Nationalisation of the Commanding Heights of Industry Under Workers' Control

The scan: The Week v8 no24.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

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Because of the ferocity of Tory propaganda and because most nationalised industries are completely bureaucratised nationalisation has become a dirty word. The basic reason for this is that nationalisation has been carried out in order to bolster up and service the remaining private sector. On the other hand, none of things we all want can be achieved without a national plan to replace capitalist anarchy and stop-go. But planning in itself does not equal socialism. Everything dpends upon the aim of the plan and its direction. Nationalisation of the commanding heights of industry must have as its aim the elimination of private ownership of the imporan means of production. It should be directed towards taking over more and more of the economy until the most important sectors are completely socially owned. Nationalisation has been unpopular with many sections of workers because of their experience in working in nationalised industries. Workers in nationalised industries still feel that they are working for others and the record of these industries in dealing with workers is no better than that of the private sector. The boards of nationalised industries are run by big businessmen, retired generals and aristocrats (with a few extrade union leaders thrown in for appearunces' sake.) If nationalisation is to be a weapon for replacing capitalist power with workers’ power all this must be changed. That is why we pose the absolute necessity of workers' control. Workers! control has nothing to do with so-called workers! participation, nor is the latter part of a process towards achieving workers' control. They are two diametrically opposed concepts. Workers' control means that the essential decisions (including investment plans) are in the hands of elected representatives of the workers; workers participation means that a few workers are brought into taking some of the responsibility for unpopular decisions. An intergal part of workers' control is that all workers' representatives will be subject to recall and will receive no more for their duties than the people they represent.