TRACTS FOR THE TIMES

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 121, 24 May 1932, Page 6

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES

SOCIALISM—NOT IN OUR TIME. (By PRO BONO PUBLICO.) We don't meet many Socialists in the country. An occasional hand may talk glibly about the creed, but never with any real knowledge, and, truth to tell, I have the impression that Socialism at the present time is a pretty dead doctrine. I expect it will revive, but in another shape. The Socialism we used to hear so much about seemed to be based oh the idea that if the Socialists could only capture the Social machine they could make a new earth, or a new heaven on earth. That idea has been scotched by the Soviet, which really captured the social machine and used it to create something that doesn't look a bit like the Socialism we used to talk about. The Socialism that I expect to emerge after the present turmoil is over will aim at capturing the intelligence of people rather than their mere votes. It will regard the social organism as the living thing that it really is and will set to work to cure its ills and its diseases one at a time and gradually to lead it into a better way of life. I have met quite lately one Socialist who had an idea something like that. He could talk with knowledge and understanding. Ho knew that Acts of Parliament were effective only when they embodied ideas either accepted already by the people or likely to bo readily assimilated. One of his remarks particularly impressed me, so that I have thought of it often since. "I don't know why you are so strong against Socialism," he said, "Jt won't come in your time and it won't affect you personally and it will make life infinitely easier for the generations' that come afterwards. Why not help it along?" This was, to me, a new approach and a new appeal. I don't like Socialism, it is true. But on reflection I have to admit that I don't know what Socialism, when it comes, will bo like, and so it isn't quite right to say that I don't like it. If you had offered to the people of the thirteenth century a vision of the twentieth, would they have liked it? Bring it nearer our own times. Would the Victorians of 1850 have gladly worked and voted to bring about the conditions of 1930? I doubt it. It seems to me that the most and tho best we can do is to get a little ahead of our times in our ideas of social justice and to endeavour to sjieed up the education of our fellow men in tho same direction and to work for amendments of the existing order as we 6ee them to bo necessary or desirable. It is hard to imagine a completely co-operative system, any more than we can imagine ourselves turning out in loin cloths on frosty winter mornings. Both developments arc conceivable, but we can bo excused for not liking one or the other. But I don't see any valid icason for refusing to join in the movement for healthier and better dress conventions.