NEW ZEALAND IN THE “POWER AGE”

Southland Times, Issue 23634, 8 October 1938, Page 8

NEW ZEALAND IN THE “POWER AGE”

Mr Lee’s Socialist Vision

We print below a review of Mr J. A. Lee’s controversial book, "Socialism In New Zealand,” which has just been published by Whiicombe and Tombs, Ltd. in conjunction with T. Werner Laurie, Ltd., London. The price of the book is 13/6 and our copy comes from Whitcombe and Tombs. Mr Lee is Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Finance.

A book on socialism by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Finance should be interesting at any time: on the eve of a General Election it becomes significant as a revelation of left-wing thought within the Labour Party. Mr Lee describes his book as “one man's opinion of from whence and to whither New Zealand is moving,” and says specifically ‘that it is not an “official interpretation of the tendencies inherent in Labour policy.” Nevertheless a man’s opinions are directly affected by his environment; and Mr Lee’s political environment happens to .be the Labour movement in New Zealand. Much of the book is descriptive, and deals with the growth of economic and political conditions in a young country. Mr Lee gives full credit to previous and conservative Governments for the development of State . enterprise and social services, but he insists that such action has been the result of a socialist tendency inherent in New _ Zealand from the beginning, and he finds the reason for this in the pressure of a machine age, unhindered here by slow growths of tradition. It seems to me that capitalism cannot avoid the socializing inevitability of machine production any more than, despite casualties, chickens can avoid - being hens. What is called western civilization is bound rapidly for collectivism. The impetus, already terrific, accelerates. The choice with which I see the human family confronted is not whether there shall be socialism or no socialism, but whether socialism will arrive through democratic selection or whether socialism shall be imposed from above.

This confident explanation leaves no room for the unpredictable factors of experience. Men have built the machines: now they must submit to the work of their own hands and do what they can to compress the various and dynamic attributes of human nature into the rigid and controlled precision of piston rods. Yet a choice of direction in politics seems to - have been possible in countries that refuse the alternatives of socialism and fascism and prefer the middle and democratic way of an evolutionary process that retains and accepts the best values of the past and present without clamouring for a brand-new economy unrooted in experience. Mr Lee condemns a dictated socialism and is not afraid to say plainly that “the philosophic mind cannot accept a mechanical adjustment of society as the final road to happiness.” In the same way he refuses to accept the religious' significance injected by demagogues into totalitarian forms of government. Democratic socialism will be sceptical and refuse to see God but only good in production, and hence we may get the material advantages of mass production and secure individual rather than massproduced mind.

THE NEW DOGMATISM What seems to have escaped his notice is that the zealots of socialism repeatedly demonstrate the less admirable attitudes of religious reformers in the darker ages. In seeking to impose a new economic condition on mankind they reveal the same certainty of belief (already, for some of them, crystallized into the dogmas of Marx and Lenin), the same proselytizing fervour and frequently the same intolerance that led too often and too violently to persecution. Mr Lee has no doubts that his own political beliefs are the best for New Zealand. He makes no allowance for the o|her man’s point of view and seems incapable of recognizing the qualities of a richer life that exist in the varieties of opinion. Per-; versely he takes pride in our freedom from the coercive methods of fascism, and yet in the next sentence betrays the lurking bigot

Democracy succeeds in New Zealand with neither castor oil nor book burning. Although, again, I never enter a library without sympathy for book burners. It isnt the burning that’s wrong: it’s the books burned. If fascists would stop burning books alive and cremate the dead ones!

This is not the opinion of a liberal thinker. Men who can view, without repugnance and contempt, the burning of any kind of books by any. particular group of fanatics, are not likely to be the trustees of a democratic cultUMr Lee returns to his dream of socialism based on machines when he describes the water power of New Zealand with enthusiasm comparable with that shown by Russian victims of the dynamo complex. These torrents, spilling through precipitous gorges, in a power age, make New Zealand a country of incredible potential wealth. Maybe civilization as we know it is not far removed from mechanical power, which suggests that the engineer might eventually make of New Zealand the wealthiest and most civilized of all countries.

