constructing co-management in venezuela: contradictions along the path (michael lebowitz, october 2005):
Now, some people may be bothered by what I'm going to say now, but I have to tell you that for many workers in capitalist firms the idea of state ownership with decisions made at the top has not been a real alternative. My father was a machinist, and I was never able to convince him. For him, state ownership was just a bigger, more powerful boss. What he wanted was to escape, to get out of the factory.
(...) [what and why co-management] In particular, the point of co-management is to put an end to capitalist exploitation and to create the potential for building a truly human society. When workers are no longer driven by the logic of capital to produce profits for capitalists, the whole nature of work can change. Workers can cooperate with each other to do their jobs well; they can apply their knowledge about better ways to produce to improve production both immediately and in the future; and, they can end the division in the workplace between those who think and those who do -- all because, in co-management, workers know that their activity is not for the enrichment of capitalists. The development of worker decision-making, the process of combining thinking and doing, offers the possibility of all workers developing their capacities and potential. And this is the kind of society, one which encourages the full development of human potential, which the Bolivarian Constitution envisions. Without democratic, participatory, and protagonistic production, people remain the fragmented, crippled human beings that capitalism produces. Democracy in production is a necessary condition for the free development of all; it is an essential element of socialism in the 21st century.
(...) Thus, it stresses that enterprises do not belong to the workers alone -- they are meant to be operated in the interest of the whole society. In other words, co-management is not intended only to remove the self-interested capitalist, leaving in place self-interested workers; rather, it is also meant to change the purpose of productive activity. It means the effort to find ways both to allow for the development of the full potential of workers and also for every member of society, all working people, to be the beneficiaries of co-management.