!>OCIALISM AND LIBERATION
505
and especially access to the means of livelihood, in effect gives those
who wield this power most of the traditional rights of ownership un–
der classical capitalism. This cuts right to the heart of the fiction
that collectivized or nationalized industry, since it is no
one
man's
individual property,
eo ipso
automatically spells the end of exploita–
tion. Under any system of socialization, where the institutional frame–
work makes it possible for workers to be systematically denied access
to the means of production, to the means of their livelihood, to speak
of the workers' ownership of the productive plant, to say it belongs
to them is a mockery.
Nor is it any different when we hear it said that the property
in question is
state
property. For this merely pushes the question
further back. To whom does the state belong or who controls the
state?
If
a group is excluded from effective political participation,
what sense does it make to say that the state belongs to that group?
In the Nazi political economy, for example, those who had legal
title
to the instruments of production, once stripped of powers of
control in their own industries, after being deprived of political power,
were reduced to the status of operatives of the German state, which
really meant the ruling hierarchy of the Nazi Party. At most they
received a return on their investment, but the size, frequency, and
above all, the reinvestment of that return depended on the Nazi
high command. They could not close down their factories if they
were unprofitable: they could not hire or fire at will. In effect these
industries belonged to the Nazi Party. They were
party
property.
The same situation obtains in the Soviet Union and in most of
the satellite countries---only more so. The juridical change in pro–
prietorship transferred title from capitalists and landlords to the col–
lectivity. But the collectivity is a legal fiction whose actual content,
according to sound Marxist principles, depends upon how it is ac–
tually organized, how it functions, and the different roles played by
different groups in the actual processes of production. Since almost
from the very beginning, the Communist Commissars had absolute
power to deny access to farm or factory to any peasant or worker,
to decide what should be saved, spent and how, and to determine the
conditions and rewards of work, and everything else connected with
the use of the industrial plant, natural resources, etc., and since this
power was in no way responsible to those whom its decisions so fate–
fully affected, in effect-and again according to legitimate Marxist
