CLASS' WARFARE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 93, 22 April 1925, Page 4

CLASS' WARFARE

The United Mine-workers of New Zealand is wholly and unreservedly a class-conscious organisation, formed to preach class warfare and, when the time is thought to be ripe, to take revolutionary action. The announcement of its constitution and aims gives a sufficient indication of its character. Though this is a New Zealand organisation, there are references to "want and hunger" among "millions of working people," and "the few who constitute the employing class have all the good things^ of life." Yet no man, honestly stating facts as they are, would contend that the want and hunger is widespread in this country, and it is undeniable that capital is not in the hands of a few but is more evenly distributed than, probably, in any other country. But if the language of the manifesto did not reveal this organisation as a slavish copy of communistic bodies elsewhere, the revelation would be made in the statement of aims. The objective is one "class-conscious ■ economic organisation to take and hold the means of production, distribution, and exchange by revolutionary industrial and political action." Private capitalism is, of course, condemned, but the manifesto goes further and proclaims opposition to State ownership. The aim, then, is "social ownership by the whole community." This is not defined; but a definition is unnecessary when it is shown that State ownership is not the method. Plainly what is aimed at is the "proletarian dictatorship" of Bolshevik Russia, not in the interests of the community as a whole, but for the benefit of a militant minority. It is well for the people of New Zealand to be warned that there is still ground in the Dominion upon which such communistic seeds can germinate and flourish.