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lack of a class ideological position, there has also been no con-
ception of bureaucracy as a structural phenomenon principally as a
wrong attitude which leads to wrong methods of work. The ten-
dency has been to view workers’ participation not as astructual
mechanism for the control of certain social strata by the class that
should be the pillar of socialist construction but as a way of bet-
tering human relations.

It follows therefore that when one reaches the factory-level,
participation can only be minimal in substance. Essentially, the
tasks of ‘management’ belong to the managers and the workers
can come in only occasionally to ‘help’ in certain fields and to also
quench their thirst for information on what is going on in the fac-
tory as a whole. This seems to be the only explanation to the
preponderence of the managers in the workers’ council and the
council’s mere advisory powers.

At UFI it was felt that the structure of participation had to be
widened so as to encompass more people and generally to
‘democratise’ all decision-making processes. Such occurences
again depend on the individual traits of managers, but even then
are very seriously limited by the structures within which they
have to operate.

In this regard, then, it is difficult to say that there is ‘control’ of
managers by the workers in their act of ‘participation’. Perhaps for
a long time to come workers’ councils will continue to be, as the
National Development Corporation say, ‘one of the major in-
centives—above all other techniques’ in controlling the workers.

Notes.

I. Itis true of course that not all utopian socialists were entirely accommodating.
Owen, in fact, did go a long way in his later day efforts to change the system
through his ‘Builders Guids’ and ‘Villages of Co-operation’. But these efforts
were of course limited by the lack of a broader analysis of political power and
its relation to the socio-economic structure.

2. For an extensive treatise on the ideas of utopian socialism, guild socialism, and
syndicalism, see the works of G.D.H. Cole, A4 History of socialist Thought, (New
York: 1961).

3. Thus you also have the changes in ‘industrial socialogy' from the scientific
management’ theories of R. Taylor er al. in the 1890s.

. Cf. A. Hutt, British Trade Unionism, (Lawrence and Wishard, 1962).
5. For an interesting case of the fear of the bourgeoisie for organised labour and

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