The Pittsburgh Press (January 4, 1946)
Background of news –
Socialization in 1946
By Bertram Benedict
The year 1946 may show whether the worldwide trend toward nationalization, or socialization, is to continue or will peter out.
In the United States, General Motors says that the auto workers’ union is moving toward socialization by trying to tie wage rates to profits. President Truman and his fact-finding board nevertheless want data on the relationship. The American Medical Association condemns the president’s proposal of November 19 for health insurance as “socialized medicine;” the president disputes the charge.
In Great Britain, the Labor government has in five months nationalized only one enterprise – the Bank of England, and that was already a quasi-public undertaking. Steps have been initiated to nationalize only three more fields of British enterprise – the coal mines, aviation and cable and radio communications.
But in 1942 the Conservative government began to buy out the owners of the coal mine royalties, leaving only mining operations to private enterprise. (The coal belonged to the owners of the land, who leased the mining rights and received royalties on the coal produced.)
Some are public utilities
As for aviation and cable and radio communications, these are public utilities, and even in the United States, stronghold of private enterprise, some public utilities are public enterprises. After all, for years Great Britain has had government control of radio broadcasting, of the wholesale distribution of electricity (privately generated), and of transportation within Greater London. And the telephone system has long been part of the British postal system.
During 1946 the Labor government is expected to initiate plans for nationalizing also all the fuel and power industries, railways, canals, buses, trucking. But these also fill into the category of public utilities.
According to a dispatch in The New York Times, the government is expected to postpone beyond 1946 its plans for nationalizing the British iron and steel industry. Here, at least, is a field where the line between public and private enterprise has so far been definitely drawn, and perhaps the real test of the worldwide movement toward nationalization will come if and when British iron and steel are nationalized.
Debt a hindering factor
Dyed-in-the-wool Socialists complain that Socialism can’t get a fair test in post-war Britain because of the staggering British debt as a result of World War II. To carry out the Socialist program for nationalizing the socially important industries, trades and services, compensation will have to be provided. (That is one essential difference between Socialism and Communism.)
Also, large capital expenditures will be required for the changeover, and these also will be difficult for a debt-ridden Britain.
Similar complaints were voiced in 1917 by the inveterate Socialists about the Communist assumption of power in Russia. Russia, they said, is the last country in which Socialism should be tried out, because the Socialist program had been worked out for highly industrialized states, and Russia was primarily agricultural.
In industry the Communists have found that some of the “capitalist” techniques were not to be despised – particularly, management skill. American correspondents who recently were allowed to tour the part of Germany under Soviet occupation reported that nationalization of industry in that territory where also abnormal economic conditions prevail, was being generally held in abeyance.