Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/43

 itself, but the coalfields of Tkvibuli are directly exploited by the State. Other mines are leased, such as the manganese deposits of Tschiaturi and the copper mines of Allaverdi, to a French company, and others in the district of Batoum to a German company (Shuckert).

Nationalisation has not been undertaken so energetically and consciously in the manufacturing industries, as in the mining and agricultural branches. Their present stage of development is little suited to State management. Only isolated undertakings among them have been nationalised, not because of the principle, but for special reasons.

Generally speaking, it may be said that all that can be nationalised under existing conditions has been nationalised, and no further progress can be made. According to statistics of the Ministry of Labour, there were 73,486 workers engaged in large industrial undertakings in Georgia in 1920. Of these 38,743 (52.7 per cent.) were occupied in State undertakings; 20,592 (28 per cent.) in municipal, co-operative and local undertakings, and only 14,151 (19.3 per cent.) in private undertakings. This will show how insignificant private industry is in Georgia at the present time.

In regard to commerce some export monopolies have been introduced, such as manganese, tobacco, silk, and wool. These are fiscal rather than Socialistic measures, and it remains to be seen how they succeed. For export trade, a State bureaucracy is as unsuitable an agent as is possible; the Georgian bureaucrats are very inexperienced, and the traditions left behind by their predecessors, the Czarist bureaucracy, are the worst possible. The world market is at present as difficult to survey as ever it was.

To enable Georgia to thrive, it is necessary to open up many new branches in trade as well as in industry. In the state in which the country finds itself, private capital cannot be dispensed with in the establishment of such new branches.

In this economic reconstruction a great part may be