TAKING OVER BRITAIN'S MINES

...But what really matters is not ownership but control of policy...

...He would have representatives of the government on the boards of the amalgamated mines...

...This will at once give the State control of the terms of colliery leases, enable it to cut clean away from the complications caused by the separate surface ownerships of the soil, and allow an unfettered re-planning of colliery development, so as to introduce wherever they are needed, common arrangements for drainage, ventilation, and the like, and to enable coal to be extracted without regard to property barriers from the most convenient shaft...

...No such problem concerned Marxists in the days before World War I. Then it was taken for granted that Socialism was the extension of the functions of democracy in other phases of life, save the political, and that it embraced the range of libertarian beliefs—liberty, fraternity, and equality...

...I do not believe that once the American people see how Britain's democratic socialization, starting from the mines up, works for the good and welfare of the...

...And indeed, in view of the dangerous international coal deficit, that would seem a logical first step...

...This involves, of course, compulsory amalgamation of collieries, wherever necessary, into more economic units...

...Is it to be a dictatorship of the proletariat...

...In short, the Cole plan envisages the vesting of control, rather than the direct State ownership of the mines of Britain and I foresee that some such plan involving "a mixed economy" will be adopted at the outset by the victorious Labor Party...

...State ownership of minerals is but a small step towards the reorganization of the coal industry...

...Throughout the recent campaign and immediately after their victory, Labor Party leaders have stressed the promise that at the heart of their immediate policy would be the nationalism of the coal mines...

...National supervision of the mines, which, of course, would still be under private ownership so far as any profits were'eoncerned, would be vested "in a small body of full-time Mining Commissioners, appointed for a period of years...

...An analogy in our case would be the public ownership of the captive mines of the steel corporations, of the great utilities, of the automotive companies and the "anthracite railroads" where coal is at the bottom of a huge, vertical combination of operations, essential, of course, to the operations, but not regarded as the chief, i. e., the money-making, factor...

...SIXTEEN years ago George D. H. Cole, one of the most profound thinkers in the ranks of the British Labor Party, wrote a book called, The Next Ten Years in British Social and Economic Policy, which makes challenging reading today in the light of the recent Labor Party victory in Great Britain...

...common man, even the shirt-tearings of the "free enterprisers" will keep us from setting up over here an indigenous democratic socialism...

...What safeguards will there be that such a dictatorship will be but a temporary transitional step towards the desired goal of a classless society as Marx envisaged it, or a permanent totalitarian regime of bureaucrats responsible only to a limited and single political party dominated, in turn, by a handful of insiders as Stalin practices it...

...asks Cole and he goes on, "According to the old ideas it is not, because it leaves the coal industry privately owned...

...From then on, Cole suggests that the State provide capital needed for the reorganization and modernization of the mines, "on drastic conditions as to control...

...When it is used, as the neo-Communists use it, to describe a streamlined Oriental despotism, it is small wonder that the average man is highly dubious, to say the least, of the advantage of a change from capitalism...

...They have to state definitely what they mean to put in its place...

...SO FAR, at this stage of the game, is the United States away from any tackling of the problem of an adequate supply of coal that Ickes and others are threatening that next Winter millions of us will go cold, sitting on top of the greatest coal supply in the world...

...and it will be needful to take at once full powers to carry this into effect...

...Cole's book throws light on what the British, and American Socalists too, for that matter, mean by nationalization of the mines...

...In England, however, a sufficient number of the plain people chose the commonsense alternative to capitalism or totalitarianism by voting for democratic Socialism and now the whole world awaits with-eager interest the" first steps of the Labor Party in putting their program into action...

...To be sure, World War II upset many of Brother Cole's predictions, but on the whole his book stands up surprisingly well as an up-to-the-minute analysis of the practical Socialist and labor policies which are about to be put into effect in Great Britain...

...He shows how in Great Britain, as in the United States, the coal industry has become subordinate to a great, interlocking complex of business enterprises, iron, steel, chemical, light metals, electric utilities, railroads, etc., and that merely taking away the coal mines would break up many business units "which stand for the last word in the evolution of modern industrial technique...

...it is, however, an indispensable first step...

...and holding positions analogous to those of- the existing Central Electricity Board...

...And it is what the American Socialists in their last platform called control by the people of "the commanding heights of industry" that Cole and his fellow laborites are driving at...

...Is this, or is it not, socialization...

...IN PLACE of State ownership of thousands of mines good, bad, and indifferent, Cole proposes "the complete assumption of mineral ownership" by the public...

...Socialists can no longer content themselves with denunciations of the capitalist system and exhortations to abolish it day after tomorrow...

...He answers that it is not enough to say let's take over "all the collieries in the country, and the economic organizations responsible for their product...

...Even the mild governmental controls of the Guffey Act have been taken away by a Congress so intent on preserving the grandeurs of "free enterprise" that it is willing to sacrifice the comfort and health of a great bulk of the citizens lest anyone accuse it of that terrible thing—socialization...

...Back in 1929, Cole asked (and his question is still more pertinent today), "What is this mining industry which the Labour Government will be asked to nationalize with all speed...

...I think Cole's plan could be improved by stipulating, as do American advocates of nationalization, that on all control boards should sit 3 representatives of the parties most concerned with the steady and abundant production of coal—the.con-sumers, the workers, and the technicians...

...To begin with, Cole points out, whereas in its early days Socialism was largely propagandist, often Utopian, and at all events not subject to immediate and pragmatic tests, today, in 1929 and 1945 as well, "Socialism is very much a matter of practical politics...

...THE deliberate abandonment by the Stalinists of all pretensions to democracy and all of the fundamental philosophy of Marx has served to create a vast confusion as to what it meant by Socialism...