[The following article, written in November 1970, was the last one the Peruvian revolutionist Hugo Blanco wrote in the prison of El Frontón before his release December 22. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
El Frontón Prison
We Trotskyists, I should like to stress, work with a transitional program, that is, through slogans that, while based on the present understanding of the exploited classes, are designed to raise their consciousness to the level of comprehending socialist principles and the need for taking power.
One of the planks in this program is workers control of production.* This slogan is aimed at helping the workers understand that they are the essential element in production and that they must take command over this process and direct it in accordance with their own interests and those of the people as a whole.
Ultimately the working class must see that taking control of production can be done only by completely expropriating the capitalists, a reality which only a small minority realize at present. But it is easy for large sectors of workers to understand right now that they can and must curb the arbitrary policies of the capitalists, which are aimed at making profits for big business at the expense of the working class and the people in general.
As aspects of workers control, we demand the right for the workers organizations to plan and regulate industrial production. We demand opening up the management's books in order to permit a check on costs and profits. We demand the right of veto over all changes in the basic industrial plant or in the productive process, as well as over firings and similar actions.
We demand workers control over the various aspects of production in order to curb the arbitrary abuses of the bosses, but we refuse to take responsibility for the productive process as long as the workers do not hold political and economic power.
Thus we see that there is a profound difference between workers control as proposed by the Trotskyists and the "participation in plant management" cited in the Ley de Comunidad Industrial [Industrial Community Law]. We must clearly expose this law as a bourgeois measure intended to lull the workers to sleep by making them believe that they are part owners of the means of production. The objective of this law is to make it possible to exploit the workers more effectively and carry through the scheme of the bourgeois developers by sweating and starving the proletariat.
But along with this we must note that the working class unfortunately does not yet understand the antiworking-class character of this law, and a great majority of the workers have placed their hopes on it.
It is a sectarian attitude to propose boycotting the Comunidad Industrial provisions when the masses place their hopes in them. We are opposed to the "participationism" this law signifies. But the crucial fact at present as regards this measure is that it has aroused sympathy in the working class. Projecting a boycott in this case is like proposing a boycott of any bourgeois institution in which the masses have illusions, like calling for a "boycott" of the Ministry of Labor because it is a bourgeois instrument.
It is on the basis of the present situation that we must develop our struggle to educate the masses through transitional slogans, not by turning our backs on the masses.
Let us demand opening of the books, veto over firings, the right to oust foremen and supervisory personnel, the right of veto over changes in the productive process, etc. Let us use the proposals of the "Comunidad Industrial" law to press our demands. Parallel to this, we must reject all responsibility for plant operations, pointing out that the workers cannot be considered responsible for this as long as the entire productive process is not in their hands.
There are some revolutionists who say that we must not create "illusions about workers control," claiming that it cannot exist prior to taking power. They do not seem to understand that we are talking about control in the sense of keeping a check on, not of ruling. When the working class takes power, it will not only "control" or "keep checks on," but command, take the entire productive process in its hands, and planning first of all.
It is untrue that workers control cannot exist before the workers take power; it emerges precisely in the process of this struggle. It is one of the symptoms of dual power, which arises when the momentum of the proletariat has carried it close to the point of taking power, but the bourgeoisie is not yet defeated.
This phenomenon has been attested by history in Russia in 1917, in Bolivia in 1952, and in France in 1968.
Of course such a situation is precarious and fleeting; it represents an unstable balance in revolutionary or prerevolutionary times when the workers are struggling to oust the bourgeoisie completely, while the bourgeoisie struggles to regain full sway.
We must not abandon the workers to the participationists. Step by step we must counter these demagogues with specific demands for workers control.
Notes
* The FIR [Frente de Izquierda Revolucionario - Revolutionary Left Front, the Peruvian Trotskyist organization] plans to publish Comrade Mandel's valuable work, "The Debate Over Workers Control," in the near future.