The economic proposals of Industry Minister Tony Benn have produced a fierce row both in the press —as the cartoons reprinted here show -and in the Labour Party. Alan Jones looks at the meaning of the Benn Plan. for nationalisation they contain.
the economy out of the hands of the capitalists.
Benn may claim that he is trying to use the tail of the public sector and State intervention to wag the capitalit dog. but the most elementary facts show the complete unrealism of his approach.
PUBLIC SECTOR
Take the size of the nationalised sector, It is true that half of all capital investment now takes place in the public sector - but this is more due to the collapse of investment in private industry than to the extent of the State owned indusines themselves. In fact the output of the nationalised industries is only about one tenth of ihe whole economy and their workforce only accounts for about 8%% of total In contrast to this, private industry is enormously concentrated and powerful In 1971 the 50 top companies alone produced nearly half of all turnover. A mere 80 companies own two thirds of industrial assets: and the largest 300 control 87%. In such a situation which would not Do fundamentally altered by Benn's very limuted nationalisation proposals It is the capitalist sector and not the nationalised one which must dominate.
This becomes even more obvious when you consider that the nationalis ed sector and the private sector are related at every level. To take just one exampie, the olectricity industry buys its generating machinery from private industry, gencrates the electricity in FREE FOR ALL Red Weekly When looking at any new Labour Party economic proposals probably the first thing any socialist does is to examine what plans This is in fact the first giveaway about the real nature of the recent plans put forward by Tony Benn. They do not contain any proposals to break capitalist ownership of industry, but instead limit nationalisation to a very few cases (basically just ship-building and aircraft production). These are far too few to take control of La nationalised industry and sells most of its output to private industry.
What occurs in the nationalised industries is virtually totally determined by what happens in the private sector of the cconomy. If investment falls and output drops in the private sector then there is no market for goods from the nationalised industries. If prices go up in the private Italist economy exists there is no way round this The relation betwcon the private sector and nationalised industries can he seen even more clearly when we look at the present functioning of the nationalised industries.
EFFICIENCY Contrary to the propaganda put out in the capitalist press the nation-.
captalist economy, far from being Cent in the productivity of labour than private industry. For example, in the years 1958-68 output per man in British manufacturing industry, which is fargely privately owned, went up alised railways went up by 4.6%, productivity in the mines went up by 6%, in electricity by 7ws and in the nationalised airlines hy nearly 10% "He may be wearing a fun uniform, but they say he's as dangerous as we are !" or even main, consideration socalists take into account - for example keeping down unemployment or ensuring adequate public services are more important than just productivity figures. But these figures do show the lie about supposed inefficiency of nationalised industry.
told nationalised industries are "inefficient is because the test applied to them is not the productivity of labour but the capitalist test of profitability This is quite ridiculous. It is only the insane economic system of capitalism which turns profit into a great god for which millions of men are to he thrown on dole queues, bloody wars fought and vast social convulsions gone through. The nationalised industries could make vast profits, if that was their aum, in no time at all, If they were allowed to follow the pricing policies of private capitalisma - that is to raise their prices to that point where public outery and sector then the nationalised industries shoer lack of buying power forces have to pay more. As long as the cap them to stop - they would show protits galore. But who would gain if the price of electricity were doubled and the nationalised electricity industry made a vast profit? Nobody.
LOOTING
worse then even simple profit making gues un. The whole economic policy of the nationalised industry is rigged so as to suhsidise private firms. This alised industries, even in an unplanned is done in three basic ways First: sections of an industry are "inefficient are in fact far more effici- kept in private hands or let off to capitalists. Thus, for example, the manufacturing for the teleplione system, a vast undertaking, is done privately. There are continual scan dals over the prices charged by hy 4%. But productivity in the nation- private firms to the Coal Board for pit props and other mining equipment. BOAC was forced to lose [1.3 million profit when its West African air-soutes were given to :1.
ownersThe reason why we are continually In fact, under capitalism, something lion a year sector tail.
Emmeroco in large part, their ideas Second: the nationalised industries are loored through payment of vast sums in compensation to the former who in any case had made vast protits previously out of the workers in the industry, For example, every year between nationalisation to them. and 1972 the mines made more than enough money to cover their running costs. In thirteen of those years it made profits of over 120 million and in seven of them profits of over E30 million. Yet compensation and interest payments to capitalists are so vust that in most of these years, after the hand-outs, a loss was made. Even where money was retained it was vastly cut into. For example, in 1963 an enormous E72 million surplus was made. This could have been used to cut the price of coal, improve the wages of miners, increase investment, or all three. But instead a huge ESO million was promptly taken by interest and compensation holders.
Third: the nationalised industries are looted through being ordered to charge artificially low prices to private capitalist customers. The most notorious example of this is the way the nationalised steel industry for years has been selling steel to indus trial customers at low prices, subsidised by the working class taxpayer. Many ocher cases can be cited -for example, the rebating system of the Post Office on company mail which, by 1971, amounted to a subsidy to industry of CI8 milThis situation in which the coonomic policies of nationalised indus tries are determined by the private sector is inevitoble as long as the key centres of industry remain in capitalist hands, Even if Benn's proposals were implemented then it would still be the private capitalisi with the Labour Gosernment's National Plan" of 1964, This openly stated that it was drawn up in the following way- "Industries were asked what a 25% national growth from 1964 to 1970 would mean With no compulsion in this so-called 'plan', what happens is that if the capitalists decide they don't like the plan they simply ignore it. Thus, under the 1964-70 Lahour Government, the employers did not consider their profits high cough and therefore did not invest. As a result coonomic growth was less than half the increase it was supposed to be under the 'plan.
If Benn's proposals were simply of this voluntary type they would hardly be worth discussing. But let us give him the benelit of the doubt for the moment and suppose that he actually intends there to be some element of compulsion in his proposals. What will happen then?
SABOTAGE
If Benn decides to compel some one to do something it is obviously because they don't want to do it themselves. Since the capitulist sys lem is at the moment heading Lowards 25% inflation and a million unemployed it is not surprising that Benn might want to compel the capitalist class to do something other than what they intend at present. But all historical experience shows thar the reaction of the capitalist class to any such compulsion will be very strong indeed.
While it is always calling for law and order', demanding resiraint from the working cluss, and so on, the capitalist class itsolf is never concern
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Of course productivity is not the only, private firms. ЗАПОВЗАІС NOTTINES