Self-governing Socialism: A Reader. Volume 2: Sociology and Politics; Economics

A READER

Self-governing Socialism VOLUME TWO

Sociology and Politics Economics

Edited by BRANKO HORVAT MlHAILO MARKOVIC Rum SUI»I;K

Helen Kramer, Assistant Editor

[toSbj INTERNATIONAL ARTS AND SCIENCES PRESS, INC l _ J j WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK

Copyright -© 1975 by I n t e r n a t i o n a l Arts a n d Sciences Press, Inc. 901 North Broadway, White Plains, New York 10603 All rights reserved. N o part of this book may be r e p r o d u c e d in any form w i t h o u t written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card N u m b e r : 73-92805 International Standard Book N u m b e r : 0-87332061-1 P r i n t e d in the T i n t e d States of America

Contents

Part III

Volume T w o

Sociology and Politics

1. RUDI SUPER management

T h e Sociology of Workers' Self-

General 2. H E N R I LEFEBVRE

Elements for a Sociology of

Self-management

14

3. GEORGES GURVITCH management 4. ROGER GARAUDY

T h r e e Paths to .Self20 The Possibility of Other

Models of Socialism

Self-management

and

29

the Political

System

5. N A J D A N PASI£ T h e Idea of Direct Self-managing Democracy and Socialization of Policy-making 6. YVON BOURDET

34

T h e T w o Fundamental Princi-

ples of Self-government

41

VI

CONTENTS

7. BOGDAN DENITCH Forms and Intensity of Participation in Yugoslav Self-management 8. R U D I SUPER

Organization as an Intermediary

Between the Individual and Society: T h e Democratic and Humanitarian Form of Organization

Self-management

and Organization

9. J. Y. T A B B and A. GOLDFARB

of

10. GERRY H U N N I U S

T h e T y p o l o g y of

61

Workers' Self-management in

Yugoslavia

64

11. JOSIP iuPANOV

Participation and Influence

JANEZ JEROVSEK

T h e Self-management

88

13. VELJKO R U S Problems of Participatory Democracy

Workers' Movement, Workers' and Self-management 14. ANDRE GORZ

Control, 112

Workers' Power

122

and

TONY

TOPHAM

The

Trade

U n i o n as Opposition

Part IV

101

Strategy for Labor

15. SERGE M A L L E T K E N COATES

76

System

in Yugoslav Enterprises

16.

49

Enterprises

Systems of "Participation"

12.

45

127

Economics

General 1. JAROSLAV VANEK

Identifying the Participator)'

Economy 2. M A R I O ZASARTU

135 .Self-management,

and Proprietary Socialism

Oligarchy,

141

CONTENTS

3. ALF.KSANDER B A J T

Vll

Social Ownership—Collective

and Individual

The

151

Firm Organization and Efficiency 4. BRANKO HORVAT

The

Labor-managed

Enter-

164

prise 5. ICHAK ADIZES

Balancing Environmental

Re-

quirements and Personal Needs T h r o u g h an Organizational Structure

177

6. GUDRUN LEMAN Enterprises

190

Economic Units in Yugoslav

7. SEYMOUR M E L M A N Industrial Efficiency under Managerial versus Cooperative Decision-making 8. M I T J A K A M U 5 I £

Economic Efficiency

203

and

Workers' Self-management

221

9. J A N TINBERCEN Does Self-management Approach the O p t i m u m Order?

225

Analytical Aspects 10. BRANKO HORVAT

O n the T h e o r y of the Labor-

managed Firm

229

11. B E N J A M I N W A R D

T h e Illyrian Firm

241

12. SVETOZAR PEJOVICH T h e Firm, Monetary Policy, and Property Rights in a Planned Economy National

Economy

13. DEBORAH

MILENKOVITCH

Plan and

Market

in

Yugoslavia

272

14. OSKAR L A N C E and FRED M. T A Y L O R

The

Trial

and Error Procedure in a Socialist Economy 15. BRANKO HORVAT

Production

261

282

T h e Pricing of Factors of

294

Vlll

CONTENTS

16. B R A N K O H O R V A T

An I n s t i t u t i o n a l M o d e l of a

Self-managed Socialist Economy

307

N o t e s on t h e Editors

329

PART III

Sociology and Politics

Introduction

1.

