THE CAPITALISTIC SYSTEM.

Northern Advocate, 8 April 1931, Page 3

THE CAPITALISTIC SYSTEM.

_______ I (To the Editor.) | Sir, —In your loader entitled “Socialists Recant,” in Tuesday's issue, you quote from the “Daily Telegraph” as saying “those who have nothing to lose are the stuff of which revolutions are made.” How typically Marxian is that phrase. Marx said: “Proletariats of all lands unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains, and a world to gain,” How must it have appealed to the dispossessed ones, the unfortunate victims of the unfair distributive methods of our industrial : system! For though it may not be : absolutely true, since the worker gen- < erally has gained rather than lost by : the capitalistic system, it is sufficiently true as to bring the Capitalistic '< system into condemnation by any man 1 who thinks for himself. For whatever 1 may be said of Capitalism from the - productive side, as a distributive method it is a manifest failure, and i the passage of time merely intensifies < its weaknesses in this direction, and Marx’s prophecies as to this inherent ( tendency have so far been amply ful- j filled. On the one hand avo have such i an intensity of production as the c Avorld has never before knoAvn, and on ( the other hand we have vast armies of unemployed cither partly or totally ( debarred from access to the means of life, and consequently ]i\ 7 ing a sub- i standard existence. With our Avare- r houses bulging with products, millions j are unable to buy the things they T need, and on all sides avg hear the 5 farcical cry of “over-production,” £ What a satire upon our civilisation, f nine-tenths of whose victims arc liv- v ing a. hand-to-mouth existence! If this a is the best Capitalism can do for us, f is it any wonder that the powder is : set for the spark and may go up at _ ‘. 0

any moment? Is it at all strange that the exponents of “a new heaven and a new earth” are gaining ground day by day? Is it to be marvelled at that more and more people are becoming convinced that they have “ nothing to lose” and everything to gain by a revolutionary change in our social system? There is out way, and one way only, to combat revolutionary tendencies in our midst, and that is to remove the anomalies in our present system of society which form the greatest cause of discontent. We may have to steal quite a lot of our opponents’ ideas to achieve our ends. Bernard Shaw has shown us how society is largely eommunised even at the present day, and instances waterworks, electric light services, the postal service. roads and bridges, etc., as examples. We shall perhaps have to make a beginning by nationalising hanking. What of it? Change is Inevitable. What sort of a change do we want, and how do we want it, constitutionally or otherwise? Let us make up our minds one way or another and the cry of nothing to lose will Pall upon deaf ears. We shall make such a noise with our own activities that extraneous noises will be shut out. —I am, etc., J. M. J.'