Building Up To October

The repression after the abortive July Days was aimed primarily at the workers, as capitalists and bourgeois politicians alike demanded an end to 'anarchy' in the factories. There were attacks on the right of factory committees to meet in working hours; the Committee of United Industrialists proposed that committee members get no pay for time spent on committee business; some employers stopped paying workers for the hours they were on militia duty; some refused to let the factory committees meet on the firm's premises. Plants closed down, partly because of the owners' deliberate policy, but also because of fuel and other shortages as the country's railway system reached breaking-point. Orders were turned down by bosses, lock-outs used, and some employers tried moving their plant and machinery to less radical areas to start afresh. The Petrograd Manufacturers' Association campaigned for piece-wages and 'open shops'. All this was part of the attempt to suppress the committees and workers' control. The motto of the bourgeois appeared to be: "May the country perish if it no longer belongs to me."

Some local soviets were forced to take over organising the supply of goods and essentials, as commerce collapsed. They did not find the socialists in the government either helpful or sympathetic. Skobelev, the Menshevik Minister of Labour, who had already put out a circular at the end of August that said that any meeting in working hours was illegal, circulated a notice from industrialists in the Urals which condemned "any interference by the factory committees in the management of an enterprise (...)." In the face of the attacks made on them, workers noted the ineffectiveness of the higher soviets and the trade unions. Increasingly, they were having to look to themselves.

The most effective way to do this was through the factory committees. In August, the second conference of the Factory Committees of Petrograd and its Environs met. This did much to regularise the way the committees were organised. The General Assembly of all the workers in a factory was the highest organ and the backbone of the movement. From this was elected the factory committee. A General Assembly could only be overruled by the Central Council of Factory Committees, a body built up from all the factories. The General Assembly had the right to recall and re-elect the committee at any time. For a factory committee to be a valid one, 50% of the workforce had to vote. Sub-committees were to exist for the different departments within a factory, or to carry out specific tasks. "The factory and shop committees are not created out of temporary meetings. The masses elect to these committees those who at home in the everyday life of the factory have demonstrated their firmness, their business-like character and their devotion to the interests of the workers.'' [21] At this conference, it was the Bolsheviks who again said that the job of the committees was to supervise, not to initiate decisions; the anarchists defended the idea of self-management. The Petrograd factory committees were faced with the problem of keeping production going to stop the economy disintegrating: the owners' sabotage was forcing workers to take over. Pressure was growing for seizing the factories, for enterprises to be nationalised, for workers' control.

During August, workers responded with increasing effect to the bosses' July offensive. As the vanguard of metal workers took a cautious attitude, new layers of workers took up the battle. There was a one-day strike in Moscow on August 12th. An observer commented "There were no lights, no tramcars; the factories and shops were closed and the railroad yards and stations; even the waiters in the restaurants had gone on strike." Some 400,000 were out. Other large towns such as Kiev also had strikes. Moscow leather-workers also struck for the right of their factory committees to hire and fire. In some places committees took to arresting the managers. Although there was a revival of activity among the soviets from the bottom up, the leading role of the committees was clear. Even Lenin recognised that, briefly, in August: "We must swing over the centre of gravity to the factory and shop committees. (They) must become the organs of insurrection." This rash of enthusiasm for the workers' organisations did not last long. On August 31st, the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, and five days later took the Moscow Soviet. Now the call from Lenin and Trotsky was "All power to the Bolshevik soviets!"

The Bolsheviks were also winning over some trade unions, who had always opposed the factory committees. The centralised unions wanted the committees to supervise affairs locally and nothing more; against this was the loose network of committees who stood for collective management at the factory, city and national levels. But the committees were getting organised nationally. On October 15th they published their own journal 'Novy Put' ('New Path'). From the 17th-22nd October they held the first All-Russian Conference of Factory Committees with 137 representatives from 49 industrial centres, 66 of the delegates being Bolshevik. The conference voted to set up an All-Russian Council, and discussed the problems of the Central Council of Factory Committees. As local committees had kept their best activists, the resulting vacancies were being filled by representatives from Soviets, trade unions and political parties. The conference stated that "The workers are more interested than the owners in the correct and uninterrupted operation of the plants." Workers' control was "in the interest of the whole country and ought to be supported by the revolutionary peasantry and the revolutionary army." The Bolshevik Milyutin argued that a soviet take-over was needed for workers' control. His comrade, Larin, touched on a theme that was to become a favourite of Lenin's : "Germany has set up a national economic programme, but it has been conceived in the interests of the ruling class: we must do the same, only in the workers' interest." An anarchist, Pistrkovsky, attacked the unions : "the unions are trying to throttle us (...) their members are not actually in the factory (...) they are always ready to compromise (...) the committees hold the key to the future."

The trade unions were in the main Menshevik controlled and against the October Revolution. The factory committees on the other hand called for the soviets to take power. During October, power was more and more shifting into the hands of the workers, soldiers and peasants. Printing workers took action to stop any counterrevolutionary propaganda; arsenal workers and clerical employees controlled the release of arms and ammunition; the Petrograd lighting station factory committee liased with other committees to get coal and grease for turbines to get round the employers' sabotage; a conference of artillery factory workers called for a soviet government, and set up a group to study the transition to peaceful production.

Meanwhile, Lenin was writing on the evening of October 24th -- "Who is to seize the power? That is now of no importance. Let the Military Revolutionary Committee take it, or 'some other institution', which will declare that it will surrender the power only to the genuine representatives of the interests of the people.'' [22] Not 'the people', not even 'representatives of the people', but 'representatives of the interests of the people': that is, the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin. Lenin's programme for revolution adopted the demands of the mass movement -- replace the existing government with a soviet system, end the war, give the land to the peasants, establish workers' control -- only to dilute the demands and hold back the movement. Workers' control, for instance, was to be nothing more than "a national, all-embracing, omnipresent, most exact and most conscientious accounting of production and distribution of goods," and the existing state machinery would be taken over for this. [23]

Notes

[21] Trotsky, p799.

[22] quoted in Trotsky, p1132.

[23] see Carr, pp 71-2.