NATIONAL POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 26, 31 January 1934, Page 6

NATIONAL POLICY.

WHICH SYSTEM WILL PREVAIL?

(To the Editor.)

R. C. Simmons- in the "Star" asks: "Is Britain going to follow the UjS.A.? Or is ehe going to adopt the Russian Five Year Plan?" In my opinion she must follow both. There are two economic systems of predominating importance in the world. The one is Capitalism, the other is 'Communism. The importance of the Roosevelt plan to rehabilitate industry and agriculture is. its influence on. these two systems. The Roosevelt plan endeavours to maintain the Capitalistic State, whilst at the same time introducing into it certain modifications of State control not unlike those contained in the Five Year Plan in Russia. This question of planning within a Capitalistic ■State raises a number of important questions. For example, is there a tolerable half-way stage between Capitalism and Communiem? Nations to-day are so closely interlocked by world trade and by the development of economics upon a world basis that what happens in one country intimately affects what is going to happen in another country. But the" essential fact which has to be kept in mind is that this planning of the new economic life, or new economic State, is something national, to be developed along national lines. Therefore, because the world is so interlocked, because trade and communications so tie the world together, the problem of every plan must be the extent to which it can be fitted into the world system. OELEiR ET AUDAX.