PUBLIC OPINION

Waikato Times, Volume 129, Issue 21525, 13 September 1941, Page 9

PUBLIC OPINION

CURRENT VIEWPOINTS BOBBY CALVES (To the Editor) Sir, —I agree with " Interested ” that it is not fair to blame the carriers for what really begins on the farms. These bobby calves are for human consumption and naturally should be in first-class condition. The carrier should be a responsible person who would refuse to remove any starved animals, and report any cruelty to the proper authorities. A cow's milk is not fit for human consumption until five clear days after calving. Therefore the calf should have the benefit of this milk. A calf gets quite fat in five days, properly fed. Cruelty and avarice are two vices which call loudly for correction.—l am, etc., T. E. MAGNER Hamilton, Sept. 4. 1941. THIS CIVILISATION (To the Editor) Sir.—This present conflict must raise a question or two as to the value of our civilisation. The comments of Mr Motono, sometime Japanese Minister in Paris, are apt at the present moment. He states, sadly, " As long as we consecrated ourselves to the work of an intensive civilisation, so long as w’e produced only men of letters, men of science and of art, you treated us as barbarians. But now that' we have learnt to kill, you call us civilised.” This opinion of an Oriental is startling when we read it in the light of the present day.—l am, etc., EYRE MASSISHAW Hamilton, Sept. 8. FEDERAL UNION EXAMINED (To the Editor) Sir,—" A.E.l.'s " support for Federal Union hangs on his opinion that " national sovereignty rather than international finance is the cause of progressively ruinous wars.” But he over-simplifies the problem; one might as well discuss whether it is the sun or the wind or the force of gravity that causes rainfall. One cannot pick out any one factor and make it scapegoat for the whole result. National sovereignty and international finance both have their place in any analysis of the cause of wars, but in themselves they are merely features of our social structure in a certain stage of development; like a child’s first set of teeth which serve the purpose for a while, but are later pushed out by the growth of others. Seen in their historical setting, wars appear in the nature of growing pains, the stresses and strains of developing social forces conflicting with one another and with the more static framework of social institutions, and without a thorough analysis of the laws of growth of the social body the attempt to end wars is like lancing a series of progressively ruinous boils while ignoring the study of vitamins.

As Bismarck said: " War is politics continued by other means.” And politics as we know them are but the open expression of economic forces in conflict. So our analysis must begin with the economic life of society. For reasons of space it must necessarily be a bare outline. Man became man through his use of tools, and the development of tools and labour technique has been the mainspring of our economic life. The stresses and contradictions within society arose only when man discovered an economic advantage in using his fellow-man as a tool through some form of physical coercion. Let us run briefly through history and see how the development of production has caused corresponding changes in the legal and political form of society. We see man first dependent on hunting, using crude weapons of stick and stone; but when the product gave no more than the barest existence for all there was no basis for slavery—and probably not for wars either. Slavery became possible when the development of tools and knowledge allowed division of labour into hunters and tillers; only then could gangs of unarmed slaves be watched by a single overseer. But tribes based on land and slaves needed specialised defence; so the hunters became defenders of the community and the tillers maintained them. Hence it was but a small step for those with weapons gradually to set themselves up as owners of all the land. The system of copyhold for a labour rent proved more economical than slavery, and freeman and slave alike were gradually forced into serfdom. Wars in the feudal period resulted in the larger communities swallowing up the smaller ones, and thus produced the nation-state as a stable framework for the expansion of trade. But as the merchant guilds developed an alternative form of production to rival feudal agriculture, the very form of agriculture was transformed. Trading ventures called for capital, and labour rent gave place to money rent; the overseas wool trade developed sheep farming in Britain, and gave rise to enclosures and evictions of tenants, who became the beginning of the working class as we know it today. Money rather than land came to represent power. But, like a loose first tooth, the feudal aristocracy refused to vacate their political position even when their social usefulness was finished. It required a ci*’il war in England in 1640, in France in 1789, in Russia in February, 1917, and similarly elsewhere, to jerk out the loose tooth that held its successor back. “ Liberty. Fraternity. Equality ! ” Yet in that very liberty itself lay a new means whereby one group could coerce another. The new class of wage-labourers found that their freedom to refuse terms was conditioned by the possible alternative of starvation. This form of coercion is more subtle than a slave-driver’s whip but it Is no less forceful. Those who own the highly complex “ tools ” of modern society use them to compel the wage-worker to accept less for his labour than the value he creates. If it were not so no concern would pay dividends. The more ruthless the exploitation, the greater the survival value, and herein lies the key to the stresses and strains of society today.

Competitive industry has speeded up the development of tools and labour technique, but it has reduced the workers to the

uonv-'on basis of having nothing to sell but their labour. It has immensely increased the productivity of labour and the potential abundance of life; but by its very nature it has to return to the workers as little as they can be forced to accept. The growth of competitive industry increases the social nature of production, even while it concentrates the effective ownership of the means of production into fewer and fewer hands. It feverishly develops the ability to produce, while it cuts away the ooportunity to consume. It piles up as capital the values that should exchange'for its abundance; but, while it seeks desperately for markets abroad, it. also exports the capital to develop rival industries. It tends to unify production by forcing the stronger concerns to swallow up the weaker; but as the industrial units grow to a national scale the process tends to continue on an international basis, and to lead to wars in spite of the wish of the individuals concerned. Once more social developmefit has outgrown its outer form; society again becomes aware of its teeth growing loose. Private ownership has built un all the conditions necessary to the social form of ownership, but the loose teeth cling to the illusion that they are still useful, and strive desperately to maintain their position. But we know that sooner or later they must all come out to allow’ the free growth of the new. Against this background “ A.E.1.” advocates Federal Union as a remedy for wars. He realises that the teeth grate against each other because of their instability: yet he proposes to remedy this by cementing them all firmly to each other. He is doomed to disaopointment. He likes the idea of Federal Union because it " requires no revolutionary change.” Again he will be disappointed: though whether the change will be violent or not will depend on how much those who profit from our ; present form of nroduction are prepared to put society before self. At best Federal Union can only give a temporary relief from international w’ars at the cost of increasing the already absurd internal contradictions of society, and of sharpening the pain of the transition when it is finally forced upon us.—l am, etc.. D.S. Huntly, ».