth. We can only re-emphasize that technicians don't constitute a majority – or even an essential part – of the upper strata of modern economic or political management. Incidentally, to become aware of this obvious fact helps one see through the mystifying character of arguments which seek to prove that ordinary people cannot manage production because they lack the "necessary technical capacity". The vast majority of technicians only occupy subordinate positions. They only carry out a divided work, on instructions from above. Those technicians who have "reached the top" are not there as technicians, but as managers or organizers.

Modern capitalism is bureaucratic capitalism. It isn't – and never will be – a technocratic capitalism. The concept of a technocracy is an empty generalization of superficial sociologists, or a daydream of technicians confronted with their own impotence and with the absurdity of the present system. Technicians don't constitute a class. From the formal point of view, they are just a category of wage-earners. The evolution of modern capitalism, by increasing their numbers and by transforming them into people who carry out fragmented and interchangeable work, tends to drive them closer to the working class. Counteracting these tendencies, it is true, are their position in the wages and status hierarchies – and also the scanty chances still open to them of "moving up".[13*] But these channels are gradually being closed as the numbers of technicians increase and as bureaucratization spreads within their own ranks. In parallel with all this, a revolt develops among them, as they confront the irrationalities of bureaucratic capitalism and experience increasing difficulties in giving free rein to their capacities for creative or meaningful work.

Some technicians already at the top, or on their way there, will side squarely with exploiting society. They will, however, be opposed by a growing minority of disaffected colleagues, ready to work with others in overthrowing the system. In the middle, of course, there will be the great majority of technicians, today apathetically accepting their status of slightly privileged employees. Their present conservatism suggests that they would not risk a conflict with real power, whatever its nature. The evolution of events may even radicalize them.

It is therefore most probable that workers' power in the factory, after having swept aside a small number of technical bureaucrats, will find support in a substantial number of other technicians. It should succeed, without major conflict, in integrating the remainder into the cooperative network of the factory.

4. Truly managerial functions

The people "consulted" by a Company Chairman or Managing Director, before s/he takes an important decision, usually number less than a dozen, even in the most important firms. This very narrow stratum of management has two main tasks. On the one hand, it has to make decisions concerning investment, stocks, output, etc., in relation to market fluctuations and to long-term prospects. On the other hand, it has to "coordinate" the various departments of the firm, seeking to iron out differences between various segments of the bureaucratic apparatus.

Some of these functions would disappear altogether in a planned economy, in particular, all those related to fluctuation of the market. Others would be considerably reduced: coordinating the different shops of a factory would be much easier if the producers organized their own work, and if different groups, shops, or departments could directly contact each other. Still other functions might be enhanced, such as genuine discussions of what might be possible in the future, or of how to do things, or about the present or future role of the enterprise in the overall development of the economy.

Under socialism "managerial" tasks at factory level could be carried out by two bodies:

a. The Factory Council , composed of delegates from the various shops and offices, all of them elected and instantly revocable. In an enterprise of say 5,000 to 10,000 workers such a Council might number 30-50 people. The delegates would remain at their jobs. They would meet in full session as often as experience proved it necessary (probably on one or two half-days a week They would report back continuously to their workmates in shop or office – and would anyway probably have discussed all important matters with them previously. Rotating groups of delegates would ensure continuity. One of the main tasks of a Factory Council would be to ensure liaison and to act as a continuous regulating locus between the factory and the "outside world".

b. The General Assembly of all those who work in the plant, whether manual workers, office workers or technicians. This would be the highest decision-making body for all problems concerning the factory as a whole. Differences between different sectors would be thrashed out at this level. This General Assembly would embody the restoration of direct democracy into what should, in modern society, be its basic unit: the place of work. The Assembly would have to ratify all but routine decisions of the Factory Council. It would be empowered to question, challenge, amend, reject or endorse any decision taken by the Council. The General Assembly will, itself, decide on all sorts of questions to be submitted to the Council. The Assembly would meet regularly – say, on one or two days each month. There would, in addition, exist procedures for calling such General Assemblies, if this was wanted by a given number of workers, or of shops, or of delegates.

For summaries of the composition and functions of these bodies, and of their relations with other basic units, see Basic Units 1, Basic Units 2, The Factory Council and General Assembly, and Council: Central Assembly of Delegates.

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.

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.

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, lookin