This is Richard Wolff with another response to an “Ask Prof. Wolff” question from our
Patreon community. This question comes from Blake Anderson, and Blake asks the question: What is the
relationship between our advocacy for worker co-ops (or what we call “worker self-directed
enterprises”) and politics, political power? The whole idea of how you go about making a
transition from an economy dominated by capitalist enterprises where small numbers of people, owners,
starters of businesses, families that run businesses, boards of directors (when we're
talking about corporations), these are very small minorities in every enterprise, and they make all
the decisions and reap all the wealth and the profits of a successful capitalist business.
They are an autocracy. They run the business. They're not accountable to the people that they
employ, and can fire them pretty much at will. Let's remember that in private enterprises in
the United States, for example, less than seven percent of those enterprises even have a union,
let alone a union that could effectively prevent people from getting fired if the
employer is displeased. There is no balance of power here, there is no accountability,
and there is no democracy. But what is the relationship between the alternative—a
democratic workplace, a worker co-op, one person-one vote, where everybody has an equal say
in all those basic decisions that are now made by those tiny minorities (the owners,
the boards of directors, and so on)? That's right, democratic decision over what is to be
produced, what technology is to be used, where production is to occur, and what is to be done
with whatever profits the enterprise (all of its workers) help to produce.
Well, here comes the question of power. How do you make a transition?
And, in particular, Blake wants to know what I think about “dual power.”
Dual power is a very interesting idea. It has to do with what happens sometimes when an old
economic and political system crumbles, and you don't have a clear, immediate, obvious, single
next government to take over. Things get a little murky. Things become unclear, and what you can
have is the emergence of two (or sometimes more than two) basic contestants for power.
The particular phrase “dual power” is usually attributed to Lenin because he used it to say
what had happened when the old Czarist regime of Russia collapsed early in 1917,
the time of the so-called February Revolution, the old government collapsed, but into the
vacuum created by its collapse stepped two, not one, contestants for power. One was an old kind of
parliamentary group, a very conservative political party that had functioned in what they had as a
parliament, which was quite weak under the Czar, but what also happened at that time was the
emergence of another kind of contestant for power. These were councils that had been set up back
in 1905 and they revived by 1917. “Council” in Russian is the word “soviet”—a council of workers.
Common people who set up these councils elected representatives to them and said, “This is the
new power. Not that old provisional government,” it was called. Now, why is all this relevant?
Because worker co-ops are going to discover as they grow, which they're doing,
and as they spread, which they're also doing, and as more and more people begin to see them
as desirable, viable alternatives to the top-down, hierarchical, undemocratic
capitalist workplace. As this happens, there's going to be struggle, a clash.
The worker co-ops are going to want to grow. They're going to want to have the government help
them at least as much as as it has always helped capitalist enterprises (with subsidies, with
allowances, with tax breaks) and they're going to want this, and they're not going to want to be
told no, and they're going to want it as much as the capitalists now want and get it. There's going
to be conflict, and then the worker co-ops are going to have to make some difficult decisions.
Are they going to do all of this under the timetable of a capitalism that's fading away?
That might be very dangerous. Are they going to set up their own political party,
a party of by and for worker co-ops to contest against the two-party system in this country,
when both of those two (Republicans and Democrats are clearly pro-capitalists—we know that
because they tell us that), or will the worker co-ops follow the dual power procedure—developing
their own political organizations at the enterprise, in the communities around the
enterprises, in which the key role will be played by the worker co-ops and the leadership they have
in shaping what's going on? Yeah, you might have a, similar to the Lenin–Russian situation,
a dual power struggle to develop. It was resolved in Russia when the Soviets decided, “We're taking
over. We're making a revolution. We're not going to bargain and negotiate with an old, leftover
contestant for power.” They were able to pull that off. Other situations, one might not be able to.
I don't take a position among these because I think it's premature. I think we still have,
at this point historically, to make the case as effectively as we know how,
that capitalism is a dying system. That we don't want it to take us down with it,
whether we view that through the climate lens or the social conflict and social division lens. We
see it and we see an alternative of where to go—to reorganize production in a democratic, community
way rather than the top-down, hierarchical, employer-versus-employee system we have
inherited. But we have to make that case. We have to build the worker co-ops and then the time will
come to figure out how to advance the political side of a struggle for something that has become
clear and real, both as something we can see around us and as something that could inspire and
structure a whole new way of organizing society. This is Richard Wolff for Democracy at Work.