The Mensheviks attempt to dwell on yet another question which seems
favorable to their desire once again to ally themselves with the
working class. This is the question of the method of administration of
industrial enterprises--the question of the collegiate (board) or the
one-man principle. We are told that the transference of factories to
single directors instead of to a board is a crime against the working
class and the Socialist revolution. It is remarkable that the most
zealous defenders of the Socialist revolution against the principle of
one-man management are those same Mensheviks who quite recently still
considered that the idea of a Socialist revolution was an insult to
history and a crime against the working class.
The first who must plead guilty in the face of the Socialist
revolution is our Party Congress, which expressed itself in favor of
the principle of one-man management in the administration of industry,
and above all in the lowest grades, in the factories and plants. It
would be the greatest possible mistake, however, to consider this
decision as a blow to the independence of the working class. The
independence of the workers is determined and measured not by whether
three workers or one are placed at the head of a factory, but by
factors and phenomena of a such more profound character--the
construction of the economic organs with the active assistance of the
trade unions; the building up of all Soviet organs by means of the
Soviet congresses, representing tens of millions of workers; the
attraction into the work of administration, or control of
administration, of those who are administered. It is in such things
that the independence of the working class can be expressed. And if
the working class, on the foundation of its existence, comes through
its congresses, Soviet party and trade union, to the conclusion that
it is better to place one person at the head of a factory, and not a
board, it is making a decision dictated by the independence of the
working class. It may be correct or incorrect from the point of view
of the technique of administration, but it is not imposed upon the
proletariat, it is dictated by its own will and pleasure. It would
consequently be a most crying error to confuse the question as to the
supremacy of the proletariat with the question of boards of workers at
the head of factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is
expressed in the abolition of private property in the means of
production, in the supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism of the
collective will of the workers, and not at all in the form in which
individual economic enterprises are administered.
Here it is necessary to reply to another accusation directed against
the defenders of the one-man principle. Our opponents say: "This is
the attempt of the Soviet militarists to transfer their experience in
the military sphere to the sphere of economics. Possibly in the army
the one-man principle is satisfactory, but it does not suit economical
work." Such a criticism is incorrect in every way. It is untrue that
in the army we began with the one-man principle: even now we are far
from having completely adopted it. It is also untrue that in defence
of one-man forms of administration of our economic enterprises with
the attraction of experts, we took our stand only on the foundation of
our military experience. In reality, in this question we took our
stand, and continue to do so on purely Marxist views of the
revolutionary problems and creative duties of the proletariat when it
has taken power into its own hands. The necessity of making use of
technical knowledge and methods accumulated in the past, the necessity
of attracting experts and of making use of them on a wide scale, in
such a way that our technique should go not backwards but
forwards--all this was understood and recognized by us, not only from
the very beginning of the revolution, but even long before October. I
consider that if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs
of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with
initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man
management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner, and
much less painfully.
Some comrades look on the apparatus of industrial administration first
and foremost as on a school. This is, of course, absolutely erroneous.
The task of administration is to administer. If a man desires and is
able to learn administration, let him go to school, to the special
courses of instruction: let him go as an assistant, watching and
acquiring experience: but a man who is appointed to control a factory
is not going to school, but to a responsible post of economic
administration. And, even if we look at this question in the limited,
and therefore incorrect light of a "school," I will say that when the
one-man principle prevails the school is ten times better: because
just as you cannot replace one good worker by three immature workers,
similarly, having placed a board of three immature workers in a
responsible post, you deprive them of the possibility of realizing
their own defects. Each looks to the others when decisions are being
made, and blames the others when success is not forthcoming.
That this is not a question of principle for the opponents of the
one-man principle is shown best of all by their not demanding the
collegiate principle for the actual workshops, jobs, and pits. They
even say with indignation that only a madman can demand that a board
of three or five should manage a workshop. There must be one manager,
and one only. Why? If collegiate administration is a "school," why do
we not require an elementary school? Why should we not introduce
boards into the workshops? And, if the collegiate principle is not a
sacred gospel for the workshops, why is it compulsory for the
factories?
