SOCIAL DEFEATISTS

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 15, 18 January 1921, Page 6

SOCIAL DEFEATISTS

Industrial Labour's dissatisfaction with political Labour may be partly the fault of political Labour, and partly the fault of the electoral and Parliamentary machinery, but it is mostly the fault of the impracticability of industrial 'Labour. Industrial Labour expects many things that economies—superior to politics— cannot supply. It is impossible to have dear labour and cheap other commodities, and it is also impossible to give everybody more money without lowering the purchasing power of money. It is true that the cost of living might be reduced if private profits were diverted out of private pockets and were used as a subsidy to lower prices; provided, however, that abolition of profits does not mean loss of efficiency. But that is just what abolition of private profits does mean. Efficient control of producing machinery cannot be obtained without paying for it; and if the substitution of State employership for private employership leaves the balance of wages and prices no better, it is fair to assume that the private profit formerly accruing was reasonable payment to the employer for his service. In other words, the s continuing dissatisfaction of employee and customer under State employership suggests that tho employer v/as not overpaid.

Though nationalisation has its triumphs, there is nothing to prove that, as a general rule, it charges the public less and pays the employee more. The extremists who support the abolition of private capital are of two classes—those who mistakenly believe that wholesale nationalisation is a cure-all, and those who, labouring under no such error, wish to stir up the have-nots against the haves. Tho first set of extremists are dupes; the second are wreckers. The latter arc the dangerous men, because they are unconvinced by failure. They ride for a fall. They believe that salvation lies not along the lines of making things Better, but of making them worse, because things must become worse before they can begin to be better. Such a policy of destruction, or gospel of despair, often masks itself constructive garb, and pleads measures in which it has no' faith, in order to placate its own dupes. Thus tho spectacle is presented of extremists suddenly moderating their

tone and participating in parliamentary life, professing a faith inconsistent with their past and unlikely to be in line with their future. Professions of that nature arc worse than tho mistaken enthusiasm of the optimist, because they come from men who are opportunist and insincere; whose tactics are double-edged; and who stand to gain more from failure than from success. To use a war phrase, they are defeatists, and their interests lie with the enemy. Y«l it- is a fact that tho wrecker section generally supplies, the motive power of all extremist movements. ■■■■