First Published in 1960, Nationalized Industry and Public Ownership is concerned with the state of nationalized industries in Britain in the context of the wider sphere of public enterprise in the world. It critically examines themes like the motives and background of nationalization; the state of public corporation in Britain; public utilities as monopoly; parliamentary debates and questions regarding government control; the idea of public accountability; the status of consumers’ councils, and the link between labour relations and public ownership. This book is an important historical document for scholars and researchers of public administration, political economy, British economy, labour economics and British labour history.

First Published in 1952, Problems of Nationalized Industry presents the first serious discussion on the issues related to nationalization of industries in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. Part I includes fourteen essays on the general framework of public corporations; methods of assessing compensation; the organization of nationalized industries; labour and staff problems; joint consultation between management and workers; finance and price policy; scientific research and development; and a comparison between nationalization in England and France. Part II consists of a substantial body of general conclusions which are related to the earlier chapters. This book is a must read for scholars and researchers of British politics, labour politics, labour economics and political science.

This book examines the twentieth-century rise and fall of state-owned enterprises in Western political economy.

*** Winner of the Myrdal Prize for Evolutionary Political Economy *** The last few years have seen the spectacular failure of market fundamentalism in Europe and the US, with a seemingly never-ending spate of corporate scandals and financial crises. As the environmental limits and socially destructive tendencies of the current profit-driven economic model become daily more self-evident, there is a growing demand for a fairer economic alternative, as evidenced by the mounting campaigns against global finance and the politics of austerity. Reclaiming Public Ownership tackles these issues head on, going beyond traditional leftist arguments about the relative merits of free markets and central planning to present a radical new conception of public ownership, framed around economic democracy and public participation in economic decision-making. Cumbers argues that a reconstituted public ownership is central to the creation of a more just and sustainable society. This book is a timely reconsideration of a long-standing but essential topic.