Concise Encyclopaedia of Participation and Co-Management 9783110884807, 9783110121735

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de Gruyter Studies in Organization 38 Concise Encyclopaedia of Participation and Co-Management

de Gruyter Studies in Organization Organizational Theory and Research

This de Gruyter Series aims at publishing theoretical and methodological studies of organizations as well as research findings, which yield insight in and knowledge about organizations. The whole spectrum of perspectives will be considered: organizational analyses rooted in the sociological as well as the economic tradition, from a sociopsychological or a political science angle, mainstream as well as critical or ethnomethodological contributions. Equally, all kinds of organizations will be considered: firms, public agencies, non-profit institutions, voluntary associations, inter-organizational networks, supra-national organizations etc. Emphasis is on publication of new contributions, or significant revisions of existing approaches. However, summaries or critical reflections on current thinking and research will also be considered. This series represents an effort to advance the social scientific study of organizations across national boundaries and academic disciplines. An Advisory Board consisting of representatives of a variety of perspectives and from different cultural areas is responsible for achieving this task. This series addresses organization researchers within and outside universities, but also practitioners who have an interest in grounding their work on recent social scientific knowledge and insights. Editors: Prof. Dr. Alfred Kieser, Universität Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany Prof. Dr. Cornells Lammers, FSW Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands Advisory Board: Prof. Anna Grandori, CRORA, Universiti Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milano, Italy Prof. Dr. Marshall W. Meyer, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A. Prof. Jean-Claude Thoenig, Institut Europeen d'Administration des Affaires (INSEAD), Fontainebleau, France Dr. Barry A. Turner, University of Exeter, U.K. Prof. Mayer F. Zald, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A.

Concise Encyclopaedia of Participation and Co-Management Editor György Szell

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Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1992

Dr. György Szell Professor of Sociology, Department of Social Sciences, Universität Osnabrück, FRG

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

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Concise encyclopaedia of participation and co-management / editor, György Szell. p. cm. — (De Gruyter studies in organization ; 38) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 3-11-012173-5 (Walter de Gruyter Berlin NY). ISBN 0-89925-604-X (Walter de Gruyter N.Y. : acid free paper) 1. Management — Employee participation — Encyclopedias. I. Szell, György. II. Series. HD5650.C654 1992 33Γ.0Γ1203 —dc20 92-21593 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek

— Cataloging-in-Publication

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Concise encyclopaedia of participation and co-management / ed. György Szell. - Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1992 (De Gruyter studies in organization ; 38 : Organizational theory and research) ISBN 3-11-012173-5 NE: Szell, György [Hrsg.]; G T

© Copyright 1992 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form — by photoprint, microfilm, or any other means nor transmitted nor translated into a machine language without written permission from the publisher. Typesetting: Converted by Knipp Satz und Bild digital, Dortmund — Printing: RatzlowDruck, Berlin. — Binding: D. Mikolai, Berlin. — Cover Design: Johannes Rother, Berlin. — Printed in Germany.

Für Ute

Preface The volume presented here is the result of close cooperation within a world-wide network. This network was established mainly through the Research Committee 10 "Participation and Self-Management" of the International Sociological Association. I had the pleasure and privilege of having been vice-president and later president of this Committee from 1983 to 1990. The friendly spirit which reigns in this group created also many personal links and made me dare this task of a comprehensive Concise Encyclopedia of Participation and Co-Management. Already a number of other publications out of this network preceded this one. In 1989 Paul Blyton, Chris Cornforth and me published already with De Gruyter "The State, Trade Unions and Self-Management". The volume contained the revised papers of an international workshop of the Research Committee in Osnabrück. Another volume - edited by C. Lakshmanna and R.C. Sarikwal in 1990 in Delhi contains the proceedings of an international workshop on "Industrial Democracy and Workers' Participation" in Hyderabad/India. Other material of the members of the Research Committee may be found namely in the reviews Economic and Industrial Democracy and Economic Analysis and Workers' Management. While working over the last years on the trendreport "Participation, Worker's Control and Self-Management", which has been published by SAGE in December 1988 as Current Sociology 36/3, and on "The State, Trade Unions and Self-Management" I stated that there is no concise reference source in this field. The three volumes of the International Yearbook of Organizational Democracy, which have been published by Wiley, as well as the follow-up series International Handbook of Participation in Organizations (Oxford University Press), of which I co-edited together with Cor Lammers the first volume, do not have the same covering as I intend with this book. I understand my effort as complementary to these series, because I want to address the academic public - students and staff in business studies and related fields - as well as the practitioner. I am convinced that participation and co-management are the challenges of the next decade in all fields of society and in all parts of the world. If we can offer a concise instrument for a better understanding of the issues at stake, we hopefully can contribute to the further democratization of society at all levels and in all domains. In the field of participation and co-management there are not many resource publications. One important one is "The Dictionary of Industrial Relations" edited by Arthur I. Marsh and E.O. Evans. This excellent resource book dates already back from 1973 and is really a dictionary, i.e. has only very short entries. It is strongly biased on the United Kingdom, and it is out of print since long. To name are also the many valuable publications in the field by the International Industrial Research Association namely as spin-off of the their World-Congresses. So I am convinced that there is a need for an up-to-date and really interdisciplinary realization. Scholars from different parts of the world and from different disciplines, but who are all open to interdisciplinary co-operation were solicited. The articles relate their

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specific topic to the general theme of participation historical perspective as well.

Preface

and co-management.

They include a

As I understand the Encyclopedia as a critical one it seems to me that each entry had to have in general the following structure and to include references of used sources and for further reading: 1. a historical outline of the history of the concept, and if so the praxis; 2. a description of the different approaches in the field, as well as the main authors and actors; 3. a critical evaluation 4. references. The main focus of the contributions is on central topics in the field. Unfortunately I could not cover all of them which I initially had in mind or were proposed by colleagues and friends. Due to illness or restrictions in regard to the short deadlines some items but I think not the most important ones - had to be left out in this edition. So for example: body, bureaucracy, care-work, co-management, committees, housing-, producer-, professional service-co-operatives, council democracy, culture, decision-making, employers' associations, equal remuneration, flexibility, Hungary, industrial conflict, information, institutional analysis, Italy, management, mass media, military, minorities, mobility, The Netherlands, ownership, qualification, self-employment, self-reliance, socialism, social policy, sport. I hope that I will have soon the opportunity for an enlarged and revised edition which will include some of them. I tried not to include as a separate entry - with few exceptions - personalities in this volume. The number of names is abundant, and it is very difficult, if not impossible to have clear criteria whom to integrate and whom not. There are many dictionaries which refer to persons so I believe that they are well suited for that purpose. The same question arose in regard to countries and specific historical experiences. This is relevant because Albert A. Blum edited in 1981 the International Handbook of Industrial Relations which covered 27 states from Australia to Yugoslavia on nearly 700 pages. Also the International Labour Organization had published under the auspices of Jacques Monat several studies which include country reports and overviews. But as this material especially in regard to the recent developments is not always up-to-date I thought it useful to include the main historical and living country experiences. In an international perspective it is necessary to refer to these experiences which are often handled as "models". Besides that it seems to be natural that the contributions have a national bias which cannot and perhaps should not be excluded. We all are products of our society also when we are working and living nowadays often in an international context. So the contributions should be read under this perspective that they try to give general trends in a specific socio-historic context. Finally I want to express my gratitude to all those who made this volume possible: I am very thankful for the help and understanding by Bianka Ralle from de Gruyter Publishers who supported me fully at this very challenging work.

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Besides Alan Deighton as language editor Micheline Sauriol from Montreal did also some of the "Englishing" of the texts. I am also grateful to Carsten Quesel and Renate Aumann, my scientific assistants who did help me in some of the editorial and word-processing tasks. Not to forget are the colleagues at my Department of Social Sciences at the University of Osnabrück who retyped the manuscripts on word processing so perfectly and in good humour: Elke Albrecht, Vera Bröcker, Gabriele Teepe, and Ilse Tobien. I hope they are all as content with the results as I am. I have also to thank the Enciclopedia Italiana delle Scienze Sociali for the permission to translate and reproduce the contributions by Niklas Luhmann on "Social Complexity" and Ota Sik on "Self-Management", Macmillan Press Reference Books for Branko Horvat's "Economics of Self-Management", The Blackwell Dictionary of TwentiethCentury Social Thought for my article "Workers' Council". The Volkswagen-Stiftung helped me in 1989 in granting me a sabbatical during the summer-semester and travels to Yugoslavia, Italy, France and Sweden where I could do some of the necessary research to accomplish the editorial task of this encyclopedia. I am very grateful to them because certainly the quality has been increased and the time-span to realize the project considerably reduced. And my gratitude goes to all the authors who accomplished a difficult task in a very short time. The first invitation for cooperation went out at the end of May 1989. Nearly all colleagues who were contacted responded immediately and positively. Osnabrück, March 1991

György Szell

Table of Contents Administration (Wiking Ehlert) Alienation (Walter R. Heinz) Anarchism (Laslo Sekelj) Asia (Hing Ai-Yun) Australia (Sol Encel) Austro-Marxism (Robert Haussmann) Autogestions (Olivier Corpet and Jacqueline Pluet) Autonomous Work Groups (Jon Gulowsen) Autonomy (Alain Chouraqui) Belgium (Jim Van Leemput) Bulgaria (John Thirkell) Canada (Hem C. Jain) Centralization (Rudi Schmidt) Co-determination (Ulrich Briefs) Collective Bargaining (George Strauss) Communities (Menachem Rosner) Community Business Corporations (Greg MacLeod) Community Development (Frederic Lesemann) Community Development, U.S.A. (Severyn T. Bruyn) Competence (Frank A. Heller) Consciousness and Conscience (Roberto Cipriani) Conversion (Fabrizio Battistelli) Co-operative Idea (Silvia Gherardi) Co-operative Research (Alain Chouraqui) Co-operatives (Chris Cornforth) Corporatism/Neo-Corporatism (Frans van Waarden) Countryside (Beate Brüggemann and Rainer Μ. Riehle) Czechoslovakia (Vladimir Vrtiak) Decentralization (Andräs Sajo) Democracy (Carsten Quesel) Development Strategy (Gerard Kester) Ecology (Eckhart Hildebrandt) Economic and Social Committee of the European Communities (Otto Kuby) . . . Economic Democracy (Hans W. Weinzen) Education (Jean-Michel Berthelot) Employee Consultation (Äke Sandberg) Employee Participation (K.K. Chaudhuri) Employee Shareholding (Raymond Russell) Environment (György Szell) Everyday Life (Heinz Siinker) Expression Groups (Daniele Linhart) Factory Occupation (Joop C. Visser)

1 19 24 30 35 40 49 57 61 66 80 88 99 103 112 120 126 138 143 152 158 164 174 180 186 193 206 212 217 222 234 242 258 269 282 289 296 305 318 326 335 340

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Fascism (Carsten Klingemann) Feminism (Joyce Rothschild) Financial Participation (Marcel Bolle De Bai) France (Jacques Gautrat and Jean-Louis Laville) Freedom (Stephen Sachs) Gender (Mino Vianello) German Democratic Republic (Volkmar Kreißig) Greece (Litsa Nicolaou-Smokoviti) Guild Socialism (Ken Coates and Tony Topham) Human Resources (Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay) Identity (György Szell) India (Abha Avasthi) Industrial Democracy (Michael Poole) Innovation (Z.I. Kaliguna and I.N. Martynova) Israel (Michal Palgi) Japan (Akihiro Ishikawa) Kibbutz (Menachem Rosner) Labour Managed Economies (Branko Horvat) Labour Movements (Marino Regini) Latin-America (Antonio Lucas) Legislation (Guy Rocher) Legitimation (Roberto Cipriani) Malta (Gerard Kester and Edward Zammit) Management Strategies (Thomas Malsch and Rüdiger Seltz) Marxism (Tom Bottomore) Mexico (Carlos Gadsden) Mondragon (Antonio Lucas) Motivation (Marcel Bolle De Bai) Nation/Nationalism (T.K. Oommen) New Production Concepts (Rudi Schmidt and Rainer Trinczek) Organization Development (Marcel Bolle De Bai) Organizational Culture (Antonio Strati) Organizational Democracy (Cornells J. Lammers) Organizational Divorce (Ann Westenholz) Participation (Marcel Bolle De Bai) Participative Management (Marcel Bolle De Bai) Participative Research (György Szell) Peace (Jean Guy Vaillancourt) Perestroika (Natalia Chernina) Polycentric Society (Franco Ferrarotti) Postmodernism (Ann Westenholz) Power (Edward Zammitt) Praxis Research (Äke Sandberg) Producer Co-operatives (Tom Clarke) Profit Sharing (Domenico Mario Nuti) Quality Circles (Philippe Bernoux)

Table of Contents

348 356 363 369 378 385 390 393 403 409 420 425 429 440 445 454 461 469 480 485 498 501 506 513 529 536 543 552 558 565 572 578 585 598 603 611 616 631 639 644 655 661 670 675 680 687

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Religion (Jean Guy Vaillancourt) Reproduction (Yohanan Stryjan) Scandinavia, Direct Participation (Thoralf U. Qvale) Science (Georg Ahrweiler) Self-Government (Ε. Gurenko and Ovsei Shkaratan) Self-Management (Ota Sik) Service Sector/Service Work (Wolfgang Littek) Shop Stewards (Ken Coates and Tony Topham) Social Justice (Guy Rocher) Social Market (Severyn T. Bruyn) Social Partnership (Friedrich Fürstenberg) Societal Complexity (Niklas Luhmann) Socioanalysis (Marcel Bolle de Bai) Spain (Antonio Colomer Viadel and Maria Jesus Varga) The State (Sabine Erbes-Seguin) Suggestion Schemes (Henk J.L. Voets) Sustainable Development (Ann Hawkins and Frederick H. Buttel) Sweden (Äke Sandberg) Technization (György Szell) Totalitarianism (György Szell) Trade Unions (Rainer Zoll) Turkey (Kadir Cangizbay and H.Levent Köker) Ujamaa (Paschal B. Mihyo) The United States (George Strauss) Urban and Regional Planning (Enzo Mingione) Utopian Socialism (Carsten Quesel) Values (Antonio Lucas) Wage Earner Funds (Rudolf Meidner) Work (Jänos Bogdan) Worker's Council (György Szell) Worker's Participation (Jacques Monat) Workers' Take-Overs (Henk J.L. Voets) Workplace Bargaining (Rainer Trinczek) Workplace Democracy, United States (Derek C. Jones and Charles S. Rock). . . . Works Council (Walther Müller-Jentsch) Yugoslavia (György Szell)

695 700 708 715 722 729 743 756 762 768 787 793 807 811 818 824 831 842 849 855 864 873 882 889 900 907 918 923 930 938 942 952 961 967 974 981

List of Abbreviations Name Index Subject Index List of Authors

987 993 1001 1045

Administration Even though many think that the modern world started with the great revolutions in France and England, with democracy, capitalist economy, social welfare and civil rights, one of the most decisive changes of the corporate life of the people has not been really reflected yet. There is no sufficient explanation of the persistence and change in individual, social and collective organization and their running modes, even though they are the elements of the patterns of all social action and all social systems. Big business, commerce, insurance, handicraft, the public administration, the churches and even the private are all run by convenient organizational settings. That modern organization is based on hierarchy and competence and shows its operational profit in the unending accommodation to changing requests and in the effects of the lack of real participation of most of its members. It is this contradiction which is so productive for the dynamics of modern society and so useful for prominent interests. The state administration is the comprising example of modern organization, because it combines most of the areas and levels of modern societies under the precondition of the politically realized participation of the people. Administration, Rational Administration is just another quality of labour. As soon as intentionally planned and executed action is of any persistence, it can be called administration. And because there are many units and processes of work organized, their integration in the administration of the society is the last question to be answered to reach overall rationality. Work, administration and society are the most important levels of human activity. Yet, the never ending differences between the plan and its daily realization, the number of the administrations and the uncertainty about what society really was, made science searching for the ideal rational organization. The solution found edged work and society and concentrated on pure administration. A mechanical rationality became the base of all understanding. Administration, really the middle and the core of the different social relations between work and society, was perceived to be the frame of a working apparatus. There was no possibility to see rationality develop from the human work of the dark ages to the bright future of modern society. The historical bases of administration: Privilege and rule In Central Europe - to take a start somewhere - the state, the sovereign, his administration, the gentry and the countrymen were organized by fiefism within a traditional Teutonic society (Anderson 1974; Bendix 1978). Economical, social and political aspects were not separated. In the beginning authority and control were mutually established by some kind of cooperation and delegation of power, which was fixed to a special task in the first place. The familiar socialization of age and, to a varying degree, sex were combined with the

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social needs for skilled and collective work. The individual motor of this basic mode of social organization was still close to its social usefulness to the well-being of the traditional society. Later, when the class society had been established, on the level of rule, there were still faint connections to the basic human potential showing up as self-organization of the privileged, while the lower classes lived the old way, now under the pressure of the class nobility. Class rule meant the oppressive bridging of two different worlds of life and work. In Prussia for example, the building of the new organizational patterns were born out of the development of the feudal class society (Kuczynski 1982; Wehler 1989). At the end of the 18th century the top of the state was the ministry, a group of officials which were the advisers and administrators of the will of the Prussian king. That Round Table, in former times selected by birth and noble allegiance, now was recruited by the feudal monarch only. The execution, in the old days based on a decentralized surplus administration of the followers, was restricted now to martial and more and more financial matters and carried out by totally loyal men of noble or municipal origin. The shift of power from the traditional and more equal to the feudal aristocracy was not reached by the militant competition of the victorious one alone. Most of those who were successful initiated action to foster the economical and social bases too. Marriagepolitics used the traditional structures of the social context of the nobility from the top; administrative reforms used the noble means from below. The dawning of a new economic mode of production was beyond the imaginative power of the aristocracy and historical reality. The rationalization of the administration was realized at first to be able to redistribute the taxes from the nobility to the ruler. New administrators, which were bound to be loyal and helpful to the king forever, were installed and used their skills for the sake of the territorial ruler against the landed gentry. The traditional cooperative 'give and take' was rearranged on unequal bases of status and property to lead to the office-system. Everything was thought to be mechanical and set the way, Weber introduced the ideal type of bureaucracy 100 years later (Weber 1956:160-166). In brief; there was a legitimate and fixed legal rule of the king. The principle of office hierarchy and levels of graded authority meant a firmly ordered system of super- and subordination in which there was the supervision of the lower official by the higher one. The management of the office was based upon written documents ('the files'), which were preserved in their original or draught form. Official activity demanded the full working capacity of the man and expert training. The management of the office followed general rules, which were more or less stable, more or less exhaustive and could be learned. The office was a vocation committed to the subjects only, separated from the financial means and under tight discipline. There was nothing democratic.

Roots and perspectives of the administration: Universality Looking from the old system, nothing really had changed at the turn of the 18th century. There were about 15 to 20 top ranking officials well under royal command. Their recruiting and dismissal was softened by the new principles of alimony and care which

Public Administration

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reduced bribery in office. The professionalizing strengthened the position of the royal administration against the landed gentry. The king had fitted his ruling machine. Looking from the society to come, the revolutionary potential of the administrative reform lay in the detaching of the organization from the social structure of a traditional society. Its operational mode switched from the persistence of noble status to the variability of civil competition of officials. Exempted was the monarch, who, for the historical moment to be, was the bottle-neck for the new consideration of whatever interests there would be in the opened up class society. His unquestioned position hid the introduction of politics, interests and citizens. Now the official was the centre of an office-administration that could be extended in what ever horizontal or vertical direction and subject wanted. All political, economic, social and cultural areas and subjects of the society could be taken care of. The rationalization of the traditional society stood for the abolishment of those elements in work, organization and society that are called democratic today. For the first and last time in modern history all three levels of social activities were combined under the king's command, in his state administration and in the noble half of his society. So the process of civilization or the rationalization of the world (Weber) meant the reduction of all social relations and contexts to one unit. Only if you shut your eye to the anti-democratic bases and running mode of the feudal class administration can you stick to the general understanding of the rational administration.

Social stratification in feudal times: L'Etat c'est moi The traditional society changed the mode of administrative work and broke-up into three areas of social stratification topped by royal authority. Instead of common consent, the responsibility and the loyalty of the officer to the king was introduced. Administration was legitimate only within the centralized hierarchical organization of the absolute leader. A semi-official and competitive system of bribery assured care of the flexibility of the system. All kinds of social solidarity were pulled back to private groups now; it still was the base of the work and life of the oppressed class. The altered division of the ruling class reduced the basic mode of social organization to be instrumental to historically set and structured areas. The dynamic centre of the development had been in the ruling class.

Public Administration The public administration is understood to be the follower of the rational administration. It is the centre of a society which is in transition from the traditional mode of production to capitalism respectively from a social status powered to an economically based class society. Its main features are the instrumental understanding of the organization for the benefit of a number of interested leaders, all clearly in opposition to the oppressed working class. Political, social, cultural and economical aspects are easily recognized to be of class origin. There is no sphere of diffusion of the class antagonisms. The civil society looks like it contains two different worlds of life and work of the people.The

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most important scientists of the public administration of the civil society were Hegel, Marx and von Stein, all living in the last century in Germany. The Dialectic between the Old and the New World: Hegel Hegel (1821) analyzed the bases of all societies and the state in the beginning of the 19th century. His central achievement was to question the legitimacy of the royal, religious and secular self-evidence in individuality, organization and society by the dialectics of philosophical ideas and natural law. Authority and power, participation, organization and the state have to be substantiated on the level of rights and duties of the individuals ever since. The rational state was for him the aim of all civilization. Hegel was a German professor who wrote shortly after the declaration of social and political reforms of the feudal society (1800 and 1820). He was strongly dependant of the king, knew of the civil society in France and England just by hearsay and reading books and he was without very much contact to the Prussian reality. His own living standard was the restriction that shortened his intellectual results. Heavenly philosophy had to be the social science of the day. The social and political achievements the English and the French had to fight for hundreds of years were introduced in Prussia by the king himself, who at home was badly in need to make up for the development in the other countries of Europe. The freedom of trade was realized, land could be sold and bought by everybody and the farmers were freed from serfdom. Law was unified, even though on a traditional basis, jurisdiction centralized and some kind of local democracy granted. All privileges were abolished. The serfs lost their connection to the agricultural sphere to have nothing left but their working power. In the first half of the last century the Prussian society was really on the move (Kuczynski III, 1982; Wehler II, 1989). Hegel just summarized the discussions, which derived from the social conflicts of the building of the feudal society and combined them with the ideas of township bourgeois, inspired by the French revolution, to come up with the one eternal rational order: the state. He wanted to decide the social and political questions forever. But Hegel had no idea of the historical, present or future realization of his concept of identity of society and state by increasing the rationality of the system. He just took the description of the administration from the regulations of the reformers. So he canonized reform plans of the operational unit of the state to be empirically proved and of future use for all the generations of social scientists to come. Of course Hegel should have seen that the administration had been the centre of all efforts of all social powers over hundreds of years, and that the reform programmes of those days just wanted to reproduce the feudal powers on changing social bases. They had to be defended against far-reaching revolutionary and social transitions (Kuczinsky 1981, III: 13pp; Wehler 1989, I:254pp; 531pp). So his ideal state was no useful Utopia, but a faint idea of the prospective fruits of the era of Enlightenment; its reality was not the stage of progressive development but the final regression and retreat of the noble powers into feudal absolutism (Anderson 1974).

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The capitalist rationality and the instrument of the ruling class: Marx Marx (1956: 203 pp) clearly showed in 1843 that Hegel in his idealism just affirmed the reality of Prussia. Since Hegel's days, history had taken steps back into a even more tight feudalism, but the differentiation of the society began to show the principle of the new capitalist economy that would take over whatever rationality the state, its administration and the society would favour (Kuczynski 1981, III; Wehler 1989, II). In politics the return of the old powers took place. The civil citizens which thought to be progressive asked for more feudal protection, the minute capitalist entrepreneurs and the rural exodus swept people into the calmness of the traditional city-life. There was not very much civil pressure for a constitutional monarchy anymore. The working class was not in sight. The landed gentry took the benefits (to ruin small farmers) and stopped parts of the social reforms. The king dismissed the reformers and the administration was filled via recruitment and career regulations with the loyal sons of the Prussian Junkers. They and their king stood side by side again and started to realize their national and imperial dreams. In economics the first signs of industrialization led to unexpected business recessions and revivals which in agriculture ended up in over-production, price-slumps and depression, and in industry showed up in unemployment and the misery of the new industrial workers. Capitalism was just an island here and there in the agricultural seas, nothing to worry about really. So it is quite reasonable that Marx could not explain the dynamics of the coming new civil society before living in the much more advanced England for years. There he pointed out that the engine of the civil society clearly was in the new field of capitalist economy which developed itself outside of the traditional society. The capitalist economy (see: Marxism) lead to a new split up of the individuals. Instead of social status, now the active social dynamic was with the economic entrepreneur. As soon as he stepped on the market, he had to follow its output closely to keep on making money without more orientation than the need for more profit and the certainty of being the victim of recessions, booms, depressions, crises and environmental consequences. A new active man was caught in a new frame of reference and on the swing between total power in his plant and to be at the mercy of unknown contexts in society. This situation led to basic alterations of the central mode of individual, organizational and social reproduction in the course of time. Even though Marx planned to analyze the state himself, all the years until to his death he did not do very much to explain what the capitalistic mode of administration of the civil society really could be. For him bureaucracy was an instrument of the ruling class as well as of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Paris Commune was the beginning of a new democracy. The state would die with socialism. All those arguments are nothing but theoretical indications which were never explained in detail. Looking from today, much more interesting than the elaboration of the marginal capacity of the future of all this is that Marx seems to have been content with the mechanical functioning of that administration in his days too. Obviously there was no new administration to be found yet in history. Like Hegel he copied the office-system of the reformers and made it work for the civil class society.

