Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 4, 1925. ACCORDING TO MARX.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 284, 4 November 1925, Page 8

Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 4, 1925. ACCORDING TO MARX.

At Otaki on Monday evening- the Hon. Mr Earnshaw undertook to establish the fact that Mr H. E. Holland, the leader of the Labour Party, is not only a Socialist, but a Communist; and to show just what Communism means to the workers of any country. The Labour leader lias made no secret of his adherence to Marxiau politics. He has, in point of fact, slated in Parliament that he is a Marxian Socialist, and other of his colleagues evidently share his opinion that Marxian economics are superior to all others. At the root of the Marxian doctrine is the idea that capitalist production is not only inimical to the workers, but holds them in a bondage which Mr Holland himself has frequently described as wage slavery,- to the abolition of which he and his supporters are pledged. It is none too clear from the published report of the Otaki meeting what Mr Earnshaw actually said on the subject. Hut the Labour leader has so frequently stressed the inevitability of a class struggle between the capitalistic class and the proletariat that there is very little doubt he is at heart in sympathy with the Communistic objective, which Lenin and Trotsky forced upon the Russian people. In a recent work devoted to an exposition of Marxian economics the writer affirms that gradually all the control of the means of production and distribution must fall into the hands of a few, and then the proletariat, driven to a point of resistance, would rise and take over the control of industry and establish the Socialistic State. Some such idea is certainly at the back of much of the Labour propaganda in this country. The proletariat, however, is by no means exclusively comprised of Socialists. It 'includes many who are strongly individualistic and, in some cases, are actually capitalists also. In the United States of America, where the capitalist system is most highly developed, there are many such, but, according to Marxian economics, the Value of any product is due to labour alone, and the capitalist has no right to share in the value of anything produced by the employment of his capital. The writer of the work to which we are referring- goes even further than Marx was prepared to go, although he claims that his master is in accord with him in his assertion that the value of any product is due to manual labour alone. He allows no credit to ‘.‘mangers, bosses, directors, superintendents, or overseers.” He says: ‘‘The only way in which the brain work 1 of managers and directors (as

such) produces any wealth is somewhat as the lorryman pulls the ten-ton load uphill; the managerial brain-worlc exploits brain power and the lorryman exploits horse power.” That style of argument may appeal to a section of the workers but we are inclined to think the most sensible of their number would reject it as too puerile to be worthy of serious consideration. It reminds us of certain remarks made by the Labour candidate who is contesting the Otaki seat, in the appeal he made to /the rank and file of the Freezi n g Wor k ers ’ Fe d era t ion for contributions to the Labour Party’s fighting fund, in which he urged the creation of “a work-ing-class party in Parliament to write the laws that govern the country,” rather than leave this power in the hands of those whom lie termed their enemies. In the course of that appeal Mr Semple declared that they (the freezing workers operatives) ‘‘produced all the wealth of the country and that they should, through their representatives, write the laws that determine how that wealth should lie distributed.” That statement was not addressed to the man who by his toil, industry, and capital outlay prepared the pastures upon which the sheep and cattle that are sent to the slaughter-house to be killed and there prepared for the freezer, prior to the dispatch of the carcases as mutton, lamb and beef overseas, but to the man who, taking no risks, whose pay is assured, and whose circumstances are, generally speaking, as comfortable as those of the primary producer and in some cases more so. And it is this man who is told that he creates all the wealth the countryside produces through the energy and enterprise of the man who makes the occupation of the freezing works operative possible. A similar line of argument runs through the Marxian dictum that the value of any product is due only to the manual labour employed upon it, excluding the brain work of those who direct the operations, and of the men who supply the material and* the capital which make the employment of labour possible. “Gapital,” we are told by the Marxian philosopher, ‘‘is a value that expands by absorbing unpaid labour; a self-expanding- value the secret of whose expansion is the functional absorption of unpaid labour,” whatever that may mean. In certain quarters it is held that Marxism is a spent force. That is certainly not the case in Australia nor, reading between the lines of the guarded utterances made by the Labour leaders in New Zealand, is it a spent force in this country. L was Mr H. G. Wells who once said that Marx was ‘‘as dead as Moses and that it was folly to tight-against a corpse,” but the corpse appears to be a pretty live one in this part of the -world, and we are satisfied that the one great antidote to Marxian economics is to be found in a clearer understanding- of its erroneous teachings, and of the fallacies which pass current with Marxian votaries for the highest system of philosophy.