Why public ownership?
Labour has pledged to bring energy, rail, water, and mail into public ownership and to “put democratic management at the heart of how those industries are run”. These are some reasons for doing this: • Those industries are central to economic life. To make a real socialist Green New Deal, to reshape economic life to cut carbon emissions adequately, requires public control of those industries rather than just nudging and coaxing their private owners. • They are, to one degree, or another, monopolies or semi-monopolies. Private-profit companies running such industries acquire big chances to make...