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The mode of production of the public administration: L. von Stein Lorenz von Stein, who published between 1850 and 1890, was a follower of Hegel. He combined the French class society, he knew by staying there, with the German reality of the state of his times, to come up with the link of the operational mode of the public administration. His understanding of the class society was close to the one of the Utopian Socialist and of Marx, but reformatory. Education would overtake material interests in time. The service society was the future. Even though he depended of feudal support too, he still was the first social scientist of the civil society. In his Germany since 1845 (Kuczynski III; Wehler III), there was a broken-off political revolution, which got all the historical attention. The well educated bourgeois and the first capitalists were content with some kind of constitution, when the unorganized outcasts of the society in change showed up in the streets. Bismarck, for decades the royal governor, ruled by state-of-emergency-acts in all points at issue. The on class-suffrage elected parliament and the rising public could practise democratic participation as long as they supported the national politics. There was the revolutionary take-off of capitalism. The feudal powers stopped all interferences in economical affairs. Liberalism established itself as an independent sphere and stood on even scales to the traditional world for about 30 years. Enterprises grew up into joint-stock companies, the banking and insurance business started on industrial levels, commerce followed and handicraft stood behind. Austerity politics to shelter agricultural and industrial goods, some kind of martial useful traffic investments and the production of military equipment were its tightening connections between the political and economical prevailing powers. There was a less noticed administrative revolution. The administration of the king declared itself independent of politics. Within a new secret sphere of social action, the still feudal administration was working for the public now. The public was thought to be the replacement of the people. There were no social changes. The poor were kept out of parliament by suffrage, kept off of any public organization by militant oppression and surrendered to the survival by the wages of brutal capitalist enterprises. The poor were at the eve of social organization in clubs, unions and their class outside of the dominant society. V. Stein took this history and put it into the Hegelian world of science (Stein 1850; 1887/1888): 1. The Hegelian difference of personality and nature and its combination by self-determination, activity and rationality are the bases of all human civilization. The basic "I will do" of individual action means "I", "Will" and "Doing" too, which stands for collective action. Individual action can be specialized but not divided as collective action can. The later has an aspect of representation without which nobody would be able to identify it: "I", an aspect of the collection of ideas: "Will", and an aspect of the execution of the chosen plan: "Doing". The many "Wills" of the people can only come to one "Doing" that shapes the world. Each of these aspects can be looked at in their singularity and in their dialectic connection to others respectively in their orientation to the empirical side of society or the rational side of the state. Only all aspects make up to the whole social system. 2. Pure rationality of the state and pure sociability of the class society are the

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corner-stones of his explanation of the operational mode of public administration. The state is the ideal, the social history the process and the individual interests the material out of which the real society consists of. But not the ideal state of Hegel governs the communities, the events of the society fill up the ideal. History defines the levels of rational development. Always the existing society is the best you can think of. 3. In the class society the multitude of men's "Wills" are organized in the selforganizations of the working, the civil and the feudal class. The main difference between them is that their members produce special "Wills" and "Doings". The "Wills" of the working class are short-sighted on food, job and some joys of life while those of the civil class go further for education, property and production. The aristocracy is concerned with traditional status and territory. The privacy of the property is responsible for the fact that the "Doings", which constitute the reality of the society, work for the dynamic industrial capitalist interests. They shape the social events and situations by the bases of the society on which everything has to be established. So the self-organizations of the workers, clubs, unions political parties, always will depend on those of the entrepreneurs. The workers can react to the actions of the bosses in a society, which already has structured its reality the capitalist way. All "Doings" are of capitalist origin. 4. The administration has just one "Will", that is the search for the rational unifying social context of the society. Its basic organization is the office which is the "I", it gets the "Wills" from different self-organizations of the society and does what under rational considerations is best. In his decisions the official transforms social events into the "Will" and "Doing" of the state. The most prominent organization of the State is the constitution. In a democracy the president is nothing but the representative of the State "I", parliament only the collector of "Wills" and the administration the real centre of all "Doings". The minister, secretary or any top official are again the representative "I" of the ministry, with their staff they collect the "Wills" and the lower administration of the ministry is good for the "Doing". An endless line of ideally connected and really separated and practically functioning parts of the administration follows if you go for the final situation in which the one person ("I") really does what he wants to do ("Doing") for the society. 5. Stein's four cornered dialectics are exhausted when he states that in the "mind" or the "spirit" of the officials reality and rationality are integrated. Of course you cannot locate this area or level of the administration precisely, because everybody contributes to the final result. V. Stein was thinking of the hidden aspect: the officials activities in the organization which were invisible to the public and for which he was not accountable. 6. The mode of production of public administrations offers two ways to realize social interests. The dominant one follows the "Doings" from the social situations in the society and translates them within self-organization as power relationships to the area of the state. The administration is the place of the first real clash of organized interests and class interests. The minor one follows the "Wills" from citizen to parliament. The politics of the classes meet there for the first time, are decided and put forward to the administration to be considered for potential "Doings". The officials have to accept them only if they happen to fit in with those which have taken the direct way of "Doing". The political way is functional to the administrative one. 7. As in every organization the official decides in favour of superior or state aspects only if the relations between interests are on even scales. Comprehensive rationality is tied to

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the "Doings" and to the production of legitimacy for a small number of powerful men of the society. Von Stein's theory of the organized society is so valuable, because his two-sided action pattern can analyze why and show how classes rule social interrelationships via organizations. The structure of the state causes the "Will-Doing" combination to work on the side of those material interests, which reproduce the existing society. And they neutralize everything that endangers the status quo by giving the label 'political'. Both areas of the production of social relationships are autonomous in different ways. It is always the organized form (in which interests are conceived,) that transform them into decisive arguments and actions. The steering of these dialectic processes is done by the economic, social and political bases which are imbedded in operations and constitutions of the organizations. They are outside the attention of the people. Social stratification in the bourgeoisie: The official substitute The bourgeois society had not yet been firmly established, when the changes of social stratification started to show up. The reduction of the king's position to mere representative of the system and the limitation of parliament to an ideological clearing-house without possibilities for action point in the direction of the feudal understanding. The integration of the rising bourgeois interests into the administration ended with a totally different form of social stratification. The feudal and social orientation was replaced by the working potential of the capitalist mode of production. The administration was turned over and the steering done by the generated needs of economic development. The officials were the members of social clans in which the decisions were taken. The dynamics of social change led to a new block of old and new powers at the top and to an opposition consisting of the feudal and capitalist lower classes. All were integrated into the notion of a public administration, which was to decide what was best for the wealth of the society.

Modern Administration Most scientists make no distinction between the public and the modern administration. They do not think that the change of the bourgeois to the modern society is decisive. Yet everybody sees the dissolution of the class society into the mass society, the changing concept of private property from individual entrepreneur to anonymous big business and the cancer-like growth of all organization beyond the grips of the individual, management, big bosses, politicians and the public. The capitalist society seems to be out of control, but still booming towards unknown horizons. A new mode of organizational production which is not yet understood today, structures modern administrations. At the beginning of the modern administration stands Max Weber. He is the most prominent social scientist of this century and the initiator of new concepts of organization.

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The ideal type of bureaucracy: Weber There is nothing really new to the ideal type of bureaucracy. Weber copied the office-system of the reformers Stein and Hardenberg as Hegel did and called the old rational type of administration ideal. He did not led modern history interfere with his convictions. In 1871 the German nation got its "Reich". Formerly hostile groups of feudal origin, namely military, agriculture, industry, trade and culture cooperated in order to further their imperial interests. The workers, who until then had been proud of their skills, their unions and their small individual escapes form misery, began to realize their power. The experience of the national unity reconciled ideologically the antagonisms of that double society under the banner of nationalism and state, which proved to be so catastrophic for Europe and the World. The political system did not become more democratic. Less state-of-emergency rule by the representatives of the German monarch and increase in membership of the social democratic party modified the appearance but not the politics of military industrial Germany. The national state, which was run by officials of Prussian ministries who worked overtime began to expand its administration considerably, with the cooperation of the military industrial complex and the economical stagnation in the 90s of the last century. The development of boards useful to the economy were accompanied by a build-up of boards which cared for the workers and controlled their money. Its most prominent result, the Social State, was established as a reaction against misuse of the money the workers had saved for pensions and health insurance. This money was profitably reinvested by the state into the economic development of the new Germany. Most scientists have ignored the fact that modern administration was established in the shadow of the constitutional state. In the wake of civil interests and accelerated by industrial growth, the understanding of the traditional law was changed from feudal law to modern law. Important was here that it was done more by omission than by replacement in Germany. The absence of a bourgeois class meant that there was no established tradition of bourgeois law (as the case in other European countries). What was really revolutionary here was the way in which the traditional laws were interpreted and applied (positives Recht). Ever since this time, the criteria which govern administrative decisions are: legality, objectivity, individual case, adequacy and accuracy. Law does not determine possible decisions; it illustrates taken decisions; anything is allowed which is not prohibited. The civil practice of law is ameliorated by the combination of general and special regulations. A barrage of laws and administrative regulations is optimal; in this way any attempt at transparency is sabotaged. They complete and structure the fields of legislation and jurisdiction. Those who are already in the game via powerful positions in society, can even improve the results of justice for their special interest of the day through the amount of social and financial efforts made. Exceptions are only possible with political support or with highly differentiated special regulations and official help. Ordinary cases are handled routinely. The law is not normative, rather, it is an open system. Justice is a legal procedure masquerading behind a facade of good decisions which are ostensibly made in the best interests of the individual citizen (Luhmann 1972).

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Weber did not see the other side of the mode of administration. So he established a social theory (Weber 1962) which could not maintain an equal balance between rational action and irrational behaviour. Organization and legitimacy had to be the integrating factors in the social network. Weber defines action from the point of view of the individual. Intentionally planned and executed action which is orientated to another person is called social action. Of course, everybody can act in this way. But as soon as social interrelationships are called organizations the principles of general action and social action break down. In the organization only the leader is in a position to act; its members can only react to the regulations which are in effect. What they do in the organization is, in principle, irrational. Weber saw this contradiction in his action theory. That is why he introduced the legitimacy of actors, regulations and organizations which is based on traditional, charismatic or legal preconditions of social interrelationships. Their existence in history supports the belief that they are approved by the members of each and every organization in the society. So this preconditioned legitimacy helps to hide the fact that rational action is reserved for the one absolute leader of all organizations. Ordinary people deliver their potential for action to him. If they do, they have no real chance of controlling his actions anymore. Even though Weber preferred legal legitimacy the feudal notion of authority and devotion stand for action and behaviour on the level of organization. Legitimacy is some kind of operational ideology. Weber's theory is far from being a system. He puts forward rationalized elements of history (Schluchter, 1980) which are in the end united by the capitalist mode of production (Marcuse, 1968). The interaction between the actor's rationality, his organized devotion and the legitimate authority leads to the necessity of more and more comprehensive understandings of organization and society (Ehlert, 1986: 109pp). Weber himself admitted that in the 20th century his action theory was in danger of ending in the disaster of the 'iron cage of bondage' (Weber 1971). Democracy is a field of an open competition between leaders of organizations. It does not fit in with the concept of ideal types which, according to him, lead to an increasing rationalization of the world. Weber's action theory expresses the bourgeois dream of getting the rising social organizations work mechanically for his economic or social interests. The dissolution of the ideal type: American empirical proof Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy was mistakenly considered to be the best concrete model of a capitalist and democratic society by pragmatic American social scientists. For the first time in history empirical research of the organization was under way. Interesting was not the question of authority or general rationality of the State-administration, but how management could ameliorate its position of command in the growing organizations of an emerging organizational society. For the administration the issue was the economic effectiveness and efficacy of the mode of practical administrative work in different boards. Bureaucratic rule showed up in all spheres established in the sequence of the

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political, social and constitutional state as well as in culture, the press and the public. The historical situation Weber had in mind was replaced by a new one in the U.S.A.. Merton (1940) discovered dysfunctions of the Weberian ideal which could be compensated only by a social and organizational identity, which in turn lead to its conservatism. Francis and Stone (1956) broke Weber's ideal type down into elements of organizational structure and personal behaviour and Litwak (1961) underlined the fact that the organization was made of more elements than Weber had ever conceived. Blau/Scott (1962) summarized that the precondition of any organizational analysis was the recognition of the interdependence of different structures and processes which produce the meaning of the organization. Finally. Weber's idealism concerning the organization was perceived to be normative. But there was no new theory to replace Weber's ideal type. Now the organization consisted of as many elements as could be conceived by social scientists and there had to be as many theories as there were social organizations to be found empirically in the society. The expert Barnard (1938) argued in the wake of Taylor's scientific management and Mayo's small group research said that the main interest of all organization had to be its system. Through the action and behaviour of its members and the structures of formal and informal patterns the organization's system is preserved in the long run. The analytical interest is not to prove a given or modified set of variables of the organization empirically, but rather the production and improvement of a really well-working organizational system for the top manager. This new approach was refined by Simon (1946) and applied to public administration. He then catapulted his concept of administration into the forefront as a model of information- and communication systems which could be simulated in computers thus enabling even better decisions in politics, administration and society to be made. Even though it was initially their intention to dispute a mechanical understanding of organizations, at the end they found themselves back in Webers world of rationality again. The ideal type is the system of today.

The unleashing of the mode of administrative work: Luhmann Progress in understanding of the administrations came from a German, educated in law, a former official of a regional board and a late comer to science, who studied in the U.S.A with Parsons in the late 50s. There he became acquainted with American traditions of analysing organizations and combined it with European thinking. His personal question, namely, why administrations cannot operate economically, was really synonymous with the loss of orientation in the societies of the Western world. In the Federal Republic of Germany the "economic miracle" took place shortly after the military breakdown in 1945. Liberation from the Nazi-regime lead to a parliamentary democracy whose backbone was formed by the old administration. In post war America a democratic society became wealthy by helping people oppressed by dictators. America's future looked golden on an international level, while at home the economic and social reality was far gloomier. On both sides of the Atlantic, political, social and economic progress beckoned. All this spelled organizational growth, but orientation was lacking.

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Luhmann's main achievement is that he demonstrated a new kind of functioning of organizations (Luhmann 1964; 1969) and society (Luhmann 1984). And he does it by transferring the historical working of the Constitutional State (Rechtsstaat) to the centre of social action. He transforms Parsons structural-functional theory into his functionalstructural system thinking. He never talks of real but only of functional systems. Systems exist because something can happen in the world. They are the theoretical assumptions you have to make if you assume that systems cannot really understand themselves and each other. They only perceive through their own specialized codes what the other systems present as being their action. Their main problem is persistence; they realize it by sub-systembuilding. They have to survive in an insecure environment; they do it by adapting to others in form of external presentation of the results of internal differentiation and generalization of social complexity. The lives of systems consist of endless and multidimensional lines of action; they do it in form of procedures and by their autopoetic reproduction in a world beyond reality. All the elements of the organization, found out by science, belong to the system's environment. Human beings, organization, task and social events are understood to be helpful to the systems. Personality, formal and informal organization are not structures that decide outcome, but material for functional performing and possible sub-systems. Their internal variability and their external possibilities for connection help to produce relationships that can occasionally be put forward as the action of the systems. Luhmann never objects to any scientific findings, he just rearranges them to make them useful for his world of social systems. The working mode of the systems is not named, but the notion of variable areas with variable procedures and generative results is described. Systems have to cope with taken decisions: decisions are the place where reality and abstract systems meet only to fall apart again; beneath the level of the systems there is a totally fragmented empirical world of its own; it even continues to shape the system in the second, in which it is integrated it the system. Decisions shape the relationships between systems: The one system has the problem of making decisions and adhering to them as long as possible of preventing internal chaos, while the others have to cope with these decisions via special interpretation; its use is connected to its response to environmental questions. And decisions culminate in other and always more comprehensive systems: however these supersystems, while bearing the burden of general complexity, lose their strategic competence because they are detached from the smaller ones; disconnected from any causal orientation, the final question whether there is a system of the whole world or not turns out to be silly. For Luhmann, only the medium-sized systems really matter. He disregards the fringe areas of reality and final orientation, while introducing them via the preconditions of all systems into the selective self-reproduction of the systems. Social facts are reborn as and in systems. His social theory is a really elaborated description of the society against the background of a special nomenclature and the person of Luhmann is its only master. All this is the situation of the official in the administration (Luhmann 1964). Upon demand of the society, he has to take decisions which have a real impact on social situations. His problem is that he does not really know the society and that his decisions must have problem-solving potentials which are far beyond his imagination. The objects

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of his work come from outside. All that he can really be sure of are the organizational and social routines of his office. The administration has its specialized units for officially accepting and specially canalizing social complexity. At its top there are the political departments which have to take the burden of political legitimacy to parliament and the public; there are offices specialized in maintaining contact with other administrations and organizations; at the end of the line there are the normal office hours for citizens in which the application of the law is presented in form of decisions reached in totally different forms of social relationships. The long way from the grass roots to the office, the direct one from the political top to the office or the immediate knocking at the door and the private talk between honest men of concern are all legitimate procedures of the administration. The difference between the formal and the functional administration, working through selection, is also useful for the official. For him, formal work is important in the beginning and at the end of his work. The question of competence, whether an office is authorized to do something or not, and of the translation into legal terms of the results are decisive, because only they can be controlled. Informal is the bases where the silent preparation of the decisions takes place. The official tests possible decisions on different departmental levels. He makes the decision when he thinks that all foreseeable possibilities are covered by it. The informal system is the centre of his work and in this area there is no possibility to formal supervision. He is personally not accountable. The official declares the informal results of his achievements to be formally valid in the social situation of his office. But making a formal decision does not necessarily imply its realization in society. Its implementation reopens almost everything that had been reached up until then. Two cases have to be distinguished. If the norm is directly linked to events (authoritarian type), the search for the correct legal argument and the adequate social facts which can be followed by easy decision-making only has to be organized and worked through in the way described above. If the aim of administrative action is known, but a variety of possibilities for reacting (services type) are given, the search for those social initiatives that reach the desired goals, again gives plenty of space for the mode of administrative work. Of course, the other systems can use the mode of administration too. They ask whether there are any regulations concerned, which one is required and which interpretation is really legally supported. Informal exploration is ended by formal action. Problematic are those findings which formally reduce the systems' potentials for reacting. Barring the violation of formally acknowledged regulations, everything else is possible. All follow-up decisions are shaped, channelled or restricted in defense of that basic freedom. Luhmann describes the mode of administration to be the form of production, execution and use of social decision-making. The administration is the sphere of the application of administrative work. Every system can be part of the administration of society which really is a world wide super-system. Its main elements of functioning are the division of the systems into organization, working routines and their rebuilding by formal, informal and personal work. Thus 'meanings' which are a reaction to the environment are produced. Administration divides the world into a public one and a clandestine one. Every

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decision of the administration is a decision of a system - humans are almost expendable in this process. In case a decision can somehow be linked to a person, it belongs to the formal side and can lead to political consequences only. Political dimensions are scattered throughout the administration in order to carry the risks of administration. The regulations of the society are separated from their social meaning in order to protect the administration from any consequences. The interested systems can mirror their functional needs in some kind of socially bound regulations. The preparation of the implementation of decisions depend on the possibilities of reaching the only legitimate centre of the administration. This is hidden behind settings of society, formal organizations and personality in the fugitive informality of the state administration. The official makes obligatory what the interested social systems want. Procedure is merely the disguise used to introduce special interests into the formal rules of the society. It is the different capacity of every system in the society that determines its contribution to the system's reproduction: all this takes place in the dark of informal self-service. Luhmann summarized all the knowledge of the Western World on organization from Hegel to Barnard in his special way. And he is so successful because his nomenclature is part of the formal world. Behind it he hides the results of ideology and science in his understanding of the real life and work of the systems so brilliantly, because he himself is the only valid empirical instrument. The administrative mode of the modern society: The state of the art and its future History has forced science to follow its lines closely. In the traditions of science, theory followed theory. The historical impact of the society was of empirical interest and this was mainly focussed on social events. All that turned out is a market of over 120 different concepts of the organization, all having the status of being scientifically approved. But they still have to look for new images and identities in a changing historic reality (Morgan 1986). Poulantzas (1968; 1978) pointed out that the relationship between the administration and the economy of the modern capitalist society has not yet been found. Instead of a purely instrumental state he proposes a relatively autonomous state which only is determined by economic structures as a last resort. In order to protect special interests, the administration just has to organize those interests privileged by private property, and to disorganize those without. The state administration appears as if it were the arbitrator of justice in the society; its functional arrangements imply its usefulness for social groups, strata and classes. The administration is structurally political, because it is bound to capitalism, functionally political, because its organization follows the historical relationships between theoretically fixed class positions, and actively political, because the administration takes part in and shapes politics, policies and the political action of the day. Consequently, the state is ideological, because it declares the division of labour to be the one and only context of society. Political parties, entrepreneurs management, unions, churches, the public administration and all special organizations are ideological, because they interpret events in other systems as being representative of the entire society. The

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administration is ideological, because it replaces rational procedures with social modes of production. Poulantzas' concept of the administration restores to it the political basis, which it lost in the "rational administration" almost 200 years ago. The reproduction of feudal power can be seen in functional settings of modern administrations working under capitalist rule. But this version of administration cannot really explain the developing social relationships of economically determined societies nor how they were, are or will be in the future. Neither can it explain the mode of administrative reproduction as it manifests itself in everyday work and life. Observing the course of history from the 18th century on, it is clear that the orientation of the administration has followed along the lines of disorientation on the level of society. This was necessitated by endless capitalist accumulation and culminated in a total loss of perspective - sometimes called Post Modernism. This loss of perspective is not only the scenario of decline of the certainty for the actor and the organization but the outline for a new formation of the modern administration as well. Again, it is the economy which gives the impulse for all this reaching the fringes of the world. Not the opening of new markets, but redistribution of old ones and the search for new profit opportunities are the challenges of the future. They outdate the social contexts, generated by the modern administration of national states and lead to new divisions of competence between and within organizations. Based on the historical development of administration procedures, we can see an increasing loss of democratic potential. The building of the world administration is driven by economic interests which have never been as strong working through the regional, the national and the international state agencies and resulting in structures of selection and self-service in economical enterprises operating world-wide. There is no equivalent stepping up of democracy; it is the great loser of the world-system. IBM, General Motors, Toyota and Mercedes are the representatives of the functional administration of this world and much more important than any other national or military power whatsoever. Modern social stratification: A system beyond individual reach When modern society was established, the actor lost control of his rationality where action and organization were concerned. As were his historical predecessors, who were reduced to being mere representatives, but this time of a great number of systems. To them the actor could contribute to but he could no longer understand the systems. The most important social Stratification of modern society occurred when the public administration of feudal descent was transferred for the second time into a generative mode of administration which expressed the decisions of economic relationships and conflicts in the spheres of rational administration and political democracy. The integration of society which, in earlier time, had manifested itself in different kinds of enforcement and legitimate social status, could now be reached only by legitimate and open ended procedures. On the basis of equal chances for everybody, the dream of success could be kept alive. At the same time, the economic potential needed to overcome the differentiations of the procedures decided - within the sphere of

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informality - who was probably going to be the winner. The arena where all of this takes place is the individual public official. He is now the (public) servant who finds himself swinging back and forth between formal and informal aspects of generating the decision-making process. This process of decision-making is the only cover-up used by the organization to conceal the fact that privileged interest groups could serve themselves, as always. Parliaments were easily established, because they only had to justify themselves to the silent and abstract voter. In order to support capitalism, modern administration just has to organize those with economic potential and disorganize those without. Modern administration is social stratification. After 200 years of building a capitalist society, the state and its administration were finally completely penetrated by the logic of its mode of production. There was no need anymore to keep the classes apart, because their systems social support was already brilliantly camouflaged by the administration.

Administration and participation: fields of illusion The Rational Administration could not have any democratic structures at all. It was the result of a process in which traditional democratic institutions, rights and living habits were consistently reduced in favour of the monarch's interests. He was the only one who, in the feudal class society, was in charge of the State. The well known saying of the French monarch "L'Etat c'est moi" was true. If one disregards the feudal social base, this was the only administration which united work, organization and society in the hands of one active subject. The feudal administration is the ideal of all administrations. The Public Administration which should have been the servant of democracy and society was really the centre of self-organization of social interests. Corresponding to the civil class society it was a class administration, in the beginning lead by feudal interests, later on taken over by civil industrial interests. The division of the society was only ideologically bridged by political institutions, which were without real impact on the administration of society. The structure of the administration was some kind of organization of self-service, based on the privacy of produced social events. For these, the administration was democracy and organization in one. For all the others, the society was run without democracy behind closed doors by conservative men and status groups of the society. If one disregards the social and economic base of the civil society, permanence, reform and revolution depended on whether or not the state's leading positions were conquered by the citizens or the workers. Priority was given to building-up strong organizations with persuasive leaders. The state is understood to be the top of an instrumental administration. The Modern Administration has lost most of its individual rationality. In the ideological sphere the actors were eager to regain lost orientations. The administration lost its capacity for activity controlling social events - instead it became a system for producing generatively valid decisions. The human aspect of social activity, which in former times had been the central instrument of organization, was transformed into a

Bibliography

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process of informal and formal decision-making. The Social and the Constitutional State were the start of the special integration of all citizens into the society. The still unequal society was integrated by the illusion that everybody could get a big piece of the cake, if he would followed along the lines of formally fixed procedures and won the competition of interests. The never-ending attempt to restore and improve the never-existing social collective of the civil society (which was politically enforced in the sequence of an economically antagonistic society) was the dynamic aspect of traditional legitimacy on its fruitless way to modern and post-modern democracy. Democracy is neither important nor functional for past, present or future societies. Its existence is not justified by the basic needs according to which the system is run. Democracy could be abolished, without doing much harm to either the living standards or the functioning of the whole society. Democracy as it exists today is a silent servant of self-organization and self-service, both of which are bound to those interests which are the basis of the reproduction of the capitalist systems. If one disregards the continuities and discontinuities and the different changes of the capitalist society and its organizations, one can easily be misled into the believing, that public administrations and parliamentary democracies have been strengthened all over the world. Keeping this in mind, two lines of development of society, administration and parliament have to be distinguished. Those who fight for an equal society and a fully working democracy - both at working-place and on the national level today are nothing but dreamers. In the past the members of a society had not had the right and the duties which allowed them to participate in building a socially, economically and politically just society. In the future, administration and society should give up the old dreams of democracy and see that any alteration in the mode of administrative production of the society will have to overcome a long period of an increasingly tightening grip on the people. The inquiry democracy will step over the borders of politics and policies and show, step by step, that social contexts are built up from within the society. The economy will march ahead. The penetration of the informal sphere will be at the end. The struggle for a democratic society has to contain both points mentioned above. It must bridge the antagonisms to help reduce the old exploitation as much as possible and to shape the new structures of economic use of the collective for the benefit of all. It has to be done without illusions in a blind field which consists of endless disorientation of the administrative system and the impossibility of forecasting precisely what is going to happen next in history. We still live in a generative system, which will come to its end with the refinements of the economic preconditions of its existence. Bibliography Anderson, Perry: Lineages of the Absolutist State. London, Humanities Press, 1974. Barnard, Chester Irving: The Function of the executive. Cambridge/Mass., Harvard University Press, 1938. Bendix, Reinhard: Kings or People. Berkeley, University of Calif. Press, 1978. Blau, Peter M. and Richard W. Scott: Formal organization. San Fransisco/Calif., Chandler, 1962. Ehlert, Wiking: Staatstechnologie. Münster, Wurf, 1986.

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Wiking

Ehlert

Alienation The various dimensions of alienation The theme of alienation has a long tradition whose roots are in Greek philosophy (relationship between mind and matter), Christianity (broken relation between mankind and God) and philosophy of idealism (domination of mind over the world of objects). Generally speaking, alienation refers to the separation or opposition of man in respect to environment, society or his own self. The current use of this concept in the social sciences relates to the social theories of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and the French sociologist Emile Dürkheim (1858-1917). Marx's concept of alienation represents a critical assessment of living conditions man is subject to in the historical development of society. It is based on the image of the active, creative individual whose development is restricted by the economic structure and the dominant culture of society. Alienation thus means that "the activities of the individual in the process of production, his/her work and the results of work have become independent and gained power over man" (Israel, 1972: 17). The orientation stemming from Marx aims at the disclosure of objective political and economic roots of the alienating situation of the individual, while other orientations emphasize the impact of alienation on the individual, i. e. attitudes towards various segments of life in which tensions between the individual and the organization of social life appear. In the comprehensive foundation of the concept of alienation by Marx one finds dimensions referring to the philosophy of history and anthropology (alienation and appropriation), to economics (analysis of commodities) and to history and empirical data (class analysis). In his "Economic-Philosophical (Parisian) Manuscripts of 1843/1844" Marx (1971) has developed the frame for a fundamental critical analysis of capitalist society by differentiating the totality of alienated existence into four aspects of alienated work (cf Meszäros, 1970): 1. Alienation from the product of work activities: Division of labour and property relations determine the kind of production and the disposal of the product. The produced objects or goods gain autonomy, the technical and economic developments and the world of commodities dominate human needs. 2. Alienation from one's own work activities: Work becomes shallow, does not permit free development of mental and physical powers. Work therefore does not serve the universal development of personality, it becomes a means for satisfying material, existential needs. As Marx writes in his "Grundrisse" (1953: 204): "The worker himself is absolutely indifferent towards the condition of his work; it does not interest him as such, but only in so far as it is work after all and thus of use value for the capital." The conditions of work and the means (machinery) turn the worker into an object of the production process. This creates the tendency to cripple the skills of the individual who is reduced to routine and partial operations in an impenetrable process of production. 3. Alienation from society: The realisation of specific human skills is closely related to self-determined work which is reduced by wage-labour to instrumental, non-creative

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activities. This prohibits that human beings recognize their production process as a cooperative, conscious activity; they consider production as a strange, factually necessary institution with abstract rules which have to be observed in the course of production. 4. Estrangement of man from his fellow-man: As a consequence of alienation from the product, from work and human skills individuals are also estranged in their mutual relationships. In contrast to the philosophers of history and the theoreticians of Enlightenment in the 18th/19th century Marx did not refer to the dehumanisation of industrial work as being the result of the division of labour as such, but to its specific form in capitalism. Marx has turned the philosophical notions of alienation into a concept of the social sciences by relating it to the analysis and critique of specific social formations.

