Quotes from Ch. 3: Contradictions of the Transition

An undemocratic power such as that of the capitalist class, eliminates institutional and technical innovations that threaten its control. Since, under socialism, workers are in charge they can change the very nature of technology, which, for the first time in history, concerns a ruling class with an interest in democracy on the workplace. (43)

When they found that early experiments in workers' control reduced efficiency, they did not consider adapting the conditions of production to a new social requirements but rather quickly reintroduced "one man" management. [. . .] Authoritarian economic control appeared as necessary to most socialists as it had to capitalists before them. [. . .] Once "order" was restored in the USSR, workers had no power base from which to resist the imposition of arbitrary dictatorship, as they had at earlier phases in the Revolution. (48-9)

Whether rightly or wrongly, they [the Soviets] came to believe that mass participation in administration caused intolerable disorganization or production, and they turned to more traditional administrative methods that relied on hired experts with proven competences. (52)

• Interesting because this is my concern with democratizing the production of technology. Am interested to see how Feenberg reconciles this issue.

The bases of capitalist control are twofold, a system of ownership and a system of administration. Striking down the first without touching the second leaves the state in possession of all the powers of the capitalist class, heir to the operational autonomy won by capitalists through generations of successful class struggle against workers. The consequences are obvious. In an industrial society, control of industry, transportation, and communications is a tremendous source of power; in the hands of workers' councils it would have guaranteed respect for the claims of the social movement and most likely individual rights as well. In the hands of government officials, it cleared the field for police dictatorship. (53)

• Not sure I see the difference between "workers' councils" and "government officials." Both are ruling bodies--perhaps the workers' councils are supposed to be more interested in the rights of laborers, but it's still a class of people in control of all the rest. How is this fundamentally different and therefore superior? Both seem just as susceptible to corruption and self-serving tendencies.
  

The solution to the problem of exercising power from above is contained in the very division of labor Marx criticized, and so any system based on top down control will inevitably reproduce that division of labor, whatever its ostensible policy or purpose. (54)

The costs of public participation are said to be excessively high; democracy and technology are incompatible values. But without some form of democratic control from below, technology will continue to serve as a power base for the elite. (59)