For all the misery it represents for ordinary people, there is at least one positive result of the current capitalist financial crisis. The idea of nationalisation is getting an airing again in the West, however squeamish capitalist leaders and pundits may be about using the actual word.
The question of nationalisation is important because it is simply impossible to conceive of addressing a whole series of key problems facing us today without a major expansion of the public sector and bringing the "commanding heights" of the economy under state ownership and control.
Nationalisation is part of the answer to the overriding issue of climate change and all the things related to that — especially energy and water sustainability, food security and the preservation of workers' jobs as the economy is restructured.
Then there is the struggle to preserve workers' jobs and livelihoods in the face of widespread downsizing during the current economic downturn. Today we are living in a period of total neoliberal madness — madness, it should be stressed, from the point of view of society as a whole but not from the capitalist standpoint — when just about everything in sight has either been privatised or is slated for privatisation.
In official circles today, the idea of state enterprise is decidedly on the nose. But it wasn't always so. In fact, historians have dubbed the period 1850-1914 in Australia as "colonial socialism". Large-scale public-sector investment was carried out — especially in transport, communications, water supply and sewerage systems, and immigration to boost the population.
Of course, it wasn't really socialism but rather public enterprise in the service of capitalism, creating the infrastructure that private enterprise needed but couldn't effectively organise itself.
The reality was that private capital never lost its control of the country's economic organisation. It accepted public economic activity in essential areas in which it could not profitably operate — the railways are the prime example here.
After World War I, profitable state enterprises were increasingly sold off, such as the NSW government-owned brickworks, metal quarries and pipeworks in 1936 for example.
subh = Neoliberalism today
Since the early 1980s, neoliberalism has been in the ascendant. Internationally, capitalism is in a period of sharply intensifying economic competition. Everywhere it demands that social expenditures be cut to the bone and handouts and tax breaks for big business increased. It wants to get its hands on every bit of public enterprise that it might use to turn a profit.
We can dismiss the ideological justifications for the neoliberal privatisation drive. Whatever the faults of public enterprise under capitalism — and we are far from denying them — the idea that the private sector is inherently better or more efficient is utterly ludicrous.
The only real "efficiencies" of the private sector lie in slugging the public and putting its hand out for ever more government subsidies and concessions.
We oppose privatisation in all its forms. It is a massive attack on working people and our quality of life. In opposition to neoliberalism we must advocate nationalisation, public ownership and a massive expansion of public sector on all levels (federal, state and municipal).
Rather than bailouts of the corporate criminals responsible for the financial crisis, socialists would agree with the call advanced by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in the 1930s to "merge all the banks into a single national institution" and "create a unified system of investments and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the entire people".
If this was to occur it would open the way to use the truly immense resources suddenly revealed to tackle global warming, keep people in their homes and provide everyone with decent jobs.
Of course, we are keenly aware that, ultimately, only the installation of a workers' government based on the mobilisation of the working class and its allies can solve the problems of society. But the nationalisation demand points to what is necessary and is a key part of the struggle to get there.
Furthermore, many people might question what the real difference is between private and public ownership under capitalism today?
For instance, look at the truly appalling case of Australia Post. It is run like a private corporation. Profitability and service to big business are its main concerns; it has a whole raft of obscenely overpaid executives; is engaged in a continuous assault on the pay and conditions of its work force; and, through aggressively contracting out, it is slowly privatising the whole service.
What we advocate is something radically different. We want public enterprises to be run as genuine public utilities — public service and workers' rights should go hand in hand.
Public enterprises should be run democratically, controlled by boards representing both the community and the workforce. The corporate bludgers should be cleaned out; managers should be elected by the work force and receive workers' wages with only modest margins for skill and responsibility.
subh = Nationalise the banks
Alot can be learnt from the struggle around bank nationalisation in Australia in 1947-49.
Nationalisation of banking had been in the Australian Labor Party's platform since 1919 and it was one of the clearly stated "methods" of implementing the party's 1921 objective of "the socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange".
During World War II, the banking sector had been stringently regulated. The federal Labor government wanted to maintain a high level of control of the financial sector in the postwar period in order to underwrite the peacetime reconstruction effort.
