A Utopia on the Rocks.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20492, 10 March 1932, Page 8

A Utopia on the Rocks.

Under the heading " Bankrupt Social- " ism" the Los Angeles Times, in a recent issue, has some fatherly tilings to say to New Zealand about the dangers of defying economic laws. New Zealand [we are told j has cherished Socialist aspirations and for forty years has been carrying on an amelioration programme. It has been called the most nearly Socialistic country outside of Russia. Now it has discovered that this programme has been made possible only by continually increasing the Government debt, that the improvements have never paid out and probably never will, and that either taxes must be piled on until the taxpayers revolt, or the debt must be repudiated. There is just enough truth in this to save it from being ridiculou's, since it is a fact that we have been bolstering up unprofitable undertakings with borrowed money, and for some time to come shall find it hard to meet the interest bill. But a paper that has access to accurate enough information to know how we are situated to-day ought to know what has been happening to us for a little more than a day. The Socialist Utopia that it thinks has now "'gone on the rocks," if it ever was a Utopia, went on the rocks twenty-five years ago. Nor was the State Socialism of the Seddon period a step towards the Socialist State. The Socialism of the nineties was aptly called by a French writer le socialisme sans doctrines, and it would probably surprise the Los Angeles Times to learn that even our Labour Party is diffident about its Socialism.