Economics
Public Ownership
Public ownership refers to the state or government's ownership and control of resources, industries, or services. This can include public utilities, transportation systems, and natural resources. The primary goal of public ownership is to ensure that essential services are provided to the public and to prevent exploitation by private entities.
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Related key terms
8 Key excerpts on "Public Ownership"
eBook - ePub- William Robson(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
A distinction can be drawn between nationalization, which is generally understood to mean the taking over by the State of a complete industry so that it is owned, managed and controlled for the community, and Public Ownership, which signifies the ownership by the community of any property, whether individual or not, whether embracing a whole industry or only part of it. The State may become the owner of industrial, commercial or agricultural property without necessarily exercising detailed control even over an individual firm—much less over a whole industry.’ 4 This can be done by various means, such as taking equity shares in settlement of death duties, using a budget surplus to purchase equity shares, or imposing a capital levy which could be used for the same purpose. 5 He considered an extension of Public Ownership to be a necessary condition for a further advance towards a more equal distribution of wealth; but thought the case for further nationalization on this ground has not been made out. In this Fabian tract Mr Gaitskell severely criticized certain aspects of the nationalized industries: in particular, the desire of some groups of workers to get more for themselves at the expense of the rest of the community; 1 the low standard of staff loyalty or esprit de corps ; the difficulty of attracting men of the highest ability to accept the top posts at salaries which compare unfavourably with those in private industry; and the failure to devolve sufficient discretion to the lower echelons. 2 THE NEW FABIAN ESSAYISTS A year earlier Mr Roy Jenkins, MP, in New Fabian Essays had argued that if the public sector were much larger it could set the standard of remuneration for the managerial class throughout the economy, whereas with a public sector of only twenty per cent its influence is negligible
eBook - ePub- W.H Greenleaf(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
There were two areas in which Public Ownership seemed significant in this regard. One was the improvement of the infrastructure of communications: road transport, ports and docks, railways, airways, and postal and cognate services. The other concerned the rationalization of basic industries or resources vital to national efficiency: land, electricity, coal, iron and steel, and so forth. The prevention of waste (as through unnecessary duplication of railway lines); achieving uniformity of charges; amalgamation to achieve economies of scale and lower costs; elimination of surplus capacity; the introduction of new technology: these were the sorts of economic gains in view. To some advocates of Public Ownership, control of the commanding heights was, too, a necessary prerequisite to the prevention of instability and the achievement of effective economic policy and national planning with the object, for instance, of securing full employment or controlling capital investment and the distribution of resources: one thinks of (say) Macmillan or Bevan in this connexion. And natural monopolies (where full exploitation seemed to require only one producer) demanded state ownership if the public was not to suffer. Finally what might be termed the social dimension was never far from consideration. The improvement of the status and condition of the worker would (it was assumed) somehow follow in the wake of Public Ownership leading perhaps to industrial democracy: even that, in consequence, strikes and other unrest might be eliminated. Acceptable levels of service, price, and safety would be secured if necessary by subsidy; and, especially, socially necessary (but unprofitable) provision would more easily be made as with the supply of electricity in rural areas or the maintenance of uneconomic railway lines
eBook - ePub- Xiaohu (Shawn) Wang, George Chung Wang(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The replacement of capitalist private ownership by socialist state ownership represents a revolutionary leap in production relations. The socialist system of state ownership is a Public Ownership system in which both the means of production and the products are possessed by the proletarian state representing the whole laboring people. The appearance of the socialist system of state ownership shows that the liberated laboring people have not only become the ruling class of society, but have also become masters of the economy.In China, the scope of socialist state ownership includes mineral deposits, rivers, and territorial waters; forests, virgin land, and other natural resources designated to the state by law; and enterprises such as railways, postal and communications services, banks, state plants, farms, and commerce. As the representative of the whole laboring people, the state owns the means of production and sees that they are allocated rationally and in a unified manner. This creates a new situation in human history in which, for the first time, the national economy is systematically developed, and it paves the way for the development of social productive forces.The socialist state ownership system is a socialist Public Ownership system that conforms to the highly social nature of production. In modern industries, departments and enterprises are interconnected and mutually dependent. They are all integral organic constituents of the whole social production. The appearance of the socialist system of state ownership is an inevitable result of the contradiction between the highly social productive forces and capitalist private ownership in modern industries. Only with socialist state ownership can the contradictions between the social nature of production and the private ownership of the means of production in the capitalist society and the contradiction between the organized nature of production in individual enterprises and the chaotic nature of production in the whole society be resolved; only thus can the serious waste and destruction of productive forces and products due to the capitalist system and the extravagant waste practiced by the bourgeoisie and its political representatives be eliminated. The large quantities of the means of production and products thus saved for the whole society can be used to promote a more rapid development of the productive forces.
