[The Seventh National Conference on Workers Control in Great Britain was held in Sheffield, March 29-30. More than a thousand representatives of tradeunion locals and socialist groups attended, including many foreign delegations.
Lone of the most interesting reports at the conference was given by Ladislav Velensky, the editor in chiel of Prace, the daily paper of the Czechosiovak trade unions, who described the development of workers councils in Czechoslovakia. The New York Times reported on April 9 that Velensky has been summoned before a party control commission in Czechoslovakia and faces expulsion from the Czechoslovak CP.
LErnest Mandel, the editor of the Belgian revolutionary socialist weekly La Gauche, also took part in the conference. He commented on Velenský's report in the following article in the April 5 issue of La Gauche. Ine translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The movement for workers selfmanagement was started by the shop stewards and by the Czechoslovak workers themselves. It began after the celebrated "January 1968 Resolution" permitted a renewal of initiatives and political activity by the Czechoslovak working class, which had previously been stifled by the bureaucratic straitjacket of the Gottwald-Novotny regime.
The first workers councils were elected on July 1, 1968. The trade unions stressed the need for legal recognition of participation by the workers in the management of the means of production, which belong to them collectively.
The report that the comrade editor in chief of Prace, the Czechoslovak tradeunion daily, gave to the Seventh Conference on Workers Control in Great Britain has made it possible to clarify where workers self-management stands in the Czechoslovak socialist Republic.
So far workers councils have been elected in 114 factories, including most of the big plants in the country, such as the Skoda works.
But the debates over the law on workers councils are continuing. At the congress of the Czechoslovak trade unions that was just held, sharp criticisms were raised regarding the proposed law drawn up by the government.
This bill provides for three types of enterprises. Ihe first are social enterprises which have financial autonomy and where workers councils are to take an active part in the management. Ihe second are public enterprises, which do not enjoy financial autonomy and which, like many enterprises in the public services sector, do not have to show a profit. In enterprises of this type, the workers councils are to be democratically elected but their powers are to be severely restricted. Enterprises in the third category are associations. These include combines made up of several social and public enterprises, or, should the occasion arise, foreign enterprises.
The congress of Czechoslovak trade unions primarily criticized the insufficient degree of workers control in the second and third categories mentioned a above.
The basic idea of Czechoslovak codetermination -- because what is involved is codetermination rather than selfmanagement -- is that the workers councils are the partners of the management bodies rather than organs of management themselves. But the demand was raised at the Seventh Congress of Czechoslovak trade unions that the workers councils should be the highest organs of economic management. Discussion is continuing on this question and will certainly continue for a whole period more.
The official conception of workers codetermination in Czechoslovakia includes strong technocratic tendencies. Attention is centered on the profitability
"efficiency"
of the individual plants. The of the "socialist market economy" is constantly stressed.
This is reflected first of all in the composition of the already existing workers councils. According to our Czech representative, 71.5 percent of the members of these councils are presently techlicians, 23.o percent workers, ana ›•y percent white-collar workers. Ihis is reflected also in the formula of excluding workerelected organs from the management oi public service enterprises.
Experience has confirmed what Marxist theory has proclaimed for a century. It is impossible to achieve real liberation of the workers within the framework of a market economy -- even if it is based on collective ownership of the means of production -- and in the context of competition setting the enterprises against each other. The workers who are "liberated"
in this fashion learn very quickly that in reality they are slaves to the tyranny of the "laws of the market," which produce gluts on the market, excess capacity, layoffs, and unemployment.
The claim made by both the neo- Stalinist leaders in Moscow and the technocratic ideologues in Belgrade and Prague that the only choice is between bureaucratic centralization and the market economy -- that is between the tyranny of the bureaucracy and the tyranny of the market -- is false. There is another solution in harmony with revolutionary Marxism. All power over the management of the economy must be transferred to a national congress of workers councils.
The members of this congress must be democratically elected and subject to recall. The statutes of this body must assure that the preponderant number of its members are workers. And in many areas, this council must be able to make decisions, especially in regard to investments, that would tie all the enterprises together.
Real workers self-management can only operate on an economy-wide basis. It cannot even operate in the individual plants unless it governs the economy as a whole. This conception, which is beginning to be accepted by the most conscious revolutionary forces in Yugoslavia, will also win acceptance among the Czechoslovakian workers and students.