ABSTRACT
The author talks about the concept of self-management in a special issue of the New Left Review devoted to workers control. He enthusiastically adopted it as the application of participatory democracy to the workplace. He read what he could find on the attempt by factory committees to institute workers control in the early days of the Russian revolution and the workers management of production in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. In workplace conflicts over the speed and organization of production, workers often establish tacit counter-power, take over part of the management function, and coordinate their own activity in their own interest. He argues that all the actions of a mass strike can be viewed in essence as responses to the fact that when a small minority manage society, they will generally do so in a way that conflicts with the needs of the majority. Workers activity in strikes illustrates and expands their capacity for self-management.
