Workers’ Control: Merely ‘Prudent’ or Indispensible?

Daisy Valera

The “Letters to the Editor” section of the Granma newspaper was created more than three years ago so that Cubans could make their complaints and suggestions public.

Last Friday, comments from E. Gonzalez Cruz appeared in that section of the paper and were published under the title “The Company, Cadre and the Workers.”

To clarify before continuing, “cadre” is the name given to directors — of companies, institutions or other workplaces — who are members of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC).

The letter by E. Gonzalez mentioned the lack of depth in the “Guidelines” (a discussion document for the upcoming Sixth Party Conference) concerning cadre policy, or in other words how the managers of workplaces will be designated in light of the new economic changes taking place in Cuba.

Clearly in the “Guidelines” that are being discussed as a prelude to the congress — from which the political, economic and social situation of the island will change — this issue is stated succinctly in single two points: Guidelines 66 and 202

No other lines mention who are, should be or will be those who will direct the future changes.

And it was exactly after noticing this situation in the “Guidelines” that a brilliant idea occurred to E. Gonzalez, who expressed it this way:

“In my opinion it would be prudent to conceive of the participation of the workers in the leadership of socialist government enterprises through the election, ratification or replacement of cadre…”

Another suggestion by Gonzalez was as follows:

“In turn the nuclei or committees of the party would fulfill Article 41 of the Regulations for Grass Roots Organizations of the Party, submitting their assessment of the possible candidates to be chosen as cadre with the responsibility for their election falling on the workers…”

The comrade’s two points could suggest to us that the workers in a given workplace are not the ones who select their representatives and also the fact that bodies of party members are those who appropriate this right.

But these would only be suppositions.  What is a fact is that Gonzalez Cruz inserts the phrase “it would be prudent.”

The idea of E. Gonzalez concerning workers’ control, though brilliant, is not new; it has been understood by all those who have struggled for a system more just than capitalism.

Lenin in his “Draft Regulations for Workers’ Control” (1917), to mention only one work, expressed this very clearly:

1.     Workers’ control over the production, storage, purchase and sale of all products and raw materials shall be introduced in all industrial, commercial, banking, agricultural and other enterprises…

2.     Workers’ control shall be exercised by all the workers and office employees of an enterprise, either directly, if the enterprise is small enough to permit it, or through their elected representatives, who shall be elected immediately at general meetings…

Therefore I would suggest the comrade replace the word “prudent” with others such as “necessary” or “indispensable” if he/she is referring to workers’ control and the election of their representatives by the workers themselves.

This idea is ratified by all the classics of Marxism as well as in Cuba, which has a Leninist constitution and therefore makes it more than justified that power should be in the hands of the workers.