Evening Post WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1940. SOCIALISM: SILENT AND UNSEEN?

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 51, 28 August 1940, Page 8

Evening Post WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1940. SOCIALISM: SILENT AND UNSEEN?

Mr. J. A. Lee has contended (in "Socialism in New Zealand") that the rapid multiplication of employees of the Government is converting New Zealand into a Socialist State. Socialisation can be established by means of a deliberate political decision, or it can be established automatically—and almost invisibly—by continuing to put people into Government employment, so that at last there will be no people available for private employment. In this conception, automatic Socialisation becomes a kind of painless dentistry by means of which the private employer gradually finds all his teeth (his labour teeth) extracted. No species of non-violent Socialisation is likely to be so sure, and none is more speedy if the Government maintains a rapid rate in the increasing of the number of its employees. That the Government is maintaining a rapid rate in the multiplication of public servants and of dependants on the State is obvious. How rapid is a question of figuring into which we have not delved, but we notice that the Christchurch "Press" publishes an array of figures, from which that paper concludes, that servants of the permanent Departments of State under the control of the Public Service Commissioner have increased from 7638 in 1929 to 20,870 today, while temporary employees in the Public Service increased from 1879 in 1929 to 6604 today. An increase of something less than three to one in one category, and of something more than three to one in the other category, is sufficiently remarkable; but, as Mr. Lee pointed out in his book, when to the list of public employees are added their dependants, also other dependants (direct or indirect) of the public purse, the total becomes tremendous. On page 33, chapter 1, of this book (published in 1938) he has a list of what he calls "Socialist categories" (a comprehensive list including assisted unemployed, employees on Government and local body works and contracts, suppliers to the Government, • people maintained by hospital boards, people in mental institutions, prisoners, pensioners, etc.), and, after adding dependants, he concludes: On this basis, the total number of persons in the above Socialist categories receiving an income directly from the State would be 468,000, or 29£ Per cent, of the total population of 1,587,000 at March 31, 1937. Going into further detail, which we have not space to admit, he enlarges his chain of dependence, direct or indirect, on the State to include "more than 50 per cent, of the population of New Zealand." Not satisfied with this calculation, Mr. Lee adds a footnote, dated April, 1938, in which he mentions extensions of State employership occurring since he wrote the chapter, and he comments : It will thus be seen that the Socialist categories have been and are being tremendously expanded. Who destroys New Zealand Socialism devastates New Zealand's economy. It would therefore seem that the figured calculations of the Christchurch "Press" would not surprise Mr. Lee, except in the sense that they understate rather than overstate the momentum of New Zealand's advance along the road of automatic Socialisation. Dropping for the moment Mr. Lee's wider calculations in which he includes prisoners and in which he makes estimates of dependants in varying degrees of dependency, we return to the figures of the Christchurch "Press" and observe that the 20,870 actual employees of the Government who are entered as being under the Public Service Commissioner, and the 6604 actual employees of the Government who are classed as temporary, are less than half the story, for these 27,474 Government employees do not include the 25,710 listed by our contemporary as being employed by the Railway Department, or the 19,603 listed as on public works, or the 14,450 of the Post and Telegraph service. Under these three heads, the total is nearly 60,000. Comparing the figures of these three Departments with their figures in 1929 (printed in parentheses) the Christchurch "Press" arrives at the following result:—Post j and Telegraph, 14,450 (11,727); Railway, 25,710 (19,086); Public Works, 19,607 (10,286). There is no doubt that, although

"Socialism in New Zealand" is only two years old, a new edition of the book would enable Mr. Lee to seize hold of later and larger basic figures of the rapidly-growing Government employership, and to expand them into a still more imposing edifice of State Socialisation arriving silently but rapidly by the automatic process of giving people Government jobs. This process is easy both for the Government and for the recipients; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes—but does it bless New Zealand? While Ministers say nothing about this backstairs drift to Socialism, Mr. Lee exults in it. He rejoiced in 1938 that in New Zealand "the population sustained by Socialist activity is a complete majority of all the people." The issue, he said, is not Socialism or no Socialism; the issue is whether Socialism will come democratically or by dictation. To the candour of Mr. Lee New Zealanders are at least indebted for a clear indication of whither they are going, and of the hopelessness of stopping the drift so long as Government spending knows no limit.