Resolution from the first Red International of Labor Unions (Profintern) congress held in July, 1921.

‘On Workers Control’ from Resolutions and Decisions of the First International Congress of Revolutionary Trade and Industrial Unions. Voice of Labor, Chicago. 1922.

Resolutions on Workers’ Control

1. The analysis of modern economic conditions irrefutably proves that the productive forces of society are in sharp and insolvable contradiction with the prevailing industrial and ownership relations. Pending the world war this contradiction was evident only to the most advanced proletarian elements. However, the acuteness of the post-war world crisis, equally affecting the victorious, the vanquished and the neutral countries brought home this lesson to the large proletarian masses. The endless war, despite the treaty of Versailles; the general and chronic crisis, despite the absolute necessity of restoring industry, have put society as a whole, and particularly the proletariat of the whole world, face to face with the burning question of its further existence. With the first attempt to solve this question it becomes absolutely clear, that the above-mentioned contradictions have now reached such a degree that the bourgeoisie having up to the present directed industry as a class, now becomes its disorganizer; i.e., not only does not the bourgeoisie assist any more its development, but on the contrary puts obstacles in its way, and becomes a fetter on production.

The working class is the first to feel very keenly the unbearable burden of this contradiction, because it is more than any other class tied up with production in great industrial centers, shops and factories; and also because the above stated contradiction leads to wholesale slaughter of the workers on the battlefields, or to mass starvation in the periods of unemployment.

This is why the necessity to define the role of the bourgeoisie in the present organization of industry, and to determine how it fulfills its task; and as a result of this, the reorganization of the whole system of production by the workers themselves in their own interests, first arises in the minds of the working class. Such a necessity, which really means a prologue to the unifying of the contradictions of the capitalist system by violent action, i.e., social revolution, takes in fact the form of workers’ control over production.

2. This primitive stage of workers control reveals itself in sporadic attempts of the workers of each concern to supervise the work, the supply, and condition of the machinery of production, to determine whether the closing of the factory, or the curtailing of production are really based upon necessity and are not a result of mischievous intention of the owner. But very soon the workers get convinced, that supervision and control alone are not sufficient to prevent the capitalist from disorganizing the work in the factories. The system of artificially curtailing production or completely closing their factories, adopted by the capitalists of different countries, shows very well the limitations of this form of control. Equally insufficient are the spasmodic attempts made by workers of some concerns to continue production at all costs, even against the will of the factory owner. In such casual attempts, as in Russia after the March revolution, or not very long ago in Italy, Germany, England and other countries, the basic feature of the new position of the working class in industry manifests itself. From the position of a passive and exploited force, which till now was considered as a machine or its appendage, the working class rises to the position of pioneer of the idea of organization of production, to the position of the direct inheritor of the bourgeoisie, which now, on account of its class interests, has become the disorganizer of production.

3. To the old type trade unions, whose activity was limited to the fight for but slight improvements under the existing capitalist system, such a change in the minds of the working masses causes an indisputable blow. Tied together through its bureaucracy with the bourgeois apparatus, and entirely dependent upon it, the old trade unions are powerless to grasp the new problem of production put before the working class, or to find a practical solution for it. This is why with particular force and rapidity new organizations are now growing up which, still using the weapon of the old trade unions—the strike—for revolutionary purposes, already strive to take over industry. The activity of the shop committees is now not limited only to the strike, but is mainly expressed in taking over some functions of the “factory owner, especially in the branches of supplying the factory with raw materials, fuel and later with financial means, or the confiscation of factories sabotaged or left by the owners. This is the reason why at this state of the workers central the bourgeoisie and its apologists—the leaders of the old trade unions make the fiercest attempt to oppose to the revolutionary workers’ control, the so-called “industrial democracy,” mixed commissions of factory owners and workers, profit sharing schemes and other “democratic” tricks based on the theory of “equal” rights between labor and capital on condition of leaving the means of production in the private ownership of the bourgeoisie. This ideal of “equality” carefully cultivated by the English trade unions, which received its final expression at the 10th Congress of trade unions in Germany (1919) and which still dominates the French General Confederation of Labor, is in practice but an attempt to fool the working class through the distortion of the meaning of revolutionary workers’ control; to turn it aside from the immediate revolutionary problems to the entirely outlived bourgeois ideas of the yellow International of trade unions.

