Nationalisation, Socialism and Unemployment

A correspondent, Mr. R. Scales, of Newark, Notts, writes telling us that we are wrong to advocate nationalisation because, he says, it causes unemployment. The following extracts from Mr. Scales’ letter and from an enclosed document will sufficiently indicate the conclusions at which he has arrived as a result of the 20 years he says he has devoted to the problem.

“Dear Sir,
I see your party are intent on nationalisation, so I enclose you an extract from my paper, which will prove conclusively that the same will increase instead of decreasing unemployment.”

The enclosed extract from Mr. Scales’ paper contains the following passage: —

“Nationalisation is not in the public interest, as people finance the working of land, transport, mines, electricity, gas, water, etc., for profit (money) for a living for worker and investors alike, whose spending creates trade to provide each and others a living as by economic law the living of one creates the living of another. Also if industries are nationalised the public will have still to find the money to finance them, as States, having no money, would increase taxes on everyone to raise the money to purchase industries, work them, and compensate present proprietors, thus everyone would pay the same or more indirectly for nationalised services as if owned and worked by private enterprise, and as everyone pays taxes everyone would have less to spend and each cause less trade and more unemployment.”

Mr. Scales’ 20 years’ study evidently do not include any study at all of what Socialists have always stood for. It will therefore come as a surprise to Mr. Scales to learn that the S.P.G.B., far from advocating nationalisation or State capitalism, has always opposed it. Socialism, which is not nationalisation, will not and could not cause unemployment. Unemployment is a term which can only be applied to men and women who get their living by being employed for wages or salary, and as Socialism necessarily involves the abolition of the wages system in its entirety, the advent of Socialism involves the end both of employment and of unemployment. The task of Socialist society will be to organise the co-operation of the able-bodied population in the production of all the necessities and amenities of life, and all the members of society will have free access to the wealth produced. Socialism will provide more leisure for the majority of the population than they have now, because all the able-bodied will be working, instead of, as now, the capitalist class being exempt from the necessity of so doing: and, furthermore, an enormous amount of work which is essential to capitalism (including financial operations, the maintenance of the armed forces, etc., etc.) will not be required under Socialism. Unemployment, the inability to find an employer, cannot exist under Socialism.

Now for some of the details of Mr. Scales’ argument. If we are to believe him, private capitalism does not produce unemployment, but State capitalism or nationalisation does, produce unemployment. Mr. Scales’ belief does not stand examination. He will find, if he enquires, that British capitalism in its heyday of “private enterprise” in the nineteenth century was never without unemployment, and periodically it suffered from the economic crises and greatly increased unemployment that goes with crises. He will find that the same is true of U.S.A., the country which has prided itself on being a country of unfettered capitalist enterprise.

Another point on which Mr. Scales’ argument gees astray is the contradiction between his belief that “spending creates trade,” and thus provides employment, and his further belief that this does not apply to State capitalist enterprises. It is obvious that spending by a Government Department has the same results, no better and no worse, than spending by a private capitalist.

Both State capitalism and private capitalism are up against the same capitalist problem that the working class receive as wages or salary an amount which is quite insufficient to buy the flood of goods that the labour of the working class produces for their capitalist (and State capitalist) masters. Unemployment is a necessary feature of capitalist society, and it matters little to the working class whether they are exploited by capitalists direct or whether they are exploited by the State acting on behalf of the capitalist class. The remedy is not more State capitalism, but the abolition of capitalism and the inauguration of Socialism.

ED. COMM.