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Nationalization
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 45, 30 September 1933, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
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The following article is a contribution to the discussion on the NRA. It represents the views of the author. Other articles are invited but should not exceed 700 words. |
The slogan of nationalization of industries is at the present stage not one of immediate agitation but rather a propaganda slogan laying the basis and setting directives for the movement in the period of upheaval which lies ahead. Even with American economic development taking the most favorable course for the capitalist class – even, that is, with a coinciding of the NRA and a real expansion of production resulting in the temporary liquidation of the crisis, – the class struggle will necessarily take on new forms owing to the trend of development towards state capitalism. The “new” capitalism will be militantly imperialistic. The violent struggle for control of markets will base itself at home on the ever more oppressive exploitation of the working class. For the moment the stream of mass pressure follows the Roosevelt, but as events (the progress of inflation for example) clarify the situation the stream will over the confining walls.
We cannot wait expectantly for swell and become a flood breaking the period of open struggle to “educate” the workers. We must set forth our views and a corresponding plan of action now, correcting in the light of events those errors that will naturally adhere to our rough draft as we go along. Meantime we patiently answer the queries and objections raised by the serious workers looking for a solution to their problems.
In the mind of the worker the question of compensation naturally arises when nationalization is under consideration. Losovsky, in approving of the slogan at the 15th C.P.S.U. Congress in 1927 thought that the fight for “no compensation” serves to distinguish the Communist from the socialist. But to Trotsky, viewing the slogan as a means of engaging the workers in a gigantic struggle with the bourgeoisie, the question of compensation is entirely secondary, if not irrelevant. It is entirely a matter of objective conditions and not a matter of principle, as is indicated in the work Whither England:
“Besides the financial side of the question is of ‘secondary importance. The principal task is to create the political conditions for nationalization, whether by purchase or without purchase, that is of no importance. In the last instance it is a matter of life and death for the bourgeoisie. Revolution is inevitable for the reason that the bourgeoisie will never permit itself to be strangled by Fabian banking operations. Even a partial nationalization can be undertaken by bourgeois society in its present form, only by surrounding it with such conditions as would render the success of these measures extremely doubtful, thus compromising the principle of nationalization and with it the Labor Party. The bourgeoisie would oppose as a class every straightforward attempt at even a partial nationalization. The other branches of industry would resort to lockouts, to sabotage, to a boycott of the national industry; i.e., bring about a life and death struggle. However guarded the first steps might be, the task will nevertheless lead to the necessity of breaking the opposition of the exploiters.”
Here we have clearly given the dialectic nature of the struggle for nationalization.
The U.M.W. Committee on Nationalization stated in their report in 1924 that the struggle for nationalization would build up a labor party. We Communists are opposed to the formation of a labor party. Why then propose nationalization?
It might be conceded, for example, that in the case of England, where the Labor Party existed as a stumbling block in the road of the proletariat, it was perfectly proper for the Communists not merely to pose the problem of nationalization but to set in motion mass pressure for an actual struggle for its realization, at the same time pointing out its inadequacy. But how does this apply to America where the masses are so backward, where the Left organizations, even including the reformists in this category, are so few in number? The answer depends on our judgment as to the mode of awakening of the political class consciousness of the masses and the speed with which this will occur. We are opposed to the formation of a labor party here because among other things the English experience warned us how such a party diverts the energy of the masses from a real struggle acts as a brake and helps to defeat our aims. But in that case it is our duty to take over those slogans which appeal to the masses and lead in a progressive direction making them the basis not for programs to fool the masses, but for filling them with our content actual class struggles conducted with every weapon in our power.
The way in which even now the workers are showing initiative in taking full advantage of the “pacifying” collective bargaining clause in the NRA, gives every hope for expecting the speedy political development of class consciousness in the American working class. In that case the slogans of national ization and of workers’ control of industry will be pushed more and more to the fore and we must be ready to fill them with our class content at the proper time, and to make them the basis for a real and not a sham battle. Under proper conditions these slogans offer every possibility of rallying the miners the railroad workers and the entire working class for a struggle against the capitalists, they offer a means of striking a blow at finance capital, and with a real struggle the permit development of our strategy on the widest scale for orienting the working class towards the seizure of power.
We must not expect that the slogan will appear in America under the same set of conditions as elsewhere. We work with conditions as we find them and not as we would like to have them. It is ot at all necessary that a labor party or a reformist movement exist to advance such slogans, nor that a labor party arise as the direct result of their advancement. If in advanced countries the period of preparation for the seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat will be more prolonged but the actual seizure of power will be much foreshortened, then these intermediate slogans will live their brief existence for the purpose of crystallizing the struggle, only to be quickly transformed in the course of the struggle.
Roosevelt is acting as the spearhead of the bourgeois attack on the working class, on its former standards of livelihood. The workers think at the moment that he is actually encouraging unionization and many are flocking into the A.F. of L. It is our plain duty to go with them and to form a Left wing in the unions. We must help set up workers’ codes of action leading towards workers’ control and nationalization. We must help set up permanent shop (grievance) committees at first ostensibly for the purpose of disclosing violations of the NRA, later gradually reaching out for the closed shop and for ever greater workers’ control of production. Through the shop committees we must propagandize the workers’ codes of action. Unless we prepare now we cannot hope to win the masses in time when, through its inner contradictions, the capitalist program falls through and the question of power becomes the order of the day.
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