My Bumble Opinion

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 53, 2 March 1907, Page 12

My Bumble Opinion

By PIS&OT. SOCIALISTS ALL

"We are all Socialists nowadays," said a Conservative member of the House of Commons the other day: and not many weeks afterwards one was reading of somebody who -was described as a "Tory Socialist." A generation ago such a description jvould have sounded the -snidest, if not insanest, of paradoxes. But by this time \re have learned that it is the name and not the reality of Socialism that offends. We are all dreamerssome more, some less; and there is no dream of the future of mankind that does not involve the complete, if gradual, change of our social fabric. But when you tell your dream over your last pipe to your friend, and he calls you "Socialist," you are quite likely to snort and, with all sincerity, avow yourself a whole-hearted Conservative. It is only the political-minded man who labels his ideas colleetivist or communistic if indeed any communists survive; the mass of us dream of a Utopia at the end of an unnamed road. "With some the road is long,- with some it is short; but with most of us it winds a bit, and is a little uncertain of direction. The avowed Socialists see salvation in State and municipal ownership, or in co-opera-tive trading; but so long as we don't hear the avowal we listen readily enough to their prescribing of their panacea. It is the length of that road to Utopia, as he sees it, that really makes the diiierence between 3-our Conservative and your Socialist. In days, of enthusiasm" I have sat far into a winters night dreaming with the most Tory of cronies of the changes to come; and Tories as they were, I have known by the light in the eye, the generous fervour of voice that lessened only when we came to practical steps, that we were all looking along that road to Utopia. Some of us thought of the hunger; some of us perhaps of the dirt, and dreamt of a universal cold tub; some of us saw the masses with the cultured and plastic minds of the few—but all of us felt that sooner or later our respective better things mustcome. It is a strange thing that New Zea:land, with its advanced legislation, is less consciously socialistic than the mass of any nation in Europe, even including Russia, Hardly one step has been taken here that had not been previously thought out by Socialists in England, or France, or Belgium; but it is very doubtful if the question were asked of the whole community, whether one New Zealander in twenty would describe himself as a Socialist. The obvious reason for this—and the most ardent of Socialists would be the first to admit it—is that reform has been reached by the purest individualism, alias the purest selfishness. Of course, good ends are often reached by bad means; but the fact remains that Jones, in his vote, has thought hardly at all of Utopia, and very nearly everything of himself, or at most of himself and his next-door neighbour. The consequence is that, while life is easier, it is hardly at all more gentle or more careful of ideals. 1 doubt exceedingly whether it is more averagely intellectual. Our labour meetings talk of nothing but wages and the things most obviously connected with wages; not like their French fellows of literary and scientific education, of beautiful surroundings and of the indirect factors in the evolution of a noble race. And this, I though the evils, if great, were not so : great as those of the European toiler who wanted to reorganise society on an empty stomach- At least we need our masses to be, as Carlyle would have put it, articulate; to know the meaning of language, and to express a complex idea ; simply and with ease. There is an miii provement certainly, but the goal is still far off. The lawyers thrive not only on their law, but by the absolute need for the inarticulate to find another mouth. As for sociology and the study of other democracies (what more interesting for colonial reformers than the co-operative movements in Belgium and England?) I believe that they are nowhere more neglected. Certainly I have never seen a collection of sociological literature in Auckland, and what few books there are show by their good condition how little they are read. Now. if I were going to install a new plant in a factory, I take it that I should be interested in all the trade catalogues that I could come by referring to f.he particular type of machinery that I wanted; and yet, when it is a matter of introducing new legislative machinery, we have not even a fair basis of comparison by which to be sure that what is being offered us cannot be excelled elsewhere! I put the matter in this intensely and exaggeratedly practical way because there are still a few people "who make violent distinctions between practice and theory; • but those who are used to the handling of books ■will see far more than this immediate benefit, in the training of a capable, thoughtful and intelligent citizen. I am not going to defend, the long or the short road, for this is not the place for party politics. But we are all afoot for Utopia, and we need to hearten one another if the goal is not to seem too distant. We want the enthusiast as well as the business man, the deep thinker as well as the coiner of catch phrases, and most of all the unselfish idealist instead of the self-seeking cadger of votes. Such men can be found after seeking, but their voices will be gentle, even though they do not flatter; they will assuredly need looking for, need persuading to emerge when they have been found. Their advent will be the beginning of better things, and the trouble in finding them, even in educating them to their mission will be returned a thousandfold. At present pessimism has us in an awful grip. No one dares to see a golden future, other than in a future of gold. The new doctrine is twofold—that we can only look after ourselves, and that to look after ourselves we need — shall I say? — much of the fox, something of the pig and all of the wolf. Men can die ifor their country, but we are told that they cannot be induced to sacrifice an hour of their day to make the world happier or more beautiful. But that there are not tens of thousands left with nobler ideals than that inspired by a cheaply American view of social progress I refuse to believe. They are hidden away perhaps, unhonoured and even despised, but ready to join us on the march, when we have tired of visions of Eldorado, and to lead us on the highxoad £q the Utopia of. our noblex dreams.