LABOUR'S ANCIENT IDEAS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 1, 27 September 1920, Page 5

LABOUR'S ANCIENT IDEAS

This campaign against capi'Jali'sm is the most ridiculous policy over invented (says tho Bailee of Northumberland in nn address printed in the "National Review"). You might just as well advocate Hie abolition of progress. Kis reaction gono mad. The nationalised State was one of the earliest forms of government adopted wfien nations were emerging from barbarism; it took exactly the Mine form as Ifl linn taken "to-dnv in Russia., namely, « small number of officials ruling by force n vast multitude of workers. Industrial conscription was carried to perfection by tho Pharaohs; and Lenin, who ifl supposed to bo quilo tho last, tiling in reformers, is merely n mad rencMonary who has gone back 4000 yearn for his system of government. One of the pet ideas of these oncmiVs of capitalism is the "refusal to recognise any perron's right to receive interest on capital;" and oven tflioso who do not go so far as th's attack tho shareholder as fBo embodiment of capitalism. This id™ is about iSOfl years old, and originated in the Dark Ages, when taking interest! was supposed io bo synonvmous with usury, and therefore mi-Christian. Two r°si\Hs ensued from the carryiiig out of this princ'iplo; one wan the arrest of industrial development, and the other was to secure for the Jews, who had u« ' sCS«-»c<s nt-ohf usury, riruileto control nf Qie financial system of "Europe. It is to note Hint l'i" alinli'.Sen of c; pifalism in Eastern Europe by the Bolsheviks has had precisely the same results. It k strnncn th-r 1 the Labour Party not only seems incapable of or'ginat'lig anv new idea, but it never snrce-Ma I m resuscitating one that is less lilmn r. ' thonsend rears old.