HAVING stated the principles of the new relationship between the Trade Unions and the State which arise immediately the character of the State is changed from that of the weapon for the defence of private property to the weapon of social property, the way is clear for an examination of the new scope and powers of the Trade Unions as allies of the socialist State.
Up to this time the Trade Unions have been (a) the defenders of wage rates, hours of labour, factory conditions, etc., a brake on the rate of exploitation of the workers; (b) the custodians of certain forms of social insurance, such as unemployment pay, sick pay, old age pensions, or superannuation; (c) “consultants” with regard to the general development and organization of the economic life of the country. This latter feature of their activity has taken the form of collaboration with the employers and the Government, by means such as the Mond-Turner discussions, joint policy formulating with the employers’ federations, attendance at economic conferences convened by the Government and the League of Nations.
Naturally the coming of a socialist government would call for the adoption of new methods of running industry. But whether the socialist government be parliamentary or soviet it could not itself undertake the administration of industry. The Government is the political authority for effecting the change from private ownership to social ownership. It is the centre of political power for settling the question of ownership in the name of the new society. Having settled the ownership question it has to create the means for the administration of industry.
How the question of ownership is settled will determine the means whereby the new method of administration of industry will be created. If the transition is through the securing of a parliamentary socialist government accepted by the minority defeated in the elections, then the first step would be the creation of a National Economic Council for the co-ordination and direction of industry.
If, however, the change from one system to another meets with the stubborn resistance of vested interests and the issue has to be settled by civil conflict, then the new mechanism will arise in a different way. The direct mass conquest of ownership will have to precede the development of forms of administration and the factory committees will be called upon to play the same role as in the Russian Revolution. “Workers’ control of industry” would then be a political slogan of the workers in the direct fight for possession. That, of course, is a class political fight and not necessarily parliamentary in form.
Both Mr. Milne-Bailey in his book Trade Unionism and the State, and Mr. Herbert Morrison in his book the Socialization of Transport, misinterpret the evolution of the forms of “workers’ control” in the Soviet Union and assume that workers’ control is steadily abandoned because the Trade Unions and the State created “trusts”, assume different functions the farther away we get from the first months of the revolution. The fact is there has been no abandonment of workers’ control.
Ownership and control are inseparable and the workers of Russia have not surrendered ownership, they have changed the forms of administration of industry and government on the principles of functional democracy inherent within all socialist theory. That this evolution of administration of socialized industry has deviated from preconceived notions of how it should be done was only to be expected. The deviations, however, are not so remarkable as the amount of revolutionary socialist theory which proved correct in practice, every step of which was without precedent.
If, however, my analysis of the possibility of a parliamentary socialist government be correct, the starting point for the “workers’ control of industry” will be different from that of Soviet Russia, the evolution of its forms of development will be different, though the goal may be the same.
Neither a soviet government, nor a parliamentary socialist government can administer industry without creating special institutions for the purpose. The socialist government has to start from scratch. Having achieved political power through the parliamentary franchise, the problem of administering industry will be presented to the socialist government and the workers in industry in an entirely different way from that in the history of the Russian Revolution, always providing that the capitalists accept the parliamentary decision without creating a pro-slavery rebellion and civil war.
Once more, therefore, assuming the acceptance of the rapid transition to Socialism, the first step of the socialist government must be to create a National Economic Council, representative of the socialized banks and industries, trade unions and co-operatives, selected experts in economics, etc. This will be the first step towards the social administration of things.
That such a council cannot work as an ad hoc body is obvious. It will have to form its planning commissions, sub-committees, and departments, and be built up generally on the principle of a federation of industries in accordance with the structure of the industries which the council is called upon to administer. No industry can be run as an isolated unit but only as a co-ordinated part of the rest of industry. Hence the necessity for the federal principle to be applied and the general co-ordination to be effected in a National Economic Council. This council will be responsible for the planning of industry and its administration. Its plans, of course, must receive the approval of the Government and Parliament which represent the political authority for the transition to the new society. Leading members of the Government must be in charge of the National Economic Council and be held responsible to the cabinet.
