Labour and the Socialist State

Abstract

The extension of state control over industry at a time of economic collapse and war had major repercussions on the organisation and industrial relations of the nationalised sector. The broad sweep of Bolshevik policy in this sphere had already been sketched out in early 1918, with state economic bodies taking precedence over the trade unions, and the trade unions over the factory committees. In other words, the state would organise and manage socialist industry, not the workers themselves, and hence the statism of war communism was an extension of the general policy of the state capitalist period, but now without the capitalists. The labour process and the organisation of production in enterprises were determined by the imperative of max imising production. Critiques of the pre-revolutionary labour process gave way to enthusiasm for scientific management as expounded by Frederick Taylor. During war communism management was centralised and income inequalities encouraged through various incentive schemes. Given the scarcity of effective material or financial incentives, as war communism developed increased reliance was placed on coercion by state bodies, and the trade unions became increasingly marginalised.KeywordsTrade UnionEconomic ManagementPiece RateControl CommissionMoney WageThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.