The Sociology of Workers' Self-management R U D I SUPEK

Sociology means the study of society from the viewpoint of its totality. The sociology of self-management shows us that all those attempts at and conceptions of self-managed production organizations that did not take into consideration workers' selfmanagement as an integrated social, economic, and political system—from Robert Owen to guild socialism to the Soviet and German workers' councils—were condemned to failure. Workers' self-management, therefore, represents an entire social organization, on the one hand, and the corresponding social forces capable of realizing it, on the other. Yugoslavia today is the only country in the world that is attempting to create and apply an integrated system of workers' self-management. It remains an open question for scholarly discussion, however, whether the implementation and very conception of workers' self-management does not require* a certain level of development of economic and social forces; that is, whether, according to Marx's conception, it represents a "new form of social relations" that presupposes "a certain level of development of the productive forces." From that viewpoint one can examine whether Yugoslavia possesses the best "objective conditions" for the construction of a self-governing society. Such a dilemma is not new; Translated by Helen Kramer.

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS

Lenin faced a similar question in connection with socialism. But once history is in action as a revolutionary force, it usually subordinates "objectivity" to the "human project," within certain limits, by particular anticipations or "leaps" (Lenin) . The virtues of the Yugoslav experiment lie in its revolutionary anticipations; its weaknesses, in the "objective necessities" of historical development. This, of course, by no means frees the creators of the new society of their subjective responsibility for attempts as well as for mistakes. Although the idea of workers' self-management historically developed from the parts toward the whole, from individual attempts of various visionaries and social reformers to an overall inclusion in the social system of a revolutionary class, the practical realization of workers' self-management, applied within the framework of a concrete society, seems to flow in the opposite direction, from the whole toward the parts, from state power toward the transformation of production organizations. This is especially true in those countries that underwent a socialist revolution which at first took an etatist form and gradually oriented itself to workers' self-management; we have seen such attempts in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and this is probably that trend toward the democratization of society that Gurvitch calls "reformist." It is valid to assume, as does Gurvitch, that the establishment of workers' self-management will take place both "from the bottom up," by the takeover of factories by workers' councils in revolutionary circumstances, and "from the top down" in those countries, usually socioeconomically backward, where industrialization and the lack of suitable personnel will impose a more statist form of organization. Hence workers' self-management appears simultaneously as an element of labor strategy in winning power and as the basis of a new socialist order (H. Lefebvre) . There is a widespread opinion that workers' self-management is a theory elaborated especially by Proudhon and the anar(hosyndicalists and that it cannot be connected with the Marxian conception of socialism. This conception is advocated in particular by the proponents of so-called statist socialism, which today is the dominant system in the East European countries. However, those acquainted with the works of Marx and Engels know that workers' self-management is the logical consequence of Marx's critique of bourgeois democracy, at the center of which is the organization of rule in the form of the state, as well as of Marx's

theory of the alienation of labor. In fact, we find three dominant ideas in Marx that lead us to workers' self-management: a) the idea of the withering away of the state and its replacement by the "free association of the producers"; b) the idea of the "expropriation of the expropriators," the owners of the means of production, by the workers, and direct control of workers over the produced surplus value or surplus labor; c) the idea of the abolition of the technological division of labor or "split-up labor" and of the crippling of the worker's personality, through institution of a system in which workers will sue cessively perform different functions, from manual to managing, in the productive process itself; this is possible only by the crcation of a "work community," a self-managing productive organization in which the worker directly participates in all essential productive functions.1 For Marx, the political alienation of man—which means the alienation of social forces in the form of political power and the state—has the same root as alienation in work—that is, in the class relations betweennrie capitalists and workers-for the state is an instrument of the class rule of the capitalists. Hence the abolition of the state and of representative democracy is just as much the precondition of the emancipation of the working class and of people in general (tor the workingfclaSSIs" the emancipator ot the whole society) as is the socialization Of tile" means o f production. Nationalization of the meatflS Of production by the state, regardless of whether the state is bourgeois or proletarian, means, as Engels once expressed it, only the transformation of the state into a "general capitalist." Hence the essential precondition for the "withering away of the state" is not the nationalization but the socialization of the means of production, where work collectives or the associated producers themselves independently manage production as "good entrepreneurs." The means of production are not the property of the state, but neither are they group property. They are social property?, which means that ^elr-managing organizations do not have the right to misuse these means (jus abutendi) they dispose of the fruits of their labor, but they do not have the right to destroy the means of production. The political system that corresponds to a self-governing society is that whose anticipation Marx saw in the Paris Commune of 1871, that is, direct democracy, which eliminates every form of state bureaucracy and is based on the direct representa-

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS

tion of workers' or people's delegates, who remain under the closest control of their electors for the duration of their mandate. The Marxist-Leninist strategy of socialist revolution assumes a transitional period between capitalism and socialism which is generally called the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and about which there are various theories; one of the" essLiit4