COLLECTIVISM OR LIBERALISM?

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 6 February 1928, Page 3

COLLECTIVISM OR LIBERALISM?

(To the Editor) Sir,—The two philosophers of social existence, collectivism and Liberalism, are so diametrically opposed to each other that all attempts to harmonise their working have hitherto failed. Collectivism postulates the mass as all important and the individual, with all his personal attributes, as merely, a cell in the body politic or a part of the machine named the State. The ego or soul of man is lightly regarded as nothing more than a. drop in the great ocean of humanity made, governed and directed by the laws which control the collective being of society. Such is the collective idea of human life and the activities of those who absorb this philosophy are everywhere in more or less degree directed towards organising, disciplining, coercing and forcing the individual into subjection to what is assumed to he the collective 'will and interest. All force and dictatorship of authprities in Soviet Russia are applied with the reason of interesting the will of the mass and is named "dictatorship of the proletariat" on this ground. The same plea of justification for all acts in suppression of personal liberty is put forward by Mussolini and the Fascisti in Italy. The interest of the State is taken as paramount. The conservative collectivism of Fascism and the radical collectivism of Bolshevism are identical in postulating the mass as absolute in authority. It is the political god and its exponents are its prophets who set forth the sacred revelations. By its very nature the authority of collectivism is one of force. Bights of opinion, feeling, personal aspiration and initiative cannot be recognised where the collective will is the all important consideration, It is remarkable that the present day manifestations of collectivism have had their rise in the school of that more nebulous philosophy named socialism. Both Lenin and Mussolini were nurtured and trained in that academy of the ideal. Amongst Labour socialists the World over we find the preachers of collectivism, generally with limitations of their own affirming. In New Zealand leading members of the socialist "New Zealand Labour Party" are exponents of colleetivist ideas. Only when they run up against real collectivism, the idea carried out to its logical conclusions,, as in Italy and Russia, do we find men like Messrs D. G. Sullivan, J. McCombs and others repudiating the mass idea and taking shelter in Liberalism. It is very notable indeed that men and women who subscribe in socialist platforms and colleetivist ideals are yet in practice really Liberals in their politics. This mixing of ideas which differ and conflict is even carried into the party councils and in the Labour Party's platform are found side by side planks which in principle are the negation of each other, an individualist and liberal plank following or preceding a colleetivist affirmation. Tlfe philosophy of Liberalism rightly understood is the very antithesis of collectivism. Its foundation is the recognition of man's psychic and biological nature. The individual is recognised as something other than a mere unit in a composite body. Individuality has a value of its own and influences the mass for human progression even as the collective body of humanity creates conditions for the individual. The rationalist view of human life which recognises the futility of suppression has for its first principle the ideal of liberty. Freedom both for the individual and the mass is the idea which inspires the political doctrine of Liberalism. Between this ideal of personal human liberty and the machine philosophies of Bolshevism and Fascism—with their inevitable dictatorship —there must necessarily be conflict. The recognition of the contracts between democracy and dictatorship; personal freedom and mass autocracy; individual conscious and collective psychologic impulse. This concept should ever lead us in the efforts for human betterment to mould our policies of political thought and action so as to preserve the individual and utilise the collective not for itself alone hut for the further enrichment and development of personal being on which all human welfare rests. This is the doctrine of Liberalism covered by various names in national and international politics yet the same principle throughout all. We are, etc.. N.Z. WELFARE LEAGUE. Wellington. 3rd Feb.