Abramovich said here that, as we have few experts--thanks to the
Bolsheviks, he repeats after Kautsky--we shall replace them by boards
of workers. That is nonsense. No board of persons who do not know the
given business can replace one man who knows it. A board of lawyers
will not replace one switchman. A board of patients will not replace
the doctor. The very idea is incorrect. A board in itself does not
give knowledge to the ignorant. It can only hide the ignorance of the
ignorant. If a person is appointed to a responsible administrative
post, he is under the watch, not only of others but of himself, and
sees clearly what he knows and what he does not know. But there is
nothing worse than a board of ignorant, badly-prepared workers
appointed to a purely practical post, demanding expert knowledge. The
members of the board are in a state of perpetual panic and mutual
dissatisfaction, and by their helplessness introduce hesitation and
chaos into all their work. The working class is very deeply interested
in raising its capacity for administration, that is, in being
educated; but this is attained in the sphere of industry by the
periodical report of the administrative body of a factory before the
whole factory, and the discussion of the economic plan for the year or
for the current month. All the workers who display serious interest in
the work of industrial organization are registered by the directors of
the undertaking, or by special commissions; are taken through
appropriate courses closely bound up with the practical work of the
factory itself; and are then appointed, first to less responsible, and
then to more responsible posts. In such a way we shall embrace many
thousands, and, in the future, tens of thousands. But the question of
"threes" and "fives" interests, not the laboring masses, but the more
backward, weaker, less fitted for independent work, section of the
Soviet labor bureaucracy. The foremost, intelligent, determined
administrator naturally strives to take the factory into his hands as
a whole, and to show both to himself and to others that he can carry
out his work. While if that administrator is a weakling, who does not
stand very steadily on his feet, he attempts to associate another with
himself, for in the company of another his own weakness will be
unnoticed. In such a collegiate principle there is a very dangerous
foundation--the extinction of personal responsibility. If a worker is
capable but not experienced, he naturally requires a guide: under his
control he will learn, and to-morrow we shall appoint him the foreman
of a little factory. That is the way by which he will go forward. In
an accidental board, in which the strength and the weakness of each
are not clear, the feeling of responsibility inevitably disappears.
Our resolution speaks of a systematic _approach_ to the one-man
principle--naturally, not by one stroke of the pen. Variants and
combinations are possible here. Where the worker can manage alone, let
us put him in charge of the factory and give him an expert as an
assistant. Where there is a good expert, let us put him in charge and
give him as assistants two or three of the workers. Finally, where a
"board" has in practice shown its capacity for work, let us preserve
it. This is the sole serious attitude to take up, and only in such a
way shall we reach the correct organization of production.
There is another consideration of a social and educational character
which seems to me most important. Our guiding layer of the working
class is too thin. That layer which knew underground work, which long
carried on the revolutionary struggle, which was abroad, which read
much in prisons and in exile, which had political experience and a
broad outlook, is the most precious section of the working class. Then
there is a younger generation which has consciously been making the
revolution, beginning with 1917. This is a very valuable section of
the working class. Wherever we cast our eye--on Soviet construction,
on the trade unions, on the front of the civil war--everywhere we find
the principal part being played by this upper layer of the
proletariat. The chief work of the Soviet Government during these two
and a half years consisted in manoeuvring and throwing the foremost
section of the workers from one front to another. The deeper layers of
the working class, which emerged from the peasant mass, are
revolutionarily inclined, but are still too poor in initiative. The
disease of our Russian peasant is the herd instinct, the absence of
personality: in other words, the same quality that used to be extolled
by our reactionary Populists, and that Leo Tolstoy extolled in the
character of Platon Karatayev: the peasant melting into his village
community, subjecting himself to the land. It is quite clear that
Socialist economy is founded not on Platon Karatayev, but on the
thinking worker endowed with initiative. That personal initiative it
is necessary to develop in the worker. The personal basis under the
bourgeoisie meant selfish individualism and competition. The personal
basis under the working class is in contradiction neither to
solidarity nor to brotherly co-operation. Socialist solidarity can
rely neither on absence of personality nor on the herd instinct. And
it is just absence of personality that is frequently hidden behind the
collegiate principle.
In the working class there are many forces, gifts, and talents. They
must be brought out and displayed in rivalry. The one-man principle in
the administrative and technical sphere assists this. That is why it
is higher and more fruitful than the collegiate principle.