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effectively in self-management. They lack education and technical
knowledge, have not got rid of the old wage-earning mentality, and too
willingly put all their powers into the hands of their delegates. This
enables a small minority to be the real managers of the enterprise, to
arrogate to themselves all sorts of privileges and do exactly as they like.
They also perpetuate themselves in directorial positions, governing
without control from below, losing contact with reality and cutting
themselves off from the rank-and-file workers, whom they often treat
with arrogance and contempt. All this demoralizes the workers and turns
them against self-management. Finally, state control is often exercised so
indiscreetly and so oppressively that the "self-managers" do not really
manage at all. The state appoints directors to the organs of self-
management without much caring whether the latter agree or not,
although, according to the law, they should be consulted. These
bureaucrats often interfere excessively in management, and sometimes
behave in the same arbitrary way as the former employers. In very large
Yugoslav enterprises directors are nominated entirely by the State; these
posts are handed out to his old guard by Marshall Tito.
Moreover, Yugoslavian self-management is extremely dependent on the
State for finance. It lives on credits accorded to it by the State and is free
to dispose of only a small part of its profits, the rest being paid to the
treasury in the form of a tax. Revenue derived from the self-management
sector is used by the State not only to develop the backward sectors of
the economy, which is no more than just, but also to pay for the heavily
bureaucratized government apparatus, the army, the police forces, and
for prestige expenditure, which is sometimes quite excessive. When the
members of self-managed enterprises are inadequately paid, this blunts
the enthusiasm for self-management and is in conflict with its principles.
The freedom of action of each enterprise, moreover, is fairly strictly
limited, since it is subject to the economic plans of the central authority,
which are drawn up arbitrarily without consultation of the rank and file.
In Algeria the self-managed enterprises are also obliged to cede to the
State the commercial handling of a considerable portion of their
products. In addition, they are placed under the supervision of "organs to
supply disinterested technical of tutelage," which are supposed and
bookkeeping assistance but, in practice, tend to replace the organs of
self-management and take over their functions.
In general, the bureaucracy of the totalitarian State is unsympathetic to
the claims of self-management to autonomy. As Proudhon foresaw, it
finds it hard to tolerate any authority external to itself. It dislikes
socialization and longs for nationalization, that is to say, the direct
management by officials of the State. Its object is to infringe upon self-
management, reduce its powers, and in fact absorb it.
The single party is no less suspicious of self-management, and likewise
finds it hard to tolerate a rival. If it embraces self-management, it does so
to stifle it more effectively. The party has cells in most of the enterprises
and is strongly tempted to take part in management, to duplicate the
organs elected by the workers or reduce them to the role of docile
instruments, by falsifying elections and setting out lists of candidates in
advance. The party tries to induce the workers' councils to endorse
decisions already taken in advance, and to manipulate and shape the
national congresses of the workers.
Some enterprises under self-management react to authoritarian and
centralizing tendencies by becoming isolationist, behaving as though
they were an association of small proprietors, and trying to operate for
the sole benefit of the workers involved. They tend to reduce their
manpower so as to divide the cake into larger portions. They also seek to
produce as little of everything instead of specializing. They devote time
and energy to getting around plans or regulations designed to serve the
interests of the community as a whole. In Yugoslavia free competition
between enterprises has been allowed, both as a stimulant and to protect
the consumer, but in practice the tendency to autonomy has led to
flagrant inequalities output and to economic irrationalities.
Thus self-management itself incorporates a pendulum-like movement
which makes it swing constantly between two extremes: excessive
autonomy or excessive centralization; authority or anarchy; control from
below or control from above. Through the years Yugoslavia, in
particular, has corrected centralization by autonomy, then autonomy by
centralization, constantly remodeling its institutions without so far
successfully attaining a "happy medium."
Most of the weaknesses of self-management could be avoided or
corrected if there were an authentic trade-union movement, independent
of authority and of the single party, springing from the workers
themselves and at the same time organizing them, and animated by the
spirit characteristic of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism. In Yugoslavia and
in Algeria, however, trade unionism is either subsidiary or
supernumerary, or is subject to the State, to the single party. It cannot,
therefore, adequately furfill the task of conciliator between autonomy
and centralization which it should undertake, and could perform much
better than totalitarian political organs. In fact, a trade unionism which
genuinely issued from the workers, who saw in it their own reflection,
would be the most effective organ for harmonizing the centrifugal and
centripetal forces, for "creating an equilibrium" as Proudhon put it,
between the contradictions of self-management.
The picture, however, must not be seen as entirely black.
Selfmanagement certainly has powerful and tenacious opponents, who
have not given up hope of making it fail. But it has, in fact, shown itself
quite dynamic in the countries where experiments are being carried on. It
has opened up new perspectives for the workers and restored to them
some pleasure in their work. It has opened their minds to the rudiments
of authentic socialism, which involves the progressive disappearance of
wages, the disalienation of the producer who will become a free and self-
determining being. Selfmanagement has in this way increased
productivity and registered considerable positive results, even during the
trials and errors of the initial period.
From rather too far away, small circles of anarchists follow the
development of Yugoslav and Algerian self-management with a mixture
of sympathy and disbelief. They feel that it is bringing some fragments
of their ideal into reality, but the experiment is not developing along the
idealistic lines foreseen by libertarian communism. On the contrary it is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]