VARIETIES OF SOCIALISM.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 9, 5 October 1907, Page 6

VARIETIES OF SOCIALISM.

Foit a few brief moments on Thursday night the Premier turned aside from his defence of the Land Bill to throw out some . observations' upon Socialism in general, and the , particular species of Socialism that the Government affects. It' is not anything-'to Sir Joseph Ward's discredit that lie failed to contribute anything to the solution of a problem that is engaging the hostilities, of a thousand Old World philosophers, and that presents quite opposite faces to such sharp intuitions as those, for example, of Bernard Shaw and Mr. Eoosevelt. We all know that there are Socialists of many grades, and we know, too, that the Socialism .of Sir Joseph Ward differs from the Socialism of Mr. Ben Tillett as honey differs from vinegar.' But everybody does not "know—the Premier certainly cannot know, or, as a respectable statesman, he would not advocate the legislative principles which make up his "forward" policy—that just as honey and vinegar resolve into the. same elements, so the " paternalism " v of the modern Liberal will ultimately, but nibre, slowly, dissolve into the same social conditions as Mr. Ben Tillett would put iii force at nine o'clock on Monday morning._ In saying that the Ministry is a Socialistic ; Ministry,.wo mean no more than that they are moving rapidly forward along a path that appears, and for the present probably is, a kindly and safe one, but which, in, the long view, is cruelly kind and merely disastrous. When King Edward, as Prince of Wales, said'that we were "all Socialists nowadays," he coined one of those neat and attractive inaccuracies which.are so constantly being taken for changeless axioms by this age of slovenly second-hand _ thought. Sir Joseph Ward believes, and we believe with him, that he recoils from communistic theories, but his mistake is in supposing that he can trifle with dangerous weapons with impunity. There is a wide gulf, to be sure, between a Socialism that confines itself to large State enterprises and the Socialism of the "brotherly-lovers" who made the Stuttgart conference a ' prolonged free fight. At present the most urgent need of ; this Dominion is not the erecting of barriers against all kinds of obvious perils', or even the concentration of hostile criticism on individual injustices like those in the land Bills to which we have directed attention in our most recent- issues. \ What is most required is the direction of public attention to the difficulty of damming a stream of legislative tendency. As long ago as 188-1 the late Herbert Spencer pointed out in a famous essay the shortsightedness of the "practical" politician, " into whose mind there enters no thought of such' a thing as political momentum, still less of a political momentum which, instead of diminishing or remaining constant, increases. The theory on which he daily proceeds," Spencer continued, "is that the change caused by his measure will stop where he intends it to stop. He contemplates intently the things his act will achieve, but thinks little of the remoter issues of the movement his act sols up, and still less its collateral issues.' v Spencer had prophesied in IS6O from the growing dictatorial restrictions of personal freedom a mass 'of unexpected and unpleasant results, and these he lived to marshal for his justification in the essay from which we . have quoted. To expect the New Zealand Government of 1907 to admit Herbert Spencer to their councils is, perhaps, to expect too much of modern cock-sure-ness, and Sir Joseph Ward may go on to the end denouncing "Social Anarchists" and their violent forces, and claiming that his Ministry has discovered the exact amount of Socialism—no more and no less—that can be safely applied to a country.

He is not one of those, he appears to believe, who, in the words of the president.-of Columbia University, would " wreck the Grid's efficiency for the purpose of redistributing the world's discontent." But he is plainly lacking in appreciation of that • Puritan spirit which, as Mr. Eoosevelt pointed out in a speech on August 22 last, is the seal salt of progress. And what is that spirit? The Puritan- (said the President) owed his... extraordinary success in subduing this continent and making it tho f emulation for a social life of ordered liberty primarily to the fact that- ho combined in a very remarkable degree both the power of individual initiative, of individual self-help, and the power of acting in combination with his fellows; and that, furthermore, he joined to a high heart that shrewd commonsense which saves a mon from tho besetting sins of the visionary and the doctrinaire. He was stout-hearted and hard-headed. Ho had lofty purposes,, but he had practical good sense, too. He could hold his own in tho rough workaday world without clamorous insistence upon being helped by others, and yet he could combine with others whenever it became necessary to do a jr-1: which could not be as'well done by any one, mar. individually. Mr. Massey said on Thursday night that he wanted freeholders because every freeholder or freeholder in posse was an enemy of Socialism. A few years ago that would have been greeted as a wild and far-fetched irrelevance. ' Events have moved so swiftly along the path of paternalism since the. Government decided that State Socialism was not a tendency but a mere condition, that Mr. Massey's statement is to-day a piece of very living criticism. One. can, of course, understand that the Premier and his colleagues derive a piquancy and a delicious thrill of mastery from their handling of destructive forces, but they should really begin to think of the final issues of these precarious delights.