WAGES AND PEODUCTION

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 102, 26 October 1929, Page 8

WAGES AND PEODUCTION

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —The Welfare League has again reverted to its old habit of denying its own statements. In my last letter I showed how it had twisted my views to suit its own purpose. I quoted verbatim my own statement, and the Welfare League's garbled version of my views. The league now says that it did not ascribe to me the part of its" statement which I put in quotation marks. Notwithstanding the league's denial, I repeat that it did ascribe to me views that I neither expressed nor implied, and that it based its whole argument on its own version of my views. In my last letter I showed clearly the difference between "economic rent" and "all ground value." The Welfare League's answer to this is that the distinction is not so wide "in the mindß of Socialists as he wouldmake it appear." Well, now, Mr. ,Editor, never once during the whole of the present controversy have I attempted to "make it appear" that anything was in the miuds of Sqcialists. Anyway, what have I got to do with what is in the minds of anybody else? The Welfare League seems particularly anxious to get away from the subject under discussion, viz., "How to secure to the worker tho full economic value for belabour." i In its previous letter it tried to drag me into an argument ou Mr. Holland and the Labour Patty, iu its latest it introduces, by way of diversion, Mr. Sidney Webb and the Socialists. It is all to no purpose, however, for wild horses will not drag me off the track. 1 again appeal to the Welfare League to deal with views I have expressed, and also when I use the term "land on the margin of production" not to twist it into "virgin land," because I know virgin laud within fifty miles of Wellington City that has increased in value by 1200 per cent, during the last five years, and the owners have not contributed to such increase to the extent of one "brass farthing." Also when I use the term "worker," and state definitely that the term is used in its broader sense, please don't attempt to narrow down its meaning by substituting the term "wage-earner." My statement "that values that are created by the community should belong to tho community" is not inconsistent with any previous statement, because if the privileged class who now appropriate the "economic rent" were eliminated, society would bo compo«ed entirely oi workers, and "community" and "workers" would be synonymous terms. The Welfare League ia surely not serious when it Bays that tho "act of ematscipatiou" did not tak_ anything from the

slave owners of America. The slave owners had property rights in the slaveto the extent of millions of dollars, and the whole of this huge amount of value was taken' from them and given to the slaves themselves, to whom it rightly belonged. Slaves were bought and sold in the market exactly the same as land ia sold to-day. The market value of a slave would be the capitalised sum of the marginal difference in the cost of labour performed by a free worker and by the slave. For instance, if the rate of pay of a free worker were two dollars a day. and the cost of maintaining a slave of equal ability one dollar a day, the value or the slave would .be the capitalised value or a dollar a day during the effective life of the slave, and it would be around this sum that the price of slaves would oscillate. When the slaves were set free they would themselvs receive the marginal difference between theii; maintenance cost and their earnings as free workers. It will be clearly seen from the above that a considerable amount of value or property, or whatever' name you may care to call it by, was by a single act of the Government transferred frora one set of individuals to another. The Welfare League admits that was-not'con-fiscation. How, then, can it argue that >• •_ , ns of "ecroomic rent" from individuals who have no moral right to it and giving it to those to whom it rightly belongs is confiscation? ' I submit that there is a complete analogj- between the property rights in slaves and the property rights in "economie rent."—l am, etc., 2oth October. -