THE LABOUR PARTY'S PROGRAMME

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21086, 10 February 1934, Page 9

THE LABOUR PARTY'S PROGRAMME

TO THB IDITOB OF TUB PBFSS. Sir,—Apropos the statement contained in your issue of to-day's date that the Labour party will shortly give consideration to the modification of its party platform, has not a golden

opportunity arrived for a careful recast of the objectives and fundamental principles upon which a progressive programme could measure up to the requirements of the people as revealed in the study of our present problems? Why cannot the Labour party recognise from the beginning that the ideal state is that wherein the happiness of its citizens is contingent upon the opportunity of its inhabitants to give expression to the inherent capacities resident in every man. It is inherent in every man to be at one and the same time a capitalist, a socialist and a communist. Given the set of circumstances wherein these three proclivities may have free expression, there is at once created a basis of satisfaction for all. Let us then understand that the separation of representatives upholding any one of these phases of one ideal into distinct bodies or cliques is entirely artificial Let the Labour party recast its programme in the light of this truth. No one may claim that the present want of system provides this basis. As we live to-day to say communist is to say ostracism. To say socialist is to say dreamer, and to say capitalist is to say oppressor. Should it not be the ideal of the representatives of the masses to conceive a state where to say all of these—communist, capitalist and socialist is to say citizen? State control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange—this phrase, which has pointed the way as the ideal since it was coined, has. we learn, again won the approval of the inner councils of Labour. This will not be changed. Will not? It will! Before the masses are contented citizens it will be changed to a plan whereby the people, through their elected and state appointed representatives in districts and on industrial trust boards will control the means of production. The change in the phrase alters only the first word and will read. "The peoples' control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange." Here is room for the capitalist who fulfils his true function as trustee. The state bank is to be turned to cabinet control that is already approved, and it will record the movement of money, measure values, control the medium of exchange and store assets —assets which do not exist —a measure that varies, a medium of o::clianae without interchange. Cannot the Labour party see that whether the state bank be controlled by cabinet or bv shareholders* boards that it still is but the centralised collection of debts for the international moneylender?. Why not face the real and true situation in banking, and stop debt? Arrange the debt repaymentsstate, public, and individual—over an ! extended period of time; cut out the present bread ticket which still we call a pound-note, and give as a commodity money so that the bank will measure not alone the movement of money, but the movement of goods and services; also and at the same time record true credit in the shape of reserves. And let the Labour party depart from the confusions of the past arising from the confounding of assets with expended capital. Trust boards will be credit boards and will apportion every man's credit

upon the only standard of values, namely, work. There is room for revision" of the Labour party platform indeed, but we fear, that even revised, it may still be put of date.—Yours, etc., A.R. February 9, 1934.