[Rezension zu] A. E. Davies: The Case for Nationalization

Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s 1922 review of A. E. Davies’s The Case for Nationalization (1920) briefly surveys a program of public ownership without offering an explicit verdict. Its opening defines the book’s scope:

Das Buch stellt die Sozialisierungsabsichten der englischen Arbeiter dar.

English translation: The book sets forth the socialisation intentions of the English workers.

Schwiedland moves from communal ownership of land, housing, coal mines, power stations, inland freight operations, and alcohol production and distribution to municipal provision of bread and milk. The key institutional distinction concerns authorization: municipalities should have a general right to establish businesses, with legislation specifying exceptions rather than separately creating the legal basis for each enterprise.

Public ownership here need not eliminate commercial competition. The review next identifies state enterprises operating alongside private firms:

Endlich seien im Wettbewerb mit den Erwerbsunternehmungen staatliche Bank-, Versicherungs- und Reedereiunternehmen zu errichten.

English translation: Finally, state banking, insurance and shipping enterprises are to be established in competition with the profit-seeking enterprises.

The closing sentence adds bounded employee and worker participation in enterprise management. The review’s significance lies in this concise differentiation of communal ownership, municipal initiative, state competition, and workplace participation: socialization appears as a set of distinct institutional arrangements, not a single transfer of all economic activity to the state.