G.D.H. Cole 1959
Source: The American Socialist, Vol. 6 No. 12, December 1959, pp. 11-17.
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This article by Professor Cole was written by him shortly before his death, early this year, as the foreword to a volume of selections from his writings brought out by an Italian publisher. It has been made available for publication here by the International Society for Socialist Studies, which Cole founded several years ago for the promotion of socialist ideas. The organization is located at 22 Nevern Road, Earl's Court, London, SW5, England, and publishes a quarterly information bulletin. — Eds.
The time is coming when the libertarian tendencies in socialism will be able to reassert themselves with growing strength, and when bureaucratic tendencies will be correspondingly weakened.
TO my mind, there have always been two fundamental cleavages in socialist thought—the cleavage between revolutionaries and reformists, and the cleavage between centralizers and federalists. But much more attention is nowadays paid to the first of these than to the second, partly no doubt because the second line of division is less clear and varies a good deal from country to country, and partly because the second is all too apt to be dismissed as a quarrel between socialists and anarchists or anarcho-syndicalists, who were turned out from the Second International and then from the Third, and have been excluded by revolutionists and reformists alike. It is true that, in recent years, there has been a good deal of talk about "de-centralization," first of all in Yugoslavia and more recently in the Soviet Union as well; but "decentralization" and federalism are essentially different ideas. Broadly speaking, decentralization, at any rate in the Soviet Union, is only a matter of local or regional freedom and initiative in administrative matters, rather than in the control of high policy, whereas federalism involves an insistence on local control as primary, and on the federal co-ordination of affairs over larger areas, so as to leave the final authority in the hands of local agencies directly responsive to popular opinion. Bakunin's hostility to the state rested on regarding it as essentially a coercive and authoritative organ of government, set over and against the people, and on his insistence that the only legitimate basis of cooperative or communal effort was a locality small enough to be permeated by the spirit of local fellowship and solidarity; whereas Marxists, defining the state as essentially an organ of class coercion and maintaining that it was destined to wither away in a classless society, at the same time insisted on the need to capture and remake it for the purpose of the transition, rather than abolish it prematurely as an instrument of socialist construction. This holds good both for Social Democrats and for Communists, though the former aimed at capturing and adapting the existing state, whereas the latter insisted on destroying the bourgeois state and replacing it by a workers' state embodying the principle of proletarian dictatorship. Moreover, both—but especially the Communists—laid emphasis on the growing internationalism of economic affairs, as requiring a more than national unity of the working class for taking over the control of them.
INDEED, both right-wing and left-wing Marxists have always been strong supporters of centralized authority, and deeply hostile to all notions that involve breaking it up. Long ago, Social Democrats were arguing—as Kautsky, for example, did repeatedly—that the process of capitalist unification of businesses into large trusts and combines was preparing the way for socialism as a unified structure of economic control and welcoming large-scale enterprise as a necessary prerequisite of socialism. Marxists always had a peculiarly strong dislike of the peasant, because of the small scale characteristic of peasant agriculture, and insisted that the large industrialized farm was greatly superior to it. Indeed, they again and again prophesied the impending disappearance of the peasant because of his inability to compete with large-scale farming, and received with displeasure and even incredulity statistical evidence of the persistence of peasant holdings. In the Soviet Union the collectivization of farm holdings was regarded as a great and essential step in the direction of socialism both because large-scale farming was believed to be more productive, as making possible the mechanization of farm processes and the application of higher techniques, and because collectivization would help to socialize the minds of the peasantry by weaning them from individual to collective habits of mind and by assimilating them to the industrial proletariat. According to the Marxian doctrine, socialism involves the application of the most advanced techniques to every branch of production; for otherwise the high output needed to put an end to the scramble for the means of good living cannot be brought to an end. Large-scale production is assumed to mean more efficient production, and its full application to involve still greater concentration of control, up to the co-ordinated planning of whole economies on a national, and even on a supranational scale.
Thus Marxists—Social Democrats equally with Communists—have always been unifiers, and have regarded the building of socialism as bound up with the extension of mass-production techniques. As capitalism has, in any case, tended to bring about an ever-increasing scale of both production and marketing, this has meant that Marxian Socialists have been, to a considerable extent, working with rather than against the grain of capitalism, in a technological sense, and have regarded as "ripest" for socialization those industries and services which, under capitalism, have already become concentrated in few hands. They have also gone beyond what has been achieved under capitalist auspices by advocating fully planned economies, resting on unified planning of output and marketing in all branches of production.
