Communism

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29739, 5 February 1962, Page 3

Communism

Sir,—“Blag” must be a tiger who may have changed his spots but not his nature —as a descendant of the Protestant Reformation. In those days “freedom” included much burning, racking, thumbscrewing, drowning and witch - bunting against the working classes of England. The Revolutionary Reformation slogan was “freedom”—freedom of scientific inquiry, freedom of conscience, and, much more important, freedom of trade. To win these the Reformation had to consolidate itself and impress its own ethical and moral ideas upon the working classes which it! brutally exploited. This was done by means of as damnable an intellectual tyranny as the one it overthrew The new morality, like the old morality, was ruling-class morality Freedom was for the masters only. Russian prices vary In Korsakov I paid 3s 6d a pound for butter and bought a 201 b salmon for about 2s 6d —Yours, etc., RALPH S. WHEELER Timaru, February 3 1962.

Sir, —The term “communism” has had other associations than with the present regime in Russia. During the later decades of last century there were loose groups of people in Europe advocating “anarchist communism.” with ideals of community ownership of the land and the social necessary means of production, distribution, and exchange. the economy, based upon co-operative agricultural and industrial associations without a centralised State An exponent of this line of social change was Peter Kropotkin, a Russian exile resident in England Some of his views were expressed in the books, “The Conquest of Bread,” “Fields, Factories, and Workshops," “Mutual Aid. a Factor in Evolution" An Englishman of that period, William Morris. also bad quite an influence toward a Utopian communist line of thought by his book. “New’S from Nowhere " and his artistic priority and other enterprises. Yours, etc.,

STUDENT OF AFFAIRS. February 2, 1962. [This correspondence may now cease.—Ed„ “The Press.”]