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From The New International, Vol. XVII No. 3, May–June 1951, pp. 175–178.
Another complete translation can be found here.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
In a letter addressed to “Berlin comrades” in 1931, Trotsky attempted a reply to the question, “What is Workers’ Control of Production.” His letter was later published under the title, Ueber Arbeiterkontrolle der Produktion, in the form of a brochure, together with other material on Germany. We have translated intact, with the exception of outdated references to the German Stalinist party, this little known contribution of Trotsky to clarification and concretization of this problem.
The many re-evaluations and studies of the Russian Revolution; the wave of “nationalization” in Western Europe after the last war, culminating in the experience of the British Labour Government; the Yugoslav Basic Law on Management of State Economic Enterprises by the Workers’ Collectives adopted in June of last year; the recent “co-management” act in Federal Germany – all these events have contributed their appropriate share to a revival of the two basically related questions of workers’ control of production, and management of the economy of a workers’, socialist state. Yet, it must be confessed, there is an amazing paucity of material, both historic and analytic, dealing with such questions.
The letter of Trotsky, which sketches the broad outlines of the first problem, gives us the classic revolutionary content of the slogan of “workers’ control,” conceived of primarily in political terms, as an aspect of the overall revolutionary program. Even here one may note the flexibility and suppleness of his thought which, rejecting dogmatic schemas (how often has this very slogan been advanced in the most sterile of fashions!), insists upon a “concrete” examination of relationships within the economy as the “starting point” and, with equal firmness, insists that we conceive of “workers’ control” as the beginning of a long-range development to the point where the institutions affecting such control have become the actual “organs of workers’ power” in the socialist society itself.
It may be asked – and it should be asked – how much of Trotsky’s thesis is of value and relevance today, in 1951? Does it relate to the problems of Labour England, for example, where nationalization takes the form of public corporations, responsible to the state, and over whose management the institutions of labor have but the slightest managerial or controlling influence? And how does it relate to Western Germany, where trade union “participation” has begun to assume advanced forms? Certainly, the specific historic process described by Trotsky, under which “workers’ control” over capitalist industry was imposed by the whole proletariat, led by its revolutionary party, has not at all followed the course he foresaw. But does this invalidate his approach, or simply demand its rectification?
It is not our intention here to attempt a reply to these, or corollary, questions. We are simply interested in beginning, and stimulating, some discussion around the subject. In this sense, Trotsky’s outline provides, we think, an excellent point of departure. We limit ourselves to suggesting two possible angles from which one may consider Trotsky’s contribution, readily acknowledging that many other approaches are possible.
First, we wish to point out Trotsky’s lucid suggestion that studies of the concrete circumstances and conditions (the meaning) of workers’ control have never been carried out, at least to the extent of having a source to which one may turn to get the “feel,” the sense of what this concept means in real life. Partly, this is due to the objective fact that the “sharpening of the class struggle” which Trotsky considered indispensable to any widespread existence of such control, has not been the condition of political life since Trotsky wrote his letter. But only partly so. In many instances, and in one or another condition (we have already mentioned such cases), the possibility for the development of this concept has existed, or does exist. The terrain has been fertile, but no seeds have fallen upon it. In many instances (Labour Britain, Germany today), the law and other codified measures touching on what industrial sociologists like to call “industrial relations” have furnished ready tools by which labor unions, provided the will and initiative existed, could invade the forbidden centers of management and control. Alas, the conservative labor leadership has readily accepted apathy and decline in proletarian consciousness as its excuse for allowing all opportunities for development to lie idle. Curiously enough, only the Fabian Society in Labour Britain has considered the question and published material which, among other things, establishes the neglected opportunities.
Therefore, one aspect of this broad problem is to attempt an approach at such studies, detailing of experiences, etc., which can approximate an answer to the question of what this looks like, in day-to-day life. “We must begin from the bottom,” says Trotsky, and this is still so.
Secondly, and here we find ourself touching the broader and more theoretical side: what place does this concept occupy in the contemporary world of socialist thought, that world which has so drastically changed since 1931? If Trotsky’s concept of the imposition of workers’ control has proven incorrect – or, at least, unrealizable – must we change the concept itself, or evolve a new way of applying it? What is its meaning, for example, in Labour England, where the decline and dispersal of bourgeois state power has not been accompanied by the development of the kind of dual power Trotsky predicted, but rather by the construction of the external, structural forms of dual power without their dynamic inner content? How does this concept look, in reality and in perspective, in our America? These are some of the first, by no means exhaustive, thoughts which are raised in reading the thesis of Trotsky. (Sections in brackets will be my interpolation; the remainder is a translation of Trotsky’s text.)
In response to your question, as an introduction to an exchange of views, I shall attempt to sketch here some general considerations evoked by the phrase, “Workers’ Control of Production.”
