DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT
by Kaganovitch in a speech before the seventeenth con-
gress of the Communist Party. * Management/ he said,
* means the power to distribute material things, to appoint
and discharge subordinates, in a word, to be master of the
particular enterprise/ This is a definition of management
to which every industrial dictator in the capitalist countries
would unhesitatingly subscribe.
By supporters of the present Russian government it is
said that the change over from self-government to authori-
tarian management had to be made in the interests of effi-
ciency. That extremely inexperienced and ill-educated
workers should have been unable to govern themselves and
keep up industrial efficiency seems likely enough. But in
Western Europe and the United States such a situation is
not likely to arise. Indeed, Dubreuil has pointed out that,
as a matter of historical fact, self-government within fac-
tories has often led to increased efficiency. It would seem,
thenj that in countries where all men and women are
relatively well educated and have been accustomed for some
time to the working of democratic institutions, there is no
danger that self-government will lead to a breakdown of
discipline within the factory or a decline in output. But,
like * liberty,' the word * efficiency' covers a multitude of
sins. Even if it should be irrefragably demonstrated that
self-government in industry invariably led to greater con-
tentment and increased output, even if it could be proved
experimentally that the best features of individualism and
collectivism could be combined if the state were to co-
ordinate the activities of self-governing industries, there
would still be complainers of * inefficiency.* And by their
own lights, the complaints would be quite right. For to
the ruling classes, not only in the totalitarian, but also in
the democratic countries, * efficiency* means primarily
* military efficiency/ Now, a society in which the prin-
ciple of self-government has been applied to the ordinary
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