Table of Contents | Words: Alphabetical - Frequency - Inverse - Length - Statistics | Help | IntraText Library |
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Double Game of French Socialism IntraText CT - Text |
|
|
4. Corporate Self-Management: a Socio-Economic Revolution
Self-management is the implementation of the principles and form of government of the Revolution of 1789 in business enterprises. 15 The whole Program appears to find in employer-employee relations a residual image of the relations between the king and the people. It aims to "dethrone" the "king," eliminate his sovereignty in the business enterprise, and transfer all power to the "plebeians," that is, the employees, and particularly to the manual laborers. The Revolution has employed various means to prevent the resurgence of different types of aristocracy in the political sphere. Similarly, the Program endeavors to prevent corporate managers and technicians from surviving as an aristocracy in "republicanized" firms. In "large" corporations the individual proprietor disappears immediately. The traditional concept of a business is itself broadened. Not only do those employed by a particular concern share real rights over the company and what it produces, but those rights extend, via representative organizations, to consumers, purveyors, and so on. In fact, these rights belong to society as a whole, represented by delegates of organizations or groups more closely related to the enterprise (see Chart 1V, -The Ideal Self-Managing Enterprise Proposed by the Socialists). Like a democratic republic, each company ultimately will be ruled by a voting majority of its workers. The company will hold assemblies to keep the workers informed about all of its business. "Representatives" or "deputies" will be elected to form a directorate (something of a soviet). The employee- managers will be mere executors of the directorate's will. This system is defined as self-managing and affirmed as the logical socioeconomic consequence of the people's political sovereignty. According to this notion, a republic is a politically self-managing nation. A self-managing regime entails the "republicanization" of the socio-economic structure. 16 In other words, it is the establishment of a corporate regime in which the orientation given by specialists and technicians is subject to assemblies and organizations made up mostly of people with less intellectual development.
|
15. "French democracy is large manipulated. It is also carefully limited. It stops at the threshold of the company." (Program, p. 231). "We are determined to promote a decisive progress of economic and social democracy. The French, citizens in their communities, must also be such in their places of work. Employers should neither fear nor oppose this desirable and necessary evolution" ("Declaration of General Policy p. 49). "In our Western societies, democracy is more or less tolerated everywhere, except in business. Whether the employer is an independent industrialist or a high ranking government official, he holds the essential powers to the detriment of all ... A business is a monarchy with a pyramidal structure. At every level the representative of the hierarchy is all-powerful; his decisions are final. The simple worker becomes a powerless man entitled neither to speech nor initiative" (PIERRE MAUROY, Heritiers de l'Avenir, p. 276.
16. "Economic democracy and political democracy are indissociable; their joint development requires that every worker, every citizen have, at all levels, the possibility and the means of taking an active part in making decisions, choosing the means, controlling their application and results" ("Common Program - Proposals for Updating, p. 50) "Economic democracy and social democracy are indissociable from political democracy " (Documentation Socialiste, supplement to no. 2, p. 145). "The socialists want the French to stop being under tutelage. Decentralization will be the heart of the experiment of the government of the left, which, during the first three months of its accession to power will undertake the most significant reform of these uncertain times giving the power to the citizens. Finally the Republic will be liberated from the monarchy" (PIERRE MAUROY, Heritiers de l'Avenir, p. 295).
|
Table of Contents | Words: Alphabetical - Frequency - Inverse - Length - Statistics | Help | IntraText Library |
Best viewed with any browser at 800x600 or 768x1024 on Tablet PC IntraText® (V89) - Some rights reserved by EuloTech SRL - 1996-2007. Content in this page is licensed under a Creative Commons License |