The Australian Labour Movement.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19675, 19 July 1929, Page 10

The Australian Labour Movement.

An issue of the Bound Table to Land by yesterday's English mail contains an interesting article on the change that has come over the policy and ideals of the Australian Labour movement since the War, " The cardinal fact in the "present position," says the writer, who is an Australian, "is that the old "theoretical Socialism taught by Marx " and his followers, which exercised so " great a sway over the minds, if not " the practice, of Labour pioneers, has " lost its hold on the Party." To those who know how much the New Zealand Labour Party hampers itself by adhering to worn-out Marxian doctrines the change wotlld seem to be for the better, but unfortunately Marxism in Australia has not been supplanted, as it has been in England, by a more moderate and intelligent brand of Socialism. The evil heritage of class warfare has remained, and is skilfully exploited by the Labour leaders, but the altruism and idealism which all Socialist creeds demand in some measure have vanished. The immediate and the only aim of the Australian Labour movement at present is government of the people by the workers in the interests of the workers, and, as the writer points out, " worker " in this connexion does not really mean worker. We are all workers (in the only useful sense of the word), but to be the workers for (and by) whom the Labour movement is conducted we j must, at the very least, be Trade Unionists. The movement is above all realistic and opportunist, and its danger lies in its skill in selecting what the average man wants and in formulating a policy which appeals to the half-educated mind. Socialism made the Labour leaders dependent on the help of intellectuals, but for the carrying out of this new policy the intellectual is neither necessary nor desirable. There was a time when the movement did much to promote economic research and showed a fruitful zeal for collecting facts, but now it is impatient with the advice of experts however anxious they may be to help it. Since Labour is probably the most effective political force in Australia to-day, its programme is certain to have a powerful influence on the national character, and that influence is likely to be, in many respects, strikingly bad. For example, most Australians are fervently nationalistic in their outlook, but whereas the more responsible leaders of public opinion realise the danger of this attitude, the leaders of Labour are busily exploiting it. They preach the White Australia policy in the form most calculated to offend the susceptibilities of the Asiatic, and are anxious to put the same policy into operation against Italians, Maltese, and other South European peoples. Their aim is simply to keep wages up by making labour scarce. The Labour movement's views on the tariff, and, indeed, on all economic matters, are governed by the samo crude insularity. It objects

! to the importation of a single article that can be produced in Australia, and even -where duties are as high as 65 per cent, it i = prepared to advocate increase?. But perhaps tlie worst feature of Labour opportunism is seen in ill*; attempt—successful in most cases —to capture the votes of Civil Servant?. All efforts to make the Civil Service independent of politics have been rigidly opposed, and in some cases bodies of Stat; employees have been brought back under departmental control. Such a policy of course harms the cause of Socialism, since expensive and badly managed State enterprises are not an advertisement for that creed. It is inevitable aiso that such unprincipled opportunism, which takes no thought of the country's future, will ultimately reveal its own barrenness, as it has done in the case of Queensland, but the process of disillusionment will be expensive. j