In either case, though the procedure is different, the result of the change, once it is accomplished, is the same. Private property in capital, in the sense of the right to profits and control, is abolished. What remains of it is, at most, a mortgage in favor of the previous proprietors, a dead leaf which is preserved, though the sap of industry no longer feeds it, as long as it is not thought worth while to strike it off. And since the capital needed to maintain and equip a modern industry could not be provided by any one group of workers, even were it desirable on other grounds that they should step completely into the position of the present owners, the complex of rights which constitutes ownership remains to be shared between them and whatever organ may act on behalf of the general community. The former, for example, may be the heir of the present owners as far as the control of the routine and administration of industry is concerned: the latter may succeed to their right to dispose of residuary profits. The elements composing property, have, in fact, to be { 114} disentangled: and the fact that to-day, under the common name of ownership, several different powers are vested in identical hands, must not be allowed to obscure the probability that, once private property in capital has been abolished, it may be expedient to re-allocate those powers in detail as well as to transfer them _en bloc_.
The essence of a profession is, as we have suggested, that its members organize themselves for the performance of function. It is essential therefore, if industry is to be professionalized, that the abolition of functionless property should not be interpreted to imply a continuance under public ownership of the absence of responsibility on the part of the _personnel_ of industry, which is the normal accompaniment of private ownership working through the wage-system. It is the more important to emphasize that point, because such an implication has sometimes been conveyed in the past by some of those who have presented the case for some such change in the character of ownership as has been urged above. The name consecrated by custom to the transformation of property by public and external action is nationalization. But nationalization is a word which is neither very felicitous nor free from ambiguity. Properly used, it means merely ownership by a body representing the nation. But it has come in practice to be used as equivalent to a particular method of administration, under which officials employed by the State step into the position of the present directors of industry, and exercise all the power which they exercised. So those who desire to maintain the system under which industry is carried on, not as a profession { 115} serving the public, but for the advantage of shareholders, attack nationalization on the ground that state management is necessarily inefficient, and tremble with apprehension whenever they post a letter in a letter-box; and those who desire to change it reply that state services are efficient and praise God whenever they use a telephone; as though either private or public administration had certain peculiar and unalterable characteristics, instead of depending for its quality, like an army or railway company or school, and all other undertakings, public and private alike, not on whether those who conduct it are private officials or state officials, but on whether they are properly trained for their work and can command the good will and confidence of their subordinates.