In the first stages the work of the National Economic Council will fall into two main divisions. On the one hand, its task will be the planned reorganization of the socialized industries and, on the other hand, the control of non-socialized industries. Although the problems attached to the first task are different from those of the second, they are closely related. It must be obvious that any attempt to plan the development of the economic life of the country without the National Economic Council having all the economic forces under its control, including the import and export of goods, must be doomed to failure. Planned economy and economic anarchy cannot live side by side in a single community. Anarchy in production must inevitably shatter all plans as every attempt to develop “planned capitalism” in the jungle of the competitive relations of capitalism has already proved. However much, therefore, of industry is immediately socialized, control of the non-socialized industry must be an essential part of the planned transition to Socialism.
The National Economic Council will, accordingly, have its departments for the control of foreign trade, its investment boards, and its planning commissions as part of its machinery for the administration of industry. It will control imports and exports, regulate the flow of investments both in the socialized and non-socialized industries, and then bring order into the development of the economic life of the community in place of the stupidities of the tariff system and the gambling of the Stock Exchange.
Just as it will be necessary to co-ordinate the industries nationally so there will be the need for effective co-operation with the various regions of the country each of which will have its economic council constructed on similar lines. They will be appointed by the National Economic Council and responsible to it for the carrying through of the general plan.
It will be asked from whence are these bodies chosen and who can remove them if unsatisfactory, etc. The answer is that the personnel will be nominated by the Trade Unions, local authorities, co-operatives, the Labour Party, and the Government, on the basis of their special knowledge, administrative ability and loyalty to the fulfilment of the socialist plan. They will be removed when proven unsatisfactory by the National Economic Council, or the committees of the council responsible for the appointment, on representation from any of the organizations which have the power of nomination. The selective principle applied in appointment is thus controlled by the elective principle. Thus will industrial democracy begin to work.
It may be argued that the National Economic Council and its industrial sections and departments ought really to be the General Council of the Trades Union Congress and the executives of the Trade Unions after they have been transformed into industrial unions. Whatever the future may have in store it must be obvious that, if political power comes to Labour in the way described, the existing structure and functions of the Trade Unions are not cut out for such an undertaking. There are hundreds of Trade Unions. The total membership is not more than four and a half millions, as compared with a working population of more than sixteen millions. The officials of the unions have been elected for totally different purposes. The great mass of the Trade Union branches have little relation to the workshops, except that their members work in them.
Indeed, one of the most urgent tasks of the Trade Unions is, and will be more so, on the morrow of the coming of a socialist government, their transformation into industrial unions to be inclusive of all who work in industry. At present they constitute a tremendous reservoir of energy and skill which can and will be applied in the workers’ administration of industry but to-day they are not organized with that purpose in view. Hence the need for change in methods of organization and the need for a new vision of their tasks. At the same time, because they are composed of the workers in industry and with all their defects represent the great mass who have the task before them of rebuilding society, they must be drawn into the National Economic Council.
The proposal for the handing over of the administration of industry to the Trade Unions re-organized as industrial unions is derived, of course, from the theories of the revolutionary industrial unionists. Once more the whole question turns on the issue of how power passes into the hands of socialists. Their view was that of the conquest of industry, factory by factory, mill by mill, mine by mine, etc. Every factory was to them a fortress to be captured for revolutionary industrial unionism until the superstructure of the State could be overthrown by the universal dismissal of the capitalists. It was the route via the workshop and factory committees which either transformed the unions in the process or superseded them by new industrial unions.
Whatever of value there is in the struggle for the transformation of the unions and the vision of an industrial democracy, there is no evidence of the possibility of the workers achieving power in that way. Hence the necessity of facing the fact that the Trade Unions will have to tackle the problems of their transformation largely after the achievement of political power. It is, therefore, necessary to reject the proposal for the Trades Union Congress and the union executives immediately becoming the National Economic Council, whilst calling on them and the co-operatives and Labour organizations to give the maximum of representation within it commensurable with the necessity to give the experts in all departments ample scope along with the requirements of political expediency in carrying through the policy of the Government.
