This is new territory. There is abundant evidence that workers can organize workplace production, but have little experience in democratically developing broader social plans that can also incorporate enough workplace autonomy to make worker self-management meaningful.

How far this can go within capitalism shouldn’t be exaggerated, but testing it does seem fruitful for developing the economic skills, institutional abilities, and political links — as well as highlighting the many unresolved problems — essential for moving on to more ambitious interventions.

A particularly significant blind spot for the workplace-control movement has been public-sector workers — especially considering that their unions are essentially the last bastion of trade unionism. In Wolff’s case, this oversight seems to follow from his minimal interest in “non-productive” workers.

But the broader reason for the neglect lies in the absurdity of applying segmented worker ownership to the public sector; it doesn’t seem especially worthwhile to think about workers in the tax department or welfare department “owning” tax collection or the distribution of food stamps.

Yet if the transformation of the state is paramount, then the role of public-sector workers is also crucial. At worst, ignoring it may lead to workers — concerned with their sectional interests — becoming a damaging obstacle to the state’s democratization. But at best, it could seriously broach the issue of moving us to a different kind of state.

In the past, some public-sector workers have tentatively forged alliances with clients as part of an effort to protect their jobs and enhance their bargaining position. Could this defensive tactic be extended to institutionalize new worker-client relationships directly within the state — e.g., setting up worker-client councils inside the welfare department to address problems with welfare provision; establishing teacher-parent councils to restructure the school system; and forming similar councils for health care, housing, transportation?

Thinking through these questions of politicization — whether it means rethinking industries, workers’ relationship to the state, or workers’ role within the state — makes it possible to conceive of the project of self-management as not bypassing unions but perhaps even fostering the conditions for their revival.

To what extent does the revivification of unions and the re-emergence of struggle among their members lie in developing a broader class sensibility that links common frustrations to the need for larger workplace and community class solidarities that can challenge what is produced, how, and for whom — questions basic to the question of self-management?