Against the orders of offi cial leadership, the shop committee movement practiced two interconnected forms of direct action: strikes and workers' control. … Strikes were eff ective because they stimulated the construction of instruments of direct democracy: workers' committees. Workers' committees placed “the control of the product in the hands of the workers themselves” (Gallacher and Campbell 1972, 31) and allowed for the coordination of strikes, boosting the workers' power to develop more committees. Hence, workers' industrial organization was the main organ of industrial control— and potentially, of political emancipation.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 475