Revitalizing the concept of alienation The social theory of alienation that combines a radical critique of society with Humanism revived in interpretations of the early writings of Marx (1971) only after World War II. It had almost sunk into oblivion during the Stalinist area of authoritarian socialist states and the dominance of sociological functionalism (cf Schaff, 1968). The revival of the alienation discussion was partly supported by the reception of Marx in France in the critique of everyday life in capitalism (cf Lefebvre, 1977). Lefebvre's topic is everyday-consciousness, seen as a fragmentary consciousness concerning the unity of individual and society. Because work is extremely partialized and rationally organized in social-technological structures of production and administration, man can develop concrete needs only outside the world of work. Thus, the potential for new social movements which is formed outside of the sphere of production against economic, political and social grievances is included in the analysis of consequences of alienated labour for everyday consciousness. This notion was taken up by Seve (1978) who has constructed a new perspective for understanding the development of personality structure in capitalist societies. His theoretical analysis centers less on the consequences of alienated work on consciousness but on the use and development of individual skills and competence. Just as the satisfaction of primary needs through work and its products is impossible, the development of skills in wage-labour cannot be realized and has to be referred to private and concrete activities. Alienation thus not only leads to false consciousness but to a crippling of human competence. The division of man between the spheres of work and private life reduces the "schedule" of the individual by restricting his biography to a repetitive utilization of his working power without the option to improve his skills by being engaged in meaningful work activities. Seve concludes that under those conditions the individual suffers under a severely restricted rate of personality growth. This conception of alienation signals the necessity to reconstruct the social personality from the work biography in connection with the restrictions for developing the whole range of human competence.

Alienation theory in social sciences

21

Alienation theory in social sciences In sociology the alienation theme has been taken up first in succession of Marx by the "Critical Theory" (The Frankfurt School). In this tradition social criticism and psychoanalysis were combined to explain alienation by referring to organized repression of drives and the illusion of freedom in leisure and consumption in advanced industrial societies. The influential conception of "one-dimensional man" (Marcuse, 1964) for instance relates alienation to the inability of man - due to the social power structure for developing new forms of need satisfaction which could succeed against the routine organization of work and the dominance of consumption and entertainment industries. This conception of alienation is still bound to the tradition of Marx and is substantially different from empirical alienation research in social psychology which, despite referring to Marx, is much closer to the functional tradition of French (E. Dürkheim) and American social science. Here the relationship between individual and society is analyzed from the point of view of functional prerequisites for stability and continuity in society. The concept of "anomie" is introduced to designate the state of societal disintegration which according to Dürkheim is due to increasing division of labour and decreasing solidarity among the members of society. Anomie has become a key concept for diagnosing a badly integrated society (cf Merton, 1968). Contrary to the Marxian tradition the causes for instability and social antagonism are seen in a lack of normative commitment of individuals to the demands of society. Empirical alienation research started with the anomie-scale by Srole (1956) which measures psychological dissatisfaction rather than social circumstances; the construction of an alienation-scale by Seeman (1959) and studies in industrial sociology on the relationship between work organization and technology on the one hand and alienation or work dissatisfaction on the other by Blauner (1964). This secularisation of the alienation concept is based on social psychological dimensions of alienation, measured as attitudes towards various characteristics of work and life situations. The social psychology of alienation starts from the assumption that a discrepancy between potential and actual social practice determines everyday-life which is expressed in a lack of individual control over economic and political processes. Seeman (1959; 1972) has differentiated the global alienation concept into six variants or dimensions in order to capture alienation as a social attitude more comprehensively: 1. Powerlessness or the feeling of having little control over events and institutions 2. Meaninglessness or the feeling of incomprehensible personal and social relationships 3. Normlessness or the expectation that socially accepted goals can only be achieved with illegitimate means 4. Cultural rejection or opposition against generally shared values of society or of various groups 5. Self-alienation or being involved in activities that are not satisfying in themselves, i. e. do not provide intrinsic satisfaction 6. Social isolation or the feeling to be socially rejected or excluded. Seeman's alienation scale is used in most empirical studies of alienating experiences in the world of work and the political system. Furthermore, questionnaires or scales have

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Alienation

been developed that refer to specific institutional areas, for example bureaucracies (Aiken and Hägen, 1966) and industrial firms (Shepard, 1971). In empirical alienation research subjective attitudes are studied rather than objective conditions of the social structure. This research approach has been criticised for lacking an analysis of the latent structure which relates these six dimensions. There seems to be an implicit assumption concerning a universal, thus unhistorical theory of needs which is linked to a simple learning mechanism for explaining alienation as a consequence of frustrated expectations to be able to control conditions and events in the environment. In industrial sociology alienation used to be defined as a syndrome consisting of various objective conditions and subjective feelings and attitudes which result from relationships between workers and the social-technical organization of the firm (cf Blauner, 1964). Accordingly, alienation exists when workers 1. cannot control their immediate work process, 2. cannot build a feeling of meaningful work that relates their activities to the entire work organization, 3. do not belong to an integrated community of workers, and 4. do not succeed to realize themselves in work activities.

Recent trends Interest in alienation theory and research has dropped after the decline of protest movements in the sixties. Because of its critical orientation and importance for understanding the relation of social structure and the individual the conception of alienation has not yet lost its importance for explaining and studying social contradictions and subjective ambivalence (cf Seeman, 1983; Schweitzer and Geyer, 1989). In view of continuing rationalization in the world of work, mass unemployment and the fundamental crisis of socialist states and world-wide ecological problems, the conceptual framework of alienation theory still is relevant. Relations between objective conditions at work (restrictive labour) and psychological characteristics (self-determination and intellectual flexibility) are studied by Kohn and his co-workers (Kohn and Schooler, 1983) in a far reaching research programme, including the alienation perspective. It was possible to discover relationships between control opportunities at work and instrumental attitudes toward the job on the one hand and compensating efforts of workers in the private sphere. Automation, computerized production and administration processes have not only made work more efficient but also more stressful and controlled. The feeling of powerlessness grows with the experience of being trapped in anonymous organizations and to be dependent on huge information monopolies. The growing utilization of information and communication technology furthermore reinforces the tendency towards a more rationalistic and individualistic conception of work (cf Erikson and Vallas, 1990). The core tradition of alienation analysis has also been taken up in discussions of ethical directives and practical strategies for de-alienation and social change. Competing notions of praxis and moral agency and the analysis of social experiments with

Bibliography

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participatory democracy and workers' self-management in Yugoslavia and the Kibbutz are being connected with alienation studies (Schweitzer and Geyer, 1989). In international debates about the future of alienation research there is a more constructive discourse concerning the old controversy between " objectivistic" and "subjectivistic" positions in alienation theory (cf Geyer and Schweitzer, 1981; Shoham, 1982). This promises not only advances in connecting structural and action theories as well as attitude and survey research with case studies but also contributes to political praxis and social movements. Bibliography Aiken, M. and J. Hägen: Organizational Alienation. A Comparative Analysis', American Sociological Review 31, 1966: 539-548. Blauner, R.: Alienation and Freedom. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964. Erikson, K. and J.P. Vallas (eds.): The Nature of Work. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1990. Geyer, F.R. and D. Schweitzer (eds.): Alienation: Problems of Meaning. Theory and Method. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Israel, J.: Der Begriff Entfremdung. Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1972. Kohn, M. and C. Schooler: Work and Personality. Norwood, N.J., Ablex, 1983. Lefebvre, H.: Critique de la vie quotidienne. Paris, Grasset, 1958 (1947). Marcuse, H.: One-Dimensional Man. Boston, Beacon Press 1964. Marx, K.: Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf). Berlin-Ost, Dietz, 1953. Marx, K.: Die Frühschriften. Stuttgart, Kröner, 1971. Merton, R.K.: Social Theory and Social Structure. New York and London, Free Press, 1968. Meszaros, I.: Marx's Theory of Alienation. London, Merlin Press 1970: Schaff, Α.: Marxismus und das menschliche Individuum. Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1969. Schweitzer. D. and F.R. Geyer (eds.): Alienation Theories and De-Alienation Strategies. Northwood, Science Reviews, 1989. Seeman, M.: 'On the Meaning of Alienation', American Sociological Review, 24, 1959: 783-791. Seeman, M.: 'Alienation and Engagement', in A. Campbell and P.E. Converse (eds.), The Human Meaning of Social Change. New York, Sage Foundation, 1972. Seeman, M.: 'Alienation Motives in Contemporary Theorizing: The Hidden Continuity of the Classic Themes', Socialpsychological Quarterly, 46, 1983; 171-184. Seve, L.: Man in Marxist theory and the psychology of personality. Sussex, Harvester P., 1978. Shepard, J.M.: Automation and Alienation. A Study of Office and Factory Workers. Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press, 1971. Shoham, S.G. (ed.): Alienation and Anomie Revisited. Messina: Centre of Sociological Studies, 1982. Srole, L.: 'Social Integration and Certain Corollaries', American Sociological Review, 21, 1956: 706-716.

Walter R. Heinz

Anarchism The emergence of anarchism as a social and political theory is one of the outcomes of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Anarchism is the last and radical offspring of the theory of the social contract and natural-law conceptions of the 'good society', social justice and social equality. As a social theory and social movement, anarchism embraces a broad spectrum of theoretical conceptions and practical tendencies, with the idea of the rejection of all forms of social and state coercion as their common denominator within the framework of such a heterogeneous spectrum of ideas and practical tendencies, ranging from the extreme individualism of Max Stirner to the radical libertarian communism of Peter Kropotkin, which all happen to be found under the same heading of anarchism. Given the character of this encyclopedia, the analysis and presentation of that version of anarchism connected with the labour movement and with the subject of Worker's participation and co-management will remain at the centre of our attention. In this sense, the founding-father of anarchism as a social theory and a movement for workers' participation and self-management is Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865). Proudhon was the first social theoretician to call himself an anarchist and also the first one who, contrary to the traditional pejorative use of the term, in 1842 (Proudhon, 1970) used the term governmentlessness (gr. an-archie) in its positive meaning. The influence of the voluminous and inherently contradictory works of this self-made philosopher were felt not only in the labour movement but also in the whole political spectrum from revolutionary trade-unionism to the French nationalistic Right. For our purposes it will suffice to present P.J. Proudhon as the theorist of mutualism, federalism, workers' management and participation. Proudhon, as well as all later anarchists, never treated participation and co-management as independent variables; they were only seen in the context of the global project of total social change. There is no anarchist author who has perceived participation in decision-making or in management as a variable independent from relations on the macro-social level. Therefore, for anarchists participation is always over-all and direct participation, i.e., workers' self-management (co-management is a priori rejected as insufficient), and public (communal) property is the only or dominant form of property. The other fundamental feature of the anarchist concept of participation also inaugurated by Proudhon, is its understanding not only as a complete but as a global and total one. The organization that is the industrial or agricultural plant is not the only place where participation occurs. On the contrary, it takes place in every social structure and is of the same over-all intensity in every single social subsystem. Hence, participation is the basic social process both on the macro- and micro-level (Proudhon, 1923). The third fundamental characteristic of the anarchist understanding participation (not necessarily also Proudhon's) stems from the anarchist demand for direct and complete realization of their social ideal: the society without state and coercion. Hence participation, direct, complete, global and total is to be realized here and now, in each moment and under all circumstances (Bakunin, 1967; Kropotkin, 1903; Bookchin, 1978). Contrary to Proudhon, later anarchists abandoned the idea of gradual transition, and especially of gradual transition from society as it is to the one that should be. So far anarchists, whenever in

The history of the concept

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social power, have always introduced participation in associations and communes, whatever the circumstances were, and this makes anarchism as a social movement a movement for participation. The fourth characteristic of the anarchist understanding of participation is that it springs from their specific concept of decentralization, i.e. federalism. Social structure as a whole is build contrary to the principle of state centralism, from below and voluntarily (Proudhon, 1959; Kropotkin, 1927). The basic subjects of anarchist society are the association and the commune that voluntarily enter confederations of communes and associations. For these reasons, the anarchist understanding of participation and co-management is in fact that of direct economic and political democracy. Some anarchists, Proudhon for example, combine direct and representative democracy on the global social level, while communist anarchists, such as P. Kropotkin, advocate the concept of unmediated direct democracy both on the microand macro-level.

The history of the concept Contrary to many of his followers, Proudhon's views of the complexity of society, of social structures and the autonomy of social sub-systems were very clear. The state is a confederation of sovereign communes; the commune is the primary and original political community, while the mutualistic economy is neither communal nor state - it is an autonomous social sub-system immanently connected through the market (Proudhon, 1924) in which, apart from competition, the principle of solidarity, of the mutualism of workers' associations also exists. Mutualism in general and workers' self-management in particular appear in Proudhon's concept as an anti-thesis to etatist socialism. They stem organically from the economy perceived as an autonomous social sub-system and, with due respect for the principle of pluralist property. Proudhon differentiates three kinds of enterprises and property: state (postal services), capitalist (railways) and workers' associations. The latter are associations of stock-holders and workers. The stockholders and workers share profit (gain). The workers' part is distributed among them according to their skills, occupations, etc. In the administrative board of an enterprise, workers' representatives make for a half or a third of members. Beside this body, there are also the supervisory board and the enterprise management consisting of managers. The state is entitled to monitor the functioning of the administrative and supervisory boards but not to intervene in their work and the activities of workers' associations (Proudhon, 1967). Once the term of concession has ended, an enterprise becomes exclusively workers' property and associations turn completely participative, i.e. the system of workers' self-management is introduced. These ideas of Proudhon were embodied in the Paris Commune of 1871, and through it since then, directly and indirectly, have been influencing the whole spectrum of socialist ideas and theories and movements for participation. Karl Marx was the most historically relevant 'Proudhonian' of this kind. In his Civil War in France he took over completely Proudhon's ideas of the commune and workers' self-management - without even mentioning the authors name (Marx, 1968). In the next generation of anarchists, the most outstanding of Proudhon's followers was the Russian revolutionary Mihail Bakunin

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Anarchism

(1814-1876), with his late book Statehood and Anarchy (1873). Bakunin took from Proudhon the idea of the society structured from the bottom upwards as a confederated organic community of associations and communes. It is a society bereft of state and political coercion, of private property and positive law. Instead of the market, an "identity of interests and social aspirations becomes the connecting function in the economy". This holistic vision leaves no place for the autonomy of social sub-systems or for the consideration of concrete forms of participation and co- or self-management. The same objection applies to the voluminous work of the founder of communist anarchism, Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). The foundations of anarchist communism are the common ownership of the means of production and distribution according to needs. Global society is a mosaic of completely sovereign and otherwise entirely self-sufficient communes. The associations function within communes but are completely independent in their activities. The decision-making principle is general consensus, while instead of a market a natural exchange of goods operates. Since there is no distribution of labour, there is no economy in a modern sense (Kropotkin, 1903 and 1927). As with Bakunin, Kropotkin's concept of participation can be only judged indirectly: participation is total and over-all, in fact the only social relationship. Further elaboration of these principles never occurred in spite of Kropotkin's voluminous writing on the revisionistic interpretation of the French Revolution and Paris Commune (Kropotkin, 1893 and 1927) in the neo-darwinian anti-malthusian anthropological term of mutual aid (Kropotkin, 1902). In a somewhat different light the problem of participation appears in Kropotkin's critique of Bolshevism. Already after the first Russian Revolution of 1905, Kropotkin reformulated his previous Utopian view as a kind of revolutionary trade-unionism. He now proclaimed a "new form of social life founded upon a federation of trade unions" (Kropotkin, 1908). After the October Revolution, his bitter criticism focused on the very principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat and etatist socialism. As a solution to the crisis of communism in Russia, Kropotkin suggested the introduction of workers' self-management (instead of the dictatorial authority of the management) and the participatory democracy of the soviets (Kropotkin, 1970 and 1972). The handing over of factories to workers, i.e. the demand for participation in the form of workers' self-management as a dominant economic relationship, apart from institutions of state and state power, was also advocated by other anarchist critics of Bolshevism (Fabbri, 1921; Arshinov, 1924; Goldman, 1965; Pestana, 1964). Thus implicitly, the anarchist demand for direct, global, complete and total participation always and everywhere, whatever the circumstances might be, was given up. This 'realistic' trend of modern anarchism has also been present among the recent authors who stress participation within their critique of modern capitalism (Read, 1974; Bookchin, 1978) and etatist socialism (Iztok, 1987), as well as among those who perceive new technologies as an objective foundation of self-management as an over-all direct democracy (Bertolo, 1979).

The practice of the concept The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first attempt at a practical realization of the anarchist concept of participation and communal self-management. All the other

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anarchist attempts to realize a society of economic and political equality have also occurred under the time and space limits and specific conditions of civil war. These were highly specific historical circumstances marked, in contrast to the regular state of affairs, by complete mass mobilization, for its part a necessary precondition for the anarchist concept of direct democracy. While the Paris Commune of 1871 was inspired by Proudhon, the other three attempted realizations of the anarchist concept of participation followed the model of Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread (1903). During the Mexican uprising of 1911 the Tiujuana and Mexicala communes were established as a here and now attempt to realize anarchist communism (Magon, 1977). In this respect, European experiences, which fall into two categories, have been far more important. One category is represented by the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 (February and October), the soviet republic in Germany and Hungary 1918-1919, and the Hungarian revolution of 1956. These social revolutions attempted to realize a concept of workers' self-management or participation close or even similar to the anarchist one, with anarchists themselves or anarchism as such being far from dominant factors in the events. To the other category belongs the Makhno movement in the South Ukraine 1918-1921 and, so far, the most important practical experience of anarchist communes (collectives) in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. The practical activities of the Makhno movement have not been sufficiently studied yet, while anarchist interpretations of their functioning (Voline, 1975) or malfunctioning (Arshinov, 1924) during the uprising completely disagree. The efficiency and mass functioning of anarchist communes during the Spanish Civil War are, however, indisputable as is the case with the attempts to introduce workers' self-management in Catalonian industries and the railways. With regard to participation as such, it is essential that it functioned in its direct, complete, over-all and total form in spite of all the differences between the particular types of collectives and communes, as well as the other differing aspects of these institutions, functioning close to the principles of anarchist communism but not necessarily of participatory democracy (Mintz, 1970; Dolgoff, 1977). Whether participation of this kind was an outcome of the extraordinary circumstances and energies brought about by civil war remains open. In this context, the fact that participation was also the result of the efforts of an anarchist organization Confederation National de Trabajo, and not only of mere spontaneity, should be taken into account. In this regard the CNT Programme of the Barcelona Congress (1936) is worth mentioning: it insists on the establishment of a libertarian communist society, here and now, with communes and other supplementary organizations, including federations of communes and industrial associations as its means. Remuneration is according to needs, while the whole complicated mechanism of social life is regulated without the market, money and coercion - but by agreements and employees' coupons, the commune is an autochthone self-governing body based upon direct, unmediated and total self-management. The communal council is constituted upon the delegate principle of representatives of the territorial-, interest-, and productive groups with direct participation in decision-making, i.e. without executive bodies (Peirats, 1955). The third dimension of the anarchist concept of self-management, or rather direct democracy, is its both conscious and unconscious reappearance in various other versions of socialism. On the one hand, Marx's booklet Civil War in France has legitimated its appearance in various versions of Marxism, including its mockery in the theory and

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Anarchism

practice of the Soviet Marxism: Lenin subjected the soviets to the Party; and thirty years later, workers' self-management in Yugoslavia, initiated by the Party leadership from above as an ideological legitimization in its conflict with Stalin, turned into a mere manipulative means of legitimatirtg the power of informal, non-elected and uncontrolled oligarchical groups on the micro- and macro-level (Sekelj, 1987a). On the other hand, Israeli kibbutzim have their anarchist dimension, both ideologically and, even more, practically. They successfully function as a realization of anarchist principles of participation and (self-) management, and contrary to anarchists, they clearly differentiate the macro-social level - with its quite different structural principles to which kibbutzim continually adapt - from the micro-level of kibbutzim, namely collectives and direct democracy (Sekelj, 1987). This difference kept in mind, as well as the fact that modern society is highly complex and all its strata are permeated with ideologies of growth and consumption, a modification of Proudhon's original idea of workers' self-management has its place within a new libertarian socialist challenge to the modern welfare state from the stand-point of a new quality of life. However, more radical anarchist concepts of participation, or rather direct democracy, should remain inspiring, regulative ideas alone. Bibliography Arshinov, Pjotr: Istoria Makhnovskogo dvizhenia 1918-1921. Berlin, 1924. Bakunin, Mihail: Gosudarstvennost iAnarhija. Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1967. Bertolo, Amadeo: 'Pour une definition nouvelle des nouveaux patrons', in Les Nouveaux Patrons. Onze etudes sur la technobureaucratie. Geneve, 1979. Bookchin, Murray: Post-Scarcity Anarchism. Montreal, Black Rose, 1978. Dolgoff, Sam (ed.): The Anarchist Collectives. New York, 1977. Fabbri, Luigi: Dittatura e rivoluzione. Ancona, 1921. Goldman, Emma: Living My Life. New York, Dover, 1965. Iztok collective: 'Predlozi za drustvo bez drzave', in L. Sekelj (ed.), 1987: 312-322. Kropotkin, Petar: La grande revolution 1789-1793. Paris, 1893. Kropotkin, Petar: Mutual Aid-A Factor of Evolution. London, 1902. Kropotkin, Petar: The Conquest of Bread. London, 1903. Kropotkin, Petar: Syndikalismus und Anarchismus. Berlin, Der Syndikalist, 1908. Kropotkin, Petar: Revolutionary Pamphlets. Rodger N. Baldwin, ed.; New York, Dover Books, 1927. Kropotkin, Petar: An die Arbeiter des Westens', in A. Borries and E. Brandies (eds.), Anarchismus. Theorie. Kritik. Utopie. Frankfurt, 1970. Kropotkin, Petar: 'Brief von Peter Kropotkin', in Th. Pinkus (ed.), Briefe nach der Schweiz. Zürich, Limmat, 1972. Magon, Ricardo Flores: Land and Liberty. Orkney, Configueros Press, 1977. Marx, Karl: 'Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich. Adresse des Generalrats der Internationalen Arbeiterassoziation', in Marx-Engels- Werke. Band 17, Berlin, Dietz, 1968. Mintz, Frank: L'Autogestion dans l'Espagne revolutionnaire. Paris, 1970. Peirats, Jose (ed.): La CNTen la revoluciön espanola. Buenos Aires, 1955: 125-135. Pestana, Angel: Setenta dias en Rusia. Barcelona, 1964. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph: General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century. London, 1923. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph: De la capacite politique des classes ouvrieres. Oeuvres completes. Paris, Riviere, 1924.

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Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph: Du principe federatif. Oeuvres completes. Paris, Riviere, 1959. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph: What is Property? An Enquiry into the Principle and Right of Government. New York, 1970. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph: Oeuvres Choisies. Jean Bancal (ed.); Paris, Gallimard, 1967: 65-73, 128-129. Read, Herbert: Anarchy and Order. London, Freedom Press, 1974. Sekelj, Laslo (ed.): Ο anarhizmu. Beograd, IIC, 1987. Sekelj, Laslo: 'The League of Communists of Yugoslavia: A Power or Consciousness Elite?', Socialism and Democracy, 6/1987a. Voline (V.M. Eichenbaum): The Unknown Revolution. New York, The Free Life Editors, 1975.