The central machinery of industrial and economic planning and administration must have its corresponding departments in the form of regional and district councils appointed by the National Economic Council. Its units of administration will be the directors and managerial workers of each enterprise. From top to bottom the functions of these institutions, however they be detailed out in the forms of socialist trusts, etc., will be those of planning, directing, and managing the economic and industrial life of the country. They will be responsible to the Government, the political authority responsible for the use and transformation of the State in the name of the new society.
These are the institutions, therefore, which will arrive at agreements with the Trade Unions concerning wages and hours of labour and conditions of employment. The unions will not drop this function but carry it forward into the new order. The conditions of the new arrangements, however, will be totally different from the present. Instead of being face to face with opponents whose aim is to extract as much profit as possible from the workers, the meeting of the respective organizations will be animated by the same purpose, in that they meet on the common platform of community ownership. Their function will be essentially a scientific, regulative one. It is no longer a war of contending forces each seeking to extract the maximum from the other, but the meeting of departments of the same concern. Whether it will be found easier to work these problems out on a national or local basis remains to be seen. In either case, the principles upon which they work and the mechanism for carrying out this function is the same. The unions will cease to be the instruments for strikes when the property relations which make such activity necessary will have vanished. There is no need for the workers to strike against themselves.
But in the transition period there will be industries that are socialized and industries that remain on a capitalist basis. We may, therefore, expect to witness the Trade Unions performing two functions—constructing Socialism on the one hand, and defending workers against the capitalists on the other. Even so, the position of the unions can hardly be comparable with that of the present. Those unions in the remaining capitalist industry would have the support of their socialist government. Hence the strike weapon would be little in evidence even in the transition where all the forces of the State are directed towards Socialism.
In the industries not socialized by the Government, the full moral and political pressures of the Government must support the formation of works committees and councils. By these means the Trade Unions will be able to exercise a measure of control over conditions of work to ensure the fulfilment of agreements between the unions and the employers, and prepare for the socialization and full control of the industry.
The other functions of social insurance, for old age, sickness, unemployment (so long as there is any) insurance, the organization of social welfare, can be taken over completely from the State apparatus. This has already happened in the Soviet Union. In 1933, the whole budget Of £155,000,000 previously administered by the Commissariat of Labour (a similar government department to that of the Ministry of Labour in this country) was transferred in its entirety to the Trade Unions. The Trade Unions of this country have had a rich experience in this kind of administration and have developed an administrative staff for the purpose which it would be difficult to improve upon. Whether the Trade Unions could take over this work completely until transformed into industrial unions is doubtful. But once it was indicated that this was to be done it would give a powerful impetus to the process of transformation of the unions along the lines required.
This is not all that is required for the transformation. Workshop organization must accompany the developments I have outlined, indeed must be the basis upon which the transformation is effected. Unless this is done the actual operation of the agreements and control of the processes of production will not be possible.
It will be necessary for the workers in each factory to elect their works’ council. In small factories this may be done at a mass meeting of all the workers: in larger factories by means of departmental meetings electing their representatives. With the transformation of the unions into industrial unions these will be the units of the unions corresponding to the branch meetings of to-day. Although, at first, not all the workers will be members of the unions, social pressure, and common interest and the absence of an alternative basis upon which to foster non-unionism, will quickly ensure the vast majority of the workers becoming members of the unions. It is only necessary to recall the swift growth of the Trade Unions in the War period with the absence of unemployment to recognize how much more swiftly the recruitment would be under the impact of revolutionary changes and the moral influence of a socialist government. It will become a mark of dishonour and counter-revolutionary sympathies to be a non-unionist in those days.
