these ideas about workers' control began to receive both
widespread expression as well as concrete experimentation. This
became possible for several reasons.

With the first state onto the scene bourgeois ideologues were
anxious to demonstrate that capitalists did not really have interests
that were completely hostile to those of workers as the socialist
thesis claimed; and, secondly, that there did exist in capitalist
societies a ‘democracy’ which permeated not only the political
arena but also the economic field. Thus ‘industrial democracy’ was
bandied about profusely at the time as the philosophical foun-
dation for a rational management of industry. Note here that with
the October Revolution, there was in the West a shift from
“Workers' control’ to workers’ participation’. Instead of the
visionary transformation of society envisaged by the utopian and
other socialists, you now have even more reformist ideas such that
gradually the conceived role of the workers under socialism
changed dramatically from ‘control’ to ‘association’ with
management.

Secondly, with the growing contradictions within the capitalist
system, there was a greater and greater need to regulate industrial
conflicts. The development of consciousness among the working
people tremendously increased the urgency with which the
capitalists had to maintain ‘good industrial relations’. Participation
of the workers in management would help in foreseeing and even
forestalling critical periods.

Above all, however, the growth of monopoly called for more
rational management systems that would ensure maximum
productivity. This could be achieved only with the utilisation of
the creativity and initiative of the working force. At the high level
of resources concentration received by capitalist enterprise, both
technological and organisational arrangements called for
maximum co-operation and initiative on the part of personnel.?

Hence, the involvement by managements of workers in the
decision-making processes of their industries was just another ar-
tefact in the search for profit maximisation. Participation is bound
to increase productivity, reduce costs, avert industrial crises and
thus, all in all, work in the interests of the owners of capital. At
the same time, of course, this involvement would hoodwink the
working people into thinking they had won the class struggle and
hence the capitalists’ day of doom would at least be postponed.

187