Laslo

Sekelj

Asia Vast diversity amongst the countries of Asia is exemplified by the variegated experiences of individual countries in the 1980s. The decade represented an era of development for some. At the same time, it was a decade of decline for other countries. The IMF's (International Monetary Fund) recent report (IMF, 1989) discloses that the strong performance of developing countries as a group in which real GDP grew by 4.5 percent in 1988, is concentrated largely in Asian countries. It also appears that some large but low-income countries in Asia are operating under their potential. In addition, they harbour not only a large proportion of the global population but also some of the world's poorest people. A historical comparison will probably show those countries that have already set out on the path of democratic evolution, e.g. Japan, Thailand, have managed to stay in command of their own destiny. And those that persist to continue clinging on to old patterns of political power while resorting to brutal repression and severe restriction of oppositional forces will be faced with political chaos, recurring crisis and economic decline viz Burma and Bangladesh. The problems confronting Asia will not be resolved by throwing money at them or by accelerating industrial growth. In an attempt to provide a new philosophy for Third World Development in the final decade of the 20th century, the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), after taking a long, hard look at prospects for Third World Development in the 1990s concluded that we are not on a course towards a sustainable civilisation. Says the OECD, growth has to be balanced across all economic sections, including agriculture and development must be "participatory." This will involve rural reforms, education spending and speeding up on the democratic process. Only through shifting emphasis towards improving educational standards can the factors which contribute to unbalanced development be tackled. Better education will lead to greater political and social awareness and to more demands for democracy and public accountability. This in turn will make a series of issues - from corruption to income disparity - more susceptible to solutions. Witness how some experience with successful development efforts and early steps toward democratisation in countries like Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia, albeit small in themselves, have set the momentum for increasing demand for more liberation and social equality. For the first time in history, Indonesia, a low wage country has in 1990 taken private companies to court for failing to pay the minimum wage. A recent survey in Djakarta shows 70 percent of employers pay less than US $ 0,90 (1,600 rupiah) a day base wage required by law. Some pay as little as 850 rupiah (International Herald Tribune, 30 March, 1990). When the Manpower Minister declared 1990 as the "Year of Wages" he said there was a need to put violations in the headlines. In conjunction with such moves to dispel mass dissatisfaction, President Suharto in his 1990 Budget Speech (January) called on the private sector to sell stock to co-operatives in order to boost peoples' share

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of the economy. This directive was further underlined in March of the same year in a televised meeting with Indonesia's 30 most successful businessmen who were provided the specific guide-line that companies should sell 25 percent of their equity to co-operatives. The suggestion was that private firms should lend money to cooperatives to buy shares. Dividends on those share should repay the loans. In addition, when turning over equity to Indonesians under the indigenisation program, foreign firms were advised to give priority to co-operatives. A similar response to popular demands for liberalisation and democratisation was registered in India in March 1990. The Finance Minister in his Budget Speech announced a plan for share issue to employees by state-owned companies in order to give public-sector employees a greater sense of participation in the economy. Attempts at structural transformation such as those currently envisaged by Indonesia and India and including land reform programmes implemented in Korea, Taiwan and Japan in the recent past can indeed unleash the productive power of the masses. But without democratic participation in decision-making in matters affecting their daily lives, fundamental problems with regard to corruption and underdevelopment of the human potential will remain. For instance, the 1988 Report by the World Bank said that 1,272 of Indonesia's 6,000 rural credit co-operatives were insolvent but not entirely hopeless while 1,658 should be dissolved or liquidated (International Herald Tribune 16 March 1990). The same story of fraud and deceit was repeated for the co-operative movement in neighbouring Malaysia over the past three years. Dispersion of ownership is indeed the common strategy adopted by some countries in Asia when confronted by widespread public demands for democratisation and liberalisation. It is a less painful alternative which can only stave off popular pressure for the short term. As the proportion of total national wealth involved in redistribution exercises is minuscule, it does not at the same time threaten to change existing patterns of decision-making control. For instance, in the case of the move by Pakistan in October 1989 to privatise seven major companies, it was deemed essential that employees participate in the equity issue and, in keeping with the socialist pretensions of the ruling party, ceilings were imposed on equity participation by both local and foreign investors. But since the state still retained 49 per cent stake in the companies, this will ensure that management will remain in the hands of top-heavy bureaucracy of the public sector. Other stipulations to ensure continuity of management policies had led some to suspect the whole operation was designed only to raise money for funds-starved social programmes. Thus, the essence of democratic participation, the arena of decision-making at the level of the productive unit remains entrenched within the folds of top management and bureaucracy. Considering the fact that moves toward wealth redistribution have been made more often than not to prevent escalation of "social envy and even social disturbance" - a phrase used by President Suharto to justify recent moves to establish a more equitable society and participative politics the objective of democratisation of decision making can only be a small part of the consideration. There is still a genuine apprehension that broader participation is incompatible with economic success and political stability. Restless surge of demands for popular participation, at least in the fast growing economies of Asia has been dismissed as "Western" and therefore unsuitable for denizens schooled in traditions of Eastern cultures. Manoeuvring the revival of tradition

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and Confucian ideology to serve as justification and perhaps as ploy for not popularising decision making to the masses is one way of getting around the problem. For instance, the Korean government in the first quarter of 1990 when embroiled in a bitter battle with teachers wanting to form a union, declared that unions are "undignified" for the teachers of the nations' children. The government then proceeded to arrest, dismiss and discipline hundreds of teachers, including two who were seized by police from their hospital beds after a hunger strike. "The government's rationale is that teachers are not labourers and unions go against the value system of a Confucianist society" said Park Y.K. of the Labour and Management Institute at Seoul's So Gang University. More systematic and determined application of Confucian ideology is found in Singapore where religious studies in schools will be replaced by Civics Studies including the teaching of Confucian ethics after May-June 1987 arrest of 16 young social workers including Catholic lay workers. Prime Minister Lee had taken exception to the Church's stand proclaimed in a statement issued on 28 May that teachings on justice in social, political and economic affairs were part of the mission and tradition of the church world-wide. Ironically, better educated Singaporeans who constitute model workers for capitalist enterprises at the same time have greater tendency to convert to Christianity which has only recently been radicalised in neighbouring Philippines. The position of Asian countries along the trajectory to democracy vary widely. In countries like Nepal, Burma, Mongolia and North Korea, external events like the collapse of one-party communist regimes in Eastern Europe as well as popular agitations of domestic based groups demanding political reforms have kicked off initial measures to bring in multi-party elections or some semblance of it to project a more reformist image. Despite the existence of state repressive apparatus, for instance, the power of the military to conduct summary trials (Martial Law Decrees 1/89) and ban of gatherings of more than four persons (decree 2/88) in Burma, a start has been made. But even in countries like Japan, India, and Singapore where national politics has long been based on parliamentary democracy, one-party rule has been the norm rather than the exception. Globalization and increasing competition can only enhance this trend. And though the right to unionise is already an entrenched legal right in such countries (note, the Japan Trade Union Confederation is the Western world's fourth-largest labour group after the US AFL-CIO, Germany's DGB and Britain's TUC with a membership of about 8 million), squeezed by declining profit margins, labour demands have to be moderated. With competitive edge in technology and manufacturing cost eroding under pressure of high labour costs and stronger currencies and volatility of global markets, conditions are indeed conducive for enhanced labour - employer cooperation rather than confrontation. Given these circumstances ripe for industrial democracy to unleash the massive potential force present in human labour, employers are even still reluctant to switch to democratic forms of management at the workplace. If ever participation is encouraged and rewarded, work intensification has also followed. The Japanese System of labour participation so much lauded in the West, has in fact been described by some (including both insiders and outsiders) as the perfect instrument under which wastage can be cut, employee efforts maximised and literally "stretched beyond endurance on the production line." (Satoshi, 1984: 212). The Japanese have indeed perfected the Taylorist system in its aim of maximising labour effort. (Dohse et al., 1985; Kenney/Florida, 1988)

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In recent years, Japan has grown into the world's second most powerful economy and so has emerged as a model for Asian countries aspiring to combine affluence with reasonably high degree of political freedom. The increasing cohesive regional economies of North America and Europe have forced Japan to reassess its relations with the rest and Asia. And since the 1985 revaluation of the yen Japanese direct investment has grown by 50 percent a year to South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore and by 100 percent a year to the rest of ASEAN. As of September 1989, Japan's total investment in Asia reached US $ 36 billion, a sixth of its total world wide investment (Far Eastern Economic Review, 3 May 1990). In Asia's case, trade and investment has been followed by Karaoke bars, Japanese pop music and most important, Japanese designed industrial structures including managerial culture and house unions. Asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore which for long have remained under the aegis of British cultural hegemony are now scraping existing national systems of strong national unions to replace them with Japanese style house unions which in a way are culturally similar to those found in small Chinese companies. In fact, elements of paternalism and ethics of working for survival so prominent in most of East Asia's traditional cultures ensure that the Japanese system of management will be easily absorbed. To such a great extent is the similarity between these countries that for instance, the Japanese have dubbed Singapore as "Little Tokyo". Other Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia which are resource rich and therefore do not have traditions encouraging intense competition and striving for survival may find the work intensification aspects of Japanese management systems repulsive and unacceptable. The current wave of religious revivalism in both these countries may reflect underlying rejection of the ethos of capitalist development. On the contrary, an intrinsic part of Islam, the state religion in both these countries, is that decision-making has to be carried out via the process of "musyawara" or debate and discussion. The indigenous tradition of many Asian countries like Thailand and the Philippines eschew egoism and competition to emphasize collectivism and collaboration. Any form of industrial democracy would thus find fertile ground for development under these circumstances. This may explain why tripartism has taken root easily in Asia and is now commonly found in the region. For instance in Thailand, tripartism has been adopted as the major industrial relations strategy since the mid-1970s. Of the seven tripartite bodies currently in existence, two function as advisory committees: the National Advisory Council of Labour Development and the Labour Relations Promotion Committees. Five have decision-making authority: the Wage Committee, the Labour Relations Committee, the Workmen's Compensation Fund Committee, the Occupational Safety Standards Committee, and the Labour Court. In countries where elements of paternalism still have a hold on the population and where the ravages of internationalization pose a constant threat to national competitiveness, tripartism will increasingly be nurtured as an instrument to bridge the divergence of labour-capital interests. Korea in recent years has sent teams to observe how tripartism has successfully helped Singapore over the past decade to maintain a record strike-free model of development. But, as the case of Singapore has proved, without a strong government to reign in the distinctive demands of labour and capital their interests are disparate enough that policy stalemate has become increasingly a real possibility. With increasing levels of education and emphasis on training, labour confidence will grow

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while at the same time heightened awareness of their rights will make it more difficult to mute their demands, especially during periods of prolonged recession. Bibliography Dohse, K.; Jürgens, U. and T. Malsch: 'From "Fordism" to "Toyotism"? The Social Organization of the Labour Process in the Japanese Automobile Industry', in Politics and Society. 14 (2) 1985: 115-146. Far Eastern Economic Review, 'Japan in Asia', 3 May, 1990: 46. International Herald Tribune: 'Indonesia Prosecutes Low Payers', 3 May, 1990: 17. International Monetary Fund: World Economic Outlook. Washington D.C., April 1989. Kenney, Μ. and R. Florida: 'Beyond Mass Production: Production and the Labour Process in Japan', in Politics and Society 16 (1) 1988: 121-158. Satoshi, Kamata: Japan in the Passing Lane. Counterpoint, London, 1984.

Hing Ai Yun

Australia The idea of worker participation was very slow to take root in Australia. Industrial relations were dominated for many years by the system of compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes which dates from the 1890s. Although arbitration was originally supposed to deal with disputes, its range has extended to cover the whole field of industrial relations, and the result is a vast mosaic of awards, agreements and determinations covering every conceivable aspect of working life. Industrial relations thus acquired a quasi-judicial, legal-bureaucratic character which has inhibited development in areas such as worker participation. The rigidity of this system was frequently criticized by academic students and by practitioners, and the pressure for change grew rapidly during the 1970s. The Whitlam Labour government (1972-75) encouraged new thinking about industrial relations and set up the Trade Union Training Authority (TUTA) which has exercised considerable influence on recent generations of trade union officials. The impetus continued under successive national governments and was also picked up at the state government level. The first major national conference on industrial democracy was organized by the South Australian state government in 1978. In the same year, the Fraser (conservative) government published an official statement of policy concerning 'employee participation', which is the term preferred by the conservative parties. According to this statement, employee participation was seen as: "an approach to work structures and relationships involving the provision of opportunities for individual employees to influence decisions concerning their work and work environment. The Government recognises that employee participation practices embrace information sharing, work reorganisation, joint consultation, joint decision making and self-management."

The Fraser government also indicated that it opposed prescriptive legislation, but would encourage participation in joint programmes involving redesign of the workplace and representative systems for joint decision making. It also set up a national steering committee, chaired by a government minister, to advise the government on policies, techniques and programmes. Although this committee produced a few useful reports, not much action resulted during the lifetime of the Fraser government. Some of the state governments were more active, especially those where the Labour Party was in power. In South Australia, the government set up a special unit to promote industrial democracy, which operated from 1974 to 1980; in New South Wales, worker-directors were appointed to the boards of government business enterprises. The union movement, apprehensive about the possibility that employee participation and joint consultation might be used to undercut the role of unions, adopted a policy at the annual congress of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in 1977, which emphasized that participation was a democratic right and that unions should play a central role. In 1978, the peak association of employers, the Confederation of Australian Industry (CAI) issued its own statement which emphasized participation by individual employees. This approach was similar to the viewpoint espoused in the Fraser government's policy statement of the same year.

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The Amalgamated Metalworkers' Union (AMWU), one of the largest and most active sections of the union movement, was instrumental in developing a new strategy from 1979 onwards. This was at a time when the Australian economy was facing external difficulties, with a consequent rise in unemployment and downward pressure on wages. The ACTU response was to press for greater union involvement in decision-making, both at the national and at the plant levels. This policy was worked out in consultation with the Labour Party leadership, and put into practice when a national Labour government was elected early in 1983. Later that year, the government negotiated an agreement with the ACTU and the peak associations of employers concerning prices and incomes. This agreement, since renegotiated on several occasions, has entered into everyday Australian speech as 'The Accord'. It provided for co-operation between the government and the union movement in relation to wages, union amalgamations, restrictions on strike action, taxation and welfare benefits. The Accord has served as the centre-piece of the government's economic and industrial policy, and has been remarkably successful in achieving its objectives, although it has not brought about the improvements in productivity and efficiency which were hoped for. To a large extent, the Accord represents the application to Australia of Swedish-style corporatist principles. The Swedish model has been closely studied in Australia, and a detailed examination of its applicability to Australian conditions was published by the ACTU in 1987 under the title of Australia Reconstructed, which is the most ambitious document ever produced by the union movement. However, the Accord did not only embrace corporatism: it also committed the government and the unions to work towards industrial democracy at plant and industry levels. An important step in this regard was the publication of a so-called 'Green Paper' (i.e., a policy discussion document), entitled Industrial Democracy and Employee Participation, at the end of 1986. The Green Paper was supported by a series of research studies, summarized in a separate document called Diversity, Change and Tradition, which appeared at the same time. The research summary gives a number of examples of moves towards employee participation which have taken place in the 1970s and 1980s, some of which I shall quote below. The Green Paper restated the government's commitment to industrial democracy, while recognizing that it would not occur spontaneously and that no single model of participation could be imposed from above. Since it was published, the ACTU, the CAI, and the Business Council of Australia, the BCA (which represents the 80 largest corporations operating in the country) have issued a joint statement expressing similar sentiments. The government has also provided funds to support unions and employers who undertake experiments in participation. In addition, the Public Service Reform Act of 1984, which made a number of important changes in the structure of the national civil service, requires all government departments and agencies to develop plans for participation in consultation with the appropriate unions. In the state of Victoria, similar steps have been taken by the state government. The ACTU manifesto, Australia Reconstructed, contains the strongest and most detailed statement linking participation with industrial efficiency. It argues that participation needs to be closely integrated with other policies which will release the creative energies and talents of workers. Participation should be directed to promote the growth of productivity through the disclosure of information and agreements to improve the level of skill. The ACTU also argues in favour of a legislative framework for participation and the

Examples of participation and consultation

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establishment of national agreements. This approach involves a combination of participation at plant level with the retention of the centralized system of industrial tribunals. On this point, there remains a significant level of disagreement between the major employer organizations. The BCA, representing the larger employers, wants to dismantle the centralized system and to replace it by contracts negotiated at plant-level (commonly referred to as 'enterprise bargaining'). The CAI, representing small and medium-sized firms, is more inclined to accept unions as representatives of the employees and to work through the tribunal system, and in 1988 they issued a joint statement with the ACTU expressing this viewpoint. To conclude the chronicle, we shall mention the Industrial Relations Act of 1988, which established a new body called the Industrial Relations Commission to replace the former Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, with more widely defined powers and a specific emphasis on the need for joint consultation.

Examples of participation and consultation The research summary published with the Green Paper records developments (or lack of development) in a number of industries, including the following: printing and publishing food metals and engineering mining finance retailing In the case of printing and publishing, a study carried out by the printers' union (PKIU) found little progress and a lack of consultation between the three unions principally involved. A similar situation was reported in the food industry, which has been heavily affected by a succession of mergers and takeovers. Given the nature of such activities, not only the workers but the shareholders of the companies involved have been largely in the dark about the progress of events. In the case of mining, the relevant study found a number of examples of consultation, and concluded that 'in terms of the concept of industrial democracy employed here, the mining industry has achieved a good deal'. This concept was that 'workplace government should involve the participation, in rule making and administration, of those who will be subject to the rules of that government'. In the finance industry, there was little support for industrial democracy, either from the side of management or by the unions principally involved. There were two exceptions to this situation. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, owned and controlled by the Australian Government, has adopted policies in line with those laid down in the Public Service Reform Act of 1984. Although this Act does not bind government business enterprises, they are none the less responsive to government policy. The bank has its own union, the Commonwealth Bank Officers' Association, which received a grant under the industrial democracy promotion program to examine consultative mechanisms. The result was the establishment of a joint consultative committee on industrial democracy and equal employment opportunity. The finance

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industry report notes that this is 'a significant initiative in an industry which has been characterized by its reluctance to even consult unions, much less undertake a joint project to investigate participation'. The other exception in the finance industry concerns insurance, where the Australian Insurance Employees Union has adopted a policy of establishing consultative machinery and electing worker-directors. The matter has gone no further because of a 'blunt refusal' by the employers to consider any such possibilities. Metal manufacturing and engineering is one sector which has shown significant development, mainly because of the initiatives taken by the metal-workers' union, the AMWU. Surveys of employee participation have been undertaken by academic researchers, notably Stephen Frenkel of the University of New South Wales, and also by the main employers association, the MTIA. Frenkel wrote the research report on this sector for the Green Paper. He found a number of direct forms of participation at the shopfloor level, without union representation. Frenkel's respondents favoured direct consultation methods, which were considered to be most useful in relation to health and safety, productivity improvement groups ('quality circles'), and informal managementemployee meeting. Representative bodies involving health and safety were also relatively common, partly because of legal requirements. In a more recent study, Frenkel has also gone back to the printing and publishing sector, where 42 per cent of plants had established health and safety committees and 30 per cent had joint works committees. He concludes, however, that the record of achievement is small and that the obstacles to participation remain formidable. These include not only the rigidity imposed by the arbitration system, but the prevalence of small and medium-sized enterprises where the conditions for effective structures of consultation do not exist. In addition, only a minority of unions have a strong interest in industrial democracy. Finally, the changing structure of the work force is an obstacle because of the growth of part-time work, which now accounts for 20 per cent of employment, and also because of the effects of immigration from non-English speaking countries, which means that many workers labour under cultural handicaps. On balance, therefore, it appears that progress towards industrial democracy will remain slow and variable, depending on particular circumstances in particular industries. The fact that participation is now making headway in the public sector, however, is important and some of these gains will, sooner or later, flow through into the private sector. A recent development in the sphere of joint consultation arises from the problems facing public enterprises, either because of the threat of privatisation or because of enforced rationalization and staff cuts due to the unfavourable economic climate of the past decade. In some cases, unions and management have agreed to work together to formulate agreed policies concerning the future operations of the enterprise. A particularly interesting example involves Australia's largest employer, Telecom Australia, a public corporation with a monopoly of internal telecommunications services. This monopoly is now in question, and some operations could be hived off to private companies. Alternatively, Telecom may be merged with the other two main service providers - the Overseas Telecommunications Commission, also a public corporation, and Aussat, a mixed public-private concern which operates satellite services. Either alternative would entail major reorganization and/or staff reductions. Early in 1990, the

Bibliography

39

Australian government announced that it would make a decision before the end of the year. The management of Telecom, in consultation with the unions representing Telecom staff, decided to commission a consultant's report examining the alternatives, the consultant chosen was the H.V. Evatt Foundation, a private 'think tank' named after a former Labour Foreign Minister, which has strong labour movement connections. At the date of writing (August 1990) this study was under way, supervised by a steering committee including representatives of Telecom management, Telecom unions, and the Foundation. The success (or otherwise) of this development will undoubtedly influence other public employers to consider similar action and to formulate plans in consultation with the unions involved, rather than going ahead unilaterally and facing the industrial disruption which is likely to follow. (Telecom's current posture is influenced by earlier experiences of this kind). This form of industrial democracy shows significant promise. Bibliography Australian Council of Trade Unions: Australia Reconstructed. Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1987. CAI/ACTU: Joint Statement on Participative Practices. Melbourne, Bradley Press, 1988. Davis, Ε. M. and R. Lansbury (eds.): Democracy and Control in the Workplace. Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1986. Department of Employment and Industrial Relations: Industrial Democracy and Employee Participation. A Policy Discussion Paper. Canberra, AGPS, 1986. Department of Employment and Industrial Relations: Diversity, change and Tradition. Canberra, AGPS, 1986. Frenkel, S. J.: Employee Participation in Decision Making in the Metal and Engineering Industry. Canberra, AGPS, 1986. Frenkel, S.J. and M. Shaw: 'No Tears for the Second Tier', in Australian Bulletin of Labour, 15 (2) 1989: 90-114.

Sol

Encel

Austro-Marxism Origin and character The phrase "Austro-Marxism" - a brain-child of Louis Boudin, an American socialist became current in the years immediately before World War I as name for a group of "Viennese Young-Marxists" (K. Vorländer), who since the beginning of the century had become prominent as theorists, writers and lecturers within the Austrian Social-Democratic Labour Party. Max Adler (1873-1937), Otto Bauer (1881-1938), Gustav Eckstein (1875-1916), Rudolf Hilferding (1877-1941), Karl Renner (1870-1950), and later on also Friedrich Adler (1879-1960), were considered the outstanding figures of this "school" of Marxism, which arose in the metropolis of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The origins of this group lie in a socialist students' circle of the 1890s, which, benevolently promoted by Victor Adler (1852-1918), founder and leader of the workers' party, was mainly influenced by the orthodox Marxism of the Ex-Austrian Karl Kautsky (1854-1938). In their first works, which were influenced by the Revisionist controversy, published in the "Marx-Studien" (ed. M. Adler, R. Hilferding), a series of volumes begun in 1904, the Austro-Marxists attempted to justify their undogmatic understanding of orthodox Marxism by an original and ingenious argumentation, applying it to novel manifestations of capitalism. They published their views on theoretical and political questions of the Austrian and international labour movement in the Social Democratic monthly "Der Kampf', founded by O. Bauer, A. Braun and K. Renner in 1907. Beside their party-functions they considered workers' education, to which great importance was attached in Austria, their most important task. The Austrian modification of the Kautskyan Marxism of the Second International is generally characterized by a "mediating" kind of orthodoxy. When during World War I and the following revolutionary period the dispute within the international labour movement culminated in the alternative "Bolshevism or Reformism", the Austro-Marxists became typical representatives of the "Centre". This position had its concise expression in the so-called "Two-and-a-Halfth International", the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (1921-23), established by Austrian Social Democracy together with other independent labour parties, which, in vain, tried to mediate between the two openly hostile sides. In the 1920s it became usual to label the policy of the Austrian Social Democrats "Austro-Marxian", after the original intellectual community ("Geistesgemeinschaft") of the theorists' school had been dissolved by war and revolution, and its representatives mostly recommended different political strategies (Bauer, 1980: Vol. 8, 11-12, Vol. 9, 752-761; Bottomore/Goode, 1978: 45-52). So, Austro-Marxism came to stand for the spectrum of tolerance in the "camp" ("Lager") of Austrian Social Democracy, which had proceeded without schism from World War I, and stuck to the ideals of the Socialist International, of which Friedrich Adler became secretary in 1923. After the party had been destroyed by Austro-Fascism in 1934, Otto Bauer developed in exile the concept of an "integral socialism" (Bauer, 1976: Vol. 4, 296-315). This socialism was to unify the reformist social-democratic and the revolutionary communist

Austro-Marxism before World War I

41

traditions of the labour movement. With this the specific tendency of Austro-Marxism: the harmonization of contradictions was expressed a last time. Because of its integrating character Austro-Marxism was repeatedly regarded positively by partisans of a "Third Way", while opponents pilloried it because of its "opportunism", and critics found it easy to point out contradictions in both ideology and practice. The ambiguity of the term and the change in its meaning allow for various interpretations and thus prevent a precise definition of what Austro-Marxism really is. A historical explanatory approach, the consideration of the unique historical situation from which it emerged, is probably the best way towards a scientific appreciation of its theories, which contain interesting contributions to the socialist concept of self-administration.

Austro-Marxism before World War I The political circumstances, under which the Austrian Social Democratic Labour Party was established in 1888-89, made any illusions about the character of the state impossible: governed in a half-absolutist manner, the Habsburg Monarchy, which had already suppressed the first stirrings of the Austrian labour movement and denied all non-property owners the franchise, was evidently and exclusively a state of the propertied classes: of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Under these conditions the economic struggle of the labour movement, which, according to the Hainfeld Programme of 1889, actually saw as its supremely important historical task the reshaping of the existing economic order, was from the beginning for almost two decades after its inception, dominated by the aim of winning political and civil rights for working people: universal male suffrage was not gained until 1907. From this, the "politicism" (K. Renner), characteristic of the pre-war Austrian Labour Party, but in like manner also of the union movement closely connected with it, becomes explicable. The Austro-Marxian concept of the state and society is also marked by the experience of the long drawn out and dogged struggles for political democracy. In these struggles liberal values and democratic demands were raised only by the working classes. In the eyes of the Austro-Marxists the working classes were the representatives of the anticipated common interest of society which would be achieved within a democratic state. The democratic state, on the other hand, ultimately appeared to them incompatible with the existence of class-distinctions and class-antagonisms. It was rather to reconcile finally these antagonisms within a mutually cohesive society ("solidarische Gesellschaft") and by this to find completion. In the "mental socialisation"- so Max Adler's transcendental justification of socialism - i.e. in the postulate of every consciousness for uncontradicted general validity, the notion of a classless community is already included "a priori", and the overcoming of social antagonisms is anticipated. Facing the evident irrationality of the existing political and social conditions, which were solely based on power, the Austro-Marxists regarded every "conscious regulation" they detected in social reality the institutions set up under public law (K. Renner) or the organization of the economy by financial capital (R. Hilferding) - as an anticipation, at least, however, a starting point for the development of a democratic classless society. The bearer of the historically, logically and ethically "necessary" evolution towards socialism could, in their view, only be the working class, as soon and insofar as it represents the majority of

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Society, wins political power, and abolishes the foundations of the class-society. According to the Hainfeld Programme, the final aim of the Labour Party was the "transition of the means of production into the common possession of the entirety of the working people". The revised Viennese Programme of 1901 refers to "new forms of cooperative production based on social property" in the possession of "the entirety of the people" (Winkler, 1971). Since the economic conditions in vast areas of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy did not by any means correspond to those of developed capitalist societies and the working class could only become the majority after "a process lasting decades" (O. Bauer) the Austro-Marxian expectations of a socialist society were restricted to the abstract idea of a bureaucratic rational "administration" of the economy for the benefit of the community, the essence of which was seen to lie in regulating circulation rather than production processes. This perspective presupposed a continuous development, if temporarily disturbed by crises, of capitalism. According to Austro-Marxian economists the reproduction capacity of capitalism would reach its limits - if any - only in the far future. Nevertheless they regarded the collapse of the capitalist system as probable for political reasons: The "imperialist world war of the future" would initiate the socialist "world upheaval" (Bauer, 1975: Vol. 1, 557), in which the "dictatorship of the finance magnates" would turn into that of the proletariat, and the state, taken over by the people, would take possession of finance capital, "in order to gain prompt control of the main branches of production" (R. Hilferding). For the social-democrats' policy the complicated political structure of the multi-national Habsburg Empire was a serious barrier. It resulted in social problems increasingly assuming the shape of national conflicts. The underdevelopment of Austrian capitalism was the reason for a structural backwardness of the state. This fact also hampered the rise of the working classes as well as the cultivation of rational forms in which class antagonisms could be carried out. Social Democracy in the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy, comprising German, Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Italian, Polish and Ruthenian members, attempted after 1897 to minimize national conflicts within their own ranks by converting the party into an almost federal grouping of national sections and to make reality of the ideal of a "Little International" (trade unions all the while maintaining a rather centralistic form of organization). The first Russian Revolution of 1905, which brought franchise reform its break-through, also encouraged the Slavonic nationalist movements. As a consequence Austrian parliamentarism soon lapsed into inactivity, paralysed by obstruction. It fell into a nearly unsolvable crisis, disappointing social democratic expectations of reforms through legislation and demoralizing the party and the trade unions equally. At its Brünn (Brno) Congress in 1899 the Labour Party had passed a reformist Nationalities Programme, which aimed at transforming Austria into a "democratic federation of nationalities". This Programme of national self-government within the framework of the state, which the party wanted to see continue, was justified theoretically by Karl Renner and Otto Bauer, whose writings on the nationality question became famous works of Austro-Marxian theory. According to Bauer the nation is "the totality of men bound together through a common destiny into a community of character" (Bottomore/Goode, 1978: 107; Bauer, 1975: Vol. 1, 194) which as cultural unit will be able to persist even within a future socialist society; they will even be able to develop

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their cultural inheritance in sharper form, unaffected by class antagonisms. Territorial autonomy, as found in a bourgeois nation-state, is not necessarily a prerequisite to self-determination, it rather promotes nationalism even among working people and impedes international cooperation. National-cultural autonomy, on the other hand, made possible for example by self-administered national corporations, elected according to the personality principle (similar to religious denominations), as Renner proposed (herein deviating from Bauer) would separate national and political affairs, the cultural idea of nation, from that of territory, thus depoliticizing nationality conflicts, and neutralizing them in favour of the class-struggle. The Austro-Marxists' concepts of national self-government never had the chance of being put into practice. The struggle for universal suffrage had united the Austrian labour movement in a common crusade. The defeat of democratic and internationalist ideals, caused by the political conditions of the Monarchy, favoured the disintegration of Pan-Austrian Social Democracy (Czech separatism), on the other hand it increased a "fortress mentality", which from the beginning had grown especially among German Austrian social democrats and, in view of the crisis of the Empire, served to preserve the party's "spirit". The Austro-Marxist school was part of the social-democratic "state within the state", a counter-culture, based on the great organizational achievements of the "Trinity" of party, trade unions and consumers' cooperatives, which were to renew the everyday life of the working classes. In the pre-1914 years the Austrian, or at any rate the Viennese socialists became "the most highly cultured and instructed body of proletarians in the entire world" (Cole, 1956: 542).

