This piece was written by British socialist Arthur Bough and appeared on his blog, in longer form.

Nationalisation

What is the Marxist view of nationalisation? To summarise:

1.) Marxists view things in terms of historical development. The description “progressive” has no moral content for a Marxist. It does not mean “better” in any moral sense, or even, in this sense, necessarily meaning more efficient, it merely means more mature, the more developed form, and therefore closer to being replaced by the next higher form.

2.) Using this definition Marx says that Monopoly, which arises necessarily out of Capitalist development, is more progressive than the small capitalist enterprise. Marx is not in any way saying here, though, that the Monopoly is in any way “better”. Marx does not call for monopolies in place of those small firms. But, he recognises that the demand for a return to those small firms is reactionary. Such is true of calls for anti-trust legislation, or anti-monopoly alliances.

3.) Marx recognised that the logical extension of this process within the confines of Capitalism was that Capital should reach its ultimate concentration in the form of ownership by the Capitalist State, i.e. nationalisation, State Capitalism. In Anti-Duhring, Engels sets out their attitude to such State Capitalism. Like Monopoly, it is progressive vis a vis those forms which have gone before. Not only is it the logical progression of those forms, but it shows to workers, in practice, the form of industry most suited to their own development of the productive forces. It shows that there is no need for individual capitalist owners. In addition, the extent to which these owners become mere “coupon clippers” deriving their income merely from ownership of Government debt, the more the real nature of workers’ exploitation is exposed. It is on that basis that he argues that such State Capitalism could not last long. But nowhere in these later writing, do Marx and Engels actually raise the demand for such nationalisation by the bourgeois state. On the contrary, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx is vitriolic in his condemnation of those that do raise the call for such state intervention.

4.) The position of Marxists is the same as that they take to workers engaged in, say, a wage struggle. If workers are fighting for higher pay, Marxists make themselves the best supporters of such a struggle, but in so doing they take the opportunity to explain to workers that they will repeatedly have to engage in such struggles for higher pay, so long as the Capitalists own the means of production. Moreover, any victory will be short lived. The capitalists at the earliest opportunity will take back what they have been forced to concede. Workers living standards can only rise in line with what is compatible with Capitalist development. Only by owning the means of production themselves can they avoid such repeated struggles, and inevitable defeats, along with the loss of production and wealth that go with them, the damage done to other workers who are affected by the loss of production caused by the strike etc.

Similarly, if workers are demanding nationalisation of their industry e.g. because it is about to go bust then Marxists make themselves the best supporters of such a struggle, but they do not raise the demand for nationalisation themselves. Rather, they point out what nationalisation by the Capitalist state will mean. It will mean control by an inefficient, bureaucratic, management that will leach off the workers. It will mean the State uses its muscle to impose worse conditions on the workers than even the private Capitalists could manage, including initially a big reduction in jobs to try to make the firm profitable. Its monopoly power will often result in the provision of poor quality goods and services to consumers, who in the majority are themselves other workers. All the time that they are supporting the workers struggle they point out these things as the limitation of their ideas, and programme, and instead point the workers again to the need to rely on themselves, to take the firm into their own ownership, and to run it in the interests of workers not bosses.

The reformists, who seek to present the State as being some non-class institution, counter this by claiming that nationalised industries are, by virtue of the democratic nature of the State, under bourgeois democracy, run for the benefit not of Capital, but in the interests of society. Marx gave the lie to that argument in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. The State is, and always has been, and always will be, the State of the ruling class. Any impartial study of nationalised industries anywhere in the world shows that the points made above are apparent for all to see. In Britain, the nationalised industries were used as fodder for the profits of private companies. Just look at the way pharmaceutical companies milk the National Health Service. At the same time, the power of the State was used to crush workers resistance as the 1984 Miners Strike, the 1981 Steelworkers Strike etc. demonstrated. In every instance nationalisation has been accompanied by huge job losses. And in every sphere nationalised industries have been an epitome of bureaucratism, inefficiency, and poor quality. Nowhere have they been under meaningful democratic control, nowhere have they served the interests of “society”.

Workers’ Control

So, where workers are struggling for nationalisation or some other form of State control, for example Municipalisation, Marxists support such struggles to their best ability, but they do not raise the demand for nationalisation or Municipalisation themselves. Rather they engage in such struggles, to “stick with the workers”, to go through the process with them, and to educate them in struggle. But, in so doing the Marxists explain what is wrong with such a Programme, what will be its outcome, and why instead they should struggle for their own ownership, and thereby control over the means of production, and other aspects of their life. Where, workers are struggling against privatisation, similarly, Marxists engage fully with such struggles, but again point out why the nature of State Capitalism leads to such a drive towards a return to less progressive forms, why a successful struggle against a return to private ownership means also a struggle against State Capitalism itself, why the State Capitalist bureaucrats will inevitably betray them, and line themselves up with plum jobs in the new privately owned enterprise and so on. Under these conditions, raising a demand for Workers’ Control as a transitional demand, set within an overall programme, designed to lead workers to see the need for and struggle for their own ownership of the means of production, might be acceptable.