- Alec Nove(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
1 Indeed, it is obviously in the public interest that they be operated efficiently, for otherwise the resultant waste of resources deprives the community of additional goods or services, or leisure, which it otherwise would enjoy. The problem, as we shall see, is how to identify just what efficient operation is and what criteria are applicable. However, we must forget naive 'pseudo-socialist' notions that accounting and economic operation are somehow unimportant. Nonetheless, the words 'in the public interest' were not used idly earlier in this paragraph. Unless they do have some meaning, there really is little point in Public Ownership of anything, and the meaning, if any, surely relates to possible conflict between private profitability and some apparently desirable act or omission. For if the question were purely one of private profitability, any individual or firm, Joe Bloggs or Bloggs Ltd, could produce the goods or perform the service, and there would be no problem and no economic case for Public Ownership.In the formal world of micro-economics there is some recognition of this. Public Ownership, or public regulation of private business, even quite orthodox textbooks will tell you, can be justified where there is a natural monopoly, or where the existence of economic or social external effects is sufficiently important to make micro-profitability a misleading criterion. A familiar example, which appeared in textbooks already fifty years ago, is the smoking factory chimney. To abate the nuisance may reduce profits, but the smoke imposes costs on individuals who are not engaged in economic transactions with the firm which owns the factory, but who are entitled to protection. Or society as a whole gains, economically and socially, from the delivery of correspondence to all the inhabitants of the given country; members of society wish to be able to write to anyone, and have these letters delivered; but delivery of letters to remote destinations would not 'pay', save at prohibitive rates, and so in all countries the postal service has been nin by the state.
eBook - ePub- Robert Degen(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary , is “a political and economic theory or policy of social organization which advocates that the community as a whole should own and control the means of production, capital, land, property, etc.” Such a definition is archaic for it deals with only one facet of a set of ideas and practices that constitute modern socialism. Certainly it was the core idea of those intent on evicting capitalism in the early days of socialist thought when capitalism was condemned in toto. According to Marxist doctrine, it is private ownership of capital and land that enables the capitalist class to exercise political control over society. Once social ownership of these resources is achieved, the working class majority of the population would have the means to control the state.Public Ownership increased to a very limited extent before World War I in capitalist Britain. Nationalization was carried out by the conservative government of Prime Minister Disraeli in 1868 when the Post Office (a government monopoly since the seventeenth century) was authorized to purchase the country’s telegraph companies.1 In 1903, after decades of very unsatisfactory service by London water companies that included water famines, the companies were municipalized.The major twentieth century drive for Public Ownership in Britain culminated in the nationalization of “key” industries by the Labour government of 1945-1951. Created by Parliament, the ultimate authority over them, the public corporations were structured to be run by largely independent boards under the supervision of government ministers. The three levels of control and oversight resulted in uncertainty and occasional conflict, a problem inherent in the fact that both social and commercial objectives were involved. If the results that followed had been more successful, other industries would likely have been added to the roster, but Labour did not again form a government until 1964 and by then much of the luster had worn off nationalization. As early as 1953, a proposal at a party conference to commit the party to additional nationalization was scotched when the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union threw its great weight of votes against the resolution. Following its election defeat in 1959, the Labour Party, while still advocating additional state ownership, toned down this goal in practice. Nationalization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange was still a principle to which the Labour Party was committed when it held office from 1964 to 1970, but it ceased to rank as a major objective in its legislative program. It simply did not have strong electoral appeal. While in opposition in the early 1970s, Labour did take an interventionist posture that included more nationalization to improve the country’s weak economic performance, but when the party was in office from 1974 to 1979, additional nationalization was not pursued.
