PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20870, 9 November 1929, Page 11

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND.

TO THE KUITOK Stß, —With reference to the letter from " Queer Fellow " in your issue of November 7, I think it would be just ns well i! we got back to what started this correspondence. It was in connection with unemployment that I made the statement: "As long as the people's needs are privately owned and controlled, operated by a method of competition, the objective being private profits and dividends, then we cannot hope for a solution of our unemployment problem or of many others also that affect society." I asked, further, Is it morally' right that a person. born into this world should be denied his natural right to a full existence of the material existence to enable him to grow ' into a healthy unit of society, whon all these needs are there, and that the land, i which is the free gift of God or Nature, should in the past have been' allowed to drift into the hands of private people. ! and to be held by them under man-made laws, demanding something in the form of rent? It was .here that your correspon- ' dent " Queer Fellow " broke off to defend private ownership of land, and advised j me to go to Central Australia,, and said j that when I had been there 12 months I would be convinced that God meant the ! land to be privately owned, etc. From this he jumped to private ownership of love, wives, and women. In his last repl\ he says it -looks as if I had got a shock and was cornered on the rightful ownership question. Then he quotes Rua, the Maori prophet, as failing to carve out a living on the land and ultimately ending in gaol. Why Rua finished up in gaol he does not state. I would like, however, to ask your correspondent how the first pioneers of this or any country made a start. Did they not first have access to the land and apply their human labour to it, clearing the bush, building houses or huts, and carving their lines of communication —I have done a little of this myself—ultimately bringing the .whole natural conditions under the dominatiou of their skill and applying science and invention to subdue natural elements, which operate adversely, and in the other direction to assist progress in all their different manifestations. This is the only way civilisation has progressed and evolved; but civilisation went off the just track when the first comers and the more cunning claimed as their own, by devious methods, the mother earth, the land. This blunder has. cost us untold misery and devastation, and the loss of the flower of our manhood in such a measure that it will take us a long time to recover from the last bloody fitruggle, and this can only be done by co-operation in the interests of all for human needs on the basis of use and not profit in all the things which the human family needs in the form of food, clothing, fuel, and shelter. It is through gambling in these things by private individuals, who control them for profit that the surplus value of the product of labour is taken, and utilised further to degrade and pauperise the producers. I think this can be demonstrated as a fundamental fact in Capitalist production, because it is only in consumable goods that profits are made and surplus value produced. Another correspondent signing himself "Axios'' claims that private ownership of property is a much disputed question, with many leading economists, and that it behoves mere laymen to be not too dogmatic wben we go to the writings of authorities for our opinions, etc. I would like to ask "Axios" how we form an opinion at all? Is not ou- whole life from the cradle to the grave ' a matter of forming opinions all the time? As we 1 progress along the road we observe and reason. For this we can only use the history of the past and the present; We read a certain authority for the time being, and if after we have analysed his methods and deductions and brought our own to bear on them we are convinced they are sound, then we adopt them, and proceed to get the majority of the people

to do likewise nod perhaps improve on them and so on. “Axios,” after showing that I have analysed the situation in relation to private property correctly, still maintains I am become rather fogged, for the reason that I have not taken into consideration custom, which at the present stage of evolution pronounces the present state of affairs adequate for existing requirements. I fail to discern where this takes place. The fact that we have so many social inequalities and clashing of economic interests, resulting in civil and national and international wars, surely proves that existing requirements are not 1 met. Unemployment is a world-wide ■ chronic state in the social organism, affect- | ing the working class. The existencce of i idle rich is also a chronic state in society. ' The one is a natural corrollary of the other. I have to prove first, says this correspondent, that this present system does not promote the public, pood, and secondly, that the present limitations and restrictions are inadequate. This must be proved, says he, not from Scripture or" Labour Party policy, but from the present | state of civilisation. Very well, to save I argument, I grant this, but, what defini- ; lion does “Axios ” place on civilisation? Is not the teaching of Scripture in the world's churches to-day a part of cidlisa-

llahlir^n the ,. sanle applicable to the Labour Party policy, or to the policy of any other party or factor in society for that matter? The sum total of all diese social forces call them bv what name t ionT ' 1S the . thing we designate civilisanon.—i am. etc., November 7. P * Neiusox -