It is hard to accept this view of civilization as a planned subservience to machines. Like other theorists obsessed by the material aspects of the “power age,” Mr Lee has no fear that the process of establishing a socialist economy will destroy the cultural values that remain the basis of a true civilization, and that once the people have been reduced to the status of cogs in a vast machine they may be incapable of resisting the mass mentality. But even if these deeper considerations are ignored he still shows a lapse of practical insight. Tire manufacturing potentialities of New Zealand in a power age will Anally give a New Zealand mechanical civilization the highest pinnacle in the Pacific, although some are blind to .this future • . •

The vision might seem closer to reality if New Zealand had a big and growing population; but Mr Lee does not discuss the declining birth-rate or the pros and cons of big-scale immigration. What is the foundation, in practical administration, of the brave new socialist world? Mr Lee goes to the heart of the problem in his chapter on banking and finance. With example- after example of defeat to profit by, the Labour Party in New Zealand, convinced that no improvement in social conditions could be effected permanently without complete control of financial power, was determined to win that power In the golden moment of victory . . This sort of tactic should be the unvarying tactic of democratically-elected Labour. To win the main citadel in the moment of enthusiasm is easy.

THE PEOPLE’S MONEY Accordingly the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Bill was passed, and the Reserve Bank became a State institution. Mr Lee explains that the powers conferred on the Government by the new Act have been used “with a good deal of caution . . . some think with too-much caution, others with too little.” But he adds that “the new unorthodox powers are only starting to be used.” It becomes clear, as Mr Lee expounds his thesis, that the Labour Party plans to reduce interest on public finance to vanishing point and that

its aim is everywhere the increased use of the public credit. “If there is to be any interest on public finance, writes Mr Lee, “a Labour Government must secure that interest for the people.” Later he adds:— Certainly I want to see the .new powers utilized to the maximum. Personally, I should like to see every conversion or new loan underwritten at a rate too low for capitalist subscription.” It irks him to see that the Minister in charge of the Public Trust is “the biggest capitalist in New Zealand, responsible for the careful control of over £60,000,00.

For here is surely the greatest contradiction in politics—a socialist Finance Minister who is New Zealand’s greatest capitalist. The contradiction is inherited, not sought. And to the extent that the Trustee is assuring the income of a host of widows and minors in an unscrupulous world, the Trustee is definitely socialist. But can a socialist trustee conserve large-scale capitalism in perpetuity?

The calm assumption that professional integrity is exclusively a socialist attribute is evidence of a frame of mind that can appeal only to those who find no fault with the dominance of fixed ideas. The Public Trustee is doing a valuable work and doing it efficiently. But because the institution is framed on capitalist lines a Labour demagogue feels the- strong urge to interfere, to change, to introduce the socialist method. He says that “nothing will ever be done that will not leave the average beneficiary in a position of greater safety.” But “greater safety is not possible in relation to the functions, of the Public Trustee. What Mr Lee-means, of course, can be found in the following passage:— There must be a huge number of necessitous people, struggling "along on meagre incomes returned from interest, who would be much better off with assured returns guaranteed by the annual revenues of the Crown. Today, the Public Trustee guarantees the principal. Tomorrow a really socialist Trustee will guarantee income, not to a few widows, a few orphans, a few weaklings, but to all through superannuation, invalidity . and old-age pensions. 1 and so on. .Large-scale private accumulation and private investment, bequeathed in trust to the unfit descendant of a capitalist entrepreneur, are a concomitant of a dying system.

