> Well Carrol's comparison with nationalisation of industry in the UK is correct in one important respect: the only companies that were ever put into public ownership - or in the case of Merdien - under workers' management - were those companies that had already tanked. Nationalised industries were, by definition, failed industries. Of course it was a problem for those workforces, who could hardly refuse the prospect that nationalisation might be the best way to defend their jobs in the here and now, but it definitely did not translate into the socialist future, but workers left in control of all the lame ducks.
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In his history of the European left, Geoff Eley says that before 1914 the British labor movement was firmly opposed to nationalization, not out of respect for private property but because they viewed it as just exchanging one boss for another. Does anyone know how far this is true? And how/when did this stance change?
SA