War, revolution and First Republic For Austria-Hungary World War I ended with the breakdown of the State, the dissolution of its vast army and the revolt of its constituent nations. The Austrian Social-Democrats who, even inadvertently, had become a pillar of the Monarchy during the previous years and who supported its defence out of fear of Tsarist Russia, when the war broke out, had given up their hope for the preservation and reform of the Empire. The social-patriotic idea of Karl Renner, that state intervention in the economy ("state penetration of the economy" - "Durchstaatlichung der Wirtschaft"), that the involvement of labour representatives in the organization of the war economy ("war socialism"), and the establishment of a supranational economic and political community in Central Europe ("Mitteleuropa") would open up new perspectives for socialism, had become obsolete. When the defeat of the Central Powers came in sight and the national independence movements grew stronger, the opposition left-wingers within the party also grew stronger. For them Renner's identification with "organized capitalism" was betrayal of democratic socialism (Stephan, 1982: 63- 89). They did not regard the state as being an "organized community of the people" ("Volksgemeinschaft") but as still characterized by class antagonism (Pfabigan,1982: 139-144). According to them national autonomy was no longer possible within the framework of the imperialist State, but by calling together constituent national assemblies and by state self-determination ("Declaration of the Left", October 1917). Friedrich Adler became the hero of the anti-war movement. The conflict among the Austro-Marxists and the polarity within the party, however, did

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not cause a split. The increasing influence of the left on the labour movement finally led to their hegemony in the Austrian revolution, which was completely different from the German one. The German-Austrian Republic, proclaimed as a response to the independence of the other nations of the Monarchy in November 1918, was initially governed by a grand coalition of the Labour Party and the Christian Socialists, a farming and middle-class party, the chancellor of which was Karl Renner. The Social Democrats, whose undisputed leader had been Otto Bauer since the death of Victor Adler (1918), interpreted the Republic as a social and political form of transition, which corresponded to the existing "equilibrium of class-forces" ("Gleichgewicht der Klassenkräfte") (Bauer, 1976: 743-809). According to the Social Democrats the working class, which since the January strikes of 1918 ("Jännerstreik") had spontaneously elected workers' councils, was not capable of taking over government by itself, by founding a Soviet Republic against the will of the non-proletarian majority and the resistance of the victorious Entente. German Austria, suffering under severe food and coal shortages, seemed not to be capable of surviving, and unification with the German Republic ("Anschluß") together with the Sudetenland seemed to be inevitable if the further development of the social revolution was to be guarantied. This also seemed to be justified by the right of national self-determination. The political and constitutional changes achieved would allow social and labour legislation to be pushed to the limits of what the capitalist system would be able to tolerate. As soon as social democrats had gained the majority, "political" democracy would automatically change into "social" democracy. The party, as well as the trade unions, both having gained considerable strength, the workers' councils, institutionalized as bodies of public administration, uniting the different proletarian forces and having their own security troops ("Arbeiterwehren") and the new federal army, organised by social democrats to include a soldiers' trade union and soldiers' councils given legal status, would protect the achievements of the "first stage" of revolution and guarantee further changes. After the "Anschluß"-policy had failed in 1919, the Austro-Marxists, facing the restrictive conditions of a small and semi-agrarian state, developed plans for socialization, which were to take into account the ruined economy and at the same time the expectations of the radicalized workers. According to Max Adler's concept of a workers' councils system (Adler, 1919; Bourdet, 1967) the Central Workers' Council was temporarily to be established as a "second chamber" beside the National Assembly (with a right of veto), in order to represent "common revolutionary interests" ("revolutionäre Gemeinschaftsinteressen") against the bourgeois democracy. While parliamentarism always violates the interests of the weak, the councils were to represent the anticipated common will (volonte generale) of a united society. Only by permanently being conscious of this aim could the degeneration of workers' councils into reactionary representatives of merely professional interests be avoided. This view of Max Adler corresponds with the concept of the councils as laid down in the organizational statute of July 1919: The workers' councils are to incorporate "the will and the power of class-conscious working men", who "recognize the elimination of the capitalist mode of production as the goal, and the class-struggle as the means of their own emancipation" (Reventlow, 1969: 143). Other Austro- Marxists saw

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the workers' councils as nuclear forms of "industrial" or "functional democracy" ("funktionelle Demokratie"), respectively, which, initially established beside political democracy but combined with it, would finally take over public administration through the steady transference of new tasks in the field of economic democracy ("Wirtschaftsdemokratie"). This economization of the State (the reverse of the wartime state intervention in the economy) would culminate in the establishment of a "social parliament" (Bottomore/Goode, 1978: 187-201). The Social Democrats attempted to initiate the process of "socialization" - this term became a slogan in 1919 - by coming to an understanding with the non-socialist parties. Even before the Austrian parliament installed a "commission for socialization", Otto Bauer had developed a concept, which provided the progressive nationalization of all "ripe" heavy industry, accompanied with a Programme of compensation for owners (Bauer, 1976: Vol. 2, 89-131). The nationalized industries were to be managed to equal parts by representatives of the employees, the consumers and the state. This construction, influenced by ideas of Guild Socialism, which Bauer had been acquainted with since 1913, were to guarantee that the interests of enterprise and society were harmonized. In Germany similar proposals were made by Rudolf Hilferding. While it was possible relatively quickly to pass a law concerning the factory councils ("Betriebsräte") containing far-reaching rights of participation, and to legally establish "Workers' Chambers" ("Arbeiterkammern"), which were to represent the interests of the employees at State level, the plan of expropriation encountered insurmountable obstacles. Only former state-controlled plants were transformed into cooperative enterprises ("gemeinwirtschaftliche Unternehmungen"), in which the co-management of factory councils, trade unions, consumers' cooperatives and municipal, regional or national authorities could be tested. After the attempt at nationalization had failed, the grand coalition finally broke up, when the Pan-Germans supported the Christian Socialists against the Social Democrats' decree on soldiers' councils. Thus the "second stage" of revolution was blocked. After the Social-Democratic Party failed to gain the expected majority in the new elections of 1920, it withdrew from political power and remained in opposition until the end of the First Austrian Republic. During that period the Social Democrats made great efforts in transforming the capital, which at the same time was the seat of the conservative government, into a remarkable example of progressive urban culture and "municipal socialism": "Red Vienna". By steady amplification of their organizational network, mobilization of the urban masses, and their struggle to win the rural population (Socialist Agrarian Programme, 1925), they tried to consolidate and expand their basis in order to finally clear the way to gaining the majority. After the workers' councils had lost their functions and had been dissolved (1924), and the soldiers' councils had gradually been deprived of their influence, the "Republikanische Schutzbund" became a para-military force of the party; it was expected to prevent reactionary developments within the Republic (Duczynska, 1975). While right-wing Austro-Marxists, like Renner, wanted to maintain the option of a coalition government, as existed in several Länder of the Austrian federation, and promote socialism "from the bottom up" ("von unten auf') independently of the state as, for example, in the cooperative movement - the party under the leadership of Bauer

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chose the way of gaining power by consistent policy of opposition, similar to the "attentism" of Kautsky's pre-war "exhaustion strategy". According to the Linz Programme (1926), the winning of state power by the working classes aimed at converting democracy from "the final form of class-domination into self-government by the people no longer divided into opposing classes". As a precondition for this, the Programme declared the transference of the means of production into "the common ownership of the people", the "socialization of large scale plants and the transformation of small enterprises into cooperatives" ("Vergenossenschaftlichung"). The workers' cooperative movement developed forms of "social guidance of production and distribution of goods". Along with the increasing power of the workers their "insight into the conditions of production" also increases and strenghtens their "feeling of responsibility towards the people as a whole". Thus it becomes possible to abolish the command of capital over production, without jeopardizing production itself, while at the same time the solidarity between "workers by the hand and the brain" will grow. The Linz Programme, in which violence was assigned a strictly defensive role, is probably the most significant document of Austro-Marxian political thought and at the same time their legacy. After the events of 1927, when, despite a remarkable success in elections, the party's real impotence suddenly became obvious, the Social Democrats were driven on to the defensive. After a period of latent civil war and under the impression of the defeat of the German workers' movement, tensions reached their climax. After an active struggle of the Schutzbund in February 1934 Austrian Social Democracy was smashed by AustroFascism. The underground movement of the "Revolutionary Socialists" criticizing the hesitant party leadership, broke with the reformistic tradition of Austro-Marxism.

Concluding remarks Austro-Marxism has failed twice: it failed as an attempt to reform the multinational monarchy, and it failed as an attempt at a democratic socialist revolution. This "tragic" failure - a history of missed as well as of missing opportunities - caused criticism from inside and outside to an extent that few comparable movements have attracted. Having emerged under unique historical circumstances, many elements of Austro-Marxian theory have not been worked through. The problem of multinational states, for instance, still existed in the successor states of Austria-Hungary. The Soviet nationality concept, too, developed by Lenin and Stalin in polemical dispute with the Austro-Marxists' cultural concept of autonomy, is at stake. Unlike Marxism-Leninism, Austro-Marxism never claimed to be transferable to other countries, as is evidenced by the name itself. On the other hand, the Austrians were the first Marxists to analyze the "national" particularities of the Russian Revolution and to demonstrate that the Soviet model was not transferable to "Western" societies. Communist strategies since the dissolution of the Comintern and the rise of "polycentrism" involuntarily showed traces of Austro-Marxism, as can be seen in the Yugoslav and Italian examples. While even in Austria almost forgotten until the 1960s, Austro-Marxism has undergone a sort of renaissance since the middle of the 1970s, when social-democratic reforms and the strategies of "Eurocommunism" were being discussed. Beside Gramsci's theory of "egemonia" Otto Bauer's works

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are central in this recent discourse - not without reason: "his effort to balance a genuinely democratic socialism and a non-violent course with a strategy that emphasized radical cultural and social change is perhaps the most significant 'Western Marxist' political theory to have practical consequences between the wars" (Rabinbach, 1983: 30-31).

Bibliography Adler, Max: Demokratie und Rätesystem. Vienna, Volksbuchhandlung, 1919. Adler, Max: Ausgewählte Schriften. Vienna, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1981. Albers, Detlev; Hindels, J. and L. Lombardo Radice (eds.): Otto Bauer und der 'Dritte Weg'. Frankfurt/M. and New York, Campus, 1979. Albers, Detlev and Franco Andreucci (eds.): Der Weg der Arbeiterbewegung nach 1917. Frankfurt/M. and New York, Campus, 1985. Albers, Detlev; Heimann, H. and R. Saage (eds.): Otto Bauer: Theorie und Politik. Berlin, Argument-Verlag, 1985. Bauer, Otto: Werkausgabe, 9 vols. Vienna, Europaverlag, 1975-80. Bottomore, Tom and Patrick Goode (eds.): Austro-Marxism. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978. Bourdet, Yvon (ed.): Max Adler: Democratie et conseils ouvriers. Paris, Maspero, 1967. Bourdet, Yvon (ed.): Otto Bauer et la revolution. Paris. Etudes et Documentation Internationales, 1968. Bourdet, Yvon and Georges Haupt (eds.): Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier International: L'Autriche. Paris, Les Editions Ouvrieres, 1971. Braunthal, Julius: In Search of the Millenium. London, V. Gollancz, 1945. Buttinger, Joseph: In the Twilight of Socialism: A History of the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria. New York, Praeger, 1953. Carsten, F. L.: Revolution in Central Europe 1918-19. London, Temple Smith, 1972. Cole, G. D. H.: A History of Socialist Thought: The Second International 1889-1914. London and Barsingstroke, Macmillan, 1956. Duczynska, Ilona: Der demokratische Bolschewik: Zur Theorie und Praxis der Gewalt. München, List, 1975. Feichter, Helmut: Das Linzer Programm der österreichischen Sozialdemokratie. Diss, (phil.) Vienna, 1973 (unpublished). Filla, Wilhelm: Zwischen Integration und Klassenkampf: Sozialgeschichte der betrieblichen Mitbestimmung in Österreich. Vienna, Europaverlag, 1981. Garamvölgyi, Judit: Betriebsräte und sozialer Wandel in Österreich 1919/1920. Munich, R. Oldenbourg, 1983. Gottschalch, Wilfried: Strukturveränderungen der Gesellschaft und politisches Handeln in der Lehre von Rudolf Hilferding. Berlin, Duncker and Humblot, 1962. Gulick, Charles Α.: Austria from Habsburg to Hitler. 2 vols. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1948. Hannak, Jacques: Karl Renner und seine Zeit: Versuch einer Biographie. Vienna, Europaverlag, 1965. Hautmann, Hans and Rudolf Kröpf: Die österreichische Arbeiterbewegung vom Vormärz bis 1945. Vienna, Europaverlag, 1978. Hilferding, Rudolf: 'Einleitung', in G. D. H. Cole (ed.): Selbstverwaltung in der Industrie. Berlin, H. R. Engelmann, 1921: III-XVIII. Hilferding, Rudolf: Finance Capital: Α Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.

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Kann, Robert Α.: The Multinational Empire: Nationalism and National Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy. New York, Octagon Books, 1964. Knapp, Vincent J.: Austrian Social Democracy, 1889-1914. Washington D. C., University Press of America, 1980. Kreissler, Felix: Von der Revolution z.ur Annexion: Österreich 1918-1938. Vienna, Frankfurt/M. and Zürich, Europaverlag, 1970. Kulemann, Peter: Am Beispiel des Austromarxismus: Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterbewegung in Österreich von Hainfeld bis zur Dollfuß-Diktatur. Hamburg, Junius, 1979. Kurata, Minora: 'Rudolf Hilferding: Bibliographie seiner Schriften, Artikel und Briefe', in Internationale Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz, 10 (3) 1974: 327-346. Leser, Norbert: 'Austro-Marxism: A Reappraisal', in G. L. Mosse and W. Laqueur (eds.): The Left Wing Intellectuals between the Wars, 1919-39. New York, Harper and Row, 1966, 117-137. Leser, Norbert: Zwischen Reformismus und Bolschewismus: Der Austromarxismus als Theorie und Praxis. Vienna, Frankfurt/M. and Zürich, Europaverlag, 1968. Leichter, Otto: Otto Bauer: Tragödie oder Triumph. Vienna, Europaverlag, 1970. Mozetic, Gerald (ed.): Austromarxistische Positionen. Vienna, Cologne and Graz, Böhlau, 1983. Pfabigan, Alfred: Max Adler: Eine politische Biographie. Frankfurt/M. and New York, Campus, 1982. Rabinbach, Anson: The Crisis of Austrian Socialism: From Red Vienna to Civil War 1927-34. Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1983. Rabinbach, Anson (ed.): The Austrian Socialist Experiment: Social Democracy and Austromarxism, 1918-34. Boulder and London, Westview Press, 1985. Reventlow, Rolf: Zwischen Alliierten und Bolschewiken: Arbeiterräte in Österreich 1918-23. Vienna, Frankfurt/M. and Zürich, Europaverlag, 1969. Sandkühler, Hans-Jörg and Rafael De La Vega (eds.): Austromarxismus: Texte zu 'Ideologie und Klassenkampf. Frankfurt/M. and Vienna, Europaverlag, 1970. Schroth, Hans (ed.): Karl Renner: Eine Bibliographie. Vienna, Europaverlag, 1970. Schroth, Hans and Herbert Exenberger: Max Adler: Eine Bibliographie. Vienna, Europaverlag, 1973. Shell, Kurt L.: The Transformation of Austrian Socialism. New York, State University of New York, 1962. Stephan, Cora (ed.): Zwischen den Stühlen: Schriften Rudolf Hilferdings 1904-40. Berlin and Bonn, Dietz, 1982. Weissei, Erwin: Die Ohnmacht des Sieges: Arbeiterschaft und Sozialisierung nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg in Österreich. Vienna, Europaverlag, 1976. Weidenholzer, Josef: Auf dem Weg zum 'Neuen Menschen': Bildungs- und Kulturarbeit der österreichischen Sozialdemokratie in der Ersten Republik. Vienna, Munich and Zürich, Europaverlag, 1981. Winkler, Ernst: Die österreichische Sozialdemokratie im Spiegel ihrer Programme. Vienna, Volksbuchhandlung, 1971.

Robert

Haussmann

Autogestions1 The term autogestion - truly a portmanteau word - today covers a range of practices, theories and initiatives of a widely differing nature which all, nonetheless, express the desire of people to take charge of their own affairs. The spread of the ideas and practice of autogestion is also evident in the large number of expressions linking autogestion with projects of varying importance in the fields of social, economic and political change: self-managed housing schemes and industrial conflicts, self-managed education and vocational training, social self-management, socialism on self-management principles. In view of this multiplicity of theoretical formulations and practical expressions it seems more accurate to refer to concepts of self-management in the plural than to a single concept understood in the sense of a unique and universal model of social change applicable in all places and in all circumstances. It is true that the fundamental philosophical and political aim of all self-management proposals is - as was stressed by Y. Bourdet (1970) in his identification of the respective contributions of Rousseau, Descartes and Marx on which a political theory of self-management can be based - the recognition as a principle and the achievement of human equality and the compatibility of individual and collective liberties; but this cannot be accomplished except within a plurality of initiatives and experiments permitting the emergence of differences and hence, inevitably, of conflicts. During the course of a few years, notably between 1960 and 1970, autogestion swiftly established itself on the one hand as an independent issue with many different aspects and ramifications and on the other hand as an inescapable social and political exigency. In France, as in other countries, this interest has produced an abundance of literature on this subject, in which political pamphlets appear beside reports and analyses of experiments as well as theoretical writings involving the principal disciplines of the social sciences and the humanities. Self-management has become the subject of research in numerous scientific institutions: economists, political scientists, sociologists devote numerous debates and colloquia to the elucidation of this concept; a concept that is now an integral part of the cultural and political reference-system of the modern world. This raises the question: how great is the risk that through this institutionalisation the concept will find embodiment in social forms that are nothing but sham effectuations of the original idea (Lourau, 1978)? Several experiments in self-management, especially that of Yugoslavia, prove that this risk is real and that such a process frequently ends in reducing, even destroying in certain cases, the critical and Utopian creative force of autogestion. The example of the development of the ideas and practices of self-management in France demonstrates clearly the diversity of social and political aspirations attached to the concept as well as the obstacles encountered in passing from theory to practice, from words to deeds. A reference to the events of 1968 provides a framework within which the sometimes equivocal successes of this "old, new idea" (Maire/Perrignon, 1976) can be assessed and 1

translated by Alan Deighton

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understood. Before this date only a few militant intellectual groups with very diverse ideological allegiances were interested in autogestion: anarchists, supporters of workers' councils, anti-stalinist Marxists, socialists, Trotskyists etc.; this common point of reference was derived from the common rejection of a series of notions: bureaucracy as a method of socialist government, of the Bolshevik model for the soviet revolution, of social-democrat experiments for social change. The attractiveness of autogestion was fed by a certain idealisation of the Algerian and Yugoslav experiences, and there gradually arose an intellectual "free-trade area" in which these different currents of thought came together, each one nonetheless retaining its specific interpretation of the common point of reference. This situation furthermore allowed the fundamental debates that traditionally engaged the working-class - e.g. the argument between Marxists and Proudhonists - to be taken up and enriched by new experiences and theories (Bourdet, 1977).

Yvon Bourdet Born in 1920 to a peasant family in the department of Correze, where at the time Occitan was still spoken, Bourdet experienced in his youth the comparative independence of agricultural life and work. In contrast he had great difficulty putting up with the rigid reglementation of the seminary where he received his secondary education and with the hierarchy and dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. Consequently, after the Second World War, he resumed an independent life as a student at the Sorbonne. He subsequently became a teacher of philosophy, Agrege de l'Universite, Docteur d'Etat es lettres et sciences humaines and research director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Having abandoned theology he was immediately fascinated by existentialism and its fundamental theory of Liberty. Sartre's analysis arguing from the basis of the absolute liberty of the cogito in favour of the necessity of democracy and thus the equality of human kind led him to reject the capitalist order without for all that adopting communism, which entrusted the liberation of man to a bureaucratic regime through which a minority of decision-makers dominate a majority carrying out the decisions. For this reason he became interested in the anarchists and revolutionary communists who, from the very beginning of the Soviet regime, had opposed Bolshevism. For the same reason he participated in the activities of the group Socialisme ou Barbarie and afterwards studied austro-marxism. He published communisme et Marxisme (Paris, Brient, 1963), an annotated translation of Democratic et conseils ouvriers by Max Adler (Paris, F. Maspero, 1967; 2nd ed. 1977), Otto Bauer et la revolution (Paris, Etudes et Documentation Internationales, 1968) and the French translation by Marcel Ollivier of Capital Financier by Rudolph Hilferding, preceded by an introduction (Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1970). At the same time he was, from its very first issue, a member of the editorial committee of the journal Autogestion, then Autogestion et socialisme (Paris, Anthropos, 1966-1979) renamed Autogestions (Toulouse: Privat, 1980-1986). He published numerous contributions in the journal of which he was its prime mover during the 1970's. His principle articles were collected in the volumes: La Delivrance de Promethee (Paris, Anthropos, 1970) and Pour I'autogestion (Ibd. 1974, 1977). Yvon Bourdet is in particular also the author, in collaboration with Alain Guillerm of UAutogestion (Paris: Seghers, 1975, 1977), of a

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collective work Qui a peur de l'autogestion? (Paris, Union generale d'edition, 1978, in the series "Cause commune") and of Qu'est-ce qui fait courir les militants? (Paris, Stock, 1976). At the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales Bourdet founded a seminar on self-management and supervised a certain number of doctoral theses on the subject. Although he was of the opinion that Yugoslavia had seen the installation of only a system of co-management, in which the state and the single party dominated, he was invited several times to participate in colloquia and round-table discussions. After the first Internatinal Conference held in Dubrovnik in 1972, he organised the Second International Conference on Self-Management, Participation and Workers' Control (Paris, 6-10 September, 1977) which attracted 321 participants from 28 countries. Together with the self-management study-group, which he initiated within the framework of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, he created in 1978 an international network of researchers entlitled the Centre internatinal de coordination de recherche sur l'autogestion (CIRCA). In association with the Fondation Maison des Sciences de L'homme) CICRA published an information bulletin La Lettre du Cicra/Cicra Newsletter between 1979 and 1983. Aware in the 1970's of the resurgence of ethnic minorities, which his critique of centralism had caused him to discern, Bourdet rediscovered his Occitan roots with Eloge du patois ou I'itineraire d'un Occitan (Paris, Galilee, 1977) and L'Espace de l'autogestion (Ibid., 1978). In order to denote theoretical, absolute self-management, (autogestion theorique absolue) i.e. a society in which the division between the makers and obeyers of decisions would be abolished, he proposed the term autarchism, i.e. the self-sufficiency of people as a social unit.

Conclusions The thinking of Marxists and Proudhonists, transmitted by such journals as Arguments, Socialisme ou Barbarie or Internationale situationniste, contributed to the renewed topicality of the issue of workers' self-management, outlining the contours of an exploring the preconditions for an economic self-management which alone would permit the construction of democratic socialism. One might also remember that 1966 saw the foundation, on the initiative of Georges Gurvitch, one of France's principal sociologists, who had had experience of workers' councils in Russia in 1917 before the Bolshevik take-over, of the journal Autogestion, the main concern of which was the exploration of the "central notion of the socialist transformation of society on the basis of a workers' democracy." This journal was the centre of a gathering of theoreticians as diverse as D. Guerin, Y. Bourdet, J. Duvignaud, H. Desroche, A. Meister, R. Lourau, P. Naville and H. Lefebvre (Bourdet et al., 1978). In its first number one finds this "definition": "Autogestion means today being open to the possible. It is the way and the solution, the force which can lift the colossal burden weighing down on society. It points to the practical road towards changing the circumstances of life, which remains the watchword, the goal and the meaning of a revolution" (H. Lefebvre). From 1962 onwards the supporters of institutional analysis conducted experiments in autogestion in the fields of education and vocational training (Lapassade, 1971). Similar efforts took place in the field of psychiatry. The aim of these experiments is to contribute

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to a practical critique of bureaucratic and hierarchical structures and to establish new relationships between knowledge and power so as to break down the polarisations of school-master and pupil, nurse and patient, teacher and learner. This approach is inseparable from a global political conception of autogestion: its initiators refuse to see in it solely an isolated technique designed to stimulate more effective training. Finally, from 1964 on, theories of autogestion began to arouse an equally lively interest in some of the more important sections of the CFDT. (One of the leading French trade unions.) When in many areas the reformation of social and political thought was proving long and difficult the issue of autogestion provided a forward impulse and occupied a central position in the debate. The events of 1968 accelerated the process of theoretical and practical maturation and turned autogestion into a widely-repeated watchword, a mobilising slogan. From May 1968 onwards the CFDT contributed substantially to its success by placing autogestion at the centre of its social plan. This was based on two other major concepts: democratic planning and public possession of the means of production and exchange (Maire/Julliard, 1975). As far as the political parties were concerned, they very rapidly learned their lesson from these events: between 1971 and 1978 they integrated into their plans the principal demands of the May movement, thus furthering the political institutionalisation of autogestion. For several years the reference to autogestion marked a deep split at the centre of the Union of the Left between the forces assembled around the socialists and the communist party. Today, autogestion forms part of the programmes of the majority of the parties of the left and the extreme left, even if differences of view remain regarding its potential and the preconditions for its implementation. To what extent did the accession to power in 1981 of forces that had inscribed autogestion on their banners lead to a conversion of intentions into deeds? The question is very pertinent. At all events, questions of autogestion were quickly integrated within political discussions without substantial changes occurring in the forms of organisation or activity adopted by these parties. This undoubtedly prevented political consideration of autogestion being pursued to the ultimate crucial question: whether this central idea, implying a rejection of all the distinctions inherent in delegate systems of representative democracy (in this sense autogestion aims at an extension of direct democracy), can, in its incorrupt state, become the ideology of a specific political form - viz. a party, which, by the very way in which it functions, establishes what is at the centre of criticism: hierarchies, professionalisation and delegation. In this sense, the political theory of autogestion is fundamentally anti-leninist. Furthermore, the emergence during the same period of social movements mounting political demands for autogestion through new forms of action seems to indicate that the political space occupied by autogestion is not identical with that of professional politics. During the 1970's the development of the subject of autogestion led to a radical questioning of the thought-processes and actions of the working-class, stimulated a reinterpretation of its history and aided the rediscovery of events forgotten or distorted by official historiography (the so-called "failures" of the movement). This work of reclamation also contributed to the illumination of historical fictions and the collective memory of autogestion movements such as the Paris Commune, the Russian soviets, workers' council movements in Europe before and after the Second World War, collectives in libertarian Catalonia, the Hungarian uprising etc. Parallel work was

