Chapter IX. Karl Marx and Nationalisation

Before leaving the subject of nationalisation it will be useful to consider the significance of the fact that Karl Marx, to whom Socialists are so greatly indebted, was responsible for proposals for State control of various industries and services, and some advocates of nationalisation in our own time have tried to find support for their schemes in the writings of Marx.

In 1848 was published the Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and his friend and fellow Socialist Frederick Engels. In it, in Section II, Marx and Engels wrote as follows :–

“We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class ; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

“Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production ; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.” (Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels, 1848. Reeves Edition, p. 21.)

Marx and Engels continued :–

“These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.”

Among the list of 10 points that follow are these :–

“Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
“Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
“Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
“Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. “

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