ATTACK ON CAPITALISM.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18554, 29 April 1930, Page 12

ATTACK ON CAPITALISM.

To the Editor o! the ” Tirntm Herald.” Sir, —The indictment against the capitalist system of society voiced by Mr James Thorn in his presidential address before the delegates of the New Zealand Labour Party’s conference in Wellington last Monday was sufficiently caustic and extensive to impel some measure of defence from your flueiu pen. You had a golden opportunity to pen a leading article extolling the useful functions of capitalism as a necessary stage in the evolution of human society. This opportunity you failed to appreciate. Therefore it must be conceded that in this polemic conflict you have failed rather badly. Your hasty and thoughtless discernment ends in an all too obvious foul for tne problem of unemployment is merely mentioned in the course of the indictment as one of the most glaring anomalies incidental to and arising out of the development of modern capitalism. It is difficult to explain away or to understand your failure to attack the weak points in Mr Thorn’s indictment. A glimpse of the excerpt from the address would have served give inspiration for a decisive k.o. to the president’s mental solar plexus. A few lines in the address were pregnant with weak logic and you had all the evidence required in the past history and experience of Labour Governments in Australia and files of the recem controversy in your • olumns anent the defeat of the Queensland Labour Government —what a splendid opening you missed? In charging the New Zealand Labour Party with "a disinclination to deal with the question,” i.e. of unemployment “with courage and frankness.” a charge which could bo substantiated out of the cumulative thought expressed and the attitude adopted previous to the 1930 conference had you confined yourself to relevant matter —you fail to score even a single hit. Your intellectual capacity is exhausted and “fancy”—never a reliable aid on the polemic field *ave to sidetrack an opponent and incidentally your readers—plays havoc with your thoughts. Visions of what would or might happen if the community of this “Dominion were to accept.” the pink or Labour Party brand of "the socialist doctrine of the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution ana exchange: a repetition of the foolishness displayed by the agitators who recently attempted to involve the freezing works in an industrial upheaval with heavy losses to tTie producers, could not help but inflict heavy losses on the community.” How the heart of the capitalist Press bleeds for the primary producers and the dear old community whenever a struggle takes place between the corporations of capitalism and the wage-slaves? It is a convenient trick to enlist the sympathy of the producers especially in cases where producers’ interests are vitally

affected—on the side of the big employers in these struggles against the working class, and» while I can sympathise with working farmers in losses arising out of these conflicts, yet I must point ; out that the producers are not altogether blameless —for long as there is no dispute in industries affecting producers they take little or no heed of the wage-earners’ lot, but immediately a dispute occurs then farmers with few exceptions rally to assist Mammon to defeat his slaves It never occurs to such farmers that in assisting to crush Labour they are making a rod for their own backs, ana that for their assistance an insidious and subtle system of rapacious exploitation and propaganda is meted out to them by big interests which keeps them helpless and hopelessly divided among themselves, hinders and obstructs the few intelligent farmers to organise primary producers into corporate bodies for mutual aid and defence especially in the.efforts to control the disposal of farmers’ commodities, and keeps farmers unnecessarily antagonistic towards the advanced or extreme thinkers in the Labour Movement. The term “Nationalisation,” is an ambiguous subtlety In the hands of militant Labour, it can be used to effect big improvements and advance very materially the emancipation of Labour, but in the hands of the Labour Party it would be the best haven or refuge of a chaotic and declining capitalism. Strikes and other measures of protest would undoubtedly figure largely in the struggle against the economic and social injustice of a more privileged capitalism rescued in the winter of its decay by the Labour Party under whose regime Capitalism will acquire a fresh lease of life, but it will be state-capitalism reorganised to the highest point of efficiency i.e. Industrial Rationalisation. It will mean upper-class socialism for the few and increasing misery for the working dat» whose ranks will be swelled by those engaged at present in small businesses that ultimately will be crushed out of existence and the major portion of agriculturalists whose nominallyI independent occupations will cease [ with the break-down and final collapse of the present system of individual or family owned agricultural holdings, i This may seem to you rather a I pessimistic forecast of the future but | ample evidence is already available to support this view. I cannot permit your alleged “foolishness” of the agitators in \ the recent freezing-works’ dispute to i pass uncorrected. These agitators, I otherwise officially referred to as ; “members of the Propaganda Com- ; mittee,” are wiser, much wiser indeed ! than the majority of the rank and file | give them credit for. I know some of . them, nay worked with them for | months together and they are head i and shoulders so to speak above the ordinary agitator who has studied little lif anything and who is always hail I fellow well met with the “heads of the [ organisation." In the recent dispute I “the trouble” was not of their choosing. As was well said by a member of the Farmers’ Union at a recent meeting “the trouble” was caused by the employers’ policy of sorting out thest stalwarts for victimisation, hence the dispute was forced on these agitators. They were compelled to fight and though confronted with irretrievable loss to themselves and their fellowworkers for the time being, still it is better to have fought than not to fight at all. Success is denied them in this protest but a persecuted cause will triumph eventually. Your advice “If the Labour Party sought to give a good lead, the strongest castigation should be administered to the. freezing works I disturbers” is not sound. Remember i that politics are r,he expression of [ industrial and social needs —economic I organisation precedes political organis- | ation—in short and so far as the worki ing-class is concerned we militant hope to control both our industrial I officials and Labour politicians. At ; present our paid officials—nominally I our servants —are all too frequently our I masters and as for the Labour Party j officials, well if they tried to castigate us (they certainly don’t love us) we’ll proudly point to the well-merited defeat of the Labour Government in Queensland. Enough said. They will understand. There has been far too much interference on the part of both industrial and political-Labour, ad- ; venturers with the prerogatives of the j rank and file. The old style of things is also at fault for changes in capitalisi. organisation and tactics compel corresponding changes in working-class organisation, and the orthodox official type of mind is hence out of date. We want men and women with a high level ,of knowledge in working-class | philosophy and tactics imbued with a 1 fighting spirit and disposition to } sacrifice themselves, if need be, for the ; Cause of Labour. In short, we want leaders who will live for the movement instead of living on it aq,d using it as , a step-ladder to political self-advance-j ment. We militants thoroughly understand the principal causes of unemploynjent. What is required is action and I I 1 Labour Party and the present industrial organisation will not produce the goods, then we will be ready with a fighting organisation available for the day when the majority of the rank and file (who are satisfied to pay their dues and permit orthodox Labour officials and politicians to do their thinking for them) are sufficiently disappointed and in disgust from their erstwhile official leaders towards us militants whose personnel and message they have hitherto regarded with contempt.—• I am etc., SPARTICUS. Timaru, April 26.