Talk given to Workers Solidarity Public meeting
          Dublin September 1994

There are some who would say there is no point in discussing the 
Russian revolution today.  It happened nearly 80 years ago, the 
world has moved on, capitalism has changed, and the situation 
in Russia in 1917 is simply too different, too far in the past to 
have lessons for us today.  I would disagree, if for no other reason 
than that the Russian revolution was one of *the* defining 
moments for the left.  Most groups on the left, whether consciously 
or not, have antecedents in the Russia of 1917, and all of us can 
find inspiration in the speed with which the working class 
pressed forward, and in the scale of the changes that occurred 
- or at least some of them.

This talk will concentrate on just one part - though an important 
part- of that change ; the question of workers control - the 
relations between the factory committees, the trade unions, and 
the various parties, and what workers control meant (if anything) 
for each of them.  Also, to narrow the focus even further, I will 
deal mainly with the changes in this area only up to the outbreak 
of the civil war.  Though Russia was far from calm up to that 
point, the civil war brought in even more complications, and 
besides, as we shall see, the question had largely been resolved by 
then.  

The factory committees appeared in Petrograd and Moscow around 
February/March of 1917, and quickly spread.  Elected directly by 
the workers in each enterprise, they appear initially to have 
formed in a response to threatened closures, and to press for the 
8-hour day, though the scope of their demands would son extend.  
On March 10th, the Petrograd Manufacturer's Association agreed 
to this demand in their enterprises, and recognised the committees 
- other employers were soon forced to grant the 8-hour day, though 
recognition of the committees was to take longer.

On April 2nd, the first exploratory conference of factory committees 
was held in Petrograd, made up of workers from the war industries.  
They declared that the responsibility of the factory committee 
included all areas of internal factory organisation (hours, wages, 
hiring and firing, and so on), that the whole administrative 
personnel (including management) could only be taken on with the 
consent of the committee, and that the committee controlled 
managerial activity in the administrative, economic and technical 
fields.  Though, three weeks later, the government partially 
recognised the committees, their declarations were not exactly 
welcomed, and a campaign of vilification was launched in the 
press which was to last up to the revolution.

On May 29th, the Kharkov Conference of Factory Committees 
decided that "the Factory Committees must take over production, 
protect it, develop it.  They must ... decree all internal factory 
regulations, and determine solutions to all conflicts"   
The Conference of Petrograd Committees, held over the following 
week, resolved that the objectives of the committees were the 
"creation of new conditions of work", "the organisation of thorough 
control by labour over production and distribution", and called for 
a "proletarian majority in all institutions having executive power".  
Over the next few weeks, the movement grew, in some cases ousting 
the management and taking over their plants.  

At the Second conference of Petrograd Factory Committees in August, 
a financially independent Soviet of Factory Committees was set up, 
though many local committees had mixed feelings about it, and 
were reluctant to free their members for work there, partly because 
of the Bolshevik predominance, and partly because they felt it had
 been set up from above.  Also at this conference, it was decided that 
the decrees of the factory committees were binding on the factory 
administration, that the committees were to meet regularly during 
working hours (paid for by the employer), had the right of hiring 
and firing over all administrative staff, and were to have their own 
press, to inform the workers of their resolutions.  

These resolutions, of course, formed a platform, rather than 
indication of their real power, and at that time the committees on 
the railways were coming under attack from the provisional 
government.  Kukel, vice-minister for the Navy, proposed the 
proclamation of martial law on the railways, and the dissolution 
of the committees.  The committee movement continued to grow, 
though, with a wave of strikes from Moscow to the Donbas 
following in its wake.

At this point its worth saying a few words about the attitudes 
towards the factory committees in other quarters.  

The anarchists, naturally enough, supported the Factory 
committees, and allied with the Bolsheviks to stop them from 
being absorbed by the trade unions.  Golos Truda, the journal of 
the Union of Anarcho-Syndicalists, called for the workers to 
take into their own hands "all the raw materials and all the 
instruments indispensable to your labour".  At the All Russian 
Conference of Factory Committees, an anarchist speaker said 
that"the factory committees were cells of the future...They, 
not the state, should now administer"

The Mensheviks, and the Menshevik-dominated trade unions, 
were as hostile as the anarchists were supportive.  At the 1st 
conference of Petrograd Committees, the Menshevik minister 
Skobelev said that "the regulation and control of industry was 
a task for the state", and that "The committees would best 
serve the workers' cause by becoming subordinate units in a 
statewide network of trade unions".  This was a line they were 
to continue to follow, saying at a trade union conference in 
Petrograd that the committees should be elected from lists 
drawn up by the unions.  In late August, Skobelev drew up 
circulars forbidding meetings of the factory committees during 
working hours, and saying that the committees did not have 
the right to hire and fire (though, interestingly, he said that 
they had the right to *control*  over hiring and firing).

