Workers’ Control (Socialism)

Workers' control is concerned with the importance and the extent of control over the economy and/or state and how it is to be achieved.

Democratic socialists advocate workers’ control on two grounds. Firstly, it will ensure a more equitable distribution of economic resources. Decisions will thereby be taken for the benefit of all members of the workforce rather than merely shareholders and CEO’s. Secondly, workers’ control will abolish class distinctions. Both are important goals within socialism and form part of a broader attempt to establish a society centred around equality and social justice. Democratic socialism is built upon the premise that the parliamentary route is the more effective towards socialism. It is based on the seemingly irrefutable argument that those who lack the means of production and property outnumber members of the bourgeoisie.

Workers’ control is also promoted by those on the far-left of the political spectrum. The Marxist analysis of society is embedded within an understanding of social class, most notably the twin concepts of class struggle and class consciousness. The former refers to the inherent struggle within a capitalist society between the forces of capital and the forces of labour. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx famously argued that all hitherto societies were based upon class conflict. For instance, the transition from feudalism to capitalism marked a struggle between the landed aristocracy and the emerging middle-class. Class consciousness however is a term used to describe a stage under capitalism at which the proletariat becomes aware of their exploitation at the hands of the bourgeoisie. In doing so, a potentially revolutionary class of people emerges. Class consciousness eventually results in the replacement of capitalism with a system run for the benefit of the workers.

Marx’s emphasis upon social class has been widely criticised for its conception of social class as having derived from the means of production. Outside of the Marxist perspective the term is rarely used, and even neo-Marxists have sought to modernise and modify the traditional classification between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. For example, Barbara and John Ehrenreich (1979) claim there is a distinctive professional-managerial class consisting of salaried workers who do not own the means of production. Their function within the social divisions of labour is to reproduce the capitalist culture and class relations. They also claim there are three social classes rather than two.

It should also be noted that socialists as diverse as Anthony Crosland and Herbert Marcuse have long argued that class-based analysis of society is outdated. The world is far more complex than the situation that faced Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels during the Industrial Revolution. As such, the whole idea of a class struggle – and class consciousness – is intellectually bankrupt. As an alternative, revisionists such as Marcuse argued that the task is to liberate our consciousness from the materialism of the capitalist world. For those on the centre-left such as Crosland, only the parliamentary and evolutionary path is politically achievable. Crucially, this does not require an extensive programme of workers’ control.