SOCIALISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22125, 1 December 1933, Page 7

SOCIALISM

TO THE EDITOR. Sik, —I have to deal once more with Mr Halsey Smith’s glorification of Sociali Lm. After a careful perusal of the bel Jiefa expressed on this subject in his first letter, I ventured to offer some unfavourable criticism. I pointed out that, to all appearance, the Socialist motto 1 was “ All for the proletariat and nothing for anybody else,” and that, in my humble j opinion, it would be utterly impossible I { o r the Socialists to give effect to the 1 programme sketched out by Mr Smith I without their having recourse to measures I indistinguishable from outright, barefaced | robbery. ~ , i I naturally expected some attempt, however feeble or futile, on the part of Mr Smith to diminish the weight of my ; arguments. But, no! The only Rolauu : I receive for my Oliver is a senseless babble about some mythical operating i table, and a quaint mixture of metaphors 1 accusing me of “efflorescing like a blandly flippant sirocco ”•—matters which, possibly interesting enough in their ; proper time and place, seem strangely irrelevant to the topic under consideration. I had been under the impression ■ that it was Socialism, and not operating 1 tables, that Mr Smith and I were discussing. Will he not, then, like the proverbially good cobbler, stick to his last. Will he not, at least, make an effort to disprove the allegations I have made. I am quite convinced, however, that such a task is totally beyond his powers, for, in order to accomplish it with the sligntest prospect of success, he would be compelled to fall back upon the painful expedient of eating his own words and flatly contradicting statements he had previously made. In. proof of this, let ; me append a few brief extracts, cmled I from one of his own letters, which appeared in the Daily Times a little while back. Dealing in this letter with the question of how common ownership and democratic control are to be attained under the Socialist regime, Mr Smith expressed himself as follows:—“ The first step in the resolution" —will readers kindly note this last word ?—“ is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class” “The proletariat,” continues Mr Smith, “ will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, ail capital from the bourgeoisie, and to centralise all instru ments of production in the hands of the State—i.e.. the proletariat organised .as the State/’ Here is plain speaking with a vengeance. It is indeed to be All lor the proletariat and nothing for anybody else.” Observe carefully Mr Smith s definition of the State which Socialism desires to usher in. It is to be all proletariat; the rest of us do not appear in the picture at all. This is, of course t mighty unpleasant reading for such ol us as have the misfortune of being outside the favoured class, but wone is to follow. Our Socialist doctor reaches his climax in the. administration of a particular! v nauseous pill. “Of course, in the beginning,” he says, “this” —he is referring here to the use by the proletariat of their supremacy—“ cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production. These are the actual words of Mr Smith, a Socialist himself, and therefor peculiaiffy fitted to reveal the inner secrets of the Socialistic creed. I think that your readers will agree that they justify, beyond all power of contradiction, my contention that the seizure and confiscation of private proverty are part and parcel of the Socialistic campaign—indeed, are the poison gas to which the Socialists trust for their ultimate victory. Ah, robberyl It has an ugly sound!—l am, etc., T. Russell. Dunedin, November 30.