CAPITAL LEVY DELUSIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18764, 18 January 1923, Page 11

CAPITAL LEVY DELUSIONS

TO THE EDITOB. Sot,—Under the above heading- among others you reprint in your issue o£ the lltir an article Irom the Sunday Pictorial by Sir Sydney Low, who says that “the British Labour Party’s favourite project of confiscating wealth, by a capital levy or otherwise, is based on a delusion, or, as I should prefer to call it, an economic superstition.” There exists between the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Socialist or Communist Party a wide chasm which can only bo bridged by education. Anyone by the payment of a small fee may become a member of the Labour Party, whereas one can only become a Socialist by a study of scientific Socialism. Of course, this does not prevent certain opportunistic individuals and others, who do so througli ignorance, from claiming to be what they are not—namely. Socialists. Socialists know that eo long as the capital class own the means of lite, there can bo no question of a levy on capital. Socialists or Communists do not as Sir Sydney Low states, think that wealth is money. They know that wealth is not money. Money is simply one of the use-value forma of the commodity, gold, and as such it functions solely as a means of exchange in home retail ' circulation. Nevertheless, although wealth is not money it takes on at times the form of money. Every Socialist or Communist believes the Marxian statement that the wealth of’ those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, preseuts itself aa an immense accumulation of commodities. T’he sols premise on which Sir Sydney Low rests for his conclusions is that ‘‘the wealth of capitalist society exists solely on credit.” He says, “credit is the basis of wealth and that wealth itself is an intangible, impalpable thing.” I am forced to admit that for anyone who starts irom the.same premise as Sir Sydney Low would and must arrive at the same conclusions. But, is the premise correct or incorrect? There can be no delusion as to tho existence of the wealth of capitalist society. Neither is it any delusion that its very superabundance is clogging the wheels of production and is the solo cause of the past and present industrial stagnation with its untold misery to tha toiling masses. Of course to the workers the wealth they produce is on intangible and impalpable thing, in eo far that they neither own nor have any share in it; but, to deny its existence one would need to be shorn of the five senses. Anyone can tell us that there are vast stores of wealth (commodities) waiting to be unloaded, only the conditions for its release are lacking. Credit has vanished, as n knowledge of economics shows it docs during every crisis, and yet Sir Sydney Low says it is the basis of wealth. It is the possession of wealth in the shape of commodities which enables its owners to give credit. In fact, the capitalist mode of production forces the producers to give ouch credit. This being so, it follows that wealth is tho basis of credit, and the basis of wealth is slavery, just as much so, as it was under feudalism or chattel slavery. The harrowing account which Sir Sydney Low gives of the effects which would follow any al tempt on the part of the wage workers to retain, not confiscate, tho wealth they alone pi ounce and which tho capitalists have confiscated, is enough to melt the heart of any but a Socialist or Communist. Again, had Sir Sydney Low understood Socialism or its advanced form Communism, ho would know that under a system of Socialism there could exist no such thing as rich or poor. Classes would bo abolished from human society, and no one would be able to sell or exchange what was the common property of all. Moreover, Socialism and capitalism cannot function side by aide. Capitalism must fall before Socialism may rise. Finally if the arguments put forward by Six SydneyLow are typical of the depths to which the capitalist class is forced to resort in order to maintain its political supremacy, then the capitalist stage coach is irretrievably bogged, in its own quicksand, and for capitalism the history of the evolution of human society has no significance.—l am, etc., Gbeo.