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From International Socialism, No.73, December 1974.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Our Platform (Where We Stand) contains the item ‘For nationalisation without compensation under workers’ control.’
In some circumstances this can be an important agitational or propaganda slogan. For example, in the rash of closures or in relation to nationalisation proposals put forward by the Labour Party (ship-building, aircraft, etc.).
The no-compensation demand is particularly relevant in both cases. The stress needs to be put on the facts that the industries/firms concerned are either bankrupt or dependent on state subsidies, that compensation is a free gift to the owners. From this standing point our propaganda can generalise about property rights in the means of production in general (who creates the wealth etc.).
Nationalisation measures are state-capitalist measures, not socialist ones. This will always be true so long as the nationalising state is a capitalist state. In many cases (e.g. coal, railways) they are in the economic interests of the capitalist class as a whole. However, there is often a conflict between economic and political interests (not to mention the sectional interests of particular groups of capitalists). At present virtually the whole capitalist class is strongly opposed to the government’s nationalisation measures because it fears that they may encourage workers to demand much more especially when closures are threatened, and so seriously hamper rationalisation and interfere with redundancies.
In this situation we support nationalisation measures critically (raising the issues of compensation and control) but unconditionally. That is, our support is not altered when our full demands are not met. At the same time we oppose all schemes for hiving off sections of existing nationalised industries or denationalisation.
The fight for workers’ control is fundamental but not to be confused with workers’ self-management. Workers’ control implies the existence of a capitalist (or state capitalist) management. It is control over the activities of such managements that can be achieved, in varying degrees, before the establishment of a workers’ state. The struggle for workers’ control is the struggle to encroach on managerial rights. That struggle will be especially concerned, in the near future, with destroying the management’s power to declare redundancies. It is equally relevant in nationalised and private industries. The essential difference, from this point of view, is that nationalised industries cannot go bankrupt.
Workers’ self-management, co-operative production under the joint control of the workers in an enterprise, can also be achieved under capitalism, indeed has been on many occasions. Under socialism it will be the norm, subject to overall economic planning. But under capitalism it can only lead to workers driving down their own conditions (as a result of capitalist competition) or to the collapse of the enterprise. We do not advocate it under capitalism. Specifically, in the case of closures, we call for nationalisation, not state aid to co-operative enterprises.
This position must be argued firmly but sensitively. We recognise the progressive impulse behind self-management schemes but argue as Marx did:–
‘the co-operative movement will never transform capitalist society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour general social changes are needed, changes ... never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, namely the state power, from the capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.’
October 1974
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