What is "communist equality"-through "common ownership of the means of distribution, production, and exchange.

Question

Tony Blair's attempt to change Clause 4 of the Labour Party's Charter

Answer 1

In an ideal (ha ha) communist (or communal) society, everyone works together and production is shared. The theory being that the community will keep people in line and keep abusers from messing things up. The only time it has worked has been in small religiously oriented agricultural communities and then it has fallen apart after 20 years or so as people develop specialized skills and want to be rewarded for their talent and effort.

Answer 2

The Labour government of 1945, led by Mr. Clement Attlee, brought many industries into public ownership, by purchasing the share capital. (The only Legal way to do it).

They 'nationalised' the iron and steel industries, coal mining, gas, electricity, the railways, road transport, docks and harbours, canals, and others, at quite a substantial cost to the nation.

The theory was that all the profits that had previously gone to the shareholders would come back to the Government instead, for the benefit of us all.

But THERE NEVER WERE ANY PROFITS. Why? Incompetent management, over-demanding unions, inflexible operations, and worst of all, human nature.

Without a profit motive, and with no board of directors driving the company forward, there was no pressure to achieve anything. Things staggered along from routine rather than a plan for the future. Trade unions saw the weak position of the middle managers, and pushed them for concessions (restrictive practices) for the benefit of their members. There was little investment in new plant or equipment - the money had to come from the Government, not the Stock Market.

Extremists took control of the trade unions - good ol' card-carrying militants from the Communist Party of Great Britain, whose long-term objective was to bring down the British Government, so that a Soviet-style totalitarian 'centralist' state could be created by a grateful British public.

There followed strikes, stoppages, unrealistic settlements, and a discontented public. The problems continued for another forty years, even under the Labour Governments of Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan.

In the end, after many closures, the government sold the remaining loss-making bits off to private investors in the 1990s.

But THAT CLAUSE 4 remained in the Labour Party constitution until Tony Blair said 'This is ridiculous. Nationalisation didn't work the first time, and I'm not being tied to trying it again'. Who can blame him?

Centralism failed in every (former) Communist country for the same reason - in an IDEAL world, it's a great plan. But you can't rely on individuals to work hard and long when they see others slacking, skiving off, wasting time, demanding more money for themselves (remember the PIGS in George Orwell's 'Animal Farm'?)

So there you have it. If you can crack the motivation problem (mass hypnosis? drugs?compulsory permanent military service for all workers?) it might be worth trying it all again...........