If Mr Lee had been able to escape from the tug of his fixed' idea while he looked into the facts of Public Trusteeship he would , have found that the great majority of the legatees whose estates are managed by the Public Trust Office have inherited small sums or small properties. To speak of the “unfit descendant of a capitalist entrepeneur” is to reduce all legatees (many of them wage-earners who trustfully support the Labour Party) to the status of a socialist bogy. And to deny the right even in theory, of men and women to leave their small savings (or their large ones, for that matter) to wives and sons and daughters is to strike at one of the most cherished privileges of family life. Mr Lee thinks that the State should do everything; and it is true that the more widely a socialist Government interferes with economic and social institutions the more inevitably it will be forced to interfere in the narrowing area of individual freedom. In Mr Lee’s socialist State the individual would think less and less of his dependants; he would surrender more and more of his responsibilities to the Government and become a somewhat sheep-like person, looking up to be fed, and retreating to the preoccupations of a new and terrifying selfishness. But if interest is to be cut down almost to vanishing point, what is to be the position of the savings bank depositor? Here Mr Lee is lenient, although no doubt he realizes that he is being a trifle inconsistent.

What is to be the socialist attitude to a Post Office Savings Bank? Personally. I do not think there can be any exception to paying a small subsidy on a limited deposit, as at present-. . . While it is not desirable that tens of millions should be accumulated in private hands for investment purposes, there is sanity in enabling every citizen—even in a completely socialist regime—to have a small cash accumulation for occasional emergencies.

Again it should be pointed out that the “tens of millions” in “private hands” are not necessarily in a few hands. But Mr Lee challenges the right of an individual to save his money to the point at which it could be used in private enterprise. The good citizen must work for the State and save only what he needs for “occasional emergencies.”

PRODUCTION AND CREDIT

Of the money policy in the socialist State it is necessary to say only that it represents an increasing use of public credit. Everything is to be “a charge on annual production.” The phrase constantly recurs. All State activities—which will mean almost everything in Mr Lee’s Utopia—are to be financed with a light-hearted faith in an increasing and constantly profitable productivity. One advantage in this method seems to be that where there are no profits there can be no losses. Even the railways will escape from the need for a business-like administration.

While it may be fashionable to represent the difference between the 2.39 per cent, earned by the railways and the 4.25 per cent, charged on our national debt as an annual railway loss, it is well to recognize that since 1896 interest paid has equalled £44,432,005 . . . With moneys available at a lower rate from the Reserve Bank, railways development could be extended rather than retarded to the community’s benefit. It is clear that Mr Lee sees no value in interest charges as a check on spending. But then spending can be planned on a lavish scale while the future, is being mortgaged; and when inflation has been proved a bitter illusion it will still be necessary to talk of “socialism in chains” and to seek some other easy path to financial dictatorship. Omniscient minds are needed for the tasks in socialist planning which Mr Lee contemplates in the golden age of collectivism. But there is need also for discipline and a new spirit among the workers. Mr Lee says rightly that a trade union “cannot have power and good conditions without responsibility,” and he believes, that there is “a growing appreciation of this fact.” But what of the future? There are limits to concessions.

How to achieve a new outlook among our own people is the difficulty confronting the Labour movement. How to make trade unions agents of the transformation rather than tactical organizations seeking to bargain between a socialist Government and private enterprise for the best possible rate. is one of the great difficulties confronting a Labour Government’attempting to make a democratic approach toward new social conditions. How to maintain speed of effort with reduction of hours. The only answer seems to be that trade unions must become propaganda organizations for industrial efficiency . . . As we approach nearer and nearer to the point at which industry is owned and controlled

and operated by the people, it becomes less possible to advance one group of workers at the expense of others.

But Mr Lee has previously denied that there is an evangelist motive in the Labour movement. The plain truth is that a great many workers vote Labour without knowing that they are voting for socialism. There are individualists in every section of the New Zealand community, in the trade unions no less than among the business men and farmers; and if socialism as envisaged in this book is to be implemented completely it can be done so only through an increasing reliance on the methods of authoritarian government. The socialism of theorists makes small allowance for the varieties and con-’ flicts of human experience; in modern times there is only one State that has been able to bring it full-grown from theory into practice, and that is an Asiatic despotism where the arbitrary disposal of the lives and destinies of human masses has been a feature of authoritarian rule since the dawn of history. New Zealand is a democracy, and is likely to remain one, in spite of the socialist theories of the left-wing politicians. Mr Lee’s book is a symptom and a warning that may not pass unheeded.