DEMOCRACY

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22005, 1 February 1937, Page 15

DEMOCRACY

TO THE EDITOR OP THE PRESS.

Sir, —Your correspondent. Mr Beck, although no doubt earnestly intent, has allowed his prejudice to take charge. We of the British Empire enjoy complete freedom of speech and the choice of our ministers. If we suffer from the faulty activities of the latter we have only ourselves to blame tor being carried away by foolish promises into which few of us bother to look on account of their pleasant face value. Our traditional form of law is internationally renowed for its fairness to everyone, regardless of position, and we all have ample opportunities to rise with the aid of free education and sympathetic public opinion, if we are thrifty enough to begin with. Class distinction, like many other things, has been ruined by would-be aristocrats with a great deal of cash but little sense of leadership or duty to their fellow men. The genuine article, however, is entirely different and very useful on account of his hereditary ability to manage those in his charge, with the discretion and, fairness that only come .through the

centuries of experience of his forefathers. , , . To appreciate the horrors of communism, fascism, etc., we have only to read the accounts of ruthless measures adopted by such people, even in this so-called civilised age, in Russia, South America, Germany, and many other countries where the people are simply driven and have no say whatever.—Yours, etc., TA _„_„ T STEELE JACKSON. Southbridge, January 28, 1937.

TO THE EDITOE OF THE PBESS,

I Sir—Some correspondents to your paper have recently discussed what is loosely called "democracy," which supposedly vests the sovereignty of the state in the "people.'* Political equality and equality before the law are what those who fought and died for democracy sought to establish, but tnat neither the one nor the other of these can exist, except as an inevitable accompaniment of economic equality, has to-day become increasingly clear. For example, if it takes £2O to invoke a legal process, "equality before the law means only mockery to a man who can spare no more than 20d. The same applies, with even greater force, to the disseminating of political or other views. Trite facts of everyday life amply demonstrate that the ability of the individual to make use of the law or to exercise political power is very strictly proportioned to his economic strength. That explains why, in spite | of "democratic"- theory, and,, its high.-!

flown phrases, the sovereignty of the modern state is vested, in fact, in the owners, either singly or in combination, of property. "Democracy" is only a masking of this economic dictatorship with liberties, which, in the circumstances it is politic or a part of the game, to grant, Fascism has torn this mask aside, because liberty is no longer of use to capitalism in those countries where fascism has become the established political system. No doubt even mock democracy is preferable to fascism (or to Russian "communism"), just as hypocrisy, a homage to virtue, is preferable to a straight-out denial of virtue. The hypocrite implies by his actions that moral conduct does, or should exist, and so economic dictatorship, in its "democratic" garb, analogously implies thai political equality does or should exist. People in "democratic" states by takhr* their liberties for granted and losing that "eternal vigilance" which is their price, are likely to be deprived of them overnight, as were the Germans and Italians. —Yours, etc., ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY. Cobden, January 31, 1937.

TO THE IDITOB OT THE FBZSS.

Sir,—The letter on this subject from Mr J. W. Thompson, Springfield, in your Friday issue is so courteously phrased, and so obviously the honest attempt of an honest man to express his thoughts about it, that I regret I cannot still accept his opinions and conclusions. _

He sets out to define and differentiate between bourgeois and proletarian democracies. And here it becomes evident that his conception of democracy is very different from mine. He would have it that democracy should be a strict monopoly for the workers—and probably the manual workers at that. My conception is that democracy should include and represent all classes in the body politic. History has not yet seen, nor is it likely to see within any measurable time, any community unanimous on any question of importance. Accordingly common sense has accepted the best or only possible solution. It leaves the decision to the majority of the people and gives them also the right of reviewing or revoking that decision at certain short intervals —triennially in New Zealand. Is that not fair, or will Mr Thompson suggest a fairer method? As I understand it, he would have what is called "the dictatorship of the proletariat," and that to me would mean that the workers would have the bourgeoisie at their mercy and dragoon and tyrannise over them as they chose. Like all justice lovers, I would resist such tyranny. But I would never agree to a course which would replace the tyranny of the classes in past centuries by the tyranny of the masses in this century. A wrong will never be righted by revenge or by transferring the privilege and liberty to do wrong from one class to another. Will Mr Thompson not agree that the long fight which has brought us

to universal suffrage and the better social and industrial conditions for the workers has been captained by a succession of good bourgeois leaders? In the last century we have seen Grey. Peel, Gladstone, Russell, CampbellBannerman, and Asquith, to take a tew random names. They did not belong to the proletariat, but they worked magnificently for them and made possible the freedom and advantages which Mr Thompson and I enjoy. Can he imagine proletarian leaders fighting in the same spirit to-day to ensure that their political opponents, the classes, should have equal fairplay and consideration. I cannot. I am not at all impressed by his laboured argument as to why he, a pacifist, should on occasion be allowed to become a militarist. That "facing both ways" attitude will not earn the respect of any sensible person. It is, indeed, an insult to intelligence to argue that war is a crime when resorted to by democracy, but a virtue when employed by communism—for I suspect Mr Thompson favours that political concept. Mr Thompson gives one the choice of two phases of democracy, the form we know, which he calls spurious and which I call in Lincoln's phrase "government of the people, for the people, by the people," or a true democracy which, he says, will function divorced from class oppression and domination. Yet behind that latter definition of "true democracy" we know there lurks a revengeful spirit. My

choice is for the democracy I know—the British democracy which has led the world for a century—perhaps centuries—and is still leading it.—Yours, 6tC CONFIDENT DEMOCRAT. January 31, 1937.