LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 40, 21 May 1935, Page 8

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

SEARCH FOR.SECURITY.

Sir,—Your editorial remarks on the above in Friday's issue reflect the heartfelt desire of every rightthinking person. But the grett question is, how are we collectively as a nation and the nations collectively as a world to usher in that era of peace on earth and goodwill to all men that we pray for so incessantly ? It seems to me that as individuals we are all leaving it to someone else to make a start. There is a feeling abroad that we are helpless individually. The same applies in a national sense. It would seem as if we had lost our sense of proportion. We have reached the stage of conquest of the physical world so tHat there is no visible danger of any portion of the earth's population having to go short of the necessities, the comforts, and even the luxuries of life. To reach this stage our ancestors and we of the present generation have conformed to a convention of hard work, and we have become obsessed with the idea that we exist to work, in spite of the fact that we have ever been inventing the means to provide the necessities of existence with as little work as possible. We have submitted to. the domination of work and to that extent have allowed our freedom to be restricted to the necessity of work.

The innate desire of every individual is freedom based on economic security. Now that our industrial system is capable of delivering the means to economic security to everyone, we allow ourselves to be diverted from the realisation of our individual desires through collective action. We lose sight of the true purpose of an economic system when we object to giving economic security to every individual on the grounds that idleness is bad for anyone. In effect, we set ourselves up to use the economic system to impose a moral $tandard on our fellow beings, and we fail to distinguish the difference between work and occupation. Work is the performance of tasks necessary to provide our minimum physical needs. Occupation is the manner in which we express our real selves yby the things we do for the sake of doing them and not for the sake of any money reward. We allow money to dominate our every action, instead of making it serve the purpose of giving to each one of us the mearßS to a fuller life.

If the policy which we would choose for ourselves is that which gives us freedom through economic security, we cannot deny the same to everyone. It is obvious *that ( mankind has achieved freedom from drudgery and to deny to those not required in industry a share of the inheritance of available abundance is to make them anti-socia^ and a danger to the common welfare. By nature we 'are social beings, but we are in the grip of a fear which prevents us stepping out to take the real freedom which is ours for the taking. We are at the threshold of the greatest turning point in the history, of the human race. We have to choose between two policies which are confronting us to-day—Domination and Freedom. Any policy which aims at the establishment of a complete sovereignty, whether it be of a Kaiser, a League, a State, a Trust, or a Trade Union, is a policy of Domination, irrespective of the fine words which may accompany it; and any policy which makes it easier for the individual to benefit by association, without being constrained beyond the inherent necessities of the function involved in the association, is a policy of Freedom. We imagine that we are a free people and as such ! the- fear of losing that freedom re- | conciles us to preparations for war and finally actual: war, which, as normal human beings, we abhor. If we analyse that freedom we find it so hedged around by invasions of our sovereign rights that it can rightly be said that real freedom does not exist. Instead, we are dominated by | a power outside and beyond our control because we have allowed it to become so. Because we have allowed certain conventions to become established about the control and use of money, we find ourselves following a road we do not wish to travel. We find poverty destroying the social structure when we have abundance; we find ourselves preparing for war when we wish for peace. Why? Because we have allowed Finance to dominate us and turn Democracy into a hollow farce. We consent to being governed by a power which denies freedom and compels us to conform to its policy. We, as individuals, should assert our sovereign powers and lay down the policy that we, as the units of a" nation, are free to use the surplus wealth that lies waiting to our hand as we individually think fit, and that we are free to decide the form in which it is to be made available. The first nation that makes the above its policy will