At present the means of production (land, factories, railways, etc.), are the private property of a small minority of the population, the capitalists. By virtue of their ownership they draw a large unearned income in the form of rent, interest and profit from the wealth produced by the working-class. The Labour Party's remedy for the poverty problem is (while leaving the greater part of capitalist, industry unchanged), to introduce a purely nominal change of ownership in certain industries that are to be “nationalised." Instead of receiving incomes in the form of dividend on shares in mining or railway companies the present owners will relinquish direct ownership and receive instead approximately the same capital and income in the form of Government stocks and the interest thereon, and the existing gross inequality of property and income will not be affected.
[From editorial in Socialist Standard, October 1945]
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