The Establishment Of The Factory Committees

An industrialist called Auerbach complained that "the revolution was understood by the lower orders as something in the nature of an Easter carnival: servants, for example, disappeared for whole days, promenaded in red ribbons, took rides in automobiles, came home in the morning only long enough to wash up and again went out for fun." [6] While some set out to use the new freedom to see how the old ruling class had whiled away its time, others aimed at constructive tasks. Factory committees made their appearance: one of the first started on March 2nd when the Petrograd 1st Electricity Works elected a 24 member council (including 10 Bolsheviks). By the end of March, similar councils and committees existed in nearly every plant in Petrograd and Moscow: they were especially strong in the metal works.

The Petrograd Soviet, then controlled by moderate socialists hostile to workers' control, set March 5th as the day for a return to work (always the most important thing -- get the workers working), while trying straightaway to steer the new factory committees into a 'helpful' role. On March 7th it stated: "For the control of factory and shop administration, for the proper organisation of work, factory and shop committees should be formed at once. They should see to it that the forces of labour are not wasted and look after working conditions in the plant." [7] The soviets did not fight for the eight hour day that workers were demanding until workers in Moscow and Petrograd simply stopped after eight hours and left the factories. On March 10th the Petrograd Owners Association capitulated over the eight hour day, and in an agreement with the Soviet, 'permitted' the formation of factory committees, while trying to limit them in every way. Moscow saw a longer struggle: when the local Soviet called for a return to work, the workers stayed out, forcing the Soviet to declare the eight hour day to be in force from March 21st, at which point the employers conceded. The Russian workers had won a first battle through their own efforts, no thanks to the socialist-dominated soviets. They now had more time to meet, discuss, read and -- importantly -- take rifle practice.

The factory committees themselves were able to cater for this newfound spare time: armed workers' militias were established at factories, education classes got under way. The committees took on all sorts of tasks without waiting for any 'permission' from the soviets or the Provisional Government. Where no trade unions existed, they entered into wage bargaining and opened the books of the firm. The committees supervised the hiring and firing of workers. Given the sabotage of employers, some of whom simply abandoned their enterprises, the committees aimed at first to keep production going, getting the materials, maintaining the machinery, fulfilling orders: in an atmosphere of growing economic collapse, it was the committees who were playing a constructive role, even if it was as yet a very partial form of workers' control. The distinction between control, which implies supervision and inspection of other people's decisions, and management, which implies decision-making, was not lost on the workers though. The factory committee of the massive Putilov works in Petrograd, elected by 90% of the workforce, stated in late April: "While the workers of the particular enterprises educate themselves in self-management, they prepare themselves for the moment when private ownership of the factories will be abolished and the means of production will be transferred into the hands of the working class. This great and important goal for which the workers are striving must be kept steadfastly in mind, even if we are carrying out only small details in the meantime." [8]

The factory committees recognised the need to co-ordinate their activities outside the confines of individual plants. Moves to centralise started when representatives from the committees of the twelve largest metal works met in Petrograd on March 13th, less than three weeks after the revolution. Although this meeting set up no permanent organisation, an early April conference of factory committees in Moscow, and similar ones in some provinces, set up co-ordinating centres to establish links between cities. A conference of workers in the factories of the Artillery and Naval Department approved the committees' role in hiring and firing, seeing the books and so on. Radical committees were ignoring the law and going their own way as circumstances demanded. The conference, held on April 15th, also planned a Chief Centre to co-ordinate the state sector factory committees. At the end of April, the Putilov works committee called for a more broadly-based conference. On May 29th a factory committee conference in Kharkov passed a resolution that the committees should be "organs of insurrection" and that they should seize the factories and manage production. Clearly some workers were thinking ahead and had a clearer notion of what would be required for their aspirations to be satisfied.

