perspective and their own order of priorities. That these are dif-
ferent from those of management must be recognised as a
prerequisite for meaningful workers’ participation. Once this is ac-
cepted, workers’ participation becomes much more significant. It
becomes a democratisation of management; a way of establishing
a relationship of trust between ‘managerial workers’ and other
types of workers in any enterprise; and a means of obtaining a
sense of commitment and dedication amongst the workers that
could never be achieved by mere supervision or the exclusive use
of monetary incentives. It is clear that the fulfilment of this
promise is no easy task, and requires as much the re-education of
managers as the education of the workers, for now management
can be seen to be primarily a function of social leadership rather
than simply a computerisable science. Production emerges as a
social enterprise involving the collaboration of large numbers of
people towards a common goal. If workers are to identify with the
organisation for which they work they must be integral members
of it. They cannot be treated as a necessary evil, which as the
major variable factor of production must always be first to pay the
price of unemployment for managerial miscalculations or sudden
shifts in demand.

It becomes clear that workers’ participation should indeed be
expected to introduce radical changes into the internal operation of
firms, but that at the same time factors external to the firm deter-
mine the extent to which the full potential of such a policy can be
realised. Hence the extent to which such participation can be ‘real’
rather than manipulative depends in large part on the extent to
which the distribution of income, as well as the distribution of the
risk of loss of income or employment, can be justified to all mem-
bers of the firm. This in turn is conceivable only in circumstances
where all accounts are not only freely available to all workers but
are openly and widely discussed, a procedure that is unlikely to be
espoused by firms whose managements seek to maximise the
return accruing to the private owners of a firm. When firms are
socially owned such a procedure becomes feasible, though not
inevitable, and requires as a prerequisite the existence of a
coherent and defensible national development policy both on the
question of relative distribution of income between individuals and
on the issue of present versus future consumption at a national
level.

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