«Auf einem Schiffe regiert der Kapitän und kein Matrosenrat»

Abstract

Though several countries introduced works councils or forms of co-determination at the end of World War I, Switzerland – as a model democracy – refrained from doing so. This paradox is analysed by reconstructing the Swiss debates about co-determination and industrial democracy during the short reform period following the national general strike in November of 1918. Elsewhere in Europe, forms of employee participation were institutionalised as a reaction to workers’ council activism after 1917, and these developments were closely followed in Switzerland. Such efforts at industrial democracy were considered as precursors to socialism by moderate representatives of the labour movement. At the same time, reform-minded centrist politicians praised co-determination as a happy compromise between Bolshevism and pure capitalism, as well as a logical consequence of Swiss democratic traditions. However, the reformist momentum generated by the national general strike was too weak, the concepts put forward were too diverse, and resistance by employers was too strong for any form of industrial democracy to become institutionalized during the window of opportunities that lasted until about 1920, when bourgeois fears of an imminent socialist revolution were dwindling.