Socialist Sermonettes.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 41, 15 December 1911, Page 18

Socialist Sermonettes.

By JFIV-WiE PAKNIKEN

No. 1. Negative communism is • restricted to the negation, of private property. According to this form of communism, all goods should be equally put at the disposal of all. This preposterous kind oi communism is no longer advocated b;\ anyone, for it is evident that a, system which does not exclude others from the use of those things .which individuals have appropriated to themselves, would ruin all industry and bring about a state of universal misery and utter disorder. For who would till a field, if others were permitted to come at will and to reap the harvest? — Oath re in. Now Cathnrin, one of the great Liberal ist Socialist-killers, asserts that: "Liberal poitical economists established the principle that Labor alone is the foundation and source of all value, and, consequently, of all wealth." He adds: "Socialism seized upon this principle, and made it the basis of its operations against the modem conditions of property." Mark you, the Socialist basis is not .spoliation, exploitation, robbery, repudiation, or any other predatory means of acquiring property, but the absolutely jiist principle that each individual should receive the entire product of his work —that's the admirable (because equitable;) all that Socialism battles for. There are many fields to bo tilled besides agrarian fields, and in these other fields noai-iillers are permitted by the capitalist system, which lets the non-tillers live, on and by the labor of the tillers to come at will and to reap the greater portion of the harvest. The modern system of property does exclude others from the use of these things, which _ exploiting individuals have* appropriated to themselves. There has been too much expropriation of the workers' , own products and. property. It is because there has been and is so stupendous an abundance of _ tilling fields whose harvest non-tillers were ■and are permitted to reap, that Socialism has become a permanent phenomenon in all civilised countries whereever industry is highly developed. In uncivilised countries there is an infinitely greater equality oi distribution of labor's products. The curse and' cancer of civilisation is the fateful fact that the laborers do not take the first place in society. but the last and lowest. Saint-Simon, the first who endeavored, to place modern Socialism upon a systematic, scientific basis, contended that labor— industry >m its wider srr-so —must be the standard of all .sock)l institutions. When such a standard is ■r-stabiishe<; (as established, it surely v> i'l be —must bo, if civilisation is to ok'hire) s men will be rewarded in approximate proportion to the value of their Isborservice to the community; mc?), who want to be allowed to livp, will 'bavv to work work; they will K-o-t be permitted to work workers as men now work horses, bullocks, and -other beasts of burden. The community will have no time and no place (save- the blood and home manure mills) ' for what Sohaffle, the anti-Socialist', calls the sterile and parasitic middleman, the unclean and .aristocratic brigandage of the stock-exchange, the idle rich,_ the idle poor; there slrall "be no living without labor. To call the Labor Party, for all other excrescences will papers lotinually do, siniply serves- to ■emphasise the hideous fact that Labor is one class, and anti-Labor another class. In the Socialist civilisation there will be only one class, the Labor Party, for a-1 -other escreseoucfi-s will be eliminated. The principle developed by Ri-cardo, tfuvt all goods, considered from an. industrial .standpoint, are., only the product of labor, a.nd c-ost nothing but. labor, pill have as its natural (and therefore just) complement, triumphantly and permanently established, the principle that the pro-ducts of Lab Glare to be the property of Labor. '' W'h ereve r S- w•iali sm ■c x i sts a. t p res exit, it is also democratic, a/iniing at the introduction of the greatest possible eyuality."—Cat'Lrein. That is exactly what modern Socialism does aim at —the greatest possible equality, not impossible equality, as anti-Socialists often erroneously assert ; and it is a truly Christ-like conception, that no other, csociasl system was ever capable of aiming at. It is the aim th.at shall hit the bull'iS-eyo of human endeavor. 'This admirable aim does not meet with Catlirein's approval. He prefers tinkering and trifling with the present capitalistic system, whose awful achievement is the establishment of the greatest possible inequality, for he says: "Everyone may :i:iri should bo an advocate of social reform, whilst combating strenuously all Socialist tendencies.' 5 Well, such curious combat only stimulates- the thoughts that will, make the permanent phenomenon of modern Socialism grow and grow to fecund fruition for all workers —that is real workers of work, not workers of their fellow-men.