NATURALISATION

Southland Times, Issue 18972, 20 June 1923, Page 9

NATURALISATION

DISTINGUISHED SOCIALIST RECANTS. WASTEFUL AND INEFFICIENT. In a striking and significant article in a recent number of the American Outlook, Mr John Spargo, the well known Socialist writer, whose works have been read and quoted the whole world over deliberately and emphatically renounces his former faith in the doctrine of nationalisation. “As a Socialist,” Mr Spargo reminds his readers, “during many years I advocated nationalisation of all mines and their control and administration by the Government, with some sort of arrangement for actual management by a body representative of workers, consumers and Government. I have opposed syndicalism and its vari-ant-8, including guild Socialism, because, in the last analysis they all placed a dangerous power, the control of a great basic industry, in the hands of a group or class, and thereby enabled that group or class, through that control, to dominate the life of the nation. It has been my belief, an important part of my faith, that a machinery could be developed which would make it possible to obviate this evil and to attain essential industrial democracy.” This good Socialist, in short, had dreamed of a great spiritual advance in which a collective consciousness and a collective conscientiousness would be developed. DISILLUSIONMENT. Having made this open confession Mr Spargo proceeds to explain how his eyes were opened to the realisation of industrial life. “I have to admit,” he continues, “that my belief in all forms of nationalisation has been so strained that it has become a tenuous thing at best, the collectivism of the war and poet-war periods has forced me to admit great disillusionment, to say the least. Wherever one turns for examples, the extensive experiments with nationalisation, the substitution of govern mental for private or quasi-private capitalist enterprise, show no results which can be regarded as encouraging or assuring. Everywhere one sees inefficiency, waste, retrogression. Our own experience with the railways was not entirely typical; it was an episode of brief duration, and throughout there remained in force limitations which would not have endured as part of a permanent policy and the like of which are not found in the more extended ex perimen ts of European countries. The limitations referred to operated as protective devices; they limited the amount of harm to our transportation system and to our economic life which the experiment could produce. Making every possible allowance for the circumstances in which that experiment took place, I am bound to believe that the sum of the results attained can only be regarded as a warning against further adventures in the same direction. Government operation of the railways was characterised by incredible inepitude, by failure to make the most elementary provision for the continuous development of the transportation system, and by the most wanton disregard of the larger social interests when immediate political expediency called for the sacrifice of these.” These observations, it should be remembered are applied to some of the results following from a less rigid application of the principles of nationalisation. AT ITS WORST. Mr Spargo looks further afield for still more impressive examples of the evils wrought by Government control. ‘'We saw nationalisation at its worst in Europe,” he declares. “Long before the war there was serious questioning of the claims made for nationalisation by its advocates. Government ownership and operation seemed to retard developmental progress. It seemed to be inseparable from a formidable mass of red tape. Somehow the institution of a frank and candid comparison of governmental enterprise with the most advanced capitalistic enterprise in the same country invariably showed that in the latter introduction of new methods, the elimination of the old abuses, and, in general, the constant realignment of the industry or business to correspond with human necessity was much easier than in the former.” These remarks apply to the war period. In his desire to be absolutely fair in his examination of the problem, Mr Spargo turns to the post-war period. APPALING BUREAUCRACY. Here he finds the abuses that have crept into the administration of industries and senices in time of peace even more flagrant than those that prevailed during the time of war. “In Russia,” he states, “as in every other country where nationalisation has been tried upon a large scale, an appalling amount of bureaucracy has resulted. The same phenomenon is perhaps the most striking of all the phenomena encountered by the traveller in Germany. We saw in this country during the war how rapidly Governmental agencies grow, increasing their staffs—and their pay rolls of course—and how difficult it is to cease them once they have been permitted to develop. Ido not doubt for a moment that forty per cent, of the employees of our Government at Washington could be dropped with a proportionate gain in efficiency —could be, that is, were it not for the fact that politicians fear nothing as much as the bureaucracy which at once serves and masters them.” From this the writer passes on to the discussion of particular cases. - CONSIDERED CONCLUSIONS. Returning to basic principles Mr Spargo makes an eloquent appeal for economic rehabilitation by tired and proved methods. "In my judgment,” he says, “any plan of nationalisation—meaning the substitution of Governmental for private enterprise—runs directly counter to the sum of available experience. Unless I misread the signs of the times, the great need of the world, the fundamental requisite for economic rehabilitation, is a vast strengthening of the capitalist system of the several countries. This requires a great strengthening of faith in the security of investments and the opening up of all possible channels for investment in productive enterprise. It requires the development of a vast army of investors in every country.” On these points there remains to-day little difference of opinion among accepted authorities. A LAST WORD. In conclusion Mr Spargo sums up the whole position. “For the present, at least, I am free to say,” he avers, “that I can see no hope of anything good or useful to be attained by any such extension of the power of the Government and its preponderance over the economic life of the nation as has been suggested. On the contrary, the sooner we can lessen those powers, reduce the size of our Governmental machine and its interference with the economic life of the nation, the better will it be for all of us.” Here is the moral of the whole story, a moral New Zealand well may apply to its own affairs in these strenuous days when the known highway is the road to safety.