CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 63, 14 March 1945, Page 4

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

PLANNED ECONOMY

(To the Editor)

The remedy for social evils can never be the creation of far greater evils. The remedy about to be put into operation in New Zealand is a planned economy and this is the proposal that has to be analysed, for it does mean compulsory labour and the end of democratic government. It is Fascism. President Roosevelt had strong Socialist leanings. His New Deal was the first step, but he has repudiated this. He declares that the free competitive system is the only system compatible with democracy. This is obvious, for if you destroy competition you create monopoly and the next step is Fascism. He has stated an eternal truth: "There can be no political freedom without economic freedom," and has interpreted this for us by postulating five freedoms—freedom of nations, speech, religion and freedom from want and fear. To give these to the world he states man must have the right to live in a system of free enterprise, free from monopoly. The point is that .free enterprise ceases to be free if _it drifts to monopoly. The democracies are the only countries that have ever evolved free enterprise—that is why they are democracies—why they have their high standard of living—why their people have the power to change government by peaceful means—why there is not only peace within but between all the democracies. Germany, Japan, Spain, China, the Balkans, Russia, Italy. South Americas and all other non-democratic countries have never known free enterprise. That is why they are what they are for their peoples have never been able to acquire the power over government or rulers. It was the coming of free enterprise to certain countries 100 years ago that made democracy possible in those countries—brought all progress to the world and the finest flowering of civilisation the world has ever known.

W. E. WAIDEGRAVE.