2010-06-14

How relevant is nationalisation today?

On my blog resolutierevolutie witch is unfortunately in Dutch, I wrote an article describing the relevance of nationalisation today. The main point I wanted to make in this article was that during times of crisis, all the major industries (banks, car industry, airlines…) are knocking on the door of the state asking for help. There was a time however that they presented the state or big government as the source of all their problems. Now big government must step in to bail them out.

In addition, the public in general are looking to the state for solutions for all the economic and ecological (BP oil spill) problems. Therefore, according to me, the left should use this to push forward the idea of nationalisation under worker’s control and management, but in a modern fashion. We should present it as an enlargement of the public sector, which in its turn needs to be “de-bureaucratised”.

I received the following reaction from Michel Bauwens from the p2p-foundation:

What if we would look at mutual coordination based on open book management;

what if we look at commons and trusts instead of state-based nationalization?

What if we look at civil society based solutions instead of using the bourgeois state forms?

I would like Michel to clarify these proposals and, in addition, summon up his main criticism on Marxism: what ideas of scientific socialism he thinks are still valid (if any), and what ideas should we reject?