Morrison and the Profit Motive¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter from Socialist Appeal delivers a polemical demolition of Herbert Morrison’s defence of the profit motive under a Labour government. Morrison, as Lord President of the Council, had argued that the profit motive would remain in industry but that its “abuses” would be reformed through state regulation, with nationalisation confined to a minority of sectors. The article dismisses this as a “time-worn fallacy” long refuted in elementary socialist education.
The core argument is structural, not moral. The problem is not “bad” capitalists versus “good” ones, but the inexorable laws of the capitalist system itself. Surplus value is extracted from unpaid labour; workers cannot, over time, purchase the goods they produce because wages are held below total output value. This internal contradiction generates periodic slumps and crises, and no amount of regulation or renaming—calling labour a “service” rather than a commodity—can alter it. The chapter insists that a new slump is inevitable within a few years, and that the post-war boom is merely a temporary effect of war destruction and shortages.
The article also attacks the claim that nationalised industries will serve workers’ interests. It cites a jeering comment from Anthony Eden that these will be state capitalist enterprises, forced to supply cheap fuel and services to the capitalist class and its state. The authors concur: nationalisation under Labour is not socialism but state capitalism, run for the benefit of the employers.
A further polemic targets the argument, attributed to Sir Stafford Cripps, that workers are too ignorant to control production. The chapter retorts that workers, alongside technicians who experience industry daily, are the most capable of directing the economy. The real reason for bureaucratic control is political: a decision to side with the employing class.
The chapter concludes with an unambiguous choice: “With the workers, or with the employers – that is the choice. There is no middle way.” Morrison, Cripps, and the Labour leadership have placed themselves on the side of the bosses. The only solution is the uncompensated takeover of all large industry, run under working-class control, enabling planned production and unleashing the initiative of technicians and workers for the benefit of all.