Workers’ Control and Self-Management: Critical Learnings for an Alternative Democracy

This article examines some of the discussions and debates in the literature about workers’ control and self-management, which have assumed an importance in the context of the search for an alternative to the prevailing global socio-economic, political and cultural system and its persistent crises. The article reviews and analyses a range of approaches to workers’ control and self-management, their interpretations and purposes. This is done with reference to the historical and contemporary development of workers’ control and self-management in the debates between thinkers and practitioners associated with workers’ struggles both in the aftermath of World War 1 and more recently. These debates reflect on a complex array of issues arising from the challenges to capitalist production, situating it in the context of the struggles against capitalism in the early 20th century. They also raise issues concerning how the concepts of workers’ control and self-management might be understood and interpreted in relation to contemporary forms of parliamentary democracy, the role of radical political parties of the left, and questions of leadership and bureaucracy in such parties in existing socialist states and in relation to cooperatives under capitalism. The article suggests that it is important to understand the potential for workers’ control and self-management as an alternative to the dystopic social systems under the present regimes of neoliberal capitalist globalisation.