Workers' Control

Background

Immediately after the February Revolution, factory committees (fabrichno-zavodskiye komitety, abbreviated fabzavkomy) formed spontaneously in major industrial cities such as Petrograd and Moscow, intervening not only in wages and hours but in hiring, firing, production planning, and general management. Through the spring and summer of 1917, workers in many factories effectively took over or co-managed their enterprises. The Bolsheviks made 'workers' control' a central plank of their program, positioning it as a 'curb on the capitalists' and a transitional measure on the way to nationalization.

Content of the Decree

Adopted by the Council of People's Commissars on 14 November (O.S.) 1917 and approved by VTsIK, the 'Regulation on Workers' Control' introduced workers' control in all industrial, commercial, banking, agricultural, transport, and cooperative enterprises employing hired labor. Control was exercised through elected bodies (factory committees, councils of elders, shop committees) with representation also for office employees and technical personnel. Each major city, gubernia, and industrial area was to have its own Soviet of Workers' Control, with an All-Russian Soviet of Workers' Control established in Petrograd.

The decree empowered workers' control organs to set minimum output, determine production costs, and inspect all business correspondence. Commercial secrecy was abolished; owners were obliged to show all books and financial statements for the current and past years. The rulings of control organs were binding on owners and could be annulled only by higher organs of control. Owners and worker representatives on control committees shared state responsibility for order, discipline, and the safety of property.

Reality and Aftermath

While the decree legalized the spontaneous practice of the factory committees, it simultaneously subordinated workers' control to a hierarchy within the Soviet state apparatus. On the All-Russian Soviet of Workers' Control, factory committees held only five seats, with trade unions and soviet executive committees commanding the majority. Shop-floor workers frequently exceeded the decree's powers, taking direct charge of management, a dynamic that increasingly clashed with state-directed nationalization.

From spring 1918, with the shift to War Communism, workers' control was progressively displaced by nationalization and centralized management. After the June 1918 decree on the nationalization of large-scale industry, factory committees were absorbed into trade unions or dissolved, and workers' control gave way to one-man management (yedinonachaliye). The defeat of workers' control helped shape the Workers' Opposition (1920–21) and became a central fault line in the party's trade-union debate.

Historical Assessment

Workers' control represented the high-water mark of autonomous working-class activity during the first months of Soviet power. Yet it was also the site of a collision between two visions of the transition from capitalism to socialism: direct worker power from below versus centrally directed nationalization by the party-state. This tension remained a recurring source of conflict in debates over industrial management throughout Soviet history.