"THE NEXT TEN YEARS."

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 11 (Supplement)

"THE NEXT TEN YEARS."

LABOUR PARTY'S OBJECTIVE. BESTATEMENT OF SOCIALISTIC POLICY. NO FANCY LAND PROGRAMMES. (By E.L.C.W.) LONDON, July 23. The -whole nation, indeed the -whole ■world, is looking towards the new Government. Its success or failure will he momentous. Writing before the event' — the present Labour Government's assumption of office —INIr. G. D. H. Cole, in hie book, "The Next Ten Years," on British social and economic policy (ilacmillan), declared that when Labour came into office, "such a Government will not be able to select, on any theoretical ground, the issues with which it proposes to deal, or the order of dealing with them. It will have its hands full with immediate and pressing problems; and, while it will need to have always in mind -the relation of its current measures to the wider task of a complete, though gradual change from a capitalist to Socialist economy, it will be under the necessity of showing speedy practical results, if* it is to have any chance of retaining power in its hand. It will be of 310 use for the leaders of such a Government to appeal to their constituents to await the complete realisation of its ultimate plans before judging its effects. Both they and it will be judged by what they are able to accomplish practically during the first few years of their tenure of political power. If they fail to produce these immediate and practical results it will be some time before they are given another chance."

Within the covers of this treatise of )450 pages, Mr. Cole lias set forth with fc lucidity all too rare in hooks of the Hand, what steps towards Socialism are likely to he undertaken in the near future —not that Mr. Cole assumes the pontifical, he puts his hook forward merely as suggestive, and meet' for criticism. It is, in truth, a revaluation and restatement of Labour and Socialist policy, Mr. Cole has the power to syn--fchetise the changing and changed aspect of Socialism and many will owe him a debt for the clarity of his exposition. Be himself —a Socialist for twenty years -—'is rather more of a Socialist than ever, tut his conception of Socialism has changed. ■ ••• , "All Socialists." 'And more than Socialists have changed. Only the other day Mr. Amery, standing near Mr. Churchill, declared that we are all' Socialist's. Mr. Cole makes it clear that no one need fear the impact of a Socialist Government if it follows any such path as he traces out. Socialists who count are not nowadays out for nationalisation of everything all at once. Nationalisation is not wholly rejected, hut the view that its all round adoption is a shorty cut to national betterment is very definitely denied. The old collectivism is dead which thought of the mechanism of nationalisation as a mere extension of the political government of the State, and proposed to hand over the running of industries to Civil Service departments under political heads.

Complete nationalisation of the coal mines, a step which some Tories even have accepted as reasonable, is not, in Mr. Cole's view, a wise step, and he fears that the miners who asked for nationalisation when the industry was prosperous will exert pressure on the Labour party to go on with it now. Mr. Cole's lucid explanation of the steps he would advise in this well nigh desperate industry are too long to quote, but in brief, his view of coal, as of others, is "'That many of the largest and most successful capitalist concerns cross inn <lustrial boundaries at many points, and that it would be undesirable, in socialising such concerns, to break them up; that the best course in many instances seems to be that of socialising rather by concerns than by industries, and of leaving the concerns so taken over in •distinct being under public control." The new Socialism is out not to destroy capitalism, but to control it.

How much of a realist Mr. Cole is may be gauged from the fact that he, a former Guild Socialist and an authority second only to Lord Passfield and Mrs. Sidney Webb on trade unions, •warns tlie Miners' Federation that they •will be unwise to press for an immediate repeal of the Eight-hours Act— and this, precisely, is what they ares demanding this week. What of the Land? Nationalisation of land has always had a better hearing in the Dominions than in the Old Country, and New Zealand, now setting itself anew to some redistribution of land, will take a lively interest in Mr. Cole's declaration that more support for the Labour party in the rural districts —where it is weakwill not be got by devising fancy land programmes, but by raising the standard of living. Agricultural wages are already controlled by the State. The control, he declares, should be stiffened, and while rural wages can be raised as efficiency improves the chief immediate hope for the labourer lies in the provision of family allowances. Land, of course, must be nationalised, but here again no sudden and colossal land purchases by the State are envisaged. "The traditional three-cornered arrangement of landlord, tenant and labourer is no longer working efficiently, as the landlord is largely ceasing to supply fixed capital. This failure destroys the landlord's reason for existing, and the land should accordingly be socialised. This should be done not by buying out the landlord but by assigning to him an income secured by the rent of the land and subject to deduction in respect of a proposed tax on land values. The State, Laving become the owner of the land, should undertake the function of supplving the farmer with necessary capital." °

Imperial Problems. Mr. Cole sees no objection "to that form of tariff preference which remits or lowers to the Dominion producer any import duty imposed for quite other reasons upon the foreign producer.' But Great Britain, he goes on to say, as was shown when the question was fully discussed at the Imperial Economic Conference, can do little to u. p c Dominions in this way; She has fewexisting duties on which she can grant ail effective preference to the producers within the Empire; and she c e m u >d. ought not to put on duties merely fo: the purpose of exempting Empire p duce from them, or even maintaining fo. the sake of Empire preference existing duties for which there is no good _ ec °"° mic case. On the other hand • sees possibilities, without tariff preference, of drawing closer the econ°mic bonds between Great Britain and self-governing Dominions.