Workers Councils Part 1 Chapter 6. Difficulties

Workers Councils Part 1. The Task

6. Difficulties

More essential difficulties in the reconstruction of society arise out of the differences in outlook that accompany differences in development and size of the enterprises.

Technically and economically society is dominated by big enterprise, by big capital. The big capitalists themselves, however, are only a small minority of the propertied class. They have behind them, to be sure, the entire class of rentiers and shareholders. But these, as mere parasites, cannot give a solid support in the struggle of the classes. So big capital would be in an awkward position were it not backed by the small bourgeoisie, by the entire class of smaller business men. In its domination of society it takes advantage of the ideas and the moods growing out of the world of small trade, occupying the minds alike of masters and workers in these trades. The working class has to give good consideration to these ideas, because its task and its goal, conceived on the basis of the developments of big capitalism, are conceived and judged in these circles after the familiar conditions of small trade.

In small capitalistic business the boss as a rule is the owner, sometimes the sole owner; or if not, the shareholders are some few friends or relatives. He is his own director and usually the best technical expert. In his person the two functions of technical leader and profit-making capitalist are not separated and hardly to be distinguished even. His profit seems to proceed not from his capital, but from his labor, not from exploitation of the workers, but from the technical capacities of the employer. His workers, either engaged as a few skilled assistants or as unskilled hands, are quite well aware of the generally larger experience and expertness of the boss. What in large enterprise, with its technical leadership by salaried officials, is an obvious measure of practical efficiency -- the exclusion of all property interests -- would here take the retrogressive form of the removal of the best technical expert and of leaving the work to the less expert or incompetent.

It must be clear that here there is no question of a real difficulty impeding the technical organisation of industry. It is hardly to be imagined that the workers in the small shop should want to expel the best expert, even the former boss, if he is honestly willing with all his skill to co-operate in their work, on the foot of equality. Is not this contrary to basis and doctrine of the new world, the exclusion of the capitalist ? The working class, when reorganizing society on a new basis, is not bound to apply some theoretical doctrine; but, to direct its practical measures, it possesses a great leading principle. The principle, living touchstone of practicability to the clear-sighted minds, proclaims that those who do the work must regulate the work, and that all who collaborate practically in the production dispose of the means of production, with the exclusion of all property or capital interests. It is on the basis of this principle that the workers will face all problems and difficulties in the organisation of production and will find a solution.

Surely the technically backward branches of production exercised in small trade will present special, but not essential difficulties. The problem of how to organize them by means of self-governing associations, and to connect them with the main body of social organisation must be solved mainly by the workers engaged in these branches, though collaboration from other sides may come to their aid. Once the political and social power is firmly in the hands of the working class and its ideas of reconstruction dominate the minds, it seems obvious that everybody who is willing to co-operate in the community of labor will be welcome and will find the place and the task appropriate to his capacities. Besides, in consequence of the increasing community feeling and the desire for efficiency in work, the units of production will not remain the isolated dwarfish shops of former times.

The essential difficulties are situated in the spiritual disposition, the mode of thinking produced by the conditions of small trade in all who are engaged here, masters as well as artisans and workers. It prevents them to see the problem of big capitalism and big enterprise as the real and main issue. It is easily understood, however, that the conditions of small trade, the basis of their ideas, cannot determine a transformation of society that takes its origin and its driving force from big capitalism. But it is equally clear that such a disparity of general outlook may be an ample source of discord and strife, of misunderstandings and difficulties. Difficulties in the fight, and difficulties in the constructive work. In small-trade circumstances social and moral qualities develop in another way than in big enterprises; organisation does not dominate the minds in the same degree. Whereas the workers may be more headstrong and less submissive, the impulses of fellowship and solidarity are less also. So propaganda has to play a greater role here; not in the sense of impressing a theoretical doctrine, but in its pure sense of exposing wider views on society in general, so that the ideas are determined not by the narrow experience of their own conditions but by the wider and essential conditions of capitalist labor at large.

This holds good still more for agriculture, with its larger number and greater importance of small enterprises. There is a material difference, besides, because here the limited amount of soil brought into being one more parasite. Its absolute necessity for living room and foodstuff production enables the owners of the soil to levy tribute from all who want to use it; what in political economy is called rent. So here we have from olden times an ownership not based on labor, and protected by State power and law; an ownership consisting only in certificates, in titles, assuring claims on an often big part of the produce of society. The farmer paying rent to the landowner or interest to the real-estate bank, the citizen, whether capitalist or worker, paying in his house-rent high prices for barren soil, they are all exploited by landed property. A century ago, in the time of small capitalism, the difference between the two forms of income, the idle income of the landowner as contrasted with the hard-won earnings of business man, worker and artisan, was so strongly felt as undue robbery, that repeatedly projects were proposed to abolish it, by nationalisation of the soil. Later on, when capitalist property ever more took on the same form of certificates commanding income without labor, land reform became silent. The antagonism between capitalist and landowner, between profit and rent disappeared; landed property is now simply one of the many forms of capitalist property.