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undertaken on a theoretical level, where there has been a re-evaluation of the importance of authors long consigned to the sidelines or condemned by dominant orthodoxies: critical Utopias, Bakunin, Proudhon, Pannekoek, Sorel, Korsch, Mattick etc. Similarly, the analyses by M. Rubel have made it possible to see autogestion in the context of workers' self-determination (autopraxis), which Marx attempted to describe and provide a theoretical basis for (Rubel, 1974; Corpet, 1978: 462-487). In numerous areas the issue of autogestion has thus contributed to a renewal of the manner in which questions are asked and (sometimes) answered regarding the definition of new development models, the establishment of egalitarian social relationships, the collective control of scientific and technological progress, the redefinition of the tools and objects that structure the contexts of life and work. Two slogans express clearly the significance of autogestion for many of its proponents: "Life tomorrow is built on today's struggles", "Produce, work and live differently". Thus through all the issues it takes up, the Utopias it embodies, the experiences it makes possible, autogestion indeed constitutes in the words of L. Sfez "a sort of unstable concentrate of the whole history of ideas" (1978). The success of concepts of autogestion is furthermore by no means limited to France. For several years there has been a veritable internationalisation of the subject, which has been enriched by very varied experiences, whether in their extent, the intentions underlying them or the methods of their implementation and the groups and populations involved. In Africa experiments have been conducted in reviving and developing the autogestion potential in grass-roots communities (eg. fokolona in Madagascar or the Ujamaa villages in Tanzania); in Latin American countries, Peru, for example, attempts have been made to create a large sector of self-managed "social property" and to reorganise collective and community structures in the agricultural sector (Meister, 1981). For all of these countries it is not, as in the industrialised countries of East or West, a matter of modifying the direction of existing development but of putting in hand a different type of development founded on local needs and an increase on the grass-roots level in participatory and autogestion experiments. These movements can be expected to develop over the coming years and it is already noticeable that large international organisations such as the UN and UNESCO refer officially to development programmes aimed towards autogestion. The problem remains, clearly, of knowing who will be the true proponents of these transformations: the experts newly converted to autogestion or the people directly concerned (Meister, 1977). In industrialised countries demands for and experiments in autogestion take on a number of forms. There is a constant growth in the number of alternative and cooperative enterprises, community living- and working-structures, networks of mutual assistance (as in Quebec or the Federal Republic of Germany), takeovers of bankrupt companies by their employees (as in Japan or Great Britain). The strength of the concept of autogestion was demonstrated on a national scale by the events in Poland since August 1980 which led to the foundation of the "independent and self-managed" trade-union Solidarity. These events reveal two tendencies: firstly, radical rejection of the official structures described as "workers' control" but in fact void of all content and, secondly, the desire to recover the political autonomy of the working class through the development of economic and social structures that are truly self-managed and democratic (Pologne: la breche?, Autogestions, no. 5, Spring 1981). Whatever its

54

Autogestions

ultimate fate, this movement will have made a large contribution to the renewal of approaches to autogestion within the "socialist" countries, a contribution far greater than anything the Prague Spring of 1968 achieved (Faye/Fisera, 1977), or even the Yugoslav experience when divested of the official rhetoric of autogestion with which it is bedecked (Meister, 1970; Supek et al„ 1973, and 'Les habits neufs du president Tito: critique sociale, repression politique et luttes ouvrieres en Yougoslavie', Autogestions, no. 6, Summer 1981). Thus everywhere in the world the movement for autogestion is growing, the same aspirations are manifest even if neither the forms nor the modes of procedure are similar or even always comparable. For there is a great distance between analogical statements of will and identity of practice. The fact that a single word can express so many different realities entails the risk of confusion and ambiguity. Only a comparative analysis of the conditions surrounding the emergence and development of these many forms of autogestion (encompassing respective levels of development, degrees of social mobilisation, cultural traditions, economic structures) can contribute to the dissipation of these ambiguities by integrating with knowledge already gained all that is done or said on the subject of autogestion, by integrating the most limited experiences with the most audacious on expectations. In order to achieve this it does not appear sufficient to provide a merely generic and general definition of autogestion, nor to define it by contrasting it with what it is not (participation, co-government, bureaucracy, ...). Neither is it sufficient to describe the historical principles governing the way in which it works (rotation of responsibilities, replacement of officials, equality before the law, the withering away of the state). In reality, faced with the complexity and diversity of the practical expressions of autogestion, one needs to guard against all excessive nominalism, against implicit references to a pure and perfect form of autogestion that, in the last analysis, is nowhere to be found. One needs rather to present a model that embraces the various forms of autogestion, a model designed both to take account of the multi-dimensionality of the concept and also to constitute a sort of analytical framework for each concrete example of autogestion. In this context one might characterise autogestion as the coming-together of the following factors: a project for the radical transformation of society, its structures, behaviour and moral concepts, whereby its Utopian programmatic dimensions are determined; a specific form of organisation for social relationships within and beyond work, based on the recognition of the fundamental equality of persons and respect for their differences: this determines the structural and relational dimensions; a movement rejecting all processes of institutionalisation and fragmentation aimed at perpetuating or renewing hierarchic command and bureaucratic structures and all forms of expropriation of power and knowledge: this determines its anti-institutional dimensions. With the help of this analytical model it would then be possible to examine the manner in which these various dimensions are present in each experiment, whether on the level of basic social units (residential area, work-place, community) or on the level of larger economic and social groupings (province, country). This approach would also have the advantage of not confusing experimentation and analysis and of not disqualifying a priori local limited experiments contributing to the opening up and exploration of the potential range of forms of autogestion. With this tripartite definition of autogestion it is

Bibliography

55

also possible to show how the limitation, neutralisation or absence of one or other of these dimensions leads to the withering or perversion of an experiment. If an attempt to introduce autogestion leads to a successive, non-simultaneous implementation of each of these dimensions the unavoidable consequence is the institutionalisation of autogestion. Autogestion thus bears on the one hand global characteristics: it demands structural changes for the principal economic structures and regulatory authorities of the state. On the other hand it implies a multiplicity of fairly important changes in all those areas where autonomous creative activities can take place (daily life, education, communications etc.). At stake in a transformation of society towards autogestion is therefore the juncture between unity and diversity, the centre and the periphery, the individual and the collective; this juncture must not be left to the State after the assumption of power: on the contrary, it has to result from a permanent self-creation of society, of a society in which a withering away of the state and a decline in the power of the organs of the state can be verified and experienced through direct experiment. Bibliography Arvon, Henri: L'autogestion. Paris. PUF (QSJ 1832), 1980. Bihr, Alain and Jean-Marc Heinrich: La neo-social-democratie ou le capitalisme autogere. Paris, Le Sycomore, 1979. Bourdet, Yvon: La delivrance de Promethee. Paris, Anthropos, 1970. Bourdet, Yvon: Pour I'autogestion. Paris, Anthropos, 1977 (reed.). Bourdet, Yvon and Alain Guillerm: L'autogestion. Paris, Seghers, 1975 (reed. 1977). Bourdet, Y.; Pluet, J.; Corpet, O.; Sfez, L.; Duvignaud, J. and G. Gurvitch: Qui a peur de I'autogestion? Liberie ou terreur. Paris, U.G.E. "Cause commune", 1978. Castoriadis, Cornelius: Le contenu du socialisme. Paris, U.G.E., 1979. Corpet, Olivier: 'De l'autopraxis ä Γ autogestion', in Economies et Societes, Cahiers de l'ISMEA, serie S, no. 19-20, January-February 1978: 462-487. Desroche, Henri: Le projet cooperatif. Son Utopie et sa pratique. Ses appareils et ses resaux. Ses espe ranees et ses deconvenues. Paris, Editions ouvrieres, 1976. Dumas, Andre (ed.): L'autogestion, un systeme economique? Paris, Dunod, 1981. Durrieu, Yves: L'heritage de Tito. L'autogestion necessaire. Paris, Syros, 1980. Faye, Jean-Pierre and Vladimir-Claude Fisera: Prague: la revolution des conseils ouvriers. 1968-1969, Paris, Seghers/Laffont, 1977. Gorz, Andre: Adieux au proletariat. Au delä du socialisme. Paris, Galilee, 1980. Lapassade, Georges: L'autogestionpedagogique. Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1971. Lepage, Henri: Autogestion et capitalisme. Reponse ä l'anti-economie. Paris, Masson, 1978. Lourau, Rene: L'Etat inconscient. Paris, Ed. de Minuit, 1978. Maire, Edmond and Jacques Julliard: La CFDTd'aujourd'hui. Paris, Le Seuil, 1975. Maire, Edmond and Claude Perrignon: Demain l'autogestion. Paris, Seghers, 1976. Meister, Albert: Ou va l'autogestion yougoslave? Paris, Anthropos, 1970. Meister, Albeit: La participation pour le developpement. Paris, Ed. Ouvrieres, 1977. Meister, Albert: L'autogestion en uniforme, I'experience peruvienne de gestion du sousdeveloppement. Toulouse, Privat, 1981. Mothe, Daniel: L'autogestion goutte ά goutte. Paris, Centurion, 1980. Naville, Pierre: Le Temps, la technique, l'autogestion. Paris, Syros, 1980.

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Rosanvallon, Pierre: L'äge de l'autogestion ou la politique au poste de commandement. Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1976. Rubel, Maximilien: Marx critique du marxisme. Paris, Payot, 1974. Sfez, Lucien: L'enfer et le paradis, Paris, PUF, 1978. Supek, Rudi et al.: Etatisme et autogestion, bilan critique du socialisme yougoslave. Paris, Anthropos, 1973.

Olivier Corpet and Jacqueline

Pluet

Autonomous Work Groups Four strands of work autonomy Professional people such as medical doctors and lawyers and semiprofessionals such as teachers and engineers generally have a high degree of autonomy at work. This autonomy is associated with higher education and middle class status. The three following categories are representative of working class autonomy. Artisans and craftsmen in industry have traditionally worked on a rather autonomous basis, often supported by strong trade union activity. Autonomous work groups, that is, autonomy at the level of the work group. Such groups may include unskilled as well as skilled workers. This category is the issue of the present article. Flexible specialization (Piore/Sabel, 1984) suggests new patterns of organization that are based on a significant degree of autonomy for the workers. This kind of autonomy possibly draws upon the three types of autonomy already mentioned, but is also a response to advanced i.e. computerbased technology.

Autonomous work groups in a historical context The term autonomous work groups is connected with work patterns described in British coal mines and Indian textile mills by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in the 1950s (Herbst 1974; Trist et al., 1963). In the 1960s autonomous work groups were tested out as a means to stimulate democratization and participation in Norwegian working life. Such groups seemed to represent a traditional way of work in Norway. Organization in autonomous work groups were hoped to be an adequate response to the wide spread alienation caused by Scientific Management and related principles of work design. Later autonomous work groups have been associated with the Quality of Working Life-movement.

Criteria of autonomy 1. The group can influence the formulation of its goals including (a) qualitative aspects (what the group shall produce) and (b) quantitative aspects (production volume and terms of payment). 2. Providing that the established goals governing relationships to the company are satisfied, the group can decide (a) where and (b) when to work. This includes the timing of tasks and the limitation of working hours, (c) The group can decide which other tasks it wishes to engage in. 3. The group makes the necessary decisions in connection with the choice of production method. 4. The group decides its own internal distribution of tasks. 5. The group decides on its own membership.

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6. The group decides matters of leadership, (a) if it needs a person to be in charge of internal matters, and, in case, who this person shall be, and (b) if it wants a leader for the purpose of regulating boundary conditions, and, in case, who this leader shall be. 7. The group members determine their own work methods. (Gulowsen, 1972)

Degree of autonomy In an analysis of one British and seven Norwegian groups of unskilled workers, it was found that the criteria of autonomy were ordered along a Guttman scale (Gulowsen, 1972). The study suggested that criteria lower on the list have to be satisfied in order that criteria higher up on the list can be satisfied. Although having gained some support, this finding has been falsified on a general level by later research. Nevertheless, it is obviously relevant to talk about degrees of autonomy. Among the groups mentioned, none of them satisfied criterion l.a., but three of them satisfied l.b. and all the rest of the criteria. Today the term autonomous work groups is mostly replaced by the term semi-autonomous work groups, which shows a more realistic attitude to the potential of such groups.

Autonomous work groups and technological change To what extent are autonomous work groups able to cope with technological change? According to the Tavistock tradition two conditions for work group autonomy are important: (1) The group shares a common and unified task and works within easily definable boundary conditions. (2) The task does not vary unexpectedly or in ways which the group itself cannot control or cope with (Emery, 1959). In other words, work group autonomy was expected to depend on a similar autonomy in the task structure and on technological stability. Some researchers have, however, expressed a more optimistic attitude regarding the extent to which autonomous work groups can deal with technological variations. It has been suggested that autonomous work groups could become elements in highly advanced industries with rapidly changing technology. Two decades have passed since the eight groups previously mentioned were described. What actually happened to the groups, and what determined their fate? Briefly stated only 3 out of the 8 groups have survived. The other 5 died out when the production units to which they belonged were stopped because they were technologically out of date or reorganized for economic reasons. First hypothesis: If a production system is highly mature, laissez-faire management including a high degree of autonomy for the workers may be an optimal managerial strategy. This way costs related to administration and conflict management are probably at a minimum. Thus autonomous work organization may be a way of prolonging the economic viability of a production system which is about to become outdated.

Discussion

59

Autonomous work groups and worker ownership In 1985-87 the Norwegian Ministry of Industry launched a national programme for stimulating small industries to invest in more advanced technology. Providing certain conditions were met, the state would pay 25 percent of investments. When analysing the effects of the programme, two companies owned and managed by the workers attracted special attention. An old and highly prestigious firm manufacturing lathes and other tool machinery had been working against the current when the owners offered it to the workers. In 1984 it was taken over by a workforce consisting of 19 skilled workers. Three apprentices were not invited in on the deal. One of the workers was appointed manager. The company board was made up by the workers as well. The company applied to the Programme for technology support and money was granted. This started long discussions inside the company regarding choice of equipment. The differences in opinion were considerable. Some of the workers were against investing anything at all, while others argued in favour of highly different types of machinery. Neither the manager nor the company board felt that they had sufficient authority to make a decision in a matter where they did not have all, or at least a very heavy majority of the workers behind them. The result was that the company was unable to benefit from the Ministry's offer. A small printing shop operated and owned by three tradesmen and employing two young assistants is a parallel case. Two of the owners wanted to invest, but the third one was not interested in expanding the business. Later one of the printers bought out the two others, but by that time the offer from the Ministry had expired. Second hypothesis: These two examples suggest that groups of workers organized on an egalitarian basis may have little ability to make decisions with strategical implications for their companies.

Discussion According to the empirical evidence that has been referred to in this article, it may be a condition for work group autonomy that the management has something to gain and little to lose by this kind of work organization. By stimulating work group autonomy the company is likely to get a flexible work organization with very low administration costs. Many of the cases which have been referred to are from industries with run down technological equipment and no strategical objectives other than prolonged survival at minimum costs. We have reconfirmed that autonomous groups seem to depend on highly stable boundary conditions. We have no indications that such groups have played an active part in strategical reorientation of the company. On the contrary, in some cases group autonomy has been reduced, in other cases the whole production system has been closed down by such reorientations. Even in cases where the workers have had real power, i.e. where they have owned the company, they have shown little ability to initiate technological change and make strategical decisions in general.

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Trends 1. Autonomous work groups have been abandoned as a core notion in their strategy for democratization and participation by the Norwegian trade union movement. 2. Semi-autonomous work groups, job rotation and job enlargement have become central principles of work design in many large industrial firms, among them car manufacturers such as Volvo. The terms are adapted by the QWL-movement as well. 3. Many highly automated industries aim for maximum flexibility and technological competence as close to the production process as possible. Piore and Sabel (1984) suggest the term flexible specialization to describe this kind of organization. Organization in composite work groups in many ways similar to semi-autonomous work groups is one way to adapt the principle of flexible specialisation. Such groups generally consist of highly trained specialists with company specific qualifications. Such people are likely to be impotent in a trade union sense (Gulowsen, 1988). Bibliography Emery, F.E.: Socio-technical Systems. London, Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, 1959. Gulowsen, J.: Selvstyrte arbeidsgrupper. Tanum, Oslo, 1971. Gulowsen, J.: Ά Measure of Work Group Autonomy', in L. Davis (ed.): Design of Jobs. Penguin, 1972. Gulowsen, J.: 'Skills, Options and Unions', in R. Hyman and W. Streeck (eds.), 1988. Herbst, P.G.: Socio-technical Design. London, Tavistock, 1974. Hyman, R. and W. Streeck, (eds.): New Technology and Work Organization. Oxford, Blackwell, 1988. Piore, M.J. and C.F. Sabel: The Second Industrial Divide. New York, Basic Books, 1984. Trist, E.L. et. al.: Organizational Choice. London, Tavistock, 1963.

Jon Gulowsen

Autonomy 1 The interactions between legal rules and industrial relations (with their regulatory apparatuses, both social and economic) are multiple, complex and constantly evolving. Legal rules and institutions (from legislation to company agreements or employment contracts) form part of a network of economic and social rules which structure their emergence and implementation, but which they are intended to construct or contain. Today, the autonomy of the actors is modifying the regulatory articulations between modes (legal, economic and social) and levels (central, intermediate and local) of regulation. This makes it necessary to augment the notion of rules with that of multiple, dynamic regulatory complexes, which take account in an integrated way of the actors in the regulatory apparatus in question and of its subject, form, level and duration. Within this general interpretative framework, it is now apparent that the regulatory apparatuses and the articulations between them are subject to a process of destabilisation (reflected in the growing use of terms such as crisis, deregulation, transformation, change, uncertainties, as well as resistance, reaction, sluggishness and rigidity); this may give rise to dysfunctions, congestion and conflicts; it may also lead to socio-legal experiments involving the establishment of regulatory complexes characterised by negotiation, decentralisation and/or participation (experienced as social innovations), which themselves involve a high degree of autonomy on the part of actors taking part in regulatory learning processes leading to the production of rules governing work. Any approach to these issues needs to be considered at both the epistemological and methodological levels.

Regulatory apparatuses disrupted by dynamic complexity Analysis of this point can be presented in three indissociable stages: The traditional regulatory apparatuses (on the economic, social and legal levels) and the articulations between them are being disrupted by a number of factors. These include, among many others, four "crises" or "transformations" in the economic, social, cultural and legal spheres, whose impact on the areas in question can be readily observed. The economic crisis has put the spotlight on the firm and its values of efficiency and productivity, and has led to the drive for flexibility and adaptation, and to the questioning of certain legal, economic and social rules that are considered rigid, even Taylorian. The position of the "social" sphere has been destabilised. On the one hand, the social sphere downstream of the production process (a "product" of economic growth) has been called into question; in other words, there has been a retreat from protective rules, now considered excessively rigid and an obstacle to social redistribution. On the other hand, however, greater attention has been given to the social sphere upstream of the production process (participation, or improvement of working conditions), now considered a condition (and no longer a consequence) of economic efficiency. This shifting of the 1

translation by Andrew Wilson

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Autonomy

debate towards the social sphere upstream of the production process has destabilised not only the social actors but also the corresponding evaluative concepts and tools. Anomy and breakdowns in socialisation sometimes occur, at the same time as interesting social experiments in adaptation. On the other hand, this same shift of interest towards the social sphere upstream of the production process, in the name of the economic efficiency of the firm, is curiously akin, on the ideological level, to a cultural evolution (in evidence since 1968) towards "qualitative values", in the name of the dignity and autonomy of the worker-individual and the worker-citizen within the firm. Indeed, it may be hypothesized that very diverse values, norms and representations are at work today, which, when formed into complexes, could amount to what might be termed a quantitative culture and a qualitative culture. Very briefly, the quantitative culture stresses the values of efficiency, competition, profitability and accumulation of wealth, all of which are said to be readily measurable. The qualitative culture, on the other hand, is associated with a set of values that are less easily quantified: quality of life, and of life at work, working conditions, social interaction, aspirations to autonomy and dialogue and rejection of mass industrialisation and of traditional authority. Although these "cultures" are not associated with clearly defined groups, but are to a very large extent present in the same groups, albeit with different emphases, this tension between such polarised referents contributes to the destabilisation of orderly systems, thus threatening their internal consistency. At the point of intersection between economic crisis, social debate and certain cultural developments, the consequent processes of destabilisation are also reflected in the difficulties faced by labour legislation. The widespread perception that such legislation is excessively constrained by the rigidities of state law gives rise to a search for complementary or alternative forms of regulation, but which are also articulated and coordinated. Another, complementary, approach to the difficulties currently being experienced by the traditional regulatory apparatuses is to see them not as associated with a "crisis" (the economic crisis is fading, but the difficulties of regulation persist ...), but rather as a reflection of two marked and closely linked trends: on the one hand, the constant increase in complexity and diversity, and, on the other, the continuous acceleration in the pace of change. The massive development in interactivity, based partly on the growing autonomy of more highly trained actors and partly on the growth of communications, of transport and the media, underlies this evolution towards what might be termed dynamic complexity. These two trends might, therefore, be structural and long term; consequently, the "crisis" in the regulatory apparatuses is not caused by the transition from one stable state to another stable state, but by the profound failure of the traditional systems of regulation, particularly the state system (conceived and equipped for stability), to adjust to an essential dynamic component of the future, namely the need to confront ever increasing levels of interdependence (complexity) and activity (changes). These processes are extremely difficult to grasp, on both the intellectual and practical levels, and have a long-term destabilising effect on some of the conditions for social cohesion. However, analysis of these changes or crises also requires the identification and examination of those elements of social, economic and legal permanence and stability, which, in combination with the elements of change, constitute the web of dynamic complexity. Legal regulation obviously constitutes an area in which perma-

The actors in the production of the rules of work

63

nence and change, of both form and substance, and partial destabilisation and recomposition are closely intertwined.

New articulations: negotiation, decentralisation and participation In a context now dominated by "dynamic complexity", the reduction in the state's regulatory role, now considered inappropriate, has helped to dislocate the apparent unity of the legal system, and to increase the points of contact between a diversified apparatus of legal regulation and the non-legal social sphere. However, this process of reduction has been slowed down by mistrust of "deregulation" (quickly perceived as the abandonment of regulation by legal means in favour of regulation based on power relationships). This evolution has led to several attempts to modernise the socio-legal regulation of work, which have consisted more of redistributing and rearticulating the roles of the state, firm and actors in the exercise of normative power, rather than encouraging the concentration of power in either the state or the firm. This greater flexibility in the production of the rules governing work corresponds to new regulatory complexes with new articulations between modes (legal and social) and levels (central, intermediate and local) of regulation. In particular, it has been reflected in three "intangible investments", decentralisation (new articulation of the levels of regulation), negotiation and participation (new articulations of the modes of regulation, both legal and social), all three of which require increasing autonomy on the part of the actors (individuals, micro-collectives, firms, local level of organisations ...). The recent increase in the use of these forms of regulation involves long learning periods for the actors, and is intended to avoid rigidities and anomy, while maintaining links with the social sphere, despite the destabilisation of the traditional legal frameworks.

The actors in the production of the rules of work The evolution of the regulation of work in France is a good illustration of these analyses. New regulatory complexes now include the annual obligation to negotiate on wages, the minimum wage to be paid on entering the labour market, adjustment of working time, temporary work, vocational training etc. The right of expression for workers also constitutes a good example of socio-legal experimentation: the five-year study of it which forms part of the CNRS-CFDT PAROLES programme (a joint research venture involving the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and a major trade union confederation, based on a data bank of 4,500 company agreements and regular contact with a hundred trade union branches in a wide range of firms) has led to the conclusion that this piece of legislation represented, in its field, a response to the four elements in the destabilisation process mentioned above, which depended essentially on the increasing (but still insufficient?) autonomy of the actors. Thus efforts are being made, on the one hand, to turn workers into citizens within their firms, to enable them to influence their working conditions, and also to develop their involvement in the firm and thus increase their productive creativity and the flexibility of the production system, and, on the other, to modernise the socio-legal regulation of work by articulating the modes and levels of regulation. These voluntarist objectives and the issues arising out of the

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right of expression are located as much at the level of the content of the right being established (economic/social, upstream/downstream, qualitative/quantitative) as at that of the regulatory method or procedure adopted. On this latter level, the implementation of the right of expression for employees involves both decentralisation (state law/company agreements), participation (in "expression groups", of course), but also the negotiation of agreements (with increased intervention and legitimation for trade unions within the firm). This obviously establishes a new articulation between the modes and levels of regulation, which places the actors at the centre of the decentralised arrangement in two ways: through the compulsory delegation of normative powers to the actors at company level (management-trade union branches), in order that they may be able to enter into negotiations on the implementation of the right of expression, and through the recognition of employees as (potential?) actors, for whom a sphere of free expression is being opened up in micro-collectives based on workshops or offices. If the experience of the right of expression can be seen as one type of possible response to a situation characterised by the increased diversity of terrains (firms and actors) in both time and space, and if this situation can now be seen to be structural (and not associated with a temporary economic crisis), this would strengthen the significance of the lessons to be drawn from this experience in relation to certain long-term questions, such as the growing tension between the act of establishing rules, i.e. of recognising or proposing regulatory measures, and a wide range of rapidly changing spheres of application; or even between social cohesion and the growing aspirations of individuals and organisations for autonomy. One important lesson to be drawn is that the actors (with their strengths, their weaknesses and their necessary learning periods) are located at the centre of the regulatory complex established in response to a situation of dynamic complexity; the circle is then normally completed, since this situation is itself largely created by these actors, whose aspiration for autonomy and increasing motivation are destabilising the old regulations and hampering the emergence of new rules. As a result, attempts are made to produce such rules by negotiation, decentralisation and participation; the agreement of the actors in question is sought, within the framework of regulatory complexes that are both intricate and flexible, and attempts are made to create cohesion and autonomy by forging close links between the law (general) and regulation by the actors themselves (individuals).

Which microscope in front of a kaleidoscope? A kaleidoscope produces complex patterns of frequently changing shapes. The situations observed by social scientists are increasingly coming to resemble those patterns. A s a result, social scientists are obliged, in addition to their use of better known methods: to seek closer cooperation between universities and the actors, enabling the former to have extensive and repeated contact with the latter and with changing situations, thus helping the actors to view their routine practices with greater detachment; to develop concepts that express complexity and change rather than linearity and stability; to work at the boundaries of disciplines, or rather in those "zones of overlap" in which the observations made cannot be accounted for fully by individual disciplines.

Bibliography

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Bibliography Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Fran^aise: Le lien social, Actes du XIlie Colloque. Univ. Geneve, 1989. Balandier, Georges: Le desordre. Paris, Fayard, 1988. Bevand, Roger and Alain Chouraqui: 'The employees' right of expression in France', in International Institute for Labour Studies (ed.): Workers' participation and their representatives. Geneve, ILO, 1990. Bocchi, G. and M. Ceruti (eds.): La sfida della complessita. Milano, Feltrinelli, 1986. Chouraqui, Alain: 'Normes sociales et regies juridiques; quelques observations sur des regulations desarticulees', in Droit et Societe, 13, 1989. Chouraqui, Alain and Robert Tchobanian (eds.): Le droit d'expression des salaries en France: un seminaire international. Geneve, International Institute for Labour Studies, 1990. Martin, Dominique (ed.): Participation et changement social dans I'entreprise. Paris, L'Harmattan, 1990. Morin, Edgar: La methode. Paris, Le Seuil, 1977, 1980, 1986 (3 vols.). Reynaud, Jean-Daniel: Les regies du jeu: 1'action collective et la regulation sociale. Paris, A. Colin, 1989. Szell, György et al. (eds.): The State, Trade Unions and Self-Management. Berlin and New York, de Gruyter, 1989. Touraine, Alain: Le retour de l'acteur: essai de sociologie. Paris, Fayard, 1984.