Against this concentrationist tendency of Marxism there have always been ranged tendencies to insist on the importance of the small unit as offering a greatly superior chance for real democracy. This tendency has been manifested in a number of movements which have rejected the concentrationist aspect of Marxism without necessarily rejecting its other aspects. In Bakunin the form taken was insistence on the fundamental importance of the local community group, as embodying a natural solidarity essentially different from the artificial solidarity of larger groupings. In Proudhon the same tendency took the form of insistence on the key importance of a social basis of "free contract," backed up by a system of "gratuitous credit" as the means of ensuring for the small producer the full fruit of his personal or family labor. In Pelloutier's version of the syndicalist utopia and in other variants of anarcho-syndicalism the stress on the natural solidarity of the local commune reemerged, but with greater stress on the specialized occupational groups comprising the commune and accordingly with more emphasis on the role of the syndicats—the local trade unions—in the structure of the coming society. The Guild Socialists and the industrial unionists in America dissolved the extreme localism of anarcho-syndicalism by assuming that functional democracy could be realized on a larger, national scale; but they too—or at any rate the Guild Socialists—aimed at a practical diffusion of authority as a means of preventing undue concentration of power in a single instrument, however conceived. They were Pluralists, in opposition to the monolithic tendencies which seemed to them to be inherent in the Marxism of both Communists and Social Democrats; and they found themselves in conflict with both variants of Marxism because they wished to diffuse social power and responsibility instead of concentrating them in the hands of an omni-competent state, whatever its nature. On these grounds, they were dismissed by the Marxists of both camps as "petty-bourgeois ideologues," putting forward notions inconsistent with the Marxian insistence on the pre-eminence of class and class unity in the struggle for socialism.
YET the libertarian socialists certainly did not regard themselves as unfaithful to the conceptions of class struggle and class unity. Both Bakunin and Proudhon wrote eloquently, in their several ways, about working-class solidarity; and the doctrines of class war took a prominent place in the expositions of the syndicalists in France and Italy and in American industrial unionism. The Guild Socialists, too, made their appeal to the class of producers and sought to build up the new society on a foundation of working-class solidarity. What marked all these off from the Marxists was a tendency to insist that the working class was not an undifferentiated mass, to be progressively unified in terms of class under the leadership of an industrial proletariat engaged in large-scale industry, but rather a greatly diversified body of persons having common basic interests which would find concerted expression through their own organizations, so that the control of society as a whole would express their unity in difference rather than their simple unity. This difference comes out very clearly in controversies over the control of industry. Thus, while Social Democrats argue for ultimate control by consumers—that is, by all, in their normal capacity as consumers—and Communists reject, in the name of working-class unity, projects of sectional control in industries by those engaged in them, syndicalists and Guild Socialists urge the need for control to be broken up, so as to be brought more nearly home to bodies of workers employed in a common industry or enterprise, while recognizing the need for co-ordination between industries and enterprises in terms of an agreed common objective.
It is because I agree fundamentally with the last of those views that I have never regarded myself as a Marxist. It has always appeared to me that to treat either the whole body of consumers—or working-class consumers—or the entire industrial proletariat as constituting in essence a single unified mass is inconsistent with real democracy because masses so large and amorphous are incapable of acting together except under a top leadership which is bound to substitute its own control for the control of the mass it is supposed to lead. In other words, so-called "mass democracy" inevitably leads to bureaucracy and bureaucratic control in which the individual is unable to make his voice heard in shaping of policy. The worst example of this tendency in practice is the so-called "democratic centralism" of the Soviet Union, under which the democracy fatally disappears, and what is left is only the centralism of a party leadership able to ride roughshod over the main mass, and more and more inclined to outlaw as "fractionalism" every attempt of persons and groups outside the recognized leadership to think for themselves and seek to influence policy. Men are not so constituted that they can extend the scale of their operations indefinitely without forfeiting the power of controlling them. The place where the shoe pinches most, in everyday affairs, is the place where a group of fellow-workers are engaged in a common enterprise of a specific kind; and if men are deprived of the opportunity to regulate their common affairs at this modest level they are incapable of exerting any real control over the conduct of greater affairs, which are often past their understanding and technical competence.
