THE PROTECTORS OF THE POOR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23044, 21 November 1936, Page 21

THE PROTECTORS OF THE POOR

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Trotsky says again: “If organised economic life is unthinkable without compulsory labour service, the latter is not to be realised without the abolition of the fiction of freedom of labour and without the substitutino for it of the obligatory principle, which is supplemented by real compulsion.” We can compare the attitude taken up by Mr Semple in speaking to recalcitrant workmen. To return tc. Trotsky once more: “All our most important industries are in the hands of the State. When we say to the turner, Ivanoff, ‘You are bound at once to work at the Samovo factory, if you refuse you will not receive your ration.’ what are we to call it? Economic pressure or legal compulsion? He cannot go to another factory, for all factories are in the hands of the State, which will not allow such a change.” I wonder how New Zealand people will take this.—l am, etc., Anti-Communist.