4. Of the same significance are the attempts of the yellow leaders of trade unions to oppose “government ownership,” to the revolutionary workers’ control. The bourgeoisie is supporting them because it cleverly uses the principle of the pseudo-socialization in its own class interests. They willingly obscure the fact that government ownership doesn’t at all mean national ownership, but only the transition of production from private management of a group of class representatives to the management by the entire class. The theory of state control consists in an administration composed of elected representatives either of the government and the workers or of the owners, the government, and the workers. The representatives of the government were always considered as representing the entire population, and workers as representatives of a class. Here the falsity of the democratic principle of control reveals itself as utterly unacceptable to the revolutionary workers because their idea of workers’ control actually means the negation of modern government, which is but a weapon of the bourgeoisie, and so they reject the democratic principle and advocate instead the principle of the workers’ state expressing the real needs of the toilers. The workers’ control is antagonistic to bourgeois nationalization of industry or state ownership. Any attempt in favor of combining state ownership with workers’ control, while actually conserving the power of administration of industry in the hands of the bourgeoisie, will result only in putting the responsibility on the working class. On the other hand, such attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable may bring about the disintegration of the new revolutionary nucleus of the trade union movement in the shops which is very dangerous on account of the tendencies of the union bureaucracy to profit by their weakness and lack of co-ordination in their activity and subject them to their disintegrating influence.

5. Not less dangerous is the pseudo-revolutionary opinion, widely spread among the workers of different countries, that the proletariat can reach positive results of control even before the overthrow of the capitalist state. The sad experience of the Italian workers’ control, betrayed by the treacherous leaders of the proletariat, has emphatically proved the sheer nonsense of this opinion, and revolutionary workers in different countries must avoid the repetition of such experiments. It is particularly important to keep in view in this connection that the application of workers control in its fullest expression is impossible unless it include the financial function as well as technical supervision. Only the full application of financial control reveals to the workers the fundamental basis of the capitalist system. In the process of financial control the workers learn in practice the dependence of their factory upon the banks and national and international financial trusts. The disclosure of the commercial, industrial, and particularly financial secrets gives the proletariat an exact picture of the prime source of the overwhelming sabotage on the part of the bourgeoisie. It reveal the main lever of the system of lockouts, curtailing of production by establishing short time work and other methods artificially bringing about unemployment, cutting wages, disruption of labor organizations, etc.

6. The struggle for financial control leads the working class to the immediate and decisive clash with the bourgeoisie whose political power is to a certain extent based on financial power. At this stage, control inevitably takes an evident political aspect and requires political leadership. Meanwhile the increasingly frequent cases of seizure of factories, and at the same time impossibility of managing them without disposing of the financial apparatus, clearly puts before the workers the timely problem of getting hold of the financial system and, through it, of the whole industry. At this stage of workers’ control the contradiction stated in the first chapter resolves itself into the struggle for power between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, i.e., in the social revolution. In the process of this struggle, the duration of which is determined by the level of organization and culture of the bourgeoisie in each country, there is no more question of controlling the factory owner in order to paralyze his “evil intentions,” to break his sabotaging activities, or to continue production, at all costs, etc., but the question before the proletariat now is to take away the industry from the capitalists, to take over as a class in its own hands and under its own responsibility the management of the industrial resources of the country. At this movement the workers’ control develops into a militant attempt of the working class to direct the organization of production, in factories, shops, mines and railroads not only in its own interest, or some separate groups of the working class, but for the benefit of the whole proletariat of a given country.

7. The victory of the proletariat is inevitable because the bourgeoisie can not longer hold the industry. This brings the proletariat to the difficult task of state reconstruction amid very adverse conditions, primarily because the preliminary stages of workers control were necessarily destructive of the industrial machinery. To hold power over production in such a situation on the morrow after the revolution becomes a particularly difficult task. The sabotage of the bourgeoisie and its obsequious flatterers, concealed until now, becomes open and systematic. The factories, shops, government institutions, schools and universities are left without directing staffs. Not only must the working class physically defend the revolution, but also give its best workers to the task of administration. In such a moment the role of mass organizations, including not only the advance guard of the proletariat (the communist party), but the large sections of neutrals, assumes a very important and almost decisive significance. But the economic organizations of the proletariat could find their way in the very heart of the working class only through the creation of nuclei in each factory and in each workshop. This is why the question of relationship between the trade unions and shop committees is now of the utmost importance. Experience has shown that shop committees are of great value, especially where the trade unions are either weak or captured by opportunistic leadership. But the work of shop committees must not be localized, otherwise it will easily be paralyzed or sidetracked by the bourgeoisie. The advance guard of the working class must direct the work of shop committees in nation-wide channels. This shows that the machinery of the trade union centers must be employed to get control of the shop committees and turn them into a mighty weapon of mass control and ownership of production.