Finally, the Bolsheviks.  Though the Bolsheviks called for 
workers control, they were not very specific about what exactly 
this meant, or how it was to be achieved, and they were active 
in both the trade unions and the factory committees.  Though 
they defended the autonomy of the committees from the trade 
unions, this was to a large extent due to their greater strength 
in the committees, and there seemed to be no agreed policy 
concerning which was to be primary.  Lenin, when asked at the 
party's conference in April if workers control was to 
enterprise-centred or state-centred, replied that the question 
had not yet been settled, and that 'living practice' would 
provide the answer.

Examining the work of Lenin, however, we can find the signs 
of things to come.  In his address to the Conference of Petrograd 
factory committees in June, he said that workers control meant 
that "the administration  should render an account of its 
actions to the most authoritative workers' organisations", the 
clear implication being that the workers themselves weren't 
the administration.  In "Can the Bolsheviks retain State power", 
he says "If it is a proletarian state we are referring to then 
workers' control can become a national, all-embracing, extremely 
precise and extremely scrupulous *accounting* of the production 
and distribution of goods."  Finally, in "State and Revolution", 
he says that "it is quite possible, after the overthrow of the 
capitalists and bureaucrats, to proceed immediately, overnight, 
to replace them in the *control* over production and distribution, 
in the work of *keeping account* of labour and products, by the 
armed workers, by the whole of the armed population."

AFTER OCTOBER

The months after the revolution were to see this policy being 
put into place, and 'living practice' did indeed show where 
workers control was to be based.  Lenin's draft decree on 
workers control said that "the decisions of the elected 
delegates of the workers and employees were legally binding 
upon the owners of enterprises", but that they could be 
annulled by trade unions and congresses.  Also, the committees 
were to be answerable to the state in all enterprises of state 
importance.  The full decree subordinated the committees to 
the Russian Council of Workers Control - on which the 
All-Russian Council of Factory Committees would have only 
5 out of 21 seats.

In December, the Supreme Economic Council - Vesenka - was 
set up to direct the economy, subordinating all other agencies.  
Under the Vesenka would be regional councils -Sovnarkhozy - 
which could set up more local offices, incorporating the 
factory committees where these had set up.  At the First 
All-Russian Council of Trade Unions, and again at the First 
All-Russian Congress of Textile Workers (both in January), it 
was declared that workers control was "the instrument by 
which the universal economic plan must be put into effect 
locally", and that the Factory Committees were just the lowest 
cells of the union, "whose obligation consists of putting into 
effect, in a given enterprise, all the decrees of the union."

March saw a decree from Vesenka saying that "in nationalised 
enterprises workers control is exercised by submitting all 
declarations and decisions of the factory or shop committee, or 
of the control commission, to the Economic Administrative 
Council for approval... Not more than half the members of the 
Administrative Council should be workers or employees".  Also 
in March, control of the railways was centralised, placed under 
the control of the Commisariat, which was granted "dictatorial" 
powers.  The same decree stressed the need for "iron labour 
discipline" and "individual management".

In April, the first issue of 'Kommunist', a left Bolshevik journal, 
was produced.  It criticised the introduction of piece rates and 
the lengthening of the working day, and warned of bureaucratic 
centralisation, the loss of independence for local soviets, and 
"in practice, the rejection of the type of state-commune 
administered from below".  The Leningrad party conference, at 
the urging of Lenin, demanded that the adherents of Kommunist 
cease their separate organisational existence.

Also in April, Lenin's article on "The Immediate Tasks of the 
Soviet Government" was published in Isvestiya.  As well as 
calling for the introduction of Taylorism, he said that "The 
irrefutable experience of history has shown that...the 
dictatorship of individual persons was very often the vehicle, 
the channel of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes" 
and "Today the Revolution demands, in the interests of 
socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single 
will of the leaders of the labour process."

REASONS

While there is no doubt that production in Russia was in 
disarray after the revolution, and that there was a great need 
for co-ordination of supply, the approach the Bolsheviks took 
to this problem is instructive.  Rather than supporting the 
efforts of the factory committees to federate, which they had 
taken steps towards, even before the revolution, they almost 
immediately set about subordinating the committees to other 
bodies - first the trade unions, then Council of Workers Control, 
and then the Vesenka.  Less than a year before, the had fought 
to keep the committees independent from the unions, now 
workers power was to come from even more distant organs.  

