Workers' self-management is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an
organization's workforce. Self-management is a defining characteristic of
socialism, with proposals for self-management having appeared many times throughout the history of the socialist movement, advocated variously by democratic, libertarian, and market socialists as well as anarchists and
communists. An economic system consisting of self-managed enterprises is sometimes referred to as a participatory
economy, self-managed
economy, or cooperative
economy. This economic model is based on the notion that people should be able to participate in making the decisions
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In the economic theory of self-management, workers are no longer employees but partners in the administration of their enterprise. Supporters of self-managed cooperatives cite the importance of
autonomy for productivity in the firm and economists in favor of self-management argue that cooperatives are more efficient than centrally-managed firms because every worker receives a portion of the profit, thereby directly tying their productivity to their level of compensation.
Syndicalism is a current in the labor movement to establish local, worker-based organizations and advance the demands and rights of workers through strikes. Major
syndicalist organizations include the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the General Confederation of Labor in
France, the National Confederation of Labour in Spain, the Italian
Syndicalist Union, the Free Workers' Union of
Germany, and the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation. A number of
syndicalist organizations were and still are to this day linked in the International Workers' Association.
Syndicalists advocate
direct action, including working to rule, passive
resistance,
sabotage, and strikes, particularly
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strike, as tactics in the class struggle, as opposed to indirect action such as
electoral politics. The final step towards
revolution, according to
syndicalists, would be a general
strike. Labor unions were seen as being the embryo of a new
society in addition to being the means of struggle within the old.
Syndicalists generally agreed that in a free
society production would be managed by workers. The state apparatus would be replaced by the rule of workers' organizations. In such a
society individuals would be liberated, both in the economic sphere but also in their private and social lives.
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