Alain

Chouraqui

Belgium The historical development of the Belgian participation model Introduction Belgium has a long-standing tradition in the participation of workers in social matters. Already in 1919 under the pressure of the government, the Mixed Commission for the Metal Industry (Gemengde Commissie voor de Metaalnijverheid) united workers and management of this industry. After many developments this Mixed Commission changed ultimately in what are now the Joint Committees (Paritaire Comites). Gradually, as more and more collective agreements were concluded, a certain degree of institutionalization was reached even before World War II. It is however from that period on that the full-fledged participation structure we know now came into being. Two major events, the 'Draft Agreement on Social Solidarity', better known as the 'Pact on Social Solidarity', and the 'Joint Declaration on Productivity' are often depicted as the corner stones of what later sometimes was called the 'basic compromise'. The characteristics of this 'compromise' and thus of the 'Belgian model' can be said to consist of these elements: a very elaborate consultation system in which employers' organizations and workers' organizations (and in a number of cases the State) co-operate in virtually all matters of socio-economic importance on the national, sectoral and firm level; an emphasis on economic growth to stimulate at the same time profit rates and investment possibilities (for the employers) as well as higher wages and the social security system (for the workers); finally, an understanding that workers do not interfere with economic decision making (which is the sole responsibility of the employers) while workers' organizations gain the right to be involved as discussion partners in all social matters. The Pact on Social Solidarity is legalised by the Law of 20 September 1948 concerning the organisation of trade and industry. The actors We start with the most important workers' organizations. The Belgian trade union movement consists of two large unions, the socialist General Belgian Trade Union Federation (ABVV/FGTB) and the catholic General Christian Trade Unions (ACV/CSC), one smaller union, the liberal General Confederation of Liberal Trade Unions of Belgium (ACLVB/CGSLB) and numerous very small independent trade unions. The three larger trade unions are recognised by the government as representative and are accordingly represented in the national institutions for concertation. They represent their members in the collective bargaining as well on the national, the regional, the sectoral as the company level. They act for their members in the labour courts and organize the redundancy payments. The Belgian constitution protects the right of association and thereby implicitly the right to be a member of a trade union. Further, the law forbids to cause a worker fear of

The historical development of the Belgian participation model

67

loosing his employment because of union membership or to make employment contingent upon membership or non-membership of a trade union. This makes closed shops or non-union shops in principle impossible in Belgium. The first trade unions were socialist and forerunners of the ABW/FGTB. Already around the midst of the 19th century the first forms of trade unions (mostly 'mutualites' or sick-funds) were founded, but they were small and local. In 1885 the Belgian Workers' Party (BWP/POB) was founded as an alliance of working class and socialist organizations. In 1898 the Trade Union Commission (Syndicale Commissie) was established within the party. This Commission gets a larger relative autonomy from the party in 1937 under a new name (BVV - Belgisch Vakverbond - Belgian Federation of Trade Unions). After World War II, in 1945, the socialist trade unions reunited, the Christian trade unions declined the offer to join. The newly formed confederation was titled A B W / F G T B . At the same time this confederation of trade unions became formally independent of the socialist party. The ties with the socialist party (SP/PS) however remain very strong. The structure of the A B W / F G T B today shows a relative independence and large power of the 11 industrial unions or 'Centrales' within the overarching organization. There are separate 'Centrales' for workers, employees and civil servants. The power of the 'Centrales' is illustrated by the fact that each 'Centrale' can e.g. decide to go on strike as each has its own strike fund. At this very moment however the installation of central strike fund is being considered. The basic units of the 'Centrales' are the regional industrial sections. Above these industrial organisations are the regional organisations (24 in all) and above these the interregional organizations, one for each major region of Belgium - Flanders, Wallonnia and Brussels. Above the three interregionals stands the national organization which in the A B W / F G T B is more an administrative body and the place for co-operation between interregionals and 'Centrales'. The National Federation represents the trade union in the national collective bargaining. The interregionals do the same at the regional level. The real power however lies with the 'Centrales'. The programme of the A B W / F G T B still refers to class struggle and a classless society. State initiative is preferred above private initiative. The struggle against the power in the companies has to be fought by the militants in the companies supported by workers' control. Workers' control and not cooperation is the basic idea. This workers' control and more specific the way in which it can be exercised within capitalist society is very ambiguous. Workers' control has to go hand in hand with non-intervention and the taking of responsibility on different levels 'if necessary'. The question remains when it is necessary. The ACV/CSC, now quantitatively the most important, grew out of a first catholic, 'anti-socialist', trade union set up as early as 1886. In 1904 a general secretariate of Christian industrial trade unions is established, following Rerum Novarum, the Encyclical by which the pope gave legitimacy to catholic trade union organization. It is only shortly before World War II that the ACV/CSC grew to a strength comparable to that of the A B W / F G T B . Later, in the 1970s, it became stronger than the A B W / F G T B in numbers. One of the reasons is the declining heavy industry in the more socialist Wallonia and a growing new industry in more catholic Flanders. The ACV/CSC is connected to the Christian Democratic Party (CVP/CSC), but these ties are different from the class bound links between A B W / F G T B and SP/PS. The CVP/PSC is a

68

Belgium

multi-class organization with labour, agriculture and business wings. The structure of the ACV/CSC is in many respects comparable to that of the ABVV/FGTB, with one major difference. At the ACV/CSC it is the National Confederation that holds the power. A single strike fund illustrates this more centralized power. The ACV/CSC has regional industrial federations, regional federations (32 in all), regional committees (one for each major region of Belgium) and 18 industrial unions or 'centrales'. The ACV/CSC refers to the social doctrine of the catholic church. It is opposed to the ideas of collectivism and class struggle of the ABVV/FGTB. It promotes a collaboration between workers and employers and even a tendency towards neo-corporatism is present. Co-determination as opposed to workers' control is the main attitude. A third national and representative union is the ACLVB/CGSLB. It was founded in 1889. It has no industrial federations and is primarily centralistic. Only since 1989 an administrative split between a Flemish and a Walloon regional organization has occurred, forced by the ongoing political federalization process of Belgium. The ACLVB/CGSLB stays however much more centralistic than both other major trade unions. It has no separate organizations for workers and employees. The ACLVB/CGSLB although of liberal signature has no direct links to the liberal party. The ACLVB/CGSLB pleads for an extreme codetermination system, although this could be considered as contradictory to their claim for individual freedom. Apart of the representative trade unions there is a range of smaller trade unions. Many of them are corporations of professions such as policemen, motormen, etc.. One organization that has to be mentioned is the National Confederation of Executives (NCK/CNC). Although the NCK/CNC cannot be considered as a representative union they obtained the right to present candidates for the elections of the works councils, a right normally preserved exclusively for representative unions. The employers' associations can be divided into three main categories: the federations of the larger companies, the organizations of the small businesses and the agricultural organizations. The first national employers' organization to be established is the Central Committee of Industrial Labour (Comite Central du Travail Industriel) in 1885. This was in reaction to two major changes taking place: the establishment of workers' organisations and the fast growing social legislation. This organization changed names and extended its competence several times. Since 1973 the national employers' organization is called Union of Belgian Enterprises (VBO/FEB). Contrary to its name the VBO/FEB does not group enterprises but employers' associations of different industrial sectors. They try to create a solidarity between these different branches. The VBO/FEB represents the employers in the concertation at national level. It believes in a free market economy and economic expansion. At the same time they talk of a sense of society. They want collective bargaining without state interference. At the regional level three interprofessional organizations have been established, one for each major region: the Flemish Economic Union (VEV), the Walloon Union of Enterprises (UWE) and the Union of Enterprises of Brussels (VOB/UEB). The VEV, the oldest, was established in 1926. It is based on the young Flemish capitalism, although rather managers and executives than real capitalists form the base of

The historical development of the Belgian participation model

69

the organization. It tries to follow a less strict and more realistic neo-capitalist path. It does not reject the idea of co-determination, based on a social pact in exchange for social peace. This idea of the social pact is the basic element of the concertation economy although it is rejected by the ABVV/FGTB. The VEV represents the employers at the regional level. The representation in regional/sectoral organizations is a problem because the VEV has no sectoral organizations. The importance of this level is growing, also due to the pressure for economic federalism by the VEV. The connections of the VEV with CVP top-politicians is evident. It wants fiscal autonomy for Flanders, against the FGTB-collectivism of Wallonia. With the ongoing federalization of Belgium similar organizations had to be established in Wallonia and Brussels. In 1968 the UWE was created in Wallonia and in 1971 the VOB/UEB in Brussels. Although the VBO/FEB represents small businesses as well as big companies, the small and medium sized Enterprises organized themselves in order to uphold their specific interests. In 1949 a High Council for Traders was established. It groups a range of traders' organizations . The largest organization is the National Christian Traders' Union (NCMV). The High Council represents the traders' organizations in the national concertation. In 1890 the first central agriculture organization was established, the Belgian Farmers' Union (Belgische Boerenbond). In Wallonia a similar organization, the National federation of unions of agriculture professionals (Federation Nationale des Unions Professionnelles Agricoles), was established in 1919. Together with a third organization, the Belgian Agriculture Alliance (Alliance Agricole Beige), they form the Green Front (Groen Front). The Green Front is recognized as the representative organization to defend the interests of the farmers in the concertation. In Belgium the state does not play an over important role in the social concertation. Workers and employers prefer bipartite over tripartite concertation. This does not mean that the state has no say at all in the labour relations. A set of imperative laws regulates an important part of the labour relations. Freedom of trade and industry form the legal basis of our economic order. This is an important reduction of the social concertation. The employers and the state both try to control the content and the extend of the concertation. The extend of the intervention of the state depends for a large part on the economic situation of the moment. During a crisis the state tries to enlarge its impact. In Belgium this is not done by changing the formal structure of concertation but by pressure of the state on the concertation process itself. The government can, as in 1984 and 1986, put limits to the concertation or force the social partners to come to an agreement. Remarkable is the fact that the points of view of the government come very close to those of the employers. This is influenced by the coalition constituting the government. Until very recently the regionalization had no important influence on the social concertation, but this influence is growing rapidly. The regional concertation structure is very much a copy of the national structures. The regionalization as it takes place can be analyzed as a form of 'relative autonomization'.

Belgium

70 The formal participation

structure

The institutions of concertations can be classified according to different criteria. A first difference to be made is between concertation in which only workers' and employers' organizations take part (bipartite) and the tripartite concertation where the government takes part. In the bipartite concertation certain institutions discuss only social others only economic issues while some discuss both. A last important difference to be made is the level at which the concertation takes place. We distinguish between the national, the regional, the sectoral and the company level. The growing importance of the regional level is striking.

Tripartite institutional national regional

sectoral

NCEE/ CNEE W

Bipartite noninstitutional

social matters

economic matters

NAC/CNT

NAR/CNT

CRB/CCE

CESRW

table ronde

Β

ESRBG/ CESRB

FL

VESOC

SERV SERV*

Re Na

OC/CC

company

PC/CP

BRC/CCE

OR/CVGV CE/CSHE

* since May 1990 SERV has 5 sectoral committees Diagram 1: The Belgian participation structure

Description of the main institutions

National Committee for Economic Expansion (NCEE/CNEE): national, tripartite, institutional Due to the economic growth of the '50s the government wanted more impact on the economy. This committee was established in 1960 for the programmation of the economic growth. Since 1975, when there was no more growth to be programmed, the committee has ceased meeting.

71

The historical development of the Belgian participation model

National Labour Conferences (NAC/CNT): national, tripartite,

non-institutional

The first of these conferences was held in 1936. It constituted the first interference of the government in the concertation in a structured way. They become very important in the aftermath of the war (1944-48). In 1948 the NAC/CNT and CRB/CCE are established. Most problems are now discussed in these new organs and NAC/CNT's are held only sporadically under different names to solve topical problems. Since 1974, due to the economic crisis, the NAC/CNT's became 'top meetings' with a limited number of participants. The limits of the negotiable social advantages were set in advance by the government, threatening to impose a solution by law if no agreement was reached within these limits. This can be considered as a violation of the freedom of collective bargaining, a principal right in the Belgian labour relations system. National Labour Council (NAR/CNT): national, bipartite, social issues Since 1886 already, several institutions played an important role in the social relations between workers and employers. In 1944 a general joint council was established with an advisory role in the concertation. In 1952 this council got a legal statute with the establishment of the NAR. Twelve representatives of the workers' organizations (ABVV/FGTB: 5; ACV/CSC: 6; ACLVB/CGSLB: 1) and twelve representatives of the employers' organizations (VBO/FEB: 8; KMO/PME: 3; BB: 1) form the council. The NAR/CNT has two main competences. First, the NAR/CNT advices the government and parliament on labour law, social security, general social issues and international labour regulations. Second, but certainly of no lesser importance, the NAR/CNT exercises the right to conclude collective agreements with a general scope. This right is unique in Europe and probably in the whole world. The conclusion of collective agreements has become the most important activity of the NAR/CNT since 1968 when the right to do so became law. Since then the NAR/CNT has reached 45 agreements, all of which (except the first one) are declared binding by Royal Decree. To be complete we should also mention that the NAR/CNT participates in the working of other institutions. Central Council for Trade and Industry (CRB/CCE): national, bipartite, economic The origin of the CRB/CCE lies in the 'Pact of social solidarity'. It was established by law in 1948. The CRB/CCE has 50 members. Twenty-two are nominated by the employers' organizations, twenty-two are nominated by the workers' organizations and six members from the world of science and technology are co-opted. The CRB/CCE is only an advisory board. Its advices on the economic policy can be compared to those of the NAR/CNT on the social policy, but they have a less (morally) binding character. An important activity of the council is the publication of semi-annual reports on the development of the conjuncture. Since 1987 the CRB/CCE has sectoral committees, but we will treat those as separate organizations. Round Table (TR): regional, tripartite,

non-institutional

In Wallonia the institutional, regional concertation is not as developed as in Flanders. There is no institutional tripartite concertation. Monthly however workers' organiza-

72

Belgium

tions, employers' organizations and the Walloon government at so called 'round table' talks. They consult each other on social and economic policy. Economic and Social Council of the Walloon Region (CESRW): regional, bipartite, social and economic Unlike at the national level, at the regional level there is but one bipartite organization for social as well as economic issues in each region. The CESRW gives advice to the national and regional institutions on economic and social matters concerning Wallonia. Economic and Social Council for the Brussels Region (ESRBG/CESRB): tripartite, institutional

regional,

This council has approximately the same competence for the Brussels region as the CESRW for the Walloon region. At the time of its establishment the Brussels region however did not have an institution equivalent to a regional parliament. Therefore the council was tripartite in order to have an organization for concertation between politicians and social partners. The council has 36 members, 12 of each, employers' organizations, workers' organizations and politicians. Although this composition was meant to change after the installation of the political Council of the Capital in beginning of 1989, nothing has happened yet. Flemish Economic and Social Concertation Committee (VESOC): regional, tripartite, institutional VESOC started in 1980. It consists of 8 members of the employers' organizations, 8 members of the workers' organizations and 4 members of the Flemish Executive (the Flemish federal government). Concertation takes place on all social-economic policy issues within the competence of the Flemish community. The Flemish government engages itself to execute all proposals on which an agreement is reached within VESOC. Social-Economic Council of Flanders (SERV): regional/sectoral, bipartite, social and economic This council has known an evolution from a private initiative of employers' and workers' organizations started in 1952, over a tripartite period from 1971 onward, till its present form since 1985. The council has 20 working members (10 from workers' organizations and 10 from employers' organizations) and 7 representatives from political parties who only take part in the study and advisory tasks and not in the concertation. The SERV gives advice on social and economic issues concerning Flanders, takes positions on socio-economic themes and produces publications. Apart from the advisory task, the SERV does the preparation for the tripartite concertation in VESOC and the concertation of the social partners. Until very recently (May 1990) SERV worked only at a global level, since then SERV advised the Flemish minister of economic affairs to install five sectoral committees within its framework.

The historical development of the Belgian participation model

73

Concertation Committees (OC/CC): sectoral, tripartite, institutional There was a special need for concertation between social partners and government in some sectors. The most important of these OC/CC are the Control committee on electricity and gas, the Concertation committee for the iron and steel policy and the Concertation and control committee for the petroleum. Joint Committees (PC/CP): sectoral/national, bipartite, social The social unrest after World War I with its strikes leads to the first intervention of the government in the concertation between workers and employers. The employers refuse to accept this intervention and in March 1919 the Mixed Commission for the Metal Industry, the first joint commission, is installed under the pressure of the economic and social circumstances. In 1935 already 26 joint commissions exist and many more are to follow soon. Already in these early commissions collective agreements are made. After the national strike of 1936, the government, the employers and the workers agree on some important social advantages to be specified in the joint commissions. This brings a boom in the number of PC/CP's. After World War II, in June 1945, they get a legal status. The most important change is that collective agreements made in the PC/CP's can from then on be ratified by the Ministers and become generally binding. From that moment on first a central agreement is made in the NAR/CNT, this central agreement is then specified in collective agreements in the PC/CP's. These agreements are finally presented to the Minister for Labour and Employment for signing and making them generally binding. The Minister can accept or refuse. Refusals were plenty during crisis years when collective agreements were used to try and circumvent the limits of wage increases laid down by the government. During the congress in honour of the 80th birthday of the first joint committee proposals were made to make the collective agreements of the PC/CP's automatically legally and generally binding even without the signature of the Minister. No wonder that some authors talk of pre-corporatism and accuse the PC/CP's of being a second power next to the legal power. Since 1969 the PC/CP's also organize the conciliation and mediation procedures in case of industrial dispute. Special Advisory Commissions (BRC/CCS): sectoral, bipartite, economic In 1948, apart from the CRB/CCE, industrial councils, one per important industrial sector were established. Initially there were only eight (Construction, Metallurgy, Chemistry, Paper, Food, Fishing, Textiles and Clothing, Leather), later special commissions were established for Distribution and for the Diamondsector as well as six sectoral groups for Wood, Construction materials, Glass, Agriculture, Transport, Tourism and horeca. In 1987, mainly for budget reasons, the Industrial Councils were transformed into BRC's as subcommissions of the CRB/CCE. The main task of the BRC/CCS's consists in advising the Ministers and/or the CRB on issues concerning the industry they represent.

74

Belgium

Works Council (OR/CE): company, bipartite, social Established by law in 1948 with the following main competences: the right to information on the general working of the company; the right to yearly information on the results and a control on the accounts; the right to advice on labour organization and labour conditions that might change productivity; on economic issues presented by the CRB or BRC; on general criteria for employment or dismissals; on issues of cooperation between management and personnel; the right to control on the application of social regulations; on the application of industrial and social law for the protection of workers; the right to decide on holidays; on the use of social funds; on cultural and leisure activities; on canteens etc... These competences were extended to information on the economic and financial situation of the company; on employment and personnel policy; with the right to advice on collective dismissals; retirement procedures; with the right to decide on criteria for dismissal and rehiring for economic or technical reasons. Nevertheless the OR remains mainly an advisory body and an information forum. Its competences are larger in social than in economic financial issues. The OR/CE is a joint organization. The manager of the company is the president of the meetings, a representative of the workers is secretary. The representatives of the employers are chosen by the employer, the workers' delegation is chosen by all the workers of the company, but only the recognised workers' organizations can put up candidates. As mentioned before the NCK/CNC obtained the right to present candidates in the last elections. This forms a problem for the balance between management and workers in the council, as the executives very often take a stand nearer to management than to the other trade unions. Every company with 100 or more employees has to have an OR/CE. It is not in the OR/CE that collective agreements on the company level are decided. This is the right of the trade union delegation. Committee for Safety, Health and Embellishment of the workshop (CVGV/CSHE): company, bipartite, social Established by law in 1952. A joint organization, obligatory in every company with 20 or more employees. The election of the workers' representatives is equal to that of the OR. For the employer the Chief for Safety and Health must sit in the CVGV/CSHE and he fulfils the task of secretary. The manager is the president. Again this is mainly an advisory body. The CVGV/CSHE appoints and replaces the Chief of Safety. Trade Union Delegation (SD/DS): not a concertation

organisation

The SD/DS is older than the OR/CE and the CVGV/CSHE. It does not figure in our diagram because it is not a concertation organization in the true sense of the word, but a partner in the concertation on company level. The SD/DS represents only the members of a trade union in the talks with the management. It is chosen by the members or appointed by the trade union. The SD/DS controls the application of collective agreements, social law, etc.. The SD/DS is the recognised partner for concertation on all personnel matters such as wages, working time, labour conditions etc... The SD/DS has the right to be heard by the management, to intervene in disputes, etc...

Analysis of the participation structure

75

The importance of the SD/DS should not be underestimated. It is the SD/DS who has the power to conclude collective agreements on the company level and not the OR/CE.

Analysis of the participation structure The politics offederalization and the structure and practice of collective bargaining Although institutionally changes take place very slowly the trend is clear. More and more of the social issues are transferred to the regions. The Reform of the State of 1980 gave the regions more power in some issues of labour relations. Politically spoken each of the regions beliefs that by getting more power they will be able to conduct a better adapted economical and social policy. As we have seen up to now the new regional institutions were copies of the national institutions, but several authors (Stroobant, 1989) plead already for completely new organizations on the regional level. The establishment of industrial committees within the SERV indicate that the influence of the federalizations is felt on all levels. As these reforms took place in the midst of the economical crisis the trade unions did not have the power to resist this tendency. They were forced to adapt their organizations to the new facts. The regional level of the organizations gained power relative to the national level. The ACLVB/GGLSB up to very recently centrally organized on the national level had to adopt a regional structure as well. Within the ABVV/FGTB and the ACV/CSC important differences of opinion between the Flemish and Walloon federations came to the foreground. These differences become understandable when we analyze the differences between the regions in sociological, economical and political terms. The changing industry mix and industrial relations When we look at the crude figures of employment, factory size or wages we see no great differences between the regions. It is only when we look at the industry mix that some differences become clearer. In Wallonia the old, traditional and decaying heavy industry still forms the backbone of the economy. Flanders has had the same problems with its textile industry, but by modernization this sector has greatly overcome its problems. On the other hand Flanders has a younger and more modern industry. Together with this difference in industry mix goes a difference in ownership. Where the Walloon industry is for a large part still in the hands of the old Belgian capital, an important part of the new industry in Flanders depends on foreign capital or belongs to multinationals. The relation between the private and the public sector: divergence and convergence Not only in the private owned industry is there a difference but also in the importance of the public sector. In Flanders only 27 percent of the workforce works in the public, while in Wallonia this figure is 37 percent. This brings us to political differences between the regions. When we talk about the relationship between politics and labour relations we always refer to the representation of the workers in government. Traditionally this is measured by the presence of socialist or similar parties in government. In this respect Belgium is a special case and more so by virtue of the regional differences. The Belgian

76

Belgium

workers are not only represented in government by a socialist party (SP/PS) but also by a Christian Democratic Party (CVP/PSC). The CVP/CSC however is a multi-class party not only politically representing the workers but has also a very strong business and agriculture wing, the binding force of the party being its Christianity. The power of these parties is regionally divided. The PS is by far the strongest party in Wallonia, the CVP is the largest party in Flanders. Apart from a few short periods the CVP has always been in power, changing its partnership between SP/PS and PVV/PRL, the Liberal Party. We can therefore say that the Flemish workers for a large part felt steadily represented in government, while the Walloon workers dropped out of representation at irregular intervals. Many authors have mentioned such a situation as an explanation for differences in behaviour in labour relations (Shalev). The changes

in level and content of collective

bargaining

The evolution towards a greater importance of the lower regional level fits in with a global tendency towards a 'relative autonomization'. This tendency can best be illustrated by the changing level of collective bargaining in Belgium. In our participation structure collective agreements are concluded at three levels. At the national level in the NAR/CNT, at the sectoral level in the PC/CP's and at company level by the SD/DS with the management. To these three collective agreements we must add the individual agreements between worker and management. At the national level it is not so much a diminution in the number of agreements we see as a lowering of the importance of the issues agreed upon. It is in the PC/CP's that the real important issues have been handled. The number of agreements on this level has been kept at the same level since the 1970's. It is at the company level that there has been a real boom in the number of agreements, from 38 in 1970 to nearly 2000 in 1987. Often this tendency has been described as fitting into our age of individualism. It could be interpreted as a form of larger autonomy to lower levels and thus of more democracy. We think that this autonomy is only relative. It is for instance the increasing importance to employers of flexibility that reflects in the growing number of agreements on company level. We believe that this relative autonomy will lead to a selective solidarity when workers can only relate to those few in the working class that work under the same contract. We fear that it holds a danger for neo-corporatism and division of the labour force. An example will make this clear. When in 1989 a new collective agreement had to be concluded for the public sector the trade unions had to deal with at least six ministers or secretaries of state. The unions of Flanders and Wallonia disagreed widely on what could be reached and an agreement on the very lowest level had to be agreed upon in order not to break the solidarity. Later new agreements were made at the regional level where Flemish employees got a larger wage increase than their Walloon colleagues. On top of that the employees of the Ministry of Finance got an extra raise. In our opinion relative autonomisation has to be seen rather as a management strategy in the struggle for control over labour.

Conflict behaviour This diagram represents the absolute frequencies of strikes in the three regions of Belgium. In a constant way, without any exceptions, the number of strikes in Wallonia is

77

Conflict behaviour

Β Flanders

• Wallonia

• Brussels

Source: Piret, C.et at.. 1985; Hertogs. B.and C.Piret, 1986 Diagram 2: Strike frequency per region

the highest, at some times even double that of Flanders. The relative strike frequency, taking into account the number of employees in each region, would show an even larger difference as the working populations is far larger in Flanders than in Wallonia.

S Flanders

• Wallonia

• Brussels

Source: NIS, sociale statistieken, 1970-1981 Diagram 3: Working days lost by strikes per region

The differences in working days lost by strikes are not as clear cut as those for the frequency of strikes. This is mainly due to the fact that in a small country as Belgium one or a few large or long strikes influence these figures greatly. The 1964 peak in Flanders is due mainly to a large strike in the metalindustry. In 1970 the miners in Flanders struck had a very long strike. A strike in the steel industry in Wallonia in 1971 accounts for a large part of that peak. Still we can say that the Walloon workers are more strike prone than the Flemish.

78

Belgium

The dynamics of conflict behaviour Wallonia counts 66 percent of all strikes and 80 percent of all occupations between 1976 and 1985. Strikes are in general longer in Flanders than in Wallonia although the propensity to strike is higher in Wallonia than in Flanders. The average Walloon worker strikes one day every three years, the average Flemish worker one day every four years. The historic development of the industrialization of Belgium could be an important factor in the explanation of these different tendencies. In Wallonia it are above all Belgian capital groups and managers that define the labour relations while in Flanders it are above all foreign multinationals. As explained above the Walloon workers are only irregularly represented in government, that makes that when there representatives are in government they strike because they believe they stand a unique and fair chance to get what they want, while their Flemish colleagues feel more secure because they are represented steadily and that makes that they rather believe in a possible political solution to their problems. A more detailed analysis of the strike data would show a growing importance of strikes by separate groups and professions. We have seen strikes by policemen, nurses, social workers, motormen, etc. ... We believe this to be a consequence of the growing importance of parts of sectors due to the relative autonomization of social and organizational structures that forces selective solidarities rather than the collective solidarities on which earlier defence mechanisms of interests were based.