By May, the hopes of February were wearing thin: the new government was a failure as far as workers were concerned, and strikes were being met by lay-offs. Workers and factory committees found themselves forced to take over factories because of the management's actions, rather than any commitment to socialism or self-management as such. The 'First Conference of the Factory Committees of Petrograd and its Environs', the one called for by the Putilov workers, met from May 30th-June 5th. It had delegates from 367 factory committees representing 337,464 workers in Petrograd (out of a total of some 400,000). The main debate was over who was to run industry: the moderate socialists wanted state control by the government; the workers wanted workers' control, and in this they were supported by the anarcho-syndicalists and the Bolsheviks, recent converts to the idea. But while workers tended to imagine that 'workers' control' meant they would run things, the Bolsheviks' conception was rather different. Lenin (no use asking which factory committee he was on) spoke at the conference, and had this to say: "(...) a majority of workers should enter all responsible institutions and (...) the administration should render an account of its actions to all the most authoritative workers' organisations." [9] Clearly here there is an administration on one side, and the workers on the other: the division as in any class society. In the Bolshevik resolution that was passed, factory committees were to be "allowed to participate" in control along with the soviets, the unions and representatives of political parties !

A Central Council of Factory Committees for Petrograd was formed with 25 members. Its jobs included getting fuel, materials and machinery, distributing information and setting up a committee to organise aid for the peasants. It was able to help the weaker committees in their struggles, and from then on it was in more or less permanent session. The Petrograd Central Council also sent delegates to other cities. By the end of June there were 25 similar Factory Committee Centres in cities and districts; by October, 65 such centres existed and there had been over a hundred conferences discussing the problems facing the factory committees. The report of the Petrograd conference noted that "(...) at the moment, committees are forced to intervene in the economic functioning of businesses, otherwise they would have stopped working." [10]

At the end of June the factory committee at the Brenner factory stated explicitly "In view of the management's refusal to go on with production, the workers' committee has decided, in general assembly, to fulfil the orders and to carry on working." [11] The extreme hostility of the employers to the committees was encouraging an economic collapse, which could only be staved off by the committees linking up locally, regionally and nationally. The Provisional Government, the trade unions and the soviets (under the control of moderate socialists were definitely not sympathetic to the factory committees. The workers had initially identified with the Petrograd Soviet: its weakness and inability or refusal to take up workers' demands strengthened the committees. As the committees co-ordinated up to a national level, they came into conflict with the trade unions; as they started to act politically, they came up against the 'socialist' soviets. The committees had allies in the district committees, set up throughout Petrograd, partly to defend the city. Their authority and effectiveness was such that people turned to them to get things done. They set up canteens, creches, cultural centres; they tackled alcoholism and gambling; they took over empty houses, and tried to organise food supply.

In the large factories the factory committee's were subdivided into commissions for each part of the plant's productive activity. For example, the Mednoprokatny metal works had nine such commissions, covering fuel purchase, orders, working conditions, employment and dismissal, a library, demobilisation (i.e., the change from wartime to peacetime production), metal recovery, co-ordination, control. Undoubtedly it was the skilled workers who tended to dominate in the committee movement as a whole, and in the individual work-places. They knew how the plants operated, they were more literate and used to organising themselves through the long years of Tsarist repression. However this is not to understate the role of the less skilled. Petrograd's workforce had doubled during the war, and the recent peasant intake was often more radical, being anti-Tsarist and immediately anti-capitalist. It was these workers who pressed for wage equalisation -- and many skilled militants took up the call.

The committees leaned towards the Bolsheviks because they were a good deal more radical than the moderate socialist Mensheviks, and because they 'supported' the factory committees. In fact it was the factory committees, at the sharp end of the struggle with the employers, which were the first workers' organisations to 'go Bolshevik'. A Bolshevik resolution at the June conference won 335 out of 421 votes. However, it was the workers and not the politicians who were left to sort out the real, practical problems, such as, how to react to the employers' increasing use of lockouts. One worker, fed up with the endless talking of the political militants, addressed himself to the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks together at a conference: "I've had enough of all your talking. You never answer our questions -- what are we to do if a boss threatens he'll close down? You're always ready with proclamations and words, but no one will ever tell us what to do in a real case (...) what do we do if the factory shuts down? We are here to decide that, and we've been sent here for that, and if you don't tell us, we'll go ahead on our own." [12]

Notes

[6] quoted in Trotsky, p256.

[7] quoted in Workers' Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience, Carmen Sirianni, p16.

[8] quoted in Sirianni, p26.

[9] quoted in The Bolshevik Revolution, Volume 2, E H Carr, pp 67-8

[10] quoted in Ferro (October), p153.

[11] quoted in Ferro (October), p151.

[12] quoted in Ferro (October), p166.