Ordinarily, in the conduct of associations which are supposed to be under the members' control, the need is recognized for splitting up the larger aggregation into branches or groups, to which are assigned at any rate some powers of self-determination and control. Even the Communist Parties have their local branches and cells, to which certain limited powers, as well as functions, are assigned. But it makes a vast difference how powers are actually distributed between the center and the lesser units of an organization. Thus policies and proposals can either be habitually passed down from the center for local or group endorsement or can be passed up from the lesser units for central consideration—or, of course, there can be a two-way process providing for both methods of policy-making. What seems to me beyond question is that, where the initiative rests mainly or exclusively with the center, real democracy vanishes and is replaced by a totalitarian form of control. Even if the central body is in a better position than any branch or section can be for envisaging the total result of any proposed line of action, this does not justify it in imposing its will on the lesser groups, or in monopolizing the flow of relevant information so as to deprive the lesser groups of effective access to proposals coming up from below, or advocated by a dissident section of opinion. This cannot be secured unless a diversity of views is placed before the whole body of members, or unless the holders of divergent opinions are free to engage in propaganda for them without being accused of "deviation" or worse. The alternative, under which one set of opinions is passed from the center and the effective expression of other views is suppressed, or severely limited, is "centralism" no doubt, but not democratic centralism, which could be at most an enforcement of unity in action after full and free discussions of alternative lines of policy.
I AM not saying, be it observed, that it is never right to suppress expressions of opinion. I agree that, especially in revolutionary situations, such suppression can rightfully occur, and is fully consistent with the spirit of democracy. But suppression should be directed only against opinions which are clearly hostile to democracy, and dangerous to it; and it should never be used to enforce conformity in any matter in which conformity is less than essential in the pursuance of democratic ends. There may be, in some circumstances, some matters on which conformity is truly indispensable; but they are surely few, and the occasions for them exceptional. It is all too easy for a well-entrenched bureaucracy to suppose that exact compliance with its opinions, in word and deed, is a sine qua non; most of all, when the bureaucracy has convinced itself that there is but one correct view, of which it is the rightful interpreter. But it is a mere mockery to call a system whereby such conformity is enforced democratic. Indeed, the only argument by which such a claim can be plausibly defended is that a class is so far removed in character from the individuals comprising it that will is an attribute, not of individuals, but of classes, and that to each class in society there corresponds a single, unified class-will. Opinions, of course, will in fact differ; but, in this view, the divergent opinions of individuals or of groups are mere utopianism or sectarianism, sharply distinguished from the collective will and doctrine belonging to the class as a whole. This collective doctrine is regarded as something in the possession of the bureaucrats as class-leaders; and even if they begin by seeking to act as interpreters of this class-will, it is all too easy for them to slip over into mistaking their own will and interest for that of the class and thus ceasing to be interpreters and becoming dictators instead—dictators on behalf, no longer of the class, but of themselves. Nor is it unlikely that, having taken this step, they will follow it up with another by assigning to one man—the most powerful and authoritative among them—the task of proclaiming the collective will, provided that he constitutes himself the protector of their special interests as a bureaucracy.
This is clearly what took place in the Soviet Union in Stalin's later days, and had begun to happen from the moment when Stalin had cleared the rivals from his path and consolidated his ascendancy over the Soviet Union bureaucracy of party officials. That this was so was implicitly, and in fact explicitly, recognized in Khrushchev's furious attack on Stalin in 1956; but that attack stopped short at denunciation of the "cult of personality" and did not go beyond recalling the Soviet Union to centralism of a more collective type, in which the tasks of leadership were shared among the members of a dominant group without any repudiation of centralism as such. It is true that the ending of Stalin's personal autocracy was a considerable gain; but is the dictatorship of a caucus really any more democratic than that of an individual? During the past years there has been, undoubtedly, some relaxation of the extreme rigidity of Stalin's reign of terror and also some attempt to apply measures of administrative decentralization; but, after a short period of relatively unfettered discussion, a halt was speedily called to the freer expression of divergent opinions, and the decentralization appears rather to have been devoted to strengthening the regional and local bureaucrats than to putting any real power into the hands of the main body of party members, who are still called upon to follow without question the policy leadership given them. I do not deny that there has been some relaxation of the discipline exercised in the name of the party over the individual citizens; but nothing, I think, has been done to touch the essentially bureaucratic conception of party leadership.
More has been done, no doubt, in Yugoslavia, especially during the period of acute tension between it and the Soviet Union. The decentralization of functions into the hands of Workers' Councils and People's Committees—the latter being the new organs of local government—has involved a real diminution in the functions and powers of the center, and has given both the rank-and-file workers and the general body of citizen-producers an increased influence in economic matters. But one cannot help wondering how far this has gone in practice, or questioning whether there has been any corresponding diminution of authoritarian control in political matters. I, for one, simply do not know how in practice functions are divided between Workers' Councils, Managing Boards, and the individual establishment directors, or between all these and the superior planning and controlling authorities; and it is almost impossible to arrive, by study of the published documents, at any conclusive judgment on the matter. It seems, however, clear that, whatever decentralization of control may have been achieved in the economic field, politically the party oligarchy remains firmly entrenched.
