P.E.’s Reviews > Interventionism: An Economic Analysis > Status Update

Full quote :

'Even if in the corporative only the former entrepreneurs and capitalists had the right to make decisions and if they were to receive the largest share of the income, the system still would be syndicalism. It is not the economic characteristic of syndicalism that every syndicalist receives an equal income, or that he is consulted in questions of business policy; essential is the fact that the individuals and the means of production are rigidly attached to specific lines of production so that no worker and no factor of production is free to move from one line into another. Whether the slogan "the mills for the millers, the printing plants for the printers" is to be interpreted so that the words "millers" and "printers" are also to include the former owners of the mills and printing plants or not, and whether these former entrepreneurs and owners are given a more or less privileged position, does not matter. Decisive is that the market economy, in which the owners of the means of production and the entrepreneurs as well as the workersdepend on the demands of the consumers, is being replaced by a system in which the demands of the consumers no longer determine production, but by a system in which only the wishes of the producers prevail.

The cook decides what and how much each individual is to eat. Because the cook has the exclusive right to prepare food, if anyone refuses the food he is given, he would starve. Such a system might still have some meaning as long as conditions remain unchanged and as long as the distribution of capital and labor among the different lines of production corresponded to some extent to the conditions of demand. But changes are always taking place. And every change in the conditions renders the system less workable.

The postulate of syndicalism that the ownership of the means of production should be taken over by the workers is but symptomatic of the opinion of the productive process which the workers gain from the narrow perspective of their position. They regard as a permanent institution the shop in which they daily perform the same duties; they fail to realize that economic activity is subject to constant change. They do not know whether the enterprises they are working for are making profits or not. How else could the fact be explained that the employees of railroads operated at a loss demand "the railroads for the railroad employees"? The workers naively believe that only their work produces returns and that the entrepreneurs and capitalists are merely parasites. Psychologically this may explain how the ideas of syndicalism were conceived. But this understanding of the origin of the idea of syndicalism still does not turn the syndicalist program into a workable system.

The syndicalist and the corporative systems are based on the assumption that the state of production which is in effect at a given time will remain unchanged. Only if this assumption were correct would it be possible to do without shifting capital and labor from one industry into another. And to make such changes, decisions must be made by an authority superior to the single corporative and syndicate. No reputable economist therefore has ever attempted to can the syndicalist idea a satisfactory solution of the problem of social cooperation.'

=> 1) If employees/workers are oblivious of the real state of affairs or don't know the whether the business they are working for is making profit, being victims of their narrow perspective — as they are more or less likely to be — isn't there a need for joint committees, that is codetermination with two-tier boards, the way it has been implemented for entreprises over a certain size in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway after WW2?

See Mitbestimmungsgesetz (i.e. Codetermination Act 1976).


=> 2) Is syndicalism a mere psychological fantasy? When the workers organize into a movement to uphold an amelioration in the working conditions, isn't that telltale about the need for better working conditions?

I have to do some research about the relationship between offer and demand in the market economy AND in the job market & workplace.


=> 3) If syndicalism isn't a workable system because of an alleged inability to balance production relatively to demand, what would be a workable system for the workers to negociate their working conditions?


=> 4) Businesses need a certain quantity and quality of insider information as well as outsider credibility to perform well.
Taking into consideration the point of view of workers brings legitimacy, incentivize work, resulting in employee persistence, business resilience and less turnover.

See Douglas McGregor's Management Theories X and Y

See Le travail - Une sociologie contemporaine,
updates pp. 228, 235, 429, 552.