should more industries be nationalised

[agricola]

Cos its hard work and usually ends up in total failure?

Seriously though, if Nationalisation is the answer what is the fucking question.
Just nationalising industries is not enough. Look at how the rail coal and car industry were run before Thatcher. Does anyone seriously think that was some kind of utopia for working people?
There was huge waste and huge pay differential. Look at the public and voluntary sector today again you have the same problem hugely inefficient and huge pay differences.
Totally indefensible.
The real answer has to be in real accountability and doing as much as possible to limit the huge difference in pay in the public sector at least to start with. That means arguing for a maximum wage. How can anybody seriously defend salries of over £100,000 in the public and voluntary sector it just breeds corruption and demoralisation.
I am not against Nationalisation but without a maximum wage in the public sector it is probably going to be a complete waste of time.

There is a lot of sense in this post. Given what happened to the railways as a result of their nationalization, I would have thought it would be extremely dangerous to try and do so again.

The next Government is going to have to massively cut public sector expenditure - this should take the form of a huge root-and-branch review into where the money is going and why, followed by the elimination of that spending. This will either come from services (which the cynic in me suggests is very likely) or from ending the incredibly ludicrous PFI schemes (such as NHS IT, the Defence Training Scheme, ID Cards and hundreds/thousands of other contracts). I hope its the latter, given that they have cost this country tens of billions of pounds already, in return for fuck all.

If we were one dimensional people, able to be adequately described by the simple identity 'worker', then assurances that democracy would result from nationalisation under workers control might inspire us. But we're not, and (as this thread shows) few people are particularly interested. Shame, because the ownership of industry really does matter and it's just depressing that the left doesn't seem able to come up with anything remotely relevant to 2009.

I think the solution needs to be workers control via shares in the company (as opposed to stock market shares), rather than nationalization. The best people to run businesses are those who work there, not some idiot bureaucrat, some self-serving politician or some fly-by-night thief pretending to be a businessman.

 

[Fedayn]

The best people to run businesses are those who work there, not some idiot bureaucrat, some self-serving politician or some fly-by-night thief pretending to be a businessman.

But the above doesn't rule or, or mosr accurately, is not ruled out by taking the rail industry for eg, into public ownership/socialisation/nationalisation. That an industry is placed in the puiblic sector and run democratically by those in the industry is not only not mutually exclusice but imho the best way forward. I would also add that the management board should be on a tripartite basis with a third from government elected reps to represent the populace as a whole, a third from the unions/workforce in the industry and a third from the TU's/user groups to represent the wider community and those with a direct concern. Such a management body would be instantly re-callable and democratically accountable to the groups/unions/bodies who they represent.

 

[newbie]

The best people to run businesses are those who work there, not some idiot bureaucrat, some self-serving politician or some fly-by-night thief pretending to be a businessman.

so long as you work on the basis that the only, or at least primary, interest in a 'business'' are those concerned with the production of goods or services. What you suggest ignores the interests of those concerned with the financing (in the case of a nationalised industry, the taxpayer) and the consumption (the customer) of those goods or services. That's one dimensional because we are all workers, all taxpayers and all customers and any sane democracy needs to take account of all our varied interests, whichever hat we have on.

What we have at the moment favours the financier and, to a lesser extent, the consumer rather than the worker, and that's not right either.