In terms of the arguments in relation to “British” Steel in Scunthorpe, this is vital to understand. One of the arguments being used to justify nationalisation is that steel production is a vital, strategic industry, because, in the case of war or conflict, the state needs to be able to ensure that it can produce steel, for armaments and so on. Of course, had the UK still been in the EU, an EU state would have been able to produce such steel on an efficient and planned and regulated basis, which is one reason why the EU was created in the first place. But, Britain cut itself off from that with Brexit, which Starmer and Blue Labour have committed to pursue. Blue Labour, however, have argued that the immediate issue is that the company that currently owns “British” steel is Chinese. In reality, what this really means, is that the group of shareholders that control “British” Steel are Chinese. What this illustrates is not what is being claimed, therefore. If companies were actually controlled by their collective owners, i.e. the associated producers within them, then whether the people who simply lend those companies money, be it in return for shares, bonds, or other debt instruments, are Chinese would be irrelevant.
Take another such socialised capital, say a workers cooperative producing coal. Would it matter if the workers in that cooperative took out a bank loan from a Chinese Bank, for example? Of course not. Having agreed the loan, with a stated rate of interest, and period of return, the workers in the cooperative, would then use the money, as money-capital, to buy means of production and so on, they would operate their collective capital, produce surplus value, out of which some would go to finance further capital accumulation, and part would pay the agreed amount of interest on the loan, in the same way part might go to pay rent to a landlord from which they leased the land, and taxes to the state The Chinese Bank would have no legal right to tell the workers how they could use their capital, or any other legal right over the workers' property. Nor, having agreed by contract, the terms of the loan, could they demand its immediate return. But, because capitalist states, acting in the interests of the ruling class owners of fictitious-capital, have guaranteed, in law, the right of shareholders to exercise control over capital they do not own, that is not the case that workers, as the collective owners of the socialised capital, find themselves in.
The real issue is not whether the particular group of shareholders/creditors of a company are Chinese or simply “foreign” - in fact capitalist states across the globe, themselves, depend on huge amounts of money being loaned to them by Chinese capitalists, and the Chinese state, which buys the bonds of those countries - but the fact that the control over all socialised capital is given to a select group of creditors, i.e. shareholders, other than in the case of worker cooperatives. Is Britain, saying it does not want Chinese citizens, financial institutions, or the Chinese state, to buy UK government bonds? Of course not. In fact, in the latest statements, government ministers have even had to refuse to rule out allowing another group of Chinese speculators/shareholders to lend the money to rescue the Scunthorpe plant.
If even bourgeois property laws were upheld, then, shareholders should have no more right to exercise control over the capital of a company than any other creditor. Control, even under bourgeois property law, should reside with the owner, not the non-owner, and the owner of socialised capital is the company itself, i.e. the associated producers within the company. The real problem in relation to “British” Steel, in Scunthorpe, and other similar instances, is not that the shareholders/creditors are Chinese, or any other foreigners, but that control over the capital itself is unjustly given by the capitalist state to its non-owners, and denied to its actual collective owners, i.e. the workers within the company.
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