WHICH?

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1930, Page 10

WHICH?

J (To the Editor.)

Sir,—ln your issue of the 17tbi May the Welfare League writes that all the world over voters have got-to face two poli-= %ies which have a fundamental.difference; it is no less than constitutional reconstruction v. revolutionary Socialism, individual liberty v. Socialist State control. History suggests that constitutional reconstruction covers a multitude of political blunders,, and a less ambiguous statement of policy would bo more to the point. Furthermore, to merely write revolutionary Socialism might fecare the ill-informed; but *it proves nothing, and is a stupid exaggeration. The; Chartist movement in the early middle of the last century,- and the trades union agitation were referred to as revolutionary, by certain go-slow political organisations. Last, 'but not least, the late Joseph Chamberlain was fre- ' quently referred to in the same term. I submit, that even New Zealand is the better for the Chartist agitation, and Great Britain owes much to the bid champion o£ Plimsolls agitation and free education, to say nothing of his last worthy.effort. Who will gainsay that the people's Statute Book is not the richer for the revolutionary and the revolutionists? . '. • ; , . . '.

It would be an education to know why . the ,Welfare League puts the "versus" between individual liberty-, and State Socialist control. When Shakespeare wrote, "He that owns tho means whereby I live, owns my life," he put. the much-talked-of Welfare League's liberty, in a nutshell." According to the league's topsy ttiryy mode of Teasoning, if 999 men have • their means of work owned and controlled by the thousandth man, and are at his mercy for the right to work and thereby live, that is individual liberty. If, on the other hand, the thousand men jointly own their own means of work, and co-operate together as an organised community, that would be tho most sterilised form of despotism the Welfare League could imagine. To further clinch the argument, .1 assunie, that every ordinary shareholder in a joint stock company has lost his individual liberty because he prefers co-oper-ative effort, as against individual compe[tition. It is qnly too evident that in making its random statements the Welfare League has got badly mixed tip, and quite innocently' confused ."capitalistic licence" with "individual liberty," Carlisle most ably described capitalistic licence when ha' wrote: "The widow is gathering nettles for her children's supper. A-perfumed landlord is lounging delicately in Paris, has an alchemy by which he will extract every third nettle, jand call it rent and law." What does the league think of this power of appropriating the third nettle, the third tap of the shoemaker's hammer, of placing under tribute all the activities by which the world is supplied with its daily needs? I sincerely trust that the league will keep this before it when it is constitutionally reconstructing.

Socialist!. State control will .not upset the harmony of the Empire. As a matter of plain fact, it will; have an opposite effects After the Franco-German War, -M. Thiers,.,the President of the French Republic, broke up .some.very large estates, , and this is what he said: "Every acre of land in the'liands of a small-holder' furnishes a ■ musket for ' the protection of Trance." Now I venture to claim that; by carrying the policy of • the old French ex-President to its logical : conclusion in. New Zealand, we! would become all the ' stronger, aud, therefore, avmore worthy and harmonious partner of the Empire. -lam' ctc- ;■=:.-- C.E.H::