Conclusion The importance of political and sociological aspects The classical approach to the Belgian labour relations system starts off almost exclusively from the legal and institutional point of view. Of course this has its importance as Belgian labour relations are special in that the unions participate in all the main economic and social organizations. It is however only by studying the sociological and political causes for this enormous bargaining power that we can come to grips with the system. A detailed study of the why's and where's of the trade union power will be necessary, easy explanations as the fact that unions dues are partly paid by the employers will not do. Towards a Flemish and a Walloon model of industrial relations? Furthermore the situation is not static and must be considered in its evolution and that evolution is towards a lowering of the level at which the action takes place. It is therefore our firm belief that in order to fully understand the Belgian situation and as far as we can see for many other countries different explanations have to be sought at different aggregation levels for problems taking place at these levels. In Belgium at least separate Flemish and Walloon systems have to be looked at and even then we find no explanations for some of the problems without looking at sectoral levels.

Bibliography

79

Bibliography Arcq, E. and P. Blaise: 'Les organisation syndicales en Belgique', Dossier du CRISP 23 1986: 1-24. Baglioni, G. and C. Crouch (eds.): European industrial relations: The challenge of flexibility. London, Sage, 1990. Beaupain, T.: 'La negotiation collective: niveaux et contenus', in T. Beaupain et al., 1989: 231-251. Beaupain, T. et al.: 50 jaar arbeidsverhoudingen. Brugge, Die Keure, 1989. Coetsier, P. and M. Ryckaert: 'The Belgian industrial relations system,' in International Democracy in Europe, International research group (eds.): European industrial relations. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981: 164-179. De Broeck, G.: Labour relations in Belgium. Paper at the 8th World congress of the International industrial relations association. Brussels, 1989. De Broeck, G.: 'De overheid en het sociaal overleg', in T. Beaupain et al., 1989: 49-70. Diels, D.: 'Kaderleden niet echt thuis bij klassieke vakbonden', Intermediair 21 (19) 15 mei 1990. Hertogs, B. and C. Piret: De stakingen in 1985. Brüssel, ACV, 1986. Kendall, W.: 'Belgium', in A. Lane (ed.), The Labour Movement in Europe. London, 1975: 209-241. Nationaal Instituut Voor De Statistiek: Sociale statistieken. Brüssel, 1970-1989. Piret, C. et al.: De stakingen in 1983 en 1984. Brüssel, ACV, 1985. Rijksdienst Voor Sociale Zekerheid: Aantal op 30 juni 1988 in de sociale zekerheid opgenomen werkgevers en werknemers. Brüssel, 1989. SERV: 'Sectoriele commissies binnen de SERV', SERV Bericht 5 (6/90), juni 1990. Spineux, Α.: 'Trade unionism in Belgium; The difficulties of a major renovation', in G. Baglioni and C. Crouch (eds.), 1990: 42-70. Stroobant, M.: 'De overheid en het collectief overleg in Belgie tijdens de sociaal economische crisis 1970-1988', in T. Beaupain et al., 1989: 71-115. Vilrokx, Jacques: Self-employment in Europe as a form of relative autonomy: Significance and prospects. Brussels, EC-FAST, 1987. Vilrokx, Jacques and Jim Van Leemput: 'De evolutie van stakingen en bezettingen sinds de jaaren '60', in T. Beaupain et al., 1989: 279-313. Witte Ε. and J. Craeybeckx: Politieke geschiedenis van Belgie sinds 1830; Spanningen in een burgerlijke democratie. Antwerpen, Standaard wetenschappelijke uitgeverij, 1981. Ysebaert, C. and L. Asselberghs: Instellingen zakboekje 1989. Antwerpen, Kluwer, 1988. Ysebaert, C. and J. De Boeck: Politiek zakboekje, Martens VIII1988. Antwerpen, Kluwer, 1988. Ysebaert, C. and J. De Boeck: 'Trends in the level of collective bargaining: part two', European Industrial Relations Review 186 (July) 1989: 20-22.

Jim Van

Leemput

Bulgaria The approach to participation and self-management adopted in this article derives from four main positions. First, that the development of participation and self-management is best understood by comparing the different models of labour relations that are created in historical succession. (In this context a model is defined as a set of organisational structures and the mechanisms that make these structures work.) In practice new models are created and imposed on existing models and the transition from one model to another is rarely immediate so that the patterns of organisational and personal behaviour persist for some time after restructuring takes place. Second, that different models of labour relations need to be related to the theories that underlay their creation and legitimation. Thus in Bulgaria concepts of participation and management were always directly related to theories of ownership and the role of the state. Third, that discussion of participation is best understood when it is related to different levels of enterprise structure.Thus in the production enterprises typical of Bulgaria (and other countries in Eastern Europe) participation can in principle take place at three internal levels: at the top of the enterprise where the main managerial decisions are made; at the middle level, that is at the level of the department, which in many cases is the unit which produces a final product; or at the base where the majority of employees work in work groups or sections. However it is not simply the level at which participation takes place but the relationship between participation at different internal levels which is important. In Bulgaria in the process of developing the self-managing model from 1982 the introduction of mechanisms intended to link the top and the base was an important and conscious aspect of labour relations strategy. Fourth, that the scope for participation and self-management is partly dependent on the balance between centralisation and decentralisation in economic decision-making. Thus in a highly centralised economy the space for decision-making at the level of the enterprise will be less than in one which is more decentralised and this in turn influences the nature of participation and self-management. The models discussed here are those of the centralised model established in the early 1950s and slightly modified in the 1960s and the self-management model developed from 1982 but modified in 1989.

The centralised model The model of economic management established in Bulgaria by the early 1950s was that of the administrative command system developed in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and transferred to Bulgaria after the Second World War. In this model the economic mechanism was designed to make the enterprise respond to the plan targets determined from above by the political and state authorities. The internal organisation and operation of the enterprise were designed to conform with this strategy. There were two main internal vertical structures: first, the operational structure headed by the director and designed to ensure the process of production which transmitted instructions to the workers at the base through the departmental managers and supervisors; and second,

The centralised model

81

what was termed the social political structure of the party and the trade union. The dynamics of this structure were predominantly top-down and it was strongly hierarchical. At the same time the mechanisms for payment and the design of jobs were essentially individualistic. In most sectors of industry tasks and standards were set for the individual worker and payment was based on individual performance. In the centralised model state ownership of the means of production was regarded as the fundamental and essential basis for the development of the economy and society. The theory was that the people as citizens authorised the state to manage their property and delegated their ownership rights to the state which exercised the functions of management. In theory the worker was a co-owner but this was as more as a citizen than as a worker and his employment status was that of that of 'hired labour' that is hired by the state enterprise. Production meetings were the principal structure for the participation of workers in management in the centralised model. Their primary purpose was to involve workers in solving problems of operational management especially in relation to plan fulfilment. They were convened by the trade union and line management and they were normally confined to the level of the work group, the section or the department and they did not function at the level of the enterprise. Issues of payment were excluded from such meetings. Involvement in production problems was also fostered by the movement for socialist emulation. This took various forms but at the base of the enterprise the most common was pledges by individual workers to overfulfill production norms. Workers who were the most successful in emulation were accorded the status of frontranker. Redesign ofthe centralised model in Bulgaria began with the proposals for economic reform which were developed from the 1960s (as inother countries in Eastern Europe). As a result the state economic organisation (D.S.O.) was established as an organisational level intermediate between the ministries and the enterprises. This was a kind of corporation intended to co-ordinate the process of planning and allocation but the functioning of the enterprises within these corporations was not altered significantly. Adoption at the political level of participation in management as a concept at this period stimulated research into the attitudes and behaviour of workers but the only change in enterprise structure was the creation of a plant council for the enterprise. Its functions however were essentially consultative and advisory and it had no managerial authority or power. In the same way the general assembly of the labour collective operated as an occasional forum at which enterprise management informed the workforce or their representatives of progress in relation to plan fulfilment. The first stage in the redesign of enterprise structures and mechanisms came with the Party Conference of April 1978 which decided that what was termed the 'new type ' of brigade should become the generic structure for the organisation of work in productive industries. (Thirkell, 1985) This meant that the individual form of work organisation and payment which had predominated should be replaced by the collective form of the brigade. At this stage the new design concept was that the brigade should operate as an accounting unit. This meant that it would become a unit for the purpose of planning and accounting - hitherto the department had been the lowest internal unit for these purposes. The other innovation was the introduction of the mechanism of the co-efficient of labour participation as the mechanism for the distribution of earnings among the members of the brigade. At this stage the application of the co-efficient was decided by

82

Bulgaria

the brigade leader and not by the members of the brigade. (For details of the co-efficient and its operation see Petkov and Thirkell 1991) In terms of theory there was no general concept apart from that of the brigade as an embodiment of 'the socialist organisation of work' instead of the 'scientific organisation of work' which had hitherto been the legitimating concept for the design of jobs and payment systems.

The emergence of the self-managed model The opportunity for the development of a theory which facilitated the creation of a new model of labour relations came with the Party Congress of March 1981 when it was declared that the Labour Collective should become the stopanin of socialist property. This concept of the Labour Collective as stopanin provided the basis for the elaboration of the New Conception of Labour and Labour Relations endorsed by the party conference of November 1982. (Zhivkov, 1982) The concepts of the labour collective and stopanin, the linkage of which provided the theoretical basis for the design of a new model, need to be explained. The concept of the labour collective had existed in socialist theory since the 1930s (Makarenko, 1986) and was also established in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia though not in Hungary. In Bulgaria it was used from the 1950s as a term broadly equivalent to the 'workforce 'of a unit of production such as an enterprise. During the 1970s when participation in management on a consultative basis was the concept the general assembly of the labour collective was used as a mechanism for reaching an opinion acceptable to the collective as a whole. The concept of stopanin has no direct English equivalent - the nearest are 'manager', supervisor' and 'administrator'. The declaration of the Party Congress in 1981 that the labour collective should become stopanin of socialist property implied the displacement of the traditional concept that the director of the enterprise managed it as state property on behalf of the state and was accountable to the superior state organs. Implementation of the new concept, as explained below, required the redesign of enterprise structures and mechanisms. In addition to the concept of the labour collective as stopanin a further design concept adopted was the sociological one of 'community'. It was envisaged that the design process should be such as to facilitate the development of the labour collective as a labour community (Petkov and Thirkell, 1991). (Rus has applied the criteria of community and collective to an evaluation of Yugoslav self-management.) The elaboration of the new concept of labour relations was closely interwoven with the strategy for economic reform. The Regulation on Economic Activity of 1982 was intended to give some increase in the autonomy of enterprises in relation to the central authorities and it referred specifically to the brigade organisation of work and the criteria for establishing them within enterprises. The process of enterprise redesign lasted from 1982 till 1986 when the new model was enacted by the Labour Code. (Labour Code; Walliman and Stoyanov; Petkov and Thirkell, 1991) In terms of organisational design the new model required changes in both the vertical structures inside the enterprise and in the powers ofthe organisational units and in the relationship between internal levels. As explained above the traditional model of the enterprise was one with two main vertical structures - the operational and the social-political. The new model required a third vertical structure with strong powers and

The emergence of the self-managed model

83

this was provided through the forums of the general assembly of the labour collective at the base of the enterprise and the elected plant council at the top. The forums of the third structure were designed to become the central ones so that these bodies had to have sufficient space and powers to become so. The implication of this redesign was to invert the traditional pyramidal structure of the enterprise in which authority flowed from the top downwards to one in which authority was derived from the base. Redesign required a reconceptualisation of labour relations and of the parties in it. In the centralised model the parties in labour relations were the management, the trade union (which signed the annual collective agreement on behalf of the workers), and the individual worker who had an individual contract of employment with the enterprise. (Labour law in Bulgaria, as in other socialist countries, was largely concerned with 'individual labour relations' that is with the rights and duties of the individual worker in relation to the enterprise). The granting of legal status and authority to the forums of the labour collective made it a fourth party in labour relations and this led to the new category of 'collective labour relations' as distinct from the existing category of 'individual labour relations'. In relation to the three internal levels at which participation can take place ,that is work group, department and enterprise priority in Bulgaria was given to the level of the work group or groups of workers united in the brigade form of work organisation. There were several reasons for this. First the brigade form of organisation was already established; second it was considered that involvement of workers should start from their immediate interests which derived from the organisation of their work and payment for it. Thus the implementation of self-management was conceived as a process starting at the base in which the dynamics of involvement would spread upwards to the level of the enterprise. A distinctive feature of strategy in Bulgaria was that the level and unit of the department was not seen as an appropriate base for the development of self-management. This position was derived from the aim of reducing hierarchical control. Theoretically it was related to the levels of interests and the distribution of wages. It was decided that although in theory there were three levels of interest (and distribution of funds for payment) the strategic choice of making the brigade the basic internal unit of the enterprise made itdesirable to restructure the enterprise into essentially two main structural levels that is the brigade and the enterprise. This implied that the level of the department would operate primarily as a level of co-ordination and not as a level for the distribution of wages. Analytically this required the separation of the labour collective into two levels - the primary collective in the form of the brigade, and the main collective comprising the enterprise as a whole. This distinction was incorporated in the Labour Code and in 1986/7 in about 14 percent of enterprises, mainly smaller ones in light industry the level ofthe department was abolished and in a further 30 percent of enterprises the post of departmental manager was redefined as being that of co-ordinator. This redesign was seen as congruent with the ideas of some western theorists that in future enterprises will have shorter vertical hierarchies - the clothes-hangermodel (Gustavsen).

84

Bulgaria

The self-managing brigade The implementation of brigade organisation after the decision of the Party Conference in 1977 was one that proceeded gradually and with the elaboration of new criteria for the structure and the successive implementation of a series of mechanisms designed to make it an effective unit of self-management. In 1980, the first year for which statistics were collected there were 851,000 workers organised in 39,900 brigades with an average size of 21. By 1988 the total number of workers had risen to 948,000 but the number of brigades had fallen to 27,600 so that average size was now 34. From 1977 a distinction was made between complex and specialist brigades. Complex brigades included workers from different skill categories and sometimes ancillary clerical employees and in 1988 their average membership was 44. Specialist brigades were composed of workers with the same skill and were mainly involved in maintenance work, although in some enterprises maintenance and production workers were combined in complex brigades. Specialist brigades were usually smaller in 1988 the average membership was 20. The initial conception of the new type brigade in 1977 was that it should operate as a unit with its own accounts and thus as a planning unit and that the distribution of earnings among brigade members should be determined by the application of the co-efficient of participation. (Previously the department had been the lowest internal planning and accounting unit.) A major design issue was the criteria for determining the size and boundaries of the brigade. In relation to this there was competition between the accounting and economic criteria which, especially in the early stages, made it easier to design larger brigades to conform with the existing accounting systems, and the self-managing and sociological (community) criteria which favoured smaller brigades. (In the Labour Code the criterion of 'close proximity and mutual interaction between members' was one of the design criteria). Initially the main internal mechanism of the brigade was the co-efficient of labour participation. This was based on the brigade leader's assessment of the contribution of different members to the brigade's results according to a series of criteria. Subsequently the operation of this mechanism was altered by the establishment of new forums - the brigade assembly and the brigade council - within the brigade. The brigade assembly became the final source of authority within the brigade while the brigade council put proposals, agreed with the brigade leader toit. In relation to the application of the co-efficient the brigade leaders proposals would be considered by the council and then put to the monthly meeting of the assembly which would vote whether or not to accept them. The brigade assembly also voted on other decisions including the admission and release of members. Further mechanisms were introduced successively to increase the participation of brigades in the self-management of their work. (For details of their implementation and operation see Petkov/Thirkell, 1991). From 1982 to 1986 the mechanism of counterplanning, which had operated in the centralised model in the context of socialist emulation, was adapted to the brigade organisation. The theory of counter-planning, which originated in the Soviet Union in 1930, was that in the regular planning process the brigade should have an incentive to make proposals for changes in the organisation

The trade union

85

of production and to put pressure on higher management for these which would lead to savings in costs. Part of these savings should go to increasing the wage fund of the brigade and the earnings of its members. In terms of altering internal relationships between levels of structure the significance of counter-planning as a mechanism was that it the brigade at the base to management at the top of the enterprise. A second mechanism designed to link the brigade to the top of the enterprise was that of agreements between the brigade and the director. These were introduced in the 1982 regulation on the economic mechanism. In essence the conception was that in return for agreed levels of co-operation and performance by the brigade the management would accept responsibility for providing the necessary supplies or compensate the brigade if it failed to do so. In practice the problems of ensuring continuity of supplies in the conditions of the shortage economy made it difficult to implement this mechanism in many enterprises. The third mechanism was that of managerial elections (Petkov/Thirkell, 1988). Elections of brigade leaders by the assemblies of their brigades were introduced on a national scalefor the first time in 1984, building on the lessons drawn from experiments in some districts. In 1986 there was a second round ο felections with new rules providing for secret ballots, procedures for nomination of candidates and for the election of enterprise directors and members of the plant council by the general assembly. A third round of elections for brigade leaders and directors was held in 1988. The introduction of elections was seen as an essential component of the model of self-management in which the labour collective was given a leading place. The elected brigade leader became the representative of the brigade in relations with higher management and the elected director now had a dual role as representative of the labour collective and representative of the interests of the state. One of the consequences of changing structures at the base through brigades was that the production meetings characteristic of the centralised model atrophied (Thirkell, 1985).

The 1989 model - Managerial self-management At the beginning of 1989 a new regulation on economic activity was brought into operation. The general aim of this was to increase the importance of horizontal relations between enterprises relative to vertical relations, (for discussion of horizontal and vertical relations in socialist economies see Zaslavskaya) and to place responsibility for enterprise performance on the enterprise management. (Formally the obligations of enterprise management were now greater than the legal obligations of management in western countries.) The concept here was that of the firm. Although the structures of brigade organisation remained the status of the forums of the plant council and the general assembly reverted to that of advisory bodies.

The trade union The role and function of the trade unions changed according to the different models. In the centralised model their function was that of the classical socialist type that is to

86

Bulgaria

perform the dual functions of promoting production and of protecting the interests of the workers. The former function was carried out through various mechanisms of the movement for socialist emulation - production challenges and competitions, the encouragement of frontrankers (individual workers who led in production) and through production meetings. The latter function was based on securing the application of legal and other standards for health and safety, working time and conditions and on pay. Such standards were elaborated at national level with trade union participation. In the implementation of the new model of labour relations from 1982 the role of the trade union was redefined. At the party congress of 1981 the role of the trade unions was defined as that of organiser of the labour collective and guarantor of the economic mechanism introduced in 1982. As organiser the trade unions became the leading agency of organisational changes in enterprises, specifically the implementation of brigade organisation and the mechanisms of counter-planning, agreements and elections. The economic mechanism introduced in 1989 required another shift in function towards that of representation of worker interests through the mechanisms of collective bargaining.

The significance of the Bulgarian approach to participation and co-management The approach to strategy formulation at the national level in the period 1982-88 was 'synoptic' rather than 'incremental' (Petkov/Thirkell, 1991) in that changes were derived from the concept of the 'labour collective as stopanin'. This meant that the sequence of changes in organisational structures and mechanisms proceeded in a logical sequence and were derived from this concept. The starting point for change was the brigade organisation of work, so that change began at the base. In contrast to the approach adopted in some other countries where change began at the top with the creation of a worker's council. This conforms with the views of many social scientists that the initial engagement of the interests of workers in participation is more readily achieved at the point of production than at the higher levels of the enterprise. It was however an explicit aim that participation should develop upwards from the base. To facilitate this it became a conscious strategy to reduce the hierarchical authority of the middle level of the department. In order to implement the concept of self-management it was necessary to develop the structures within which mechanisms operated. Thus in the 1978 conception of the brigade the brigade leader was a managerial appointment and he determined the allocation of tasks and the application of the co-efficient. Subsequently a brigade council elected by the assembly of the brigade was established which advised the brigade leader on the application of the co-efficient and other issues facing the brigade as a unit. From 1986 the brigade assembly was given the ultimate authority to determine such issues and the right to elect the brigade leader both as the leader of the brigade and their representative in dealings with higher management. This leads to the issue of the relationship between changes in labour relations and economic reform. In principle it is possible to make some changes in labour relations without significant changes in economic mechanisms or it is possible to combine economic reform with reform of labour relations. In the period from 1982 a distinctive

Bibliography

87

feature of the Bulgarian approach was that reform of economic management and labour relations were closely connected. As a result of decentralisation the scope for selfmanagement at the level of the enterprise was increased with consequences for labour relations. On the other hand central control over the wage fund, although reduced, remained strong. (Petkov/Thirkell, 1991) Bibliography Gustavsen, Bj0rn: 'Evolving Patterns of Enterprise Organisation', in International Labour Review, 125 (4) 1986: 367-82. Labour Code. Sofia, 1987. Makarenko, Α.: Sochineniya. Vol. 7, Moscow, 1986. Petkov, Krastyu and John Thirkell: ' Managerial Elections in Bulgaria: Interests, Conflicts and Representation', in Labour and Society 13 (3) 1988: 306-18. Petkov, Krastyu and John Thirkell: Labour Relations in Eastern Europe: Organisational Design and Dynamics. London, Routledge, 1991. Rus, Veljko: 'Yugoslav self-management - 30 years later', in B. Wilpert and A. Sorge (eds.): International Perspectives on Organisational Democracy. Chichester, John Wiley and Sons, 1984. Thirkell, John: 'Brigade Organisation and Industrial Relations Strategy in Bulgaria 1978-1983', in Industrial Relations Journal 16 (1) 1985: 33-43. Walliman, Isidor and Christo Stoyanov: 'Workplace Democracy in Bulgaria', in Industrial Relations Journal 19 (4) 1988 : 310-21. Zaslavskaya, Tatiana: The Second Socialist Revolution. London, I.B. Tauris,1990. Zhivkov, Todor: A New Conception of Labour and Labour Relations. Sofia, Sofia Press, 1982.

John

Thirkell

Canada 'Workers' participation' is one of the more slippery concepts in industrial relations, not least because it is often assigned different meanings by different people and groups. For the purpose of this paper it is useful to draw a distinction between 'workers' participation' and 'industrial democracy' The latter is typically associated with broad social objectives. Its proponents seek to extend democratic decision-making from the political sphere into the economic sphere by eliminating or restricting the rights and powers of the dominant industrial hierarchy. Because the principal barrier to the advancement of industrial democracy is the structure of property ownership (from which derives the distribution of control over industrial decisions), the most common strategy is to exert 'political pressure on governments making them more responsive to employee and union views for redesigning the total economy toward more socially oriented goals' (Barkin, 1978). In this paper the concept of workers' participation has a narrower focus: the participation of workers in the management of the individual enterprise. Viewed this way, workers' participation constitutes one possible type of industrial democracy; although, as shall be seen later, many workers' participation schemes fall short of the goal of transforming worker-employer relationships. Even within this restrictive definition, however, workers' participation schemes vary in three important ways. First, participation may take place at any of a number of levels within the enterprise (see Table 1). To simplify somewhat, three levels can be identified: the corporate level (involving long-range strategic policy decisions, such as product and market choice, major financial decisions and planning, and disposition of profits); the establishment or plant level (involving short- and medium-term administrative decisions, such as limited resource allocation decisions, plant-wide work arrangements, production layouts, employment decisions, and cost and quality controls); and the workplace level (involving day-to-day operating decisions, such as work scheduling, working practices, workplace layout, and speed of production). Second, participation may vary according to the extent of employee influence over management decision-making. At the lower end of the continuum employers might discourage any employee influence in the management of an enterprise, relying instead on a traditional authoritarian management style and hierarchical organization structure. At the upper end participation may involve complete workers' control over the management' process, as in some Yugoslavian enterprises or in worker-owned cooperatives. In between lie a number of other alternatives: disclosure of information to workers (usually as a means of winning their consent to decisions made elsewhere or as a means of organizational control); consultation with workers through advisory bodies (joint labour-management committees); collective bargaining; and co-determination (i.e. workers' veto rights over decisions). Third, the mode of participation may be direct or indirect. Direct forms of participation involve employees personally in decisions relating to their immediate tasks or environments; indirect forms, where workers are involved in decision-making through their representatives or delegates, include collective bargaining, works councils, and

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474

Labour Managed Economies

(4) q - q l X l = | + e ^ It is easy to see that the following is true (5)

δ ί γ ^ — Qi x i) = —1ιι χ ι > 0

A similar analysis now produces the following results: (a) an increase in ρ reduces the right-hand side of equation (4); in order to preserve equilibrium, the left-hand side must also be reduces, which according to (5) amounts to reducing employment xi and, consequently (by virtue of (1) above), output; (b) and increase in the factor price of other resources has the same effect as in the neoclassical firm; (c) an increase in fixed cost k increases output and employment; and (d) factors are not treated symmetrically, since wages do not occur in (3a) and the conditions are structured differently. The entire exercise is more clearly surveyed in Table 1. Tab. 1. Effects of various changes on output and employment Type of change

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-

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+

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in product prices in wages in the price of material inputs in fixed cost

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By treating labour differently from material inputs, Illyrians behave in a strange way and impair the efficiency of their firms. When product prices in the market increase, they reduce output. The economy is thus hopelessly unstable. When the government wants to increase employment, it must levy a lump sum tax. The higher the tax, the higher the output and employment. Wage policy is of no use, since Illyrians discard wages. Because y > w, and ql (Illyrian) > ql (capitalist), where ql is the marginal product of labour, an Ulyrian firm employs fewer workers and produces less than its capitalist counterpart. For the same reason, it uses more capital than necessary. Less employment and higher capital intensity imply, for a given time preference, a smaller rate of growth. Any meaningful theory must pass to fundamental tests: the verifiability of assumption test and the predictability test. A theory may pass both tests and still not be a correct one. It if fails to pass one or both of them, it is surely not satisfactory. If its assumptions cannot be verified, the theory has no explanatory power; if its predictions are wrong, it is simply useless. The latter test is much simpler and more conclusive, and so we may consider it first. For this purpose we rely on the empirical research concerning the Yugoslav economy. The theory predicts that an increase in price will reduce output. Nothing of the kind has been observed. Increase of price signals of unsatisfied demand have been followed rather quickly by efforts to increase supply. The theory also predicts that a reduction in k will reduce supply. When the 6 percent capital tax was abolished in Yugoslavia in the 1960s, no one observed the predicted effect. The theory predicts that the worker-managed economy will be labour saving. The

475

Microeconomics

Yugoslav experience shows, on the contrary, chronic overemployment in the firms. Where saving and investment are concerned, the theoretical prediction is again wrong. Internal saving of the firm is modest (which is explained by a negative interest rate), but borrowing is enormous, so that the national saving rate oscillates around 35 percent of GNP (with government accounting for a negligible share). On the other hand, overinvestment tends to contribute to chronic inflation. Social property and planning reduce risks and so increase investment opportunities. The formal reason for the supposed perverse behaviour of the Illyrian firm is to be found in the form of the objective function which is a ratio. If a CMF were assumed to maximize the rate of profit, it would display symmetrical perverse effects (Dubravcic, 1970). Marshall avoided such consequences by distinguishing between the short and the long run. In the short run capital is assumed fixed and so maximizing profit and maximizing rate of profit comes to the same thing. Horvat (1957; 1985) suggested a similar device which becomes available after a serious methodological error of the existing literature is eliminated. The error consists in deriving dynamic behavioural consequences from static assumptions. If technology is fixed, we may assume that time does not matter. The resulting traditional static production function implies discovering output possibilities from varying quantities and proportions of inputs. If, however, we accept as a fact of life that technology is changing all the time, output will be a function of inputs and time (6)

q = f (x,,...x n , t)

Marginal product of so defined production function is not a partial derivative of output with respect to one of the inputs:

Thus, the routine maximization procedure is meaningless. Even treating t as a shift parameter will not do. Production function not only shifts in time but also changes its shape. Besides, if the capacity is not fully used (= less than 3 shifts), which is a normal situation, the returns to variable factors are as a rule increasing. In Fig. 1 the law of variable proportions is operative and marginal product of labour is q

q

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