- Madeline Powell, Frances Stokes Berry(Authors)
- 2024(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The conventional perspective focuses on the fact that private organizations are owned by shareholders while public organizations are collectively owned by governments. The difference in organizational form is expected to influence not only funding and control but also organizational goals, incentives, and management practices (Boyne 2002 ; Boyne, Poole, and Jenkins 1999 ; Perry and Rainey 1988), thereby leading to a difference in organizational performance (Andrews, Boyne, and Walker 2011). Generally, public organizations are expected to place more emphasis on social value, responsiveness, equity, and accountability to citizens and society, beyond simple efficiency (Caiden, n.d.; Savas 1982 ; Spann 1977), and to be more influenced by external political environments and institutional factors (Warwick and Meade 1979), while private organizations are assumed to focus more on the economic benefits gained from their performance (Clarkson 1972 ; Demsetz 1974) and to have more productive and innovative management practices (Boyne, Poole, and Jenkins 1999). However, the empirical findings are mixed. According to systematic reviews of publicness and organizational performance, the empirical evidence on the impact of ownership on efficiency and effectiveness shows positive, negative, and insignificant results while Public Ownership is positively associated with equity (Anderson 2012 ; Andrews, Boyne, and Walker 2011)
eBook - ePubPrivatization in Eastern Germany
A Neo-Institutional Analysis
- Herbert Brücker(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
With the development of the various approaches of the New Institutional Economics, above all the theories of property rights, transaction costs, and agency costs, neoclassical microeconomics was expanded to include information costs and transaction costs, and thus opened up to an analysis of institutional phenomena (Furubotn/Richter 1991; Williamson 1990, 71; Eggertsson 1991). The approaches of the New Institutional Economics are here supplemented by developments in game theory made during the past two decades. Game theory has created a formal apparatus that can be used in particular to examine the problem of imperfect and asymmetrically distributed information in institutions (Fudenberg/Tirole 1992). Seen in terms of these theories, the incentive and sanction structure of different forms of ownership has a significant influence on the economic behavior of individuals and economic institutions. Ownership has thus become a relevant category for explaining economic activity.This chapter will discuss the theoretical arguments in favor of the institutionalization of a regime of private ownership and the privatization of the state economic sector. For analytical reasons, two factors are separated in discussing the issue of ownership: the question of coherence and the question of efficiency of economic systems with private and public regimes of ownership. Different theories are drawn upon here to deal with these two issues: the issue of the coherence of economic systems cannot be settled within the Walrasian theoretical tradition, which is indifferent toward the institutional foundations of an economic system. For this reason, János Kornai’s theory of shortage has been selected here as a starting point for the discussion of the systems problem; Kornai’s theory is concerned with the question of the institutional conditions of the microeconomic coherence of economic systems. The discussion then goes on to consider the role of ownership for the coherence of reform and transformation strategies in the transition countries (2.1).The efficiency problem stands in the center of the historical debate on economic accounting in socialism. While Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, two representatives of the Austrian School, disputed the possibility of efficient allocation in an economic system whose means of production have been nationalized, a number of socialist economists, using the tools of Walrasian equilibrium theory, have sought to prove that a socialist economy can achieve Pareto-optimal allocation. At the heart of this theoretical and ideological dispute is the question of whether, within the framework of a static theory that abstracts from all information and incentive problems, it is possible to deal meaningfully with the problem of ownership (2.2
eBook - ePubReclaiming Public Ownership
Making Space for Economic Democracy
- Professor Andrew Cumbers(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Zed Books(Publisher)
PART ONE Public Ownership and its discontents
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1 | Public Ownership as state ownership: the post-1945 legacy
What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism – that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are all privately owned solely for profit – does not work. It cannot deliver the goods. (Orwell 1982 [1941] : 73)Introduction
In late July 1945, as the Second World War drew to a close, the British people rejected their wartime leader, Winston Churchill, and his Conservative Party and presented the Labour Party with a historic landslide victory and its first ever majority government. Under the new prime minister, Clement Attlee, Labour embarked upon the most radical and left-wing programme of economic reform of any British administration in history. With its commitment to tackle the poverty, deprivation and unemployment that had plagued the country in the years before war, Attlee’s government embarked upon massive and unprecedented levels of state intervention in the economy. The centrepiece was an extensive programme of nationalization to take key sectors of the economy away from the oligopolistic private interests that the Labour Party and its supporters viewed as responsible for the economic anarchy of the interwar years.The great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or of blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men. These men had only learned how to act in the interest of their own bureaucratically-run private monopolies which may be likened to totalitarian oligarchies within our democratic State. They had and they felt no responsibility to the nation. (Labour Party 1945
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