However that may be—a question on which I feel compelled to defer judgment—the essential issue of one-party rule remains. The issue of free discussion and democratic participation is clearly bound up with that of "one-party" rule.
NOW, the notion that there can be but a single party authorized to rule is based on the idea of class-unity. There can be, it is said, but one dominant class, placing its impress on all essential social institutions; and therefore there can be but a single party, embodying the collective will of the dominant class. If differences of opinion exist in fact within the dominant class, this can be only because some individuals or groups are in error about the collective class-interest and therefore put forward what are in fact sectarian points of view, and must accordingly be suppressed in order to prevent them from misrepresenting the class. Such dissidents, it is said, cannot constitute a real party, because they do not represent a class: they are mere sectarians, seeking to substitute their individual or sectional opinions for the will of the class. There is no wrong, it is argued, in suppressing them, because, however much support they may elicit, they represent no real social force.
The plausibility of this argument rests on the double assumption that there is a single rightful class-doctrine and that those who in fact control the party machine are in full possession of it. But surely either of these views may be mistaken. It is by no means self-evident that to the question, "What is the class interest in such and such a matter?" there is only one possible correct answer. Surely there may be cases in which there is something to be said both for and against two or more ways of dealing with a particular problem, and the pros and cons may be fairly evenly balanced. If so, the answer, wherever possible, should surely be sought in full discussion of the alternatives over the widest possible field, without the balance being tilted by any monopolization of the argument by the advocates of one solution as against another. Secondly, even where there is only one legitimate answer, the bureaucracy may be mistaken in supposing that it is in full possession of this answer, and that accordingly no discussion is called for. To maintain this is in effect to throw over democracy in favor of authoritarian bureaucracy; for the application of democratic methods might possibly record that the bureaucrats are in truth the sectarians, advancing as class-truth what is no more in reality than sectarian bureaucratic interest.
Finally, one either believes in democracy or disbelieves in it, whether the democracy in question is that of a class or of the whole people. The essence of democracy, in either case, is the real and effective participation of all those concerned in the process of decision-making, from the stages in which the decision to be taken begins to be debated up to the point at which it is finally taken. In theory, the Communist philosophy accepts this, with the added corollary that the decision, when taken, becomes universally binding, even upon those who have thrown their weight against it while it was under debate. But in practice this cannot happen if decisions are made at the center without prior and widely diffused debate, and critics are allowed no opportunity of expressing and organizing dissident opinions.
It is, moreover, a most dangerous error to suppose that uniform decisions are necessary on most questions. Even if there has to be a broad general framework of accepted doctrine, there is every reason for limiting it to as few matters as possible, and for encouraging diversity of experiment in other matters—for example, against subjecting the Ukraine and Asiatic Russia to more than a very limited basic uniformity of institutions. I am, of course, aware that the Soviet Union is in form a federation, and that each Republic within it has its own partly autonomous institutions, whose range of competence has been to some extent widened recently. But with this must be considered the fact that the entire Soviet Union has a single Communist Party and that this party has largely taken over the functions of central government and substituted itself for the Soviets as the essential organ of guaranteed power. Indeed, the process of substitution goes still further; for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, acting in these days directly and not, as previously, through a Comintern which it despotically controlled, claims the right to dictate policy to the Communist Parties in other countries and to ensure the compliance of their policies—and of their leaders—with its own. This would be much less harmful if the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were internally a democratic party, in which decisions were arrived at by free discussion among the whole body of members; but, as things are, it means that the controlling Russian bureaucracy dictates not only to critics of the Soviet Union but to a considerable extent to Communists throughout the world—subject of course to the possibility of these parties feeling strong enough—as in the case of China—to stand out against such dictation, or—as in the case of Poland—being driven to do so by the force of opinion pressing on them from within a country.
