The WSM and nationalisation...

yeah, in broad agreement with what sean siberio said. A few things though:

Anarchists have a tendency to confuse the leftist ghetto for the real world, coz its slightly bigger than the anarchist ghetto (and the people in it are usually hotter and dress better ). Nonetheless, the leftist ghetto is still a ghetto and calling for things like nationalisation is actually really weird to a lot of people so this thing of "oh you purists, we're reaching out to the common man with his hand in the soil" stuff is a little bit wanting imo. It would have been like me turning up to my old bar job where staff came and went every month and said "does anyone want to join the GMB?" thinking I was reaching out of the anarchist ghetto when really I still would have looked like a loon...

Second: No one is saying we should replace the slogan 'Nationalisation now!' with 'Communism now!'. We're saying that we want to replace it with working class struggle to improve wages, conditions etc. As an example, see the strikes last year over the 2% real wages pay cut in the UK. It's not communism but it's still pretty promising. As an aside, anarchists in Britain were fairly silent when all the postal wildcats and other public sector pay stuff was kicking off.. perhaps they were busy reaching out of the purist ghetto?

Finally, again, people are mistaking nationalisation here for job security, proper wages and good service. I agree entirely when antieverything says we should do what is best for our communities but to equate that with nationalisation is missing the woods for the trees a little. That nationalisation has, in the past, meant decent wages and job security was not down to the fact that the state was running this or that particular industry but because the workers in that industry fought to improve their conditions at which point the state took it over so as to ensure social peace. If we look today, without that rank and file movement to improve conditions, we see the nationalised institutions eroding themselves, privatising chunks of service (off the top of my head I can think of the NHS and the railways) and attacking its workers' pay and conditions.

For anarchists to argue for nationalisation in order to get a campaign to mobilise the working class around is completely backwards way of looking at it. A class that fights for its conditions to the detriment of private capital will be given nationalisation when the state deems private capital too useless to run the economy. Any job security is a result of the struggle leading up to it, not the end result of nationalisation.

Just asking: if nationalisation was granted next week, what would be the argument then? Would you turn around and oppose it? Wouldn't people just be like "but I thought that's what you wanted?!"? Or are we all hoping that they'll all just forget?

The issue with that post is it assumes it's necessary to have a position on which branch of capital manages stuff and the details of how they do it. Do we need a position on whether Northern Rock should've been nationalised or not? On whether interest rates should've been lowered a 1/4% or 1/2% this week? On VAT? Corporation tax? It's just public policy at that level, and has no connection with either immediate working class interests or a broader revolutionary politics.

also, what Ed said.

Well... Obviously! However control over resources needs to be organised as locally as practically possible - with some resources this may mean on a level roughly contigious with former national borders. Socialise locally, and federate upwards. There is nothing inherently reactionary in calling for nationalisation if it means genuine social ownership - even if that is along national lines.

However a group of 70 or so people, or even a few thousand calling for the nationalisation of anything especially at a time when nationalisation is not really on the cards, and when if it was it would only be entirely in the interests of capital against the workers is pointless. And I think Ed might be right to say that the WSM has mistaken the left for the working class.

Certainly their demands on this issue make less sense than calling for workers and consumers control of resources. You might as well go for gold for all the chance we have of making either happen.

We see this happening in Sidor, the steel manufacturer in Venezeula. Alot of "Chavistas" are making a racket about how fantastic it is Chaves is nationalizing the place; bullshit. He's doing it so they can get back to work, not because he cares about worker control or any nonsense like that. Nationalization is the final attempt of the state to attempt to mollify its workers.