There are a number of reasons for this.  First of all, as was 
indicated earlier, the Bolshevik definition of workers control 
was very different from the common interpretation.  As Lenin 
defined it, control meant supervision, accounting.  The workers 
had control over a factory if they had access to its accounts, and 
were informed about all decisions taken by management.  On the 
other hand, most workers thought of control as management, 
and didn't hesitate to take over the running of factories where 
they could, and reserved for themselves the right to hire and fire.

The difference is most apparent when we compare two pamphlets 
on workers control issued in December 1917.  The Central Council 
of the Petrograd Factory Committees issued a 'Practical manual 
for the implementation of Workers Control" which quite 
explicitly moves beyond stock-taking, and into *real* control of 
production, calling on each committee to set up control commissions 
for the various aspects of production (including the supply of raw 
materials and fuel), which commissions were entitled to invite 
the attendance of technicians in a consultative capacity.  Shortly 
afterwards, Isvestiya published the 'General Instructions on 
Workers Control in Conformity with the Decree of November'.  
This manual also talks of commissions, but says that the only role 
they should play in management is making sure that the central 
governments directives are followed through.  The factory 
committees are expressly forbidden from taking over enterprises, 
though they may raise the matter with the government.  Plus, of 
course, the commissions were to be the executive organ of the local 
trade union, their activities made to conform with the decisions 
of the latter.

If not the factory committees, who was to have the final say in 
the running of the factories?  The tendency from the very beginning 
was to centralise all production decisions into the organs of the 
state.  Decisions, rather than rising from the factory committees 
would be handed down from central government, in the shape of 
Vesenka, and ultimately, Sovnarkom.  Here the Bolsheviks were 
following the Mensheviks, when they said in 1917 that "the 
regulation and control of industry was a task for the state" - the 
factory committees were to be (at best) the local administration and 
accountants of the state.

To understand this change, we have to look at Lenin's concept of 
socialism.  In "Can the Bolsheviks retain State power?", he says 
that a state bank is nine tenths of socialism, and that general 
state book-keeping, general state accounting would be the skeleton 
of a socialist society.  This points to a conception of socialism that 
is primarily economic, that criticises capitalism as much for its 
chaos and waste as anything else.  Apparently, one of the most 
important characteristics of a socialist state is its efficiency.  
This would explain the need for a state-run, top-down regulation 
of production.  The factory committees were on their way to 
co-ordinating production, and sorting out their supply problems, 
but such a set-up does not really allow centralised, uniform 
economy, of the type Lenin thought was essential.

Of course, the Bolsheviks thought there was more to socialism 
than that.  As well as being planned, the economy was to be run, 
to coin a phrase, "by the proletariat, of the proletariat, and for 
the proletariat".  The proletariat was to take the place of the 
bourgeoisie at every level of the administration.  The fundamental 
difference between Russian state capitalism, and any western 
state capitalism was the class background of the rulers and 
administrators.  (This emphasis on class could also be seen in the 
legal system, where often the most important thing was the class 
of the accused).  

The difficulty with this is that ignores the fundamental question 
of how the workers would actually govern, or, in this case, how 
production would be organised.  The factory committees were 
under the direct control of the workers, and an economic system 
that build on this base could have stayed under their control.  
When they were overruled and ignored by the government, it was 
the voice of the workers that was being overruled, the workers 
that were being ignored.  Yes, the government was made up of 
workers, but the situation was not so much the dictatorship of the 
proletariat, as the dictatorship of some proletarians.

CONCLUSION

While the events outlined in this talk were occurring, 
revolutionary Russia was going through many changes.  The 
dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the signing of the treaty 
of Brest-Litovsk, the beginnings of the repression of other 
left-wing parties, the setting-up of the Cheka, changes which 
seem to overshadow the demise of the factory committees, and 
the rise of the centrally-planned economy.  But the direct control 
of workers over the conditions of their work, through the 
management of their workplaces is surely a key issue for any 
revolutionary, and the stance of the Bolsheviks on the Bolsheviks 
on this issue is echoed in many other areas.  As anarchists, we say 
that workers control must mean real control, over all aspects of 
their lives, and that the only way to ensure that this control 
remains in their hands is through building from the bottom up, 
working through the organs which are closest to the workers, and 
organising those systems which can be controlled from below.  The 
state is none of these, and seizing state power means ruling out any 
real democracy, leading to a dictatorship, however benign, not of 
the class, but of a minority.
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