The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1928. LABOUR'S POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 259, 1 November 1928, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1928. LABOUR'S POLICY.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

Mr. Holland's speech at the Town Hall last night must have produced two distinct impressions on the minds of the impartial section of his audience. In the first place, the Leader of the Opposition in expounding his policy appeared to ignore very largely the distinctive features of Labour's official platform which all members of the party are bound to support. Secondly, he seemed equally oblivious of the important fact that some of the positive or constructive proposals that he put forward are Liberal in origin, and that Labour has borrowed them without acknowledgment from earlier Liberal programmes. But the great majority of Mr. Holland's hearers last night were clearly enthusiastic supporters of Labour, and they were not likely to be critical of their leader's inconsistencies.

Regarding the first point that we have raised, anyone who takes the trouble to compare the main features of last night's speech with the Labour Party's official programme must see at once that there is a very substantial difference between them. The party "platform," starting with its time-honoured objective "the Socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange," is definitely Socialistic not in the vaguely philanthropic sense in which an English statesman declared forty years ago, "we are all Socialists to-day," but in the narrow and dogmatic sense in which the followers of Karl Marx understand it. There is a vast difference between the two points of view. Mr. Baldwin's Government has been charged with "Socialistic" tendencies because it has extended the functions of the State in the interests of the whole community. But the Socialism hitherto professed by the Labour Party here has had as its object the exaltation of the wage-earning masses to a position of absolute economic and political ascendancy and the subordination of every other class and interest to them.

What the people of Auckland would like to know is, which form of Socialism the New Zealand Labour Party really supports; and they got very little direct help from Mr. Holland on that point last night. The distinction is of immense importance to Labour and to the whole Dominion. For State Socialism in the general sense familiar to us here is merely Liberalism adapted to the progressive needs of the whole community, while Marxian Socialism begins with the "class war" and must end in "the dictatorship of the proletariat." Under which flag has Labour ranged itself? The official platform shows clear signs of its Marxist origin, while Labour's election manifesto recently circulated and Mr. Holland's speech last night differ from it widely both iu the letter and the spirit. Wf make due allowance for the moderating effect produced on Mr. Holland's views by the wider political experience that he and his friends have gained in recent years. But the discrepancy between the party's official platform and the slightly accentuated Liberalism which the Leader of the Opposition presented to his audience last night is too obvious and too startling to be overlooked. Before Mr. Holland can expect the electors of New Zealand to register their votes in his favour he must make it quite clear to them that the official programme of his party, with its Socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, has "gone where the old moons go," and that is a feat which he is hardly in a position to accomplish at the present time.