Capitalism

Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 295, 25 October 1922, Page 4

Capitalism

A tree is known by its fruits. This being infallible, what can be gaid of Capitalism but words of bitterest condemnation and abhorrence'? This system is based on individualism, .private enterprise for profit, and competition—alleged potent incentives to human aspiration jand endeavour. Its'property, wealth, opportunity, are monopolised hy a handful who pretend to superior intellectual and 'organising ability, and its government is in the hands of men who express its morality and buttress it against new ideas. In its action Capitalism exercised free sway, no power has been able to thwart the working put of what is in it, and consequently the conditions prevalent must be attributed to its operation. What are those conditions? Worldwide poverty, unemployment, starvation wages, slums, over-crowding, rack-rents, disease, strikes, lockouts, bankruptcy; debt, war and rumours of wars. And over against these a heartless luxury, ostentatious display of riches, selfish aggrandisement, and flowing naturally from it all arrogance and oppression, servility and fear—a welter of corruption and abuse which is visibly destroying the life of the human race. The presence of these evils is undeniable, just as the incapacity of the system to remedy them,is undeniable, and nothing is more certain while the forces which breed them determine the form of- our gpeial organisation than that we shall stumble from misery into Wretchedness and from one disaster to another. There is only one hope for the days to come, and this is the growing unity of the world's workers, the sense of human solidarity now moving the men of goodwill in all nations. We fail in our duty to the race and to the future if we do not exert every energy to strengthen this unity, and give it its outward form of co-operative industry aiming at the benefit and satisfaction of all. •* » * #