Labour policy—false and true

by Lynden Livingston Macassey

(p. ii.) “With increasing vehemence Labour is challenging the whole structure of capitalist industry as it now exists. It is no longer willing to acquiesce in a system under which industry is conducted for the benefit of the few. It demands a system of industrial control which shall be truly democratic in character. This is seen on the one hand in the demand for public ownership of vital industries and services and public control of services not nationalized which threaten the public with the danger of monopoly or exploitation. It is also seen in the increasing demand of the workers in all industries for a real share in industrial control, a demand which the Whitley Scheme, in so far as it has been adopted, has done little or nothing to satisfy. This demand is more articulate in some industries than others. It is seen clearly in the national programmes of the railwaymen and of the miners; and it is less clearly formulated by the workers in many other industries. The workers are no longer prepared to acquiesce in a system in which their labour is bought and sold as a commodity in the labour market. They are beginning to assert that they have a human right to an equal and democratic partnership in industry; that they must be treated in future not as ‘hands’ or part of the factory equipment, but as human beings with a right to use their abilities by hand and brain in the service not of the few but of the whole community.

“The extent to which workers are challenging the whole system of industrial organization is very much greater to-day than ever before, and unrest proceeds not only from more immediate and special grievances but also, to an increasing extent, from a desire to substitute a democratic system of public ownership and production for use with an increasing element of control by the organized workers themselves for the existing capitalist organization of industry.”

(p. vii.) “(a) A substantial beginning must be made of instituting public ownership of the vital industries and services in this country. Mines and the supply of coal, railways, docks and other means of transportation, the supply of electric power, and shipping, at least so far as ocean-going services are concerned, should be at once nationalized.

“(b) Private profit should be entirely eliminated from the manufacture of armaments, and the amount of nationalization necessary to secure this should be introduced into the engineering, shipbuilding and kindred industries.

“(c) There should be a great extension of municipal ownership, and ownership by other local authorities and co-operative control of those services which are concerned primarily with the supplying of local needs.

“(d) Key industries and services should at once be publicly owned.

“(e) This extension of public ownership over vital industries should be accompanied by the granting to the organized workers of the greatest practicable amount of control over the conditions and the management of their various industries.”

“State Control and Prices.

(p. viii.) “(a) Where an industry producing articles of common consumption or materials necessary to industries producing articles of common consumption cannot be at once publicly owned, State control over such industries should be retained.