Rank-and-file shop committees turned strikes into organs of workers’ control
Evidence
Against the orders of offi cial leadership, the shop committee movement practiced two interconnected forms of direct action: strikes and workers’ control. … Strikes were eff ective because they stimulated the construction of instruments of direct democracy: workers’ committees. Workers’ committees placed “the control of the product in the hands of the workers themselves” (Gallacher and Campbell 1972, 31) and allowed for the coordination of strikes, boosting the workers’ power to develop more committees. Hence, workers’ industrial organization was the main organ of industrial control— and potentially, of political emancipation. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 475
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to theories of workers’ councils/soviets as instruments of both industrial control and political emancipation. — connects to: Workers support board-level participation once representatives explain its directive power. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2074; Worker councils structurally rotated leadership to keep power with workers. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 538; Factory councils aimed to merge economics and politics through workers’ control — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 581 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Postwar strikes were political demands for workers’ self-government, not mere wage disputes
#expands(0.78) - World War I transformed shop stewards from union appointees into rank-and-file leaders
#corroborates(0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1673 - Unorganized metalworkers outmilitated a collaborationist union leadership
#exemplifies(0.75) - Rank-and-file publications and organizing displaced company-run unions before the 1934 strike
#expands(0.72) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 285 - Hegemony can be achieved through dominance over the work process.
#expands(0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1810