desirable, or as a threat to world peace or rational organization, is almost
entirely a subjective value. In fact the doctrine of nationalism, although widely
acknowledged, cannot be very clearly defined (seenationandnation state).
The racial, cultural and historical affinities normally associated with nationality
might better be ascribed toethnicity, as the structure of nations and nation-
ality has frequently been artificially, or at least deliberately, created by politi-
cians and governments.
Nationalization
Nationalization or, as it is sometimes referred to, particularly in the USA,
socialization, is the policy of taking firms, enterprises or whole industries into
public ownership. In clause IVof its constitution, adopted in 1918, the British
Labour Partypledged to nationalize the means of production, distribution
and exchange. However, the actual amount of nationalization promised in
Labour manifestos varied from almost none to a massive part of the economy at
different elections. Nevertheless, Tony Blair made the abandonment of this
commitment a central part of his ‘New Labour’reforms following his election
to the party leadership in 1994, his aim being to distance the party from its past
ideology, and thereby broaden its appeal among the electorate.
The theoretical backing for nationalization was originallyMarxist, and
stems from the idea that ownership of the means of production definesclass
structures. Hence in an egalitarian and classless society industry should be held
in trust for all the people by the state, rather than being privately owned. A
secondary rationale, and one much more important in the Labour Party after
the Second World War, is that government control and planning of the national
economy is vital, and that this requires state ownership of at least the
‘commanding heights’ of the economy. Yet a third rationale is that some
industries, and particularly service industries like transport, are too strategically
vital to be run under the conditions of competitive profit maximization, and
have to be state-owned and run. This latter argument makes nationalization of
industry essentially no different from the widespread tendency, at least until
recently, for vital services like public utilities to be taken out of the usual
market conditions, or for some, like the postal service, to be almost everywhere
a government monopoly.
In practice there has been a fourth rationale, and one that ironically has often
led to Conservative governments nationalizing industries, which is to prevent
the total collapse of a major firm that has failed to compete on the open
market. Thus it was, for example, that the 1970–74 Conservative government
nationalized part of Rolls-Royce in Britain, and the US federal government
Nationalization