Only in the same sense as the development of the Standard Oil corporation in America from its small beginning of fifty years ago to the giant "octopus" of the present day, constitutes a "step towards socialism." The forces of economic determinism were in play in both cases.
Economic necessity compelled the bureaucratic capitalist government of Russia to build the Trans-Siberian railroad at a time when private capital hesitated about carrying out such an enterprise. Like timidity on the part of private capitalists in Australia compelled the government of that backward and isolated country to take the initiative in developing various industries. An expensive bureaucracy in Germany and Austria, necessitating large revenues, forced the governments of those countries, in lieu of taxing to death the middle class, to resort to government ownership of railways, salt mines, and other enterprises.
In the United States, on the other hand, no such development has taken place, although trustification of industry has proceeded to a greater extent than in any other country. True, the United States government has assisted the process of centralization by means of land grants to railroad corporations, by irrigation projects, by ship subsidies, etc., which have aided the American capitalists to seize and develop the natural resources of the country; but with the exception of the postal system, government ownership in any important industry has not been resorted to in the United States.
From this brief analysis we conclude that "government ownership" is but a phase of capitalist development identical in essence with that of private monopoly or trustification of industry. The training of the wage slaves is essentially the same in either instance, and the same necessity of those slaves organizing as a class against their employers would exist under complete government ownership as it does under partial government ownership and under privately owned industries.
The transition from Capitalism to Socialism cannot