8. But the unions can assume this work only under two conditions: (1) when their structure changes from craft lines to industrial, permitting to unite all the workers and employees of any branch of industry around a definite problem of production; (2) when, in opposition to the yellow counter-revolution trade-union bureaucracy in each industry, there is created a firm and determined revolutionary nucleus to counteract the corrupting policies of the bureaucracy, and to retain the organized masses in the factories on the path of revolutionary struggle for control over production and permanent management of industry.

In their vigorous fight against Amsterdam, attempting to turn the revolutionary aspirations of the proletariat in the channel of futile and fruitless control within the limits and interests of the capitalist system, the Red unions must pay social attention to the practice of workers’ control, which is the best preliminary school for the proletariat striving to take power in its own hands, The logical conclusion of it is that preliminary to the social revolution the slogan of workers’ control must be put on the order of business of every gathering of workers, not only with the object of revolutionizing them, but to give them the political and economic education necessary for the immediate future. Upon this preparation depends the duration of the political proletarian rule after the social revolution, because the social revolution and the upholding of the proletarian power are determined by the preparation and the ability of the proletariat to conquer and submit to its will the mechanism of production, i.e., whether it will be able to solve not only politically but also economically the basic contradiction mentioned in the first chapter. This task can easily be achieved by a suitable preparation, primarily because the worker gradually learns to manage the factory; then he clearly sees the correlation between different branches of industry and learns to supervise them on a large national scale. Thus, after the social revolution, when he inevitably has to proceed with the nationalization of the whole financial system, industrial transport and important sources of raw material, etc., the proletarian government will have enough workers capable not only of fighting for the social revolution, but building on the inherited ground a new socialist commonwealth, new organs of distribution and management of industry.

At this stage the workers’ control assumes the form of participation of the trade unions in the shaping of new economic organs and management of production through the latter, i.e., it transforms itself into one of the organs of economic reconstruction and control of the working class through the Soviets and the economic organs.

General Conclusions

1. The workers’ control is the necessary school in the work of preparation of the large masses for the proletarian revolution.

2. Workers’ control must be the war cry for the workers of every capitalist country, and must be utilized as a weapon to disclose the financial and commercial secrets.

3. Workers’ control must be largely used for the reconstruction of the outlived trade unions on the basis of industries, the former becoming harmful for the workers’ revolutionary movement.

5 [misnumbered]. Workers’ control is distinct from bourgeois schemes of “mixed committees” nationalization, etc., and to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie it opposes the dictatorship of the proletariat.

6. When establishing any form of workers’ control or seizure of concerns great attention must be given to the necessity of attracting the most backward proletarian masses to the discussion of the issues at stake. At the same time a careful selection of the more capable workers must be made, during the process of workers’ control with the view of preparing them for the leading position in the task of organizing industry.

7. For the efficient functioning of the workers’ control in each locality, it is necessary that the trade unions direct the work of the factory committees, while the trade unions must coordinate and combine the work of the local control committees of the same industry in such a manner as to avoid any attempt to create “factory patriotism” on the ground of localized control.

8. For the guidance of the work of the factory committees the trade unions must from the outset issue special instructions, discussing the questions of workers’ control, carry on a propaganda in the daily press and in factories not only by explaining the necessity of workers’ control, but also giving detailed reports of the results of workers’ control in different concerns, call for that purpose joint meetings, conferences, etc.

9. With a view of carrying out these aims in unions which do not accept the principles of the Red International of Trade Unions, it is necessary to organize strong revolutionary nuclei which will lay special stress on the reconstruction of the unions on an industrial basis and will keep the revolutionary character of the struggle for workers’ control.

PDF of full book: https://archive.org/download/redlaborinternat00redi/redlaborinternat00redi.pdf