When the Decree went to the Soviet Executive for ratification the Bolshevik trade union official Lozovsky said it was vital that “workers in various enterprises don’t run away with the idea that the factories belong to them”.17 The amended Decree, which gave ultimate authority to the ARCWC, was passed by the Executive and signed by Sovnarcom the next day. People’s Commissar Miliutin (who had now rejoined Sovnarcom) admitted that “legislation on Workers’ Control which should logically have fitted into the framework of an economic plan had had to precede legislation on the plan itself”. This had happened because “life overtook us” and it became necessary to “unite into one solid state apparatus the workers’ control which was being operated on the spot”. By December 1917 the number of independent Factory Committees had mushroomed to 2,100, including 68% of firms with over 200 employees. Although most of these wished for state support, and in some cases nationalisation, they did so as a means to access goods, resources, funds and specialist expertise to help them achieve their goals, not for the imposition of new management.
The problems facing the Factory Committees arose not just from social collapse but what Sirianni called “concerted sabotage by Russian capital”.18 Russian employers were, of course, hostile to the new regime. But their special hatred was reserved for the Factory Committees, who fundamentally challenged their managerial prerogatives. In response to the 14th November Decree on Workers’ Control, mine owners in the Urals and Donetz basin threatened to close mines. The Petrograd Manufacturers Association threatened to do the same to all major plants in the capital, especially those who followed the instructions of the Central Council of Factory Committees. Some employers withheld wages as economic punishment of workers who challenged them for control of the production process. The employers’ actions raised again whether workers’ control should now become workers’ self-management.
The Factory Committees were accused by both employers and Bolsheviks of not seeing the bigger picture and of disregarding the urgent need for coordinated national production. But, as David Mandel demonstrated in his study of the movement, “this argument was to a large degree disingenuous, since committee conferences consistently emphasised that workers’ control could be effective only within a framework of national economic regulation”.19 To help achieve this they planned an All-Russian Congress of Factory Committees that would create a federated structure within which regional and local committees could operate. Had this proceeded it would have been a clear threat to the hegemony of the Bolshevik Party. In response, Bolshevik trade union officials quickly mobilised to block any call for a national congress. Without a congress it was almost impossible for the Committees to create a national, federated structure of workers’ control built upon local networks.
Meanwhile the core structures of the new state began to solidify. Within six weeks of 25th October, Sovnarcom had created a secret police, the Cheka. Its remit to uncover and suppress “counter-revolutionary activities” was sufficiently wide that it would quickly begin to harass and arrest not just disaffected members of the bourgeoisie but any on the laboursocialist left who failed to support Sovnarcom. As early as 9th November, two weeks after an insurrection whose ostensible goal was to transfer all power to the Soviets, Sovnarcom unilaterally dissolved the Soviet in the Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs. On 28th November it did the same to the Soviet in the Admiralty. On the economic front a Decree of 5th December set up a Supreme Economic Council (known as Vesenka) which was to “direct to a uniform end” the activities of all the other economic bodies in the state.
Given the breakdown of the Russian economy at the time, the creation of such a body was, in itself, a sensible and practical move. It was not Vesenka’s existence but its powers and personnel that were problematic. Although it contained a few representatives from the ARCWC, it was mainly a body of appointed managers and “experts”. Within weeks it had absorbed the ARCWC. Lenin was candid about this, admitting “we passed from workers’ control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy”.20 William G. Rosenberg’s study of labour relations in post-October Petrograd finds that although workers wanted state support for their plant-level initiatives they did not wish to lose control over their own destiny, which they had secured by occupation of the factories and creation of Factory Committees. “Yet almost without exception”, Rosenberg records, “spokesmen for the various chief committees and commissions set up within the Council of People’s Commissars condemned the independence and autonomy of factory and railroad committees, and assailed workers for lack of discipline”.21
In December, the Central Council of Petrograd Factory Committees published a “Practical Manual for the Implementation of Workers’ Control of Industry”, which explained how workers’ control could be expanded into workers’ self-management. Amongst its suggestions were plans to convert war production to social production, including Factory Committees coordinating amongst themselves to ensure an adequate supply of fuel and other materials. It suggested Regional Federations of Factory Committees reporting to an All-Russian Federation. The Manual stated its ambition that “workers’ control of industry, as part of workers’ control of the totality of economic life, must not be seen in the narrow sense of a reform of institutions but in the widest possible sense: that of moving into fields previously dominated by others. Control should merge into management”.22
In sharp contrast, the ARCWC’s “General Instructions on Workers’ Control in Conformity with the Decree of November 14th”, known as the “Counter-Manual”, laid out which functions fell to Factory Committees and which to owner-managers. Its General Instructions stated that the role of the Committees was confined to carrying out directives issued by central government agencies “specifically entrusted with the regulation of economic activities on a national scale”. The Counter-Manual stressed that Committees should not concern themselves with financial management of enterprises, nor occupy any more factories. It made explicit that “the right to issue orders related to the management, running and functioning of enterprises remains in the hands of the owner”.23
As early as March 1918 Sovnarcom unilaterally ended workers’ control of the railways. It granted “dictatorial powers” to the Commissariat of Ways and Communications and made it explicit that “administrative technical executives” in every region and locality were answerable to the People’s Commissar only. These were “the embodiment of the whole of the dictatorial power of the proletariat in the given railways centre”. In response, the Left Communist Nikolai Ossinski wrote in Kommunist:
We stand for the construction of the proletarian society by the class creativity of the workers themselves, not by ukases from the captains of industry […] Socialism and socialist organisation must be set up by the proletariat itself, or they will not be set up at all; something else will be set up: state capitalism.24