I DO not wish in this article to enter into the dispute between those who conceive of democracy in terms of entire populations, irrespective of class, and those who think in terms of class-democracy and claim the right to exclude from it those who are regarded as class-enemies. Even if the latter view is preferred, and only class-opinion needs to be taken into account, I claim that all such opinion ought to be counted, and not exclusively that of a particular "vanguard" within the class. Even if a narrower view is taken, and consideration is given only to opinion within a class-party, it must still extend to all sections of the party, and not exclusively to a "vanguard" within the "vanguard" composed of the party leadership alone. It must, moreover, take full account of both local and sectional variations of such opinion, and must refrain from imposing on the whole party inflexible orthodoxy save in a very few matters in relation to which uniformity is really indispensable. Lenin himself was a highly authoritarian thinker, who did not mince his words in denouncing dissidents; but he did at any rate insist on a considerable amount of free party discussion and showed no vindictiveness in pursuing his critics, unless he felt them to have gone over irretrievably into the hostile camp—which he was, no doubt, in certain cases, too prone to do. I think Trotsky was right in holding that Lenin would have been horrified by the degeneration of party democracy that had taken place even before his death, and that advanced so swiftly after his removal, converting the dictatorship of the party as the vanguard of the proletariat into a dictatorship of officials over the party, over the proletariat, and over the whole Soviet Union and the Communist Parties outside it.
The contrast between the two conceptions of socialism, centralist and federal, has, however, nothing to do with this degeneration. The Communist conception is, quite apart from it, definitely centralist, with the emphasis on unity and unification over large areas and on the advanced proletariat engaged in large-scale industry as the constructive force in the making of socialism. The entire conception of the federalists, of a society built up on the natural comradeship of neighborhood among small groups of fellow-workers, is utterly alien to the spirit either of Communism or of Social Democracy, which alike envisage socialism as a higher stage of economic development resting on the most advanced techniques of large-scale production. As against this, Peter Kropotkin used to argue that large-scale production was by no means necessarily the most efficient, and that in particular the advent of electrical power could provide the opportunity for a scattering of industrial operations over country districts and for a return to small-scale production using the most advanced techniques and thus defeating the mass-producers at their own game. Admittedly, there is not yet much sign of this in the advanced countries; but we are at any rate beginning to see that it is highly relevant to the problems of such countries as India, where man-power is superabundant and capital very scarce in relation to it; and I think it may also be highly relevant to areas such as southern Italy, in which somewhat similar situations exist, and also to the problems of peasant economies in many countries. Proletarian socialism, finding its support among the workers in big, mechanized establishments, has always been instinctively unfriendly to peasants, even when it has sought to use them as allies, because it has regarded peasant agriculture as an obsolescent method of production; whereas it may not be so, given both full use of co-operative methods of purchasing, marketing, and the supply of credit and also full access to electrical power and modern machinery for its day-to-day operations.
SIMILARLY, ever since Marx predicted the impending disappearance of the "artisans," the craftsmen engaged in small-scale production, who, he held, were destined to be flung down into the ranks of the proletariat, proletarian socialists have been scornful of these artisans and have refused to recognize them as full proletarians in their own right. They have been regarded rather as petty bourgeois, or at any rate as sharing in the petty bourgeois attitude to social questions. Yet it is undoubtedly true that the artisans have contributed largely to the development of socialist ideas—especially to those forms of socialism in which a high value is put on personal and small group liberties and on the wide diffusion of power and responsibility in a free, socialist society. From the days of the Paris artisans and of the Swiss watchmakers of the Jura Federation, the artisans have been among the foremost advocates of a libertarian socialism hostile to the mass-socialism of the Marxists, and have contested many battles with them. Until quite recently, despite the persistence of relatively small-scale enterprise, such libertarians have appeared to be working against the grain of technological development, which has fostered the growth of mass production and concentrated a growing proportion of the workers in large establishments for the performance, in the main, of repetitive machine-tending operations. But today the trend seems much less certain. Mass production will no doubt continue to involve more and more branches of production; but will it continue to involve the aggregation of great masses of relatively unskilled labor? Broadly, the trend has been hitherto towards such aggregation; but the tendency now seems to be to get rid of much of the machine-tending labor, which is to be replaced by automatic devices calling for much less numerous bodies of relatively skilled supervisors. So, even if the establishments continue to grow larger, it no longer follows that the labor force will grow larger with them. We may be facing a situation in which, at any rate in the most advanced countries, a much larger mass of capital will be needed to set each productive worker to work, and such workers will come to be actually employed in considerably smaller groups, especially where the most advanced techniques are introduced. If this comes about, will there not be a return to a situation more closely akin to that of artisan production, with each individual playing again a more responsible part in the work? I remember that the first of the great anarchist philosophers, William Godwin, in his dislike of the tendency towards mass production, looked forward to a day when the most advanced instruments would be operated by single workers, with the aid of great reserves of mechanical power. This at any rate looks much less unlikely today than it did while technical progress was favoring the aggregation of workers into bigger and bigger productive groups, while undermining for most of them the distinctiveness of their individual operations and reducing each of them to a mere unit in a larger and larger mass. Marxism as a centralist doctrine grew up while this tendency was everywhere gaining force in the advanced countries: we may be on the eve of a period during which it will be reversed, not in respect of the scale of the operations themselves, but in that of the type of employment involved.
