The Press Wednesday, April 23, 1930. The Social System.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19910, 23 April 1930, Page 10

The Press Wednesday, April 23, 1930. The Social System.

It is'not altogether the fault of the President of the New Zealand Labour Party that he finds it necessary to talk itonsense in his annual Easter attack on Capitalism. It is, however, his fault if his attack is contradictory nonsense, as Mr Thorn's was in the address which we summarised yesterday. Capitalism may be providing too much employment, or too little, but it is not doing both ; and if Mr Thorn chooses to weep over the men who are being compelled to produce goods for which there is no market, he must avoid shedding tears at the same time over the " posi- " tively wicked and inhuman " fact that thousands are unemployed. As for scientific research and mechanical development, although they may temporarily to be "accentuating the " stress and uncertainty" of life, the alternative to* them is primitivism—a return to a state of affairs in which every man hews his own wood and draws his own water and has no time to talk Socialism or attend Trade Union meetings. Mr Qandhi is advocating something like this in India at the present time—when the Hill Tribes swoop down to plunder the cities of the plains he is going to put a spinning-wheel in their hands; but Mr Thorn can hardly support the idea of keeping mankind for ever in such a low standard of living 1 . ' The comjjort &nd the variety of life which Labour quite properly demands are the products of scientific discovery and of individual freedom, and it is because he knows this, and knows also that Socialism is On the decline all over the world, that Mr Thorn speaks so hopelessly of the prospect of getting "the people" to make a "prolonged, energetic, informed j and determined effort of, the human will to destroy Capitalism: Britain fat the present time hps a government of 'Radicals and Socialists, but they do not talk Socialism, or, as administrators, practise it. They leave it to the Clydesiders, and to the leaders of "the "people" In the remoter corners of the'earth who still think that it is a living gospel.