If workers want, as they should, greater control over their lives, in the places they spend most of their time — in their homes and communities — they can only do this if they own those houses, and communities. As with the means of production it is often not practical for workers to own things on a meaningful scale by individual ownership, only collective ownership, and co-operative activity can make that possible. Rather than calling, like pissing in the wind, for the Capitalist State to act in workers’ interests, Marxists should be pointing out within such struggles why it will not, why it cannot, and why they have to take matters into their own hands, and establish Co-operative housing, and Co-operatively owned estates and communities.

Even besides the funds available in workers’ pension funds available for such ventures, workers have their own immediate funds that could be mobilised for such activities. Not only are there those funds which are currently paid to inefficiently run Council Housing Departments, or in interest and Capital payments to Banks and Building Societies — funds which would go much further in sustaining an efficient, Co-operative Housing system run under workers’ control, but just as with the establishment of Credit Unions on many estates — there are some workers with excess funds that could be lent out at a reasonable interest for such developments. In addition, there are funds available for the development of Co-operative Housing schemes through the various Co-operative organisations. Besides, workers have, in their Trade Unions, hundreds of millions of pounds which largely goes to finance expensive offices, a bloated bureaucracy, and services which are often nothing to do with real Trade Unionism, and replace direct activity by workers themselves to resolve their problems in the workplace. These funds could be mobilised to meet workers needs. Finally, if the Labour Movement began to organise to ensure that those of its parts such as the Co-op Bank etc. were brought under real workers control then the huge sums of money available in the form of Credit, could be mobilised to spread worker-owned co-operative housing throughout the country, immediately diverting huge flows of rent and mortgage payments away from private Capital, and into the workers’ own coffers.

In some distant day, in the socialist future, it may be that workers will take going to some democratic forum, to discuss their workplace or community, as being as much a part of their daily life as today they take watching football, or Coronation Street, or playing on a computer game. But, for now we know that workers do not do that. Very few go to their Trade Union meetings, very few engage in the activities of a political party, few take up the opportunity to have a say in how the Co-op is run, and so on. After the Russian Revolution — and after most revolutions — there was a great upsurge in such activity. Yet, the fact is that the majority still did not participate. There was enthusiasm for such activities amongst the “Vanguard”, but the majority of workers were more concerned with trying to survive, and earn a living than running the enterprises in which they worked. Partly, that was because in truth they did not see that they personally owned those enterprises. It was still a place to go to work in order to earn money.

It might not be a popular thing to say, but Marxists’ first duty is to tell the truth, and the truth is that (as Lenin once put it) we have to deal with the real workers that exist today, not the workers we would like in an ideal future. Those workers, like most other people in society, only put themselves out to attend meetings and so on where they see that they have some direct interest in doing so. Those of us who engage in political activity of one form or another out of some ideological conviction, or moral conviction, are the tiny minority. Workers will only demonstrate a lasting interest in workers’ control, will only put themselves out to attend meetings to discuss such matters if they feel they have some direct interest in doing so. That means that they must feel in the here and now that they own what they are controlling, by taking such decisions they are enabling their property to be worth more, are facilitating their employment being more secure, more lucrative etc.

Workers’ Ownership

The demand for Workers’ Ownership, and for Workers’ Self-Management based on that ownership is then fundamental to revolutionary strategy for a number of reasons.

1.) Workers need ownership of the means of production in order to build their own economic and social power within society on a more stable basis than could ever be achieved simply by wage struggles.

2.) Workers’ ownership provides the fundamental requirement for developing Workers Control of production.

3.) Workers’ Ownership demonstrates to workers that production can be successfully undertaken without the organising and directing force of either individual capitalists or their State.

4.) On the basis of Workers’ Ownership real solutions can be offered to the real problems of workers here and now rather than offering workers solutions based upon action by the Capitalist State, or solutions which basically tell workers that nothing can be done until the Revolution.

5.) On the basis of Workers’ Ownership, workers in Co-operative enterprises are not only led to the requirement to actively participate in the management of their enterprise, but as shareholders in that business they have a direct pecuniary interest in doing so.

6.) Out of Co-operative enterprise, and the Workers’ Control that flows from it, workers not only learn that they do not need bosses, but learn that they can run society more effectively than can the capitalists. They learn that the profit motive is not the only basis on which enterprises can act, and from the lessons learned in acting co-operatively within a single enterprise, follows logically the lesson that even greater benefits flow from a range of enterprises, communities and other organisations working co-operatively rather than competing against each other.

7.) On the basis of the fundamental changes in the relations of production that such co-operative enterprise brings about flows necessarily a different set of ideas, ideas based on co-operation not competition. On this basis is laid the foundations of challenging bourgeois ideas, and by winning the battle of democracy within the working class, as Marx put it, the starting point of positing socialist ideas as the ideas of the new ruling class, of placing the working class in its vast majority as the conscious force which not only recognises the need to demolish the old, but the need for it to construct the new. A construction based on its own tried and tested Co-operative forms created not from on high by some State, but as Marx suggested by its own hand.