Here once more in the election of workers’ councils in the factories is the application of the popular elective principle which in its operation checks the application of the selective principle in the appointments to special positions of responsibility.
What will the workers’ council do? It will arrange with the management such questions as the manning of the departments, the transfer of labour, employment of labour, settle grievances of individual workers; it will check up the management on the supply of materials and the relations of the management to the rest of the workers, discuss the plans of production prepared by the managerial side of the establishment and the fulfilment of the plans. It must be remembered constantly that the workers’ council and the management will be no longer representatives of opposing forces but will be functionaries of a common interest and purpose. The works council will not therefore be simply a grievance bureau but a part of the mechanism of workers’ control of industry, as keenly interested in the work of the management as the management itself. The Council will not be an “interfering” body but a popular democratic means of ensuring the harmonious working of all engaged in the productive process. It will make nominations for various posts requiring technical skill but the directorate will decide. Managers will be managers and directors will be directors who will be held responsible for the decisions they make and are expected to make as functionaries of the common will.
Such is the general structure of the machinery of administration which appears to me to be the natural evolution to socialist forms of administration arising from the determined effort of a socialist government elected through Parliament. It would not supersede Parliament popularly elected, but be responsible to it provided the struggle for political power to effect the economic change in society had not forced upon society a new political form. But, as I have repeatedly emphasized, the whole economic apparatus must be subordinate to the political authority of society until the classes have merged into the classless society within our frontiers and beyond them.
It is now possible to see how the great change will affect the position of the rank and file workers, of technicians, and professions. The economic aspect is not the province of this book.
Sufficient to say that the socialization of the means of production alone provides the means whereby to close “the scissors” of production and consumption, i.e. to effect the transformation in the distribution of wealth so that they correspond to each other. It is by this means and this alone that economic security, regularity of income, and hours of labour, provision for inadvertent events for all, can be met.
The importance of this economic revolution in the life of society cannot be measured. Great though it may be, no less great will be the change effected in the spiritual stature of man. All that is meant by this change can only be fully realized by him who has been a slave and is now free.
Dr. H. F. Ward, in his most interesting and valuable book In Place of Profit, recalls the following incident which occurred in a Soviet factory.
“We had a row here last week. The director changed the machines around without consulting the workers. You should have seen what they did to him. They called a meeting and put him on the carpet. They said, ‘Who do you think you are, changing these machines around without consulting us? This is our factory, not yours.’”
In this briefly recorded incident is the essence of everything that is meant by social ownership and the worker’s control. These things are not mine nor thine but OURS. “No master, high or low.” Co-operation in a common purpose. Division of work and functional responsibility co-ordinated and applied to the conquest of the machines, the tools, materials, and all that enters into the productive process.
To those who have been accustomed to command and be obeyed such a prospect as this is appalling. To those who work at the bench, on the machine, in the mill and mine, and have felt the overwhelming pressure of economic power behind the words of command, it is the vision of what emancipation means. Let us see how it works still more closely.
Take, for example, an engineering factory. Under the existing regime it has its boards of directors, managers, experts, draftsmen, accountants, costing departments, speedmen, detectives, chargehands, skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled workers, men and women. All are subordinate to the driving motive of profit. Quality of production, human dignity, joy in work are sacrificed to profit. Fear of dismissal, brutal driving, nerve-racking anxiety, suspicions, murmurings, sneaking, spying, competition for jobs and favoured places, characterize human association. The machine towers over men, women, and youth, as a fierce slave driver burning up their energy at an ever-faster rate and throwing them on the industrial scrap heap irrespective of their fate. The ethics of the jungle and the tyranny of the machine in the production of profit are supreme in the world of capitalist economy.
The same engineering factory in the world of socialism, run on the principles outlined, would also have its directors, its managers, its experts, accountants, draftsmen, costing clerks. But the speed merchants would be absent. The detectives would be absent. The fears of dismissal would be absent. The profit motive would be absent.
