Draft Regulations on Workers’ Control

Lenin’s article on workers’ control over production which was written on October 26-27, 1917. It was supplemented and published in November 1914 in the No.3 issue of the The Newspaper of the Provisional Worker and Peasant Government with the title “Draft Regulations on Workers’ Control” (submitted to the Labor Committee for examination). It was first published in 1929 in the Vol. 22 of the Russian version in the second and third editions of Complete Works of Lenin. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 33 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

After the victory of the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Party established the Soviet state system, formulated new policies for the recovery and development of the economy and embarked on the economic socialist reform to transfer the landlord capitalists’ public enterprises to the people. However, due to the lack of management experience and leadership of economic organizations, it was impossible to nationalize all capitalist enterprises. To this end, Lenin made the “Draft Regulations on Workers’ Control”. It provided that: For the capitalist enterprises with an annual turnover of not less than 10,000 rubles, Workers’ control over the production, storage, purchase and sale of all products and raw materials, accounting books and documents of all enterprises shall be executed by the representatives directly elected in general meetings. For smaller enterprises, workers’ control could be exercised directly by all the workers and office employees, if the enterprise is small enough to permit it.

In the key state enterprises or enterprises related to the defense industry, all owners (meaning enterprise managers) and all representatives of the workers and office employees elected for the purpose of exercising workers’ control should be accountable to the state, and they should observe the principle of maintaining the strictest order and discipline and do their utmost to protection the public property.

Persons guilty of dereliction of duty, concealment of stocks, accounts, etc., shall be punished by the law. More detailed rules on workers’ control shall be drawn up by the local Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and by conferences of factory committees, and also by committees of office employees at general meetings of their representatives.

In the “Draft Regulations on Workers’ Control”, Lenin proposed some early economic policies of the Soviet Union. Although these policies were not yet socialist in nature, they provided the necessary conditions for the nationalization of industries, organization of the Soviet economy and the transition to socialism. The draft has laid the foundation for the Regulations on Workers’ Control formulated and promulgated by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in November 27, 1917.