Two federal bills passed in 1945 effectively continued the wartime banking regulations. Among other things they directed state and local governments and semi-government bodies to do all their business with the Commonwealth Bank. (This was then the state-owned central bank, there being no Reserve Bank.)
In August 1947 the Melbourne City Council secured a High Court judgement ruling this provision invalid. Then-ALP prime minister Ben Chifley concluded that other aspects of his regime of financial controls were at risk of being overturned in the courts and that nationalisation of the private banks was the only way to guarantee his program. The government's announcement touched off a veritable firestorm of opposition from the banks and the Liberal Party, then led by Robert Menzies.
They went all-out to kill the legislation in what historian Robin Gollan described as "the most intense, highly organised, highly financed, and unscrupulous propaganda campaign [Australians] had ever experienced".
Against this right-wing barrage there was a only a very weak response by the ALP and the trade union movement. There were a number of reasons for this.
First, Chifley seems to have had no idea of what he was entering into. He did not want to challenge capitalism. He actually had quite modest objectives and blundered into the nationalisation that the capitalists saw as a fundamental attack on all they held sacred. He was totally incapable of responding to what he had unwittingly unleashed.
Second, the Cold War was beginning and anti-communism was growing rapidly. The ALP-led trade unions were reluctant to campaign in a full-blooded way on an issue widely seen as a key Communist Party demand. Likewise, the growing far-right Catholic Action "Industrial Groups" section in the trade unions, although nominally in favour of nationalisation, would have nothing to do with the communists on any basis.
The issue was tested in the High Court in 1948 and before the London-based Privy Council in 1949, with the government suffering defeat in both cases. However, even in strictly legal terms, it is by no means clear that these judgements mean that any future nationalisation attempt will be automatically ruled out of order.
In the event, these setbacks plus the decisive victory of the Menzies-led Coalition in the 1949 elections buried the idea of bank nationalisation.
Looking over the bank nationalisation struggle of the late 1940s from today's vantage point is very instructive. If there were a full-blooded attempt by a radical-minded government to nationalise the banks and the financial sector today, the bosses would be in a qualitatively weaker political position.
It would be impossible for them to simply replicate their 1947-49 red-scare campaign. Conversely, any campaign for public ownership that was reasonably and resolutely led would seem to have a good chance of success or at least of winning substantial popular support.
The banks, we can be sure, would resist bitterly but amongst ordinary people they don't have many friends.
Need for public ownership
Grappling with climate change is the number-one issue facing humanity in the 21st century. We have the task of halting and then reversing it, along with dealing with some of the unavoidable consequences.
There are, of course, many other important issues but this is the absolutely decisive one. If we don't solve it most of the human race will perish.
Making the "big switch" to renewable energy necessitates a radical plan and a complete restructuring of our economy. This cannot be done with the bulk of the economy in the hands of the profit-mad capitalist corporations. At an absolute minimum, the whole energy sector must be placed in public hands.
Its foundation charter must be to achieve a rapid phasing-out of the fossil fuel-fired power stations; build up the renewable energy sector; and achieve a radical improvement in energy efficiency across the whole economy.
Furthermore, all this has to be done on an emergency basis. Only a strong public sector can possibly achieve this and achieve the redistribution of the workforce, preserving jobs and living standards and thus securing strong public backing for the necessary changes.
Government handouts to big business won't save workers. The bosses will happily take the money but they have no commitment to their employees — only to themselves and their big shareholders.
Only a revitalised and massively expanded public sector can create the hundreds of thousands of permanent, well-paid, secure jobs that are needed to give work to all who need it. If the bosses want to close a factory or if it's really going broke, it should be taken into public ownership, reorganised and put to producing socially necessary things.
The demand for nationalisation is not a panacea. It is one element in our transitional program, but an extremely important one for the times in which we live. Used intelligently, it can play an important role in the struggle.
[Dave Holmes is a national executive member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective of Australia, a Marxist organisation affiliated to the Socialist Alliance. An extended version of this article appears on Links.]