The managers and directors would be appointed by the National Economic Council or its representatives. These would be responsible for the employment of the experts, the draftsmen, the accountants, etc., and the general staffing of the factory in consultation with the works council. The works council would be elected by the workers in the factory. The council would not be full time officials as a rule, though according to the size of the factory it may be necessary to have some of their number engaged in this way. The council as a whole would be composed of workers “on the job”, at the bench, on the machine. This is the industrial union at work.
It would ensure and control the application of the National and local agreements between the unions and the National Economic Council. The council would hold joint meetings with the management to discuss the plan of work for developing the initiative of the workers in every department of administration to ensure both qualitative and quantitative standards of production. Developing the consciousness of their common ownership of industry and what is produced by it, their approval, their approach to all questions become fundamentally different. Directors and managers cease to be menacing figures who hold the power of dismissal over the heads of the rest of the workers. They become fellow workers who are held responsible for a high function by the workers in the factories and the rest of the community.
Directors and managers will have to be leaders of ability and not merely technical experts with the capacity of the bully. They will be held responsible for the supply of materials for the processes of production undertaken by the particular concern in which they are in charge, for efficiency in administration, and expressing the spirit of co-operation in a common purpose.
The directors will receive the general plan of work from the National Economic Council. This plan will be worked over by the managerial staff and departmentalized so that every section of the factory can understand what the collective social will expects as their contribution to the common purpose. This plan will be submitted to the workers through the workers’ councils in the factory so that each worker can examine the plan and check the details of the work to be undertaken. Through meetings and discussions the men on the job will check the plan, revise the plan, and control the plan when agreed upon.
This process is well described by F. Ward. He writes describing the method of work in the Soviet Union:—
“As the plan comes down through the factory it gets broken into smaller units and set for shorter times. The planning department will work it out for a three months’ period, the planning brigade in a shop for a month, and the working brigade for ten or five days and sometimes each day. Also the figures that go back to headquarters become much more exact as the workers fill them in from their experience. For instance, a young engineer in an electrical factory tells me the plan will call for ten million lamps at 42 kopecks, the workers plan may total up to nearly fifteen million lamps at 30 kopecks. Why? Because the drafter, not knowing the machine, puts down 1,000 parts for it, the worker says, ’We—the machine and I—can do 1,223,’ because he knows just what he has been averaging.”
That’s true enough. No one can estimate what can be done better than the man on the job when he is harnessed to the joy of achievement, free from the nagging fears of competitive capitalism. No one can measure the joy in turning out a good job free from the interruptions of a “speed merchant” whose sole desire is output.
Much nonsense is written to-day about the “tyranny of the machine”. It is not the machine that is the tyrant but the “profit-motived system” in which it has to be worked that is the tyrant. There is no greater joy than the manipulation of a fine piece of machinery providing the man who has to work it is a free man, and therefore master of the machine. Nothing is more destroying to a craftsman using the tools of production than the capitalist foreman’s interruption, “Here, that job isn’t for exhibition! Don’t put so damned much finish on it.”
Even the “belt system” of production can become a pleasure when handled by a team of workers collectively interested in it and its products because it is theirs.
Thus the “workers’ control of industry” I visualize is not that of a mere formal representation of the Trade Union officials upon some board of directors, it is the active continual control of the workers on the job in the fullest meaning of the word. This is functional democracy at work on the basis of the social ownership of the means of production-the only basis upon which such a democracy is realizable. It was by these means that the Five Year Plan of the Soviet Union was carried through in four years. The plan was revised from below in the manner I have indicated. And this was done with an untrained working class that had to be educated for disciplined factory work as they went along.
What it would mean in a country like ours, with a hundred and fifty years of industrialization behind it and a vast army of workers and technicians whose skill and powers of production are still unmeasured to release this energy and harness it to the new methods and new aims, it is impossible to compute.
But along this path it is clear that the Trade Unions will rapidly change from instruments of struggle against exploitation into administrative organs of a self-governing classless community in which man is free and master of the machine.