CORRESPONDENCE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 72, Issue 6239, 7 June 1946, Page 4

CORRESPONDENCE

OUR READERS’ VIEWPOINTS THE GREAT ILLUSION Sir, —Mr Smedley seems to imagine that I have not read the Soviet Constitution. The full constitution is published with preface by the Sydney Webbs. Few people realise that Franco gave the Spanish people a completely democratic constitution, but just as in Russia, so in Spain, the constitution is rendered valueless by the imposition of a planned economy. What rights exist for the individual are too dangerous to exercise. I have no doubt that Mr Smedley is well intentioned and like so many of us is seeking for a way to a better world, but he thinks of socialism in terms of what it hopes to achieve, instead of thinking in terms of what it is. Socialism is merely a method for organising society and that method is that the State plans and directs the course of production, industry and distribution. Whether that method results in what it hopes to achieve is quite a different matter. What we are concerned with is the method, and how it must function. We know there must be ■unitary control. We know from both Lenin and Stalin “it would be the greatest folly and most senseless Utopianism to suppose that the transition from capitalism to socialism is possible without compulsion and dictatorship. The unquestioning submission to a single will is unconditionally necessary.” Both define the necessary dictatorship as “nothing more nor less than power which directly rests in violence which is not limited by any laws or restricted by any absolute rules.” Again, dealing with trials, the state: “The legal trial is not intended to replace terrorism, but to base terrorism on a fundamental basis and give it legal form.” If one really desires to ascertain the truth about the socialist experiment in Russia, all one needs to do is to read with the exercise of common sense. The British Labour Party, in 1940 published a pamphlet on Russia, which stated: “Russia’s policy! is a policy of deception, black-* mail, trickery, cynicism and brutality. The Russian system is a new kind of slavery.” Another pamphlet by the British Labour Party, dealing with the Moscow trials stated: “The value of the confessions is reversed. They prove that Stalin’s terrorism is adding to moral perversion—a kind of mental decay. In every* case in which we are able to check the facts we find the most monstorus lies in the indictment.” Mr Smedley must realise that the British Labour Party would not make these statements if they were not true, for it is against their interests to do so. Paul Winterton, a communist, was official broadcaster from Moscow for three years. He left there less than a year ago, stating that he “refused to stay in such a den of lies and hypocrisy.” It is very much in the interests of Mr Maloney (a socialist) not to disparage the Russian experiment. Mr Smedley must remember that Maloney’s statements are supported by .some of the world’s leading socialists and communists, including Citrine, Max Eastman, Eugene Lyons, Alexander Smith, Fred Beale and many others. If Mr Smedley had read Quentin Reynolds carefully, he would see that Reynolds is telling him the same thing—that there is no freedom of speech in Russia, and rule is by fear. Common sense tells us that no good can come of such a system.

The very highest socialist authorities including the Webbs, must admlWthat millions have died of starvation in Russia, and this fact cannot be reconciled with plenty. The facts are all against you, Mr Smedley. All around us in New Zealand is evidence of the stupidity of the whole idea of socialism—the starvation in Russia, the famine in Europe—the brutal socialist rule by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and now socialist Tito, are overwhelming evidence that not one of the four fundamental freedoms which mankind cannot do without, can exist in a socialist state, — I am, etc-,. “ONLOOKER”