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economy. Factories received directives that often had no relationship to reality. Often factory committees had established a good working relationship with the technicians but this was blown apart as many technicians were sacked from above.26.
If central control was so inefficient why did the Bolsheviks impose it? Burnham in his 'The Managerial Revolution' argued that the Bolsheviks used the masses break the capitalists and only when the capitalists were eliminated did they curb the workers27. Once the capitalists had been broken it was imperative to break the workers control before self management could really prove itself so ensuring that the workers would defend it against state encroachment. Whether their motive was a wish to establish themselves as the ruling class or their faith in central planing is immaterial. The effect was the same.
In retrospect the bridling of the factory committees seems a decisive stage in the degeneration of the revolution. Why then was there so little resistance? My first hunch was that the answer lay in October itself. More a popular putsch than a revolution there was not the revolutionary momentum to push through workers control against state resistance.
But the workers post October were far from passive. Opposition appeared almost as the dust had settled. The first group were the unskilled who, demanding equal wages, turned to the anarchists28. Then as this wave died back grievances such as repression came to the fore. For instance there was a wave of protest when the Bolsheviks openend fire upon a demonstration in Kolpino (a town near Petrograd) leaving several workers dead. Many workers especially the semiskilled turned to the Menshevik-SR block. But far from wishing to defend the factory committees the workers often turned their resentment against the factory committees.29
Rosenberg has argued that the failure of the proletarian opposition was due to the Mensheviks lack of any explanation of the crisis that would give the workers hope in improvement.30 Before October everything could be blamed on the bourgeoisie but afterwards it began to look as if the workers were faced with insoluble problems. But the anarchists did have an 'explanation'. Their attacks on Bolshevik centralization and the state found a ready response amongst the workers though the more skilled were not prepared to follow what they saw as the unskilled workers faction.31 For the more skilled the only viable opposition was the Menshevik-SR block who made no stand in favour of factory autonomy and indeed the Mensheviks were essentially hostile to it.
Had the anarchists been able break out of their unskilled political ghetto then the factory committees would have been an essential part of an attempt to build a workers society without the state. It is here we come to the final factor in the defeat of the factory committees. The Factory committees were overwhelmingly Bolshevik in composition. If they fought for factory autonomy this was because they believed that only they could solve the immediate problems - they had no quarrel with the principle of state regulation.32 Hence [next page]