Collegiate and One-Man Management
The Mensheviks attempt to dwell on yet another question which seems favorable to their desire once again to ally themselves with the working class. This is the question of the method of administration of industrial enterprises – the question of the collegiate (board) or the one-man principle. We are told that the transference of factories to single directors instead of to a board is a crime against the working class and the Socialist revolution. It is remarkable that the most zealous defenders of the Socialist revolution against the principle of one-man management are those same Mensheviks who quite recently still considered that the idea of a Socialist revolution was an insult to history and a crime against the working class.
The first who must plead guilty in the face of the Socialist revolution is our Party Congress, which expressed itself in favor of the principle of one-man management in the administration of industry, and above all in the lowest grades, in the factories and plants. It would be the greatest possible mistake, however, to consider this decision as a blow to the independence of the working class. The independence of the workers is determined and measured not by whether three workers or one are placed at the head of a factory, but by factors and phenomena of a much more profound character – the construction of