SOCIALISTS AND WEALTH.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 46, 24 February 1927, Page 8

SOCIALISTS AND WEALTH.

IS THERE INCONSISTENCY? (To the Editor.) In your issue of Mondav's date vnn an an cle. "Should aocUiiit, £ e wel English economist, Y\ which he says: "If the n > tne masses is, as they imply. J ue to lh "j * .hat some people are Setter off. and u £ existence 01 pnvate propertv i s an evil tW ought to be rooted out. then it U veS lor the rich men who think *o t.n k»* • , • .bobbing «y devoung their wealth to public p£££ • •. ,D - tfad J CI enjoying it by spending ft ™ comiorts and luxuries for r reters also to "the glaring inconsistency of those who mink that private property"* f socia. evil and yet continue to enjoy it ! advantages." Mr. Withers is as a r'ule relreshingly fair-minded w I do not think his statements are completed detensihle here. To start with, we are aIL . ocialists and non-Sociaiists. living under thl same social system, which is one in which private property exists. Wnether we ajrree Z it or not, we are compelled by circumLnees to l.xe in accordance with the existing order of things. Let a man try to play j n a the l °l! P , l^ tball l ma "' r} ! aS if he * ere the league rales, and see the result. I be a perfectly sincere Nihilist, in the monly understood but incorrect meaning of thl word, yet my attempts to wreck train, coS not very well be defended on that score 1 admit, ot course, that if a professed Socialist happens to have more money than is rood for him. it is the nobler course to devote it to some public purpo>e. Bernard Shaw has h vested the greater part of his fortune in local body stocks, and in bolstering up the intellectual drama. But if a rich Socialist care. in say. "The majority of the nation have chosen private property, so they must be prepared lor any ill-effects resulting, say, from the fact that I am a rich man,*' there is no con tradictmg him After all, Socialism ai ms al changing the system, not any individual unit in it, so while a Socialist is more to be ad" mired if he renounces his claim to hi s surplus wealth, he cannot logically be condemned if he doesn't. Someone once said that he could not imagine such a thing a s a married philo sopher. \et, both being human, there are married philosophers as well as rich Socialists.