vided 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