The first question posed is the following: can one think of Workers’ Control of Production as a fixed – to be sure, not eternal – long-lasting regime? To answer this question one must clearly define the class nature of such a regime. Control is in the hands of the workers. This means that ownership and the right of disposition remain in capitalist hands. The regime therefore has a completely contradictory character in that it is of an interregnum (transitional) kind.
The workers need control not for platonic purposes, but to influence in a practical way both production and business operations carried on by the owner. However, this situation may not be attained without control, one way or another, passing beyond one or another of the boundaries relating to the direct function of the right of property disposal. In a more developed form, workers’ control thus means a kind of economic dual power in the factory, bank, business enterprise, etc.
Should the workers’ participation in management be of a lasting, stable, “normal” kind, it would have to be based upon the “class-collaborationism” not, however, upon the class struggle. Such a “class-collaborationism” can be realized only by the trade union top leadership and the organized bourgeoisie. Not a few of such attempts have been made: in Germany (“economic democracy”); in England (“Mondism”); etc. But in all these instances workers’ control over capital was not involved, but rather of the labor bureaucracy’s zealous solicitude for capital. Such solicitude, as experience shows, may continue for a long time, even beyond the proletariat’s patience.
The closer it is to production, to the factory and department unit, the more impossible becomes such a regime since it involves the immediate life interest of the worker. The entire process unfolds before the eyes of the worker himself. Workers’ control exercized by factory councils is conceivable only under conditions of sharp class struggle, but not under that of “class-collaborationism.” Thus, this same dual power must exist in the concern, the trust, the entire branch of industry, the whole economy.
What state regime corresponds to workers’ control of production? It is obvious that the state would not as yet be in the hands of the proletariat. If such were the case, we would have not workers’ control of production but rather control of production by the workers’ state as preparation for a regime of statified production founded upon nationalization. For us, the concept of workers’ control exists within the scope of a capitalist regime, under bourgeois domination. However, a bourgeoisie which feels itself firm in the saddle will never tolerate dual power in its concerns. Hence, workers’ control is realizable only as a consequence of a precipitous change in the relationship of forces, to the disadvantage of the bourgeoisie and its state. Control can be forcibly imposed upon the bourgeoisie by the proletariat only along the road toward that moment when power and then property is also taken away from capitalist production centers. Thus, a workers’ control regime, by its very nature, can only be thought of as a provisional, transitional regime during the period of the shattering of the bourgeois state, the offensive of the proletariat and the retreat of the bourgeoisie; that is, the period of the proletarian revolution in its widest sense.
Is the capitalist already no longer master, that is, no longer entirely master in his factory? Then it follows that he is also no longer completely master in his own state. This signifies that a dual power regime in the workshops corresponds to a dual power regime in the state. But this relationship must not be understood mechanically; not in the sense, that is, that dual power in the shop and dual power in the state will see the light of the world on one and the same day. The advancing regime of dual power, one of the probable stages of the proletarian revolution in every country, can develop in various ways, out of various elements in various countries.
[At this point, Trotsky begins a general polemic against the German Communist Party, then in the midst of the famous “Third Period.” Emphasizing the fact that the Russian “soviets” were primarily an organizational form which revolutionary leadership had infused with revolutionary content, he ridicules the then prevailing “fetishism” of Russian forms, the concept that Soviets are inevitable and the mechanical application of the slogan of “soviets” as employed by the German Stalinists. On the contrary, Trotsky opposes the idea of organizing Soviets alongside of the works’ councils in Germany, and makes the basic point that it is precisely the historic role of those organizational forms which affect workers’ control of production (councils, committees, etc.) to develop into organs of workers’ power (soviets) after the victory of the socialist revolution. On the political front, says Trotsky, workers’ control is the means of achieving a practical united front of the working class. Its foundation and the development of its forms, far from conflicting with other revolutionary forms – as the Stalinists charged – is the best guarantee of their development. Trotsky continues as follows:]
Once astride the way leading to control over production, the proletariat will unavoidably be further pushed in the direction of the conquest of power and the centers of production. Questions of credits, raw materials, markets, etc., involve matters of control beyond the confines of isolated enterprises. In such a highly developed industrial country as Germany it suffices alone to raise the question of exports and imports in order to immediately pose the matter of workers’ control of public expenditures, and to counterpose the central organ of workers’ control to the official organs of the bourgeois state. By their very nature, the unavoidable contradictions of the regime of workers’ control must inevitably become aggravated, as measured by the extension of its area of control and its accomplishments. They will soon prove to be unbearable ...
We must begin from the bottom, in the factory and workshop. We must test out and adapt these questions to a typical industry, bank and business undertaking. We must take as a starting point particularly crass cases of speculation; with the same purpose in mind, concealed lockouts, malevolent depreciation of profits with the object of cutting wages or unwarranted exaggeration of production costs, etc.
[Concluding, Trotsky urges his supporters in Germany to actively participate] ... in the study of the concrete conditions around the struggle for workers’ control [for] ... revolutionary development should be adapted to the concrete relationships within factory and workshop.
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