SOCIALISM DISSECTED

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 February 1937, Page 11

SOCIALISM DISSECTED

SIR J. SIMON’S ADDRESS. “It is an enormous assumption, perfectly unproved, that this recipe, this rigid simple formula of nationalisation of all the means of production, distribution and exchange is somehow or other going to bring to this country, or to the world so surprising, so well-established, and so certain a transformation for the better,” said Sir John Simon in a recent speech in the House of Commons. “It is sometimes said that whenever you do get a case of municipalisation or State control, there you have got Socialism. That is the sense in which Sir William Harcourt said long ago: •We are all Socialists now.’ I do not know of anybody who does not at once admit that there are cases in which this is the best system, but the real question is not whether in some selected cases—the list may perhaps be extended —it is the best, but the perfectly different omT of whether or not it is a. sound principle to say that you should extend over the whole held of industry and of trade this abolition of private enterprise, this ending of competition, and substitute ior it a system of State ownership or State control.

“I believe it can be shown very simply that the success with which you can apply it in certain cases depends upon its being applied in a society which, in other respects, preserves the stimulus of private competition. “Let me give a very simple instance. You may have, of course, some particular enterprise which is managed by public ownership but which does not make a profit. I am not going to say that municipal enterprises do not make a profit; some of them do. There are many services which are taken over by the State because the State thinks they must be maintained, even though they do not make a profit. You have to keep them going by sul> sidies. “It may be that the people engaged in those industries continue to be employed, even though the things which -they produce cannot be sold in the market. All that is quite possible. How can you do it? You can do that only if you have private property, and if you leave private enterprise to fructify and produce a source of taxation. “You cannot proceed to go over the whole field and take one thing after another until they have all gone, and then expect that the rich people of this country will still be there to be taxed, and that you will still be able to subsidise those industries as a result of taxes laid on private property. “At the present we are spending something like £350,000,000 a year upon social services, and we raise a< revenue of £800,000,000. How is it done? A very large part of it is raised because the rich man is required to pay, and I think quite rightly, out of his private pocket, about 50 per cent. “Suppose that you established a system which abolished altogether the enrichment of individuals; how are you going to tax them? It is perfectly obvious that you cannot. PERTINENT QUESTIONS. “1 should like to put one other point which impresses me deeply, it seems to be that the price of adopting this system is the sacrifice of reasonable personal liberty. Let me give an instance —the right to strike. I do not myself see how, if this 7 all-over Socialist system were established, that, right could survive. How is the exercise of a man’s right to say whether he will work for his employer consistent with the sole employer being the community? I cannot see how it is, unless it be held that this new system is going to produce such a paradise that no one will ever want to take such an attitude again. “How under this imaginary system can there be any opportunity for the expression through the Press of free opinion? Every newspaper, even the “Daily Herald,” is a capitalist newspaper. You cannot start a newspaper except with capital. Is it to be supposed that capital is going to be provided by a Socialist Government for people to be able to circulate, every day, violent attacks on them? I heard somebody say, ‘We shall have the 8.8.C.’ That is all very well as far as it goes. What I mean by a free Press is "not the supply of some careful, tepid balanced account, but all the fierce attack and counter-attack which we know goes on in our newspapers to-day.

“In the old days when there was a great debate on this general subject, in 1923 I think, when Lord Snowden was the protagonist on one side and Sir Alfred Mond on the other, I recollect •that we were assured that the great thing was that it would all happen quite slowly. The great phrase was that we might rely on the ‘inevitability of gradualness.’ The ‘inevitability of gradualness” has gone, and we know now that they intend to do it if they get the chance, as quickly as possible, by passing an Emergencyi Bowers Bill and by Ordcrs-in-Council. “The abolition of Capitalism sounds very well if presented in rolling sentences, but, after all, the abolition of Capitalism ignores the fact that most of the capitalists in this country are very humble people. As a result oi their own thrift they have accumulated their savings and made small investments. “A Labour leader once said: —"One of the facts we have got to face is that the workers in some ways are more concerned about their little investments than some of the capitalists are about theirs.’"