More Socialism

Northland Age, Volume IX, Issue 47, 19 March 1940, Page 1

More Socialism

W t ith the progress of the war socialisation—that dreaded bogey of the individualistic citizen—marches from strength to strength and the dearly prized liberty of doing what one likes with one’s own is limited more and more. But however bitterly one resents the limits of one’s own liberty, there are times when we warmly approve the limitation of the liberty of other people if it touches our own interests or —more patriotically—if it detrimentally affects the interests of the community as a whole. Even the most conservative of citizens will warmly approve of the action of the Government in assuming control of the Auckland wharves and preventing any delay in the handling of shipping goods. Every preventable hour’s delay of an overseas vessel in port is a blow at our war effort, and so a help to the enemy. Whatever grievances the wharf workers have they must not be allowed to assist Germany in this way. Like the farmers, the wharf workers have leal grievances, especially in the long drawn-out delay in getting an industrial award. Between employers and employed on the waterfront there has been for years at best a state of armed neutrality, often breaking out into warfare on trifling provocation, causing loss and annoyance to the public. As far as impartial outsiders may judge, the right in these quarrels has never been wholely on one side, and the wharf workers have always complained that their side has never been fairly stated for the public to judge; that the press and the business community have always held them up to public odium as always in the wrong. There is a certain amount of truth in this. It is not a rare thing to hear citizens during a wharf dispute talk of wharf workers as a set of too well paid men, unjustly privileged by the Government with a monopoly of wharf work, who seize every opportunity to cease work to press selfish claims, who deliberately practise “go slow” tactics to spin out the work and enable them to draw more pay; in this and other ways increasing the already heavily-burdened producers’ costs. One has even met citizens who were of opinion that the average wharf worker earned from £7 to £lO a week regularly by working half as hard for half the hours as, say, an average farmers’ week. As the wharf men have a lot of time usually on their hands to mull over their grievances, and as there is a large proportion of the agitator class among them who take care that every grievance is magnified, statements like these do not make for good feeling. As a body, wharf workers are neither better nor worse than any other class of manual workers, their own interests are apt to bulk too largely in their eye to the detriment of the interests of others. But that is a fault which every other class in the community shares more or less. Naturally a misfortune that touches us personally afflicts us more

than a much greater misfortune that happens to our neighbours. And we have learned from bitter experience that no man and no body of men can be trusted with the power of becoming judges in their own case. It is from this necessity of having our disputes with our neighbours judged by some impartial authority that created the law that brings us peace and order in our own national affairs. It is to the lack of any impartial authority to decide international disputes that we owe the last disastrous war and the equally disastrous present war. Industrial wars spring from the same

root, are equally wasteful and destructive, and can only be abolished in the same way. There must be some authority to step in and hold the

scales of justice even between the opponents, and, above all, to see that the interests of the whole community do not suffer in a conflict they have done nothing to provoke and which it is to their interest to have settled swiftly and justly. If liberty must be restricted in the process, any necessary restriction is a cheap price to pay for the result. True liberty is not to do what one likes but to do as one ought. Our Neighbour’s Duty and Ours All this of course is truism, but truisms that constantly need to be restated. It is easy enough for us to see our neighbour’s duty in critical times like the present, it is not so easy to see our own. That young men should be ordered to leave their homes and families, submit to rigid discipline, face certain hardship and the probability of wounds and death in defence of the lives and liberties of the people dwelling in comparative safety at home, is demanded, as the plain duty of young men to their country by people who are not prepared to undergo a fraction of the same suffering for the same end themselves, and who often think how little they can subscribe to patriotic funds without incurring unpopularity. If this war is to be won it will be won not by insisting on the duty of our neighbours to make sacrifices but on setting them a good example by our willingness to make sacrifices. If it is necessary for the soldier to submit to discipline for that end, it is equally necessary for us to show the same willingness to do so. If it is necessary for the soldier to trust and obey his leaders, for that is the only way to victory, so it is equally our duty to sink our private preferences and even our pet prejudices and loyally support the men whom the popular vote has put in office. As long as this war lasts there must be unity—• even, if needs be, at the cost of liberty —because it is only by whole-hearted disciplined unity that final victory can be achieved. That undoubtedly calls for sacrifices; but the man who is not prepared to make these sacrifices cannot lay claim in any sense to the name of patriot. The Need for Compulsion War is a great evil but it is not altogether destitute of good. It certainly deepens the sense of national unity, it breaks down many barriers between men and men, breeds comradeship among civilians as well as among fighting men, brings home to us in a practical way that we are in reality all parts of one another, united in a common struggle for the common good. We are forgetful for a short time at least of the bitter competition that makes us warring atoms in a world where another’s gain is often our loss. In that struggle we are too often forced to fight for our own hand, or at best to consider the interests of our little section or class, which is only selfishness a little less crass. If wars create national hatreds that tend to breed more wars, they tend also to promote peace among quarrelsome factions within the nations themselves. It is in the growth of this spirit of unity that there lies the strength of a nation, for it lies at the very foundations of society. To look not only on our own things but also on the things of others is the only foundation for a stable state.

If this spirit was wide-spread, if everyone was unselfish, public-spirited, ready to sacrifice their own private interests if need be to the public good, then not only would wars cease from the earth but there would be little

left for governments to do. That would be “socialisation” in the truest and best sense of the word. Unfortunately we have not reached that happy stage yet; as between nations we seem further off it than ever. But if co-operation among mankind —personal, class, national, international, based on the union of all for the good of all—is the only hope for mankind, then a certain amount of compulsion —“compel them to come in”—is necessary and desirable. If the warring shipping interests cannot see the absolute necessity of sinking their quarrels and working whole-heartedly and efficiently at their part in the common task it is the elementary duty of the Government to compel them by reason if possible, by force if necessary, to do so, and the same principle must be applied to every other class and every man in the community. It is deplorable that it should be necessary but if necessary—but only then—it should be applied firmly and impartially. Mankind learns the necessity of unity very slowly, even when it has been brought to pay lip service to the principle. We prefer to clench hands and fight rather than clasp hands and help, and the circumstances under which most of us are compelled to earn our daily toead does little to check the spirit of selfishness in us. To be compelled to act together, however unwillingly, because our common safety is in peril, is therefore not altogether a bad thing. From experience we may learn that pure selfishness—our class selfishness —is a shortsighted and unprofitable thing, and that under wise guidance “socialisation” is the only road to progress and the permanent peace we all desire.