Nationalisation is not socialism

The modern state as it is often portrayed  is not representative of Society. It is as Marxists would describe a class state. Socialism which leaves the working class as a subject class is not socialism and the path to socialism is not via state ownership. State-capitalism is not an abandonment of capitalism: it is a version of capitalism. Some political commentators misleadingly designated as state-socialism. Whenever the state nationalises an industry, whenever the state imposes its control over industry, many naively accepted this as a rejection of capitalism. What was ending was not capitalism, but the laissez faire, free enterprise, capitalism. What came was not Socialism nor a step towards socialism, but state- capitalism. Socialism, it must be emphasised, abolishes the state; industry is not transformed into the state, but state and industry, as now constituted, are transformed into socialism, functioning industrially and socially through new administrative norms of the organised producers, a co-operative commonwealth, associations,  and not through the state.  Nationalisation is not not socialism and never can become socialism. The State regulates and directs capital and labour and just as the worker must combat his or her employer, the worker is in conflict with the State as the employer. State ownership and control of industry is scarcely  less obnoxious than capitalist ownership and control, just a different form of industrial autocracy, or ‘ wage slavery’  Socialism can only be established after capturing political power, and that this could be achieved only by political and not by industrial action.

Often the Left reformers will use the lure of nationalisation under workers control - state-capitalism is “democratised” ,  placing industry “in the hands of the people.” They define socialism as a system based on extensive state ownership and a certain participation by the population in decision-making. Any form of capitalism is fundamentally and necessarily undemocratic. It strengthens the state and weakens the workers. The capitalist state must not be strengthened but weakened by socialist parliamentary criticism and action; the state must be undermined and dragged down by the developing class power and struggles of the working class by all the general means of action at its disposal. State ownership takes all control away from the workers and leaves them at the mercy of unsympathetic government ministers or public board appointees.

Opponents of socialism frequently say as a objection that there are different kinds of socialists and different kinds of socialism. They are wrong