It Cannot Work

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 112, 4 February 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

It Cannot Work

IT is difficult to keep trace hf the vagaries and varieties of self-con-stituted economists of the various political schools of thought and thoughtlessness. One thing alone is certain : that the work of this and other countries, and international trade, have been carried on successfully by practical people in spite of all these warring theorists, in this country, since the passing of the Bank Act in 1864, trade lias gone through periods of enormous expansion on tlie one hand, and has suffered periods of depression on tlie other; yet our bankers have known how to weather tlie storms, when to extend credit' up to tlie margin of safety, and when, for purposes of safety, to restrict it, without ruining the social fabric. Of course, in bad times, one bears from less orthodox professors recommendations such as those of Professor Keynes-who a couple of years ago proposed a system to improve employment which 1 showed was "economies of holes in tlie ground.” We all knew what an unproductive business it is to dig a hole in the ground and till it up again just to give employment. Mr. Keynes proposed to multiply this process. Another gentleman 1 know wanted to rebuild 4.5(H),000 houses in no time. Another wanted Io spend £4OO millions on air raid shelters for tlie people; yet another, to spend a similar amount on food storage, and so on. and so forth. If economists of tlie Right are so prolific and diverse in their suggestions we can expect not less but more from those of the Ix‘ft. The great fact we have to recognize is that orthodox policy, in spite of a number of drawbacks, which have gradually lieen, and are still being, rectified, has succeeded in delivering the goods, (hough all Socialist experiments have utterly failed, and the latest, that in Hie U.S.S.R. —which de-

serves the title of the “Never, Never Land” —is the biggest failure of the lot. Ever since the first Five-year Plan, which took three years to prepare in advance, there has been a lopsided display of displanned and uneconomic working, fit only for a madhouse. It is true that enormous jerrybuilt factories, containing jerry-built machinery, have been turning out quantities of all sorts of goods, but they have not turned tliein out according to plan, either as to the number of people employed, the cost,' time, quantity, or quality, and the standard of living of the [>eople as a whole Ims consistently declined.

Every year that experiment in Socialism goes from bad to worse, with Hie result that there is a holocaust of scapegoats. Horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, have declined by the million, but of scapegoats there is a constant supply, and they are bumped off wholesale, to show the vigour and single mindedness of the administration. In a capitalist country, tlie customer is always right ; in a Socialist country, the administration alone is right ; everybody and everything else is wrong. There is one big lesson to lie learnt from the girations and permutations of these theorists, and that is that till such time as it is possible to stop the trade and industry, the system of justice, and every other amenity of civilization, as one might stop a watch and restart it one second later without damage, till that moment, such wholesale experiments are bound to resemble those of a child taking a watch to pieces and not knowing how to put it together again. All these planned "eeonomicinns" have one thing in common, and that is that they are utterly unpractical.—Mr. Marcus Samuel, M.P.. in "The ‘Right’ Bulletin.”