Socialism, And Social Credit

Press, Volume C, Issue 29599, 23 August 1961, Page 14

Socialism, And Social Credit

Mr Nordmeyer did his party a service in his Roskill address by urging it to re-examine the basis of its political thought His plea to the Labour Party to evolve a more radical policy was not weakened because it was made with a sideways glance at the Social Credit movement. Labour leaders have always remembered how much help their party received from unorthodox monetary theorists before it won wide support for its social programme; and they cannot be blamed for trying to regain that support It is doubtful whether they can do so with anything short of acceptance of the “ funda- “ mental fallacies ” to which Mr Nordmeyer referred. Socialism, or “ people’s “socialism”, in Mr Nordmeyer’s new phrase, will have little appeal to Social Crediters. They want the fallacy, the fundamental fallacy, and nothing but the fallacy. Deprived of their belief in that, they would be as likely to support capitalism as socialism. Mr Nordmeyer will waste his ingenuity if he spends too much of it on them.

Mr Nordmeyer is on sounder ground when he challenges the Labour Party to turn its back on materialism and asserts the suprem-

acy of moral values. How far has the Labour Party departed from its basic principle of socialism in recent years? In 1957 it was unashamed in wooing relatively big taxpayers with the £lOO rebate. In office subsequently it showed an opportunist but surprising tenderness for big business. This materialism has sprung perhaps from the industrial wing, where the profit motive, expressed through: constant demands for higher wages, has become dominant As an expression of free enterprise this may be unexceptionable, but it does not sit well with the basic principle of the Labour Party. In so far as the party has advanced socialism recently, it has done so less by stealth than by inadvertence. And the fire has gone out of the Labour Party. If it is to regain its crusading zeal and make its own unique contribution to New Zealand politics it must be ready to look socialism in the face and accept all the implications, however uncomfortable and electorally unpopular they may appear. “ The Press ” does not believe that socialism is the answer to the problems of civilisation,. least of all in the affluent society; but wc do respect those who hold firmly to it