If this be the case, may we not expect it to be accompanied by a change in the nature of socialist ideas—by a reversion to stress upon the smaller human unit and to the distinctiveness of its contribution and therewith to a reassertion of the claims to participate effectively in control by these relatively small groups of distinctive contributors to productive service? I think so; and I think I see already signs of it in a revival of the demand for "workers' control" exercized by workers on the job in their several establishments as against control by the entire working class envisaged as an undifferentiated mass of human labor. I am not suggesting that there is not a need for control in both forms, or that those employed in a particular establishment can claim a right to operate it as they please, without regard for wider social needs. What I am suggesting is that if all, or nearly all, the emphasis is put on collective control by the whole mass, and none, or hardly any, on diffused control on the particular job, the vital question of personal and small-group liberty is in danger of being overlooked, and what is likely to result is a formal mass-democracy which will degenerate in fact into bureaucracy. I am indeed suggesting that precisely this degeneration has tended to come about in the operation of industries both under Communism and under Social Democracy, which have both made the mistake of confusing high technical development with the aggregation of the producers into larger and more homogeneous masses of routine workers.
I DO not, of course, profess to know how far or fast automation will advance, either in the most advanced areas of production or elsewhere. But socialists, who profess to stand for something superior in its productive efficiency to even the most advanced capitalism, are clearly called upon to think ahead of the trends of capitalist production and should be on their guard against basing their plans on an assumption that the trends of the past will be continued indefinitely, or they may find themselves laying plans for carrying further trends which are already becoming technically obsolete.
I feel no doubt that in the case under discussion a reversal of past trends is ardently to be desired by socialists who value the quality of life as well as the mass of commodities made available to the whole body of consumers. As long as sheer poverty exists in the world, it is impossible for socialists not to be in favor of increased production; for socialist aspirations cannot be fully realized while there is still a scramble for scarce means of living. But it is surely much to be desired that the highest practicable production shall come to be consistent with the liberation of mankind from the sheer burden of uninteresting repetitive routine labor and that the mass of mankind shall come to enjoy both greater leisure and more interesting employment, which they will be more and more able to regard, not as unavoidable drudgery, but as an opportunity for creative self-expression. To be sure, if automation brings about under capitalism a sharp decline in the demand for labor it will become a still more urgent task to achieve its supersession by an economic system based on a fairer allocation of the fruits of productive effort, as the only way of averting a relapse into large-scale unemployment. But no one, except some capitalists and sheer reactionaries, wants to reestablish a permanent "reserve of labor" in order to keep the employed workers from asserting their claims; and socialists need anticipate no difficulty in meeting a fall in the demand for labor on account of automation by reduction of the working day to any required extent. What I want to see is steady pressure from the trade unions for such reduction, accompanied by increasing claims for a share in control "on the job" and by measures designed to prevent the sacking of workers alleged to be redundant without the offer of suitable alternative jobs and, where needed, adequate training for them.
In short, I hope and believe that the time is coming when the libertarian tendencies in socialism will be enabled to reassert themselves with growing strength, and when the bureaucratic tendencies will be correspondingly weakened. I am not a syndicalist; but I believe none the less that syndicalism had hold of an important element of the truth which has been grossly underrated by the politicians of Communism and of Social Democracy alike, as shown in the Marxian emphasis on the virtues of large-scale production and in the belief that it involves the progressive disappearance of individuality from the productive process and the increasing resolution of the working class into an undifferentiated mass of what Marx called "abstract human labor." As against this, I believe that the individual and the small working group count for a great deal in terms of sheer productive efficiency and also in determining the satisfying quality of work, which occupies necessarily so large a part of the lives of men—even if it can come to occupy them less as the curse of poverty is progressively conquered by technological improvement. Socialists, far from being able to ignore the importance of productive techniques, must always endeavor to be well ahead of the capitalists in interpreting them; and my suggestion is that, for the most part, they are no longer interpreting them aright.