The farmer tilling his own soil combines the character of three social classes, and his earnings are indiscriminately composed of wages for his own labor profit from directing his farm and exploiting the farm hands, and rent from his ownership. Under the original conditions partly still living as tradition of an idealised past, the farmer produced nearly all the necessaries for himself and his family on his own or on rented soil. In modern times agriculture has to provide foodstuffs for the industrial population also, which gradually everywhere, and increasingly in the capitalist countries, forms the majority. In return the rural classes receive the products of industry, which they need for ever more purposes. This is not entirely a home affair. The bulk of the world's need of grain is supplied by large enterprises, on virgin soil in the new continents, on capitalist lines; while it exhausted the untouched fertility of those vast plains, it depressed by its cheap competition the rent of European landed property, causing agrarian crises. But also in the old European lands agrarian production nowadays is production of commodities, for the market; the farmers sell the chief part of their products and buy what they need for living. So they are subject to the vicissitudes of capitalist competition, now pressed down by low prices, mortgaged or ruined, then profiteering by favorable conditions. Since every increase of rent tends to be petrified in higher land prices, rising product prices make the former owner a rentier, whereas the next owner, starting with heavier expenses, suffers ruin in the case of falling prices. So the economic position of the agricultural class in general is weakened. On the whole their condition and their outlook on modern society is similar in a way to that of small capitalists or independent business people in industry.

There are differences, however, due to the limited amount of soil. Whereas in industry or commerce whoever has a small capital can venture to start a business and fight against competitors, the farmer cannot enter the lists when others occupy the land he needs. To be able to produce he must first have the soil. In capitalist society free disposal of the soil is only possible as ownership; if he is not landowner he can only work and apply his knowledge and capacity by suffering himself to be exploited by the possessor of the soil. So ownership and labor are intimately connected in his mind; this lies at the root of the often criticised property-fanaticism of the farmers. Ownership enables him to gain his living during all his years by heavy toiling. By letting or selling his property, hence living on the idle landowner's rent, ownership also enables him in his old age to enjoy the sustenance which every worker should be entitled to after a life of toil. The continuous struggle against the variable forces of nature and climate, with technics only slightly beginning to be directed by modern science, hence strongly dependent on traditional methods and personal capacity, is aggravated by the pressure from capitalist conditions. This struggle has created a strong stubborn individualism, that makes the farmers a special class with a special mentality and outlook, foreign to the ideas and aims of the working class.

Still, modern development has worked a considerable change here also. The tyrannical power of the great capitalist concerns, of landed estate banks and railway magnates on whom the farmers depend for credit and for transport, squeezed and ruined them, and sometimes brought them to the verge of rebellion. On the other hand, the necessity of securing some of the advantages of large enterprise for small-scale business did much to enforce co-operation, as well for the buying of fertilizers and materials as for procuring the necessary foodstuffs for the accumulated city population. Here the demand for a uniform standardized product, in dairy production for instance, exacts rigid prescripts and control, to which the individual farms have to submit. So the farmers are taught a bit of community feeling, and their rugged individualism has to make many concessions. But this inclusion of their work into a social entirety assumes the capitalist form of subjection to a foreign master-power, thus stinging their feelings of independence.

All these conditions determine the attitude of the rural class to the workers' reorganisation of society. The farmers, though as independent managers of their own enterprises comparable to industrial capitalists, usually take part themselves in the productive work, which depends in a high degree on their professional skill and knowledge. Though pocketing rent as landowners, their existence is bound up with their strenuous productive activity. Their [management and control] over the soil in their character of producers, of workers, in common with the laborers, is entirely in accordance with the principles of the new order. Their [control] over the soil in their character of landowners is entirely contrary to these principles. They never learnt, though, to distinguish between these totally different sides of their position. Moreover, the disposal over the soil as producers, according to the new principle, is a social function, a mandate of society, a service to provide their fellow-people with foodstuffs and raw materials, whereas old tradition and capitalist egotism tend to consider it an exclusive personal right.

Such differences in outlook may give rise to many dissensions and difficulties between the producing classes of industry and of agriculture. The workers must adhere with absolute strictness to the principle of exclusion of all the exploitation-interests of ownership; they admit only interests based on productive work. Moreover, for the industrial workers, the majority of the population, being cut off from the agrarian produce means starvation, which they cannot tolerate. For the highly industrial countries of Europe. certainly, the transoceanic traffic, the interchange with other food-producing continents, here plays an important role. But there is no doubt that in some way a common organisation of the industrial and the agricultural production in each country must be established.

The point is that between the industrial workers and the farmers, between the city and the country, there are considerable differences in outlook and ideas, but no real differences or conflicts of interest. Hence there will be many difficulties and misunderstandings, sources of dissent and strife, but there will be no war to the knife as between working class and capital. Though so far mostly the farmers, led by traditional political and narrow social slogans, as defenders of property interests stood on the side of capital against the workers -- and this may still be so in future -- the logic of their own real interests must finally place them over against capital. This, however, is not sufficient. As small business men they may be satisfied to be freed from pressure and exploitation through a victory of the workers with or without their help. But then, according to their ideas, it will be a revolution that makes them absolute and free private possessors of the soil, similar to former middle-class revolutions. Against this tendency the workers in intensive propaganda have to oppose the new principles : production a social function, the community of all the producers master of their work; as well as their firm will to establish this community of industrial and agricultural production. Whereas the rural producers will be their own masters in regulating and directing their work on their own responsibility, its interlocking with the industrial part of production will be a common cause of all the workers and their central councils. Their continual mutual intercourse will provide agriculture with all technical and scientific means and methods of organisation available, to increase the efficiency and productivity of the work.

The problems met with in the organisation of agricultural production are partly of the same kind as in industry. In big enterprises, such as the large estates for corn, wheat, and other mass production with the aid of motorized machines, the regulation of the work is made by the community of the workers and their councils. Where for careful treatment in detail small production units are necessary, co-operation will play an important role. The number and diversity of small-scale farms will offer the same kind of problems as small-scale industry, and their managing will be the task of their self-governing associations. Such local communities of similar and yet individually different farms will probably be necessary to relieve social management as a whole from dealing and reckoning with every small unit separately. All these forms of organisation cannot be imagined before hand; they will be devised and built by the producers when they stand before the necessities of practice.