> Among organised labour and the left there was general support for some kind of collective organisation of industry, but since it was largely a theoretical question, the difference between the *nationalisation* (i.e. state ownership) of industry and the *socialisation* of industry (i.e the transition from a free market to a democratically planned society) was not well understood. Engels made the point in the debates of the First International that socialism was not the same thing as nationalisation - 'otherwise Bismark's government owned tobacco plants would be socialism' (not verbatim).
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Yes - Eley (who's a specialist in German history) says that in Germany during the Second International and WWI periods, the labor movement deliberately eschewed the word nationalization and used socialization instead, which denoted workers' control.
It seems to me that if you asked the average person in the street (in the West) in the post-WWII era what socialism meant, the reply would focus almost exclusively on the state owning the firms. Workers' control was discussed a lot in certain left circles, of course, especially in the 60's and 70's, but it never made left much of a mark on the ordinary person's image of what socialism means. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons for that, but I wonder which are the most important.
SA