The Wanganui Chronicle. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 1945. THE DREAM THAT VANISHED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 211, 6 September 1945, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 1945. THE DREAM THAT VANISHED

tyJOSCOW radio, in announcing the establishing of a club exclusively for the use of officers, does not mark a new departure in Soviet life, but the continuance of a well-established trait; the hiving off and perpetuation of various classes. No effort is now being made to set-up a classless society. That is a dream that has long since vanished. It was the expectation of the Marxian Socialists of the last century right, up to 1914 that somehow, somewhere a classless society would be established through “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a fine-sounding phrase but its precise meaning in plain English is not so impressive : it means that the mass of ordinary men will decree the activities of the community and that there shall be no master classes; that society shall be governed from the ranks. Such a conception of society had a very attractive force, for it was expected that it would do away with the profiteering class, that there would be no exploitation of the masses and that, in consequence, their standard of living would attain to a higher level than anything hitherto accomplished. Marx believed that this classless society would first be ushered into the most advanced communities. In this he was wrong, for it was in the most backward community in Europe that the experiment was undertaken. True the Russian Revolution was not the work of the masses: only five per cent, of the population was moved by it. That percentage was, however, sufficient to provide the spearhead of a revolution and especially so in a community that had tottered to its end as had the Tsarist regime in 1916 and 1917. In Russia the masses might have been able to carry on as a peasant community or collection of such communities, but there was not sufficient experience within the country to permit of a large-scale effort to be undertaken to jump the centuries and catch up with western Europe under the dictatorship of the masses. The task was essentially one for experts. The problem of industrialising Western Russia was a stupendous task which has not yet been completed. Much has been accomplished, and although there is a great deal which might be subjected to fair adverse criticism the fact remains that the country has, out of its accumulated resources, increased its capital equipment and made living safer. It may or may not have advanced the standard of living on a purely economic measure—that is to say the total quantity of production for consumption may not yet be much higher—but the capital accumulations and the current consumption are much better employed now than under Tsarist bureaucratic rule. Under the rule of the Soviets a change has occurred, certainly, and one set of bureaucrats has taken the places previously held by another set. These new bureaucrats have taken control of the administration of the countiy, they have paid themselves higher remuneration than has been paid to the masses of the ■workers, they are more numerous than the equivalent class in the United States of America, and their pay taken overall is higher than that of their American counterparts. True, they do not own the means of production, distribution and exchange. They do accumulate funds, they do invest those savings at interest, but they also do as do the capitalists of the western countries, in that they enjoy a higher standard of living than do those who are on the assembly lines.

While profit-making by traders is permitted only within narrow limits inside Russia, the exploitation of the consumer is just as effective as under the open-market-cum-sales tax system as is applied in New Zealand to-day in respect to most commodities. The managers are rewarded with motor-cars, country houses and special purchasing concessions for “services to the State” and the costs of these extra privileges in which the masses do not share are included in the selling price of the goods that, are made in the State-owned and operated organised factories. In some instances, it is alleged, the price for a commodity is fixed not. at its over-all cost but at a price which is “as high as the traffic will stand,” which is the first working principle of the monopolist anywhere else in the world. The ranks of the manager class tend to become a closed union because it is the nature of men to preserve for their children that which they have won for themselves. In Russia, therefore, while a revolution has been accomplished and a mighty experiment in government undertaken, a classless society under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat has not emerged. The Communism of the doctrinaires has moved farther and farther still into the background and a condition of society very much like that ■which is evolving in New Zealand lias been hastened into existence. With its adventure in government and production Russia has changed its masters, some of its ways of doing things, but it is following the West where the West is not following Russia. Where the Russian experiment will lead is not yet to be seen, but it is a very interesting phase through which it is now passing. Classlessness has been given up even as an ideal. Men are not equal; they are not bom equal and they can never become so. Men are born unequal and because of that simple fact they should he given equal opportunity to develop their gifts and to employ them. The task of to-day and of to-morrow is how equality of opportunity shall be secured to the fortunate and to the unfortunate alike. Russia has not yet found the answer to this problem.