INTERESTING ADDRESS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5506, 27 November 1929, Page 3

INTERESTING ADDRESS.

PAPER READ AT KEREPEEHI. “WHY SOCIALISM MUST COME.” Over forty members and friends of the Kerepeehi branch of the Labour Party listened to an interesting paper read by Mr D. Hill at the monthly meeting of the branch last week. Mr Hill dealt with Socialism, and explained that in the minds of many people it was something to be afraid of. Someone had said that there was nothing more painful than a new idea. There was certainly nothing more suspected, and Socialism for the time being was used as a bogey for the protection of discredited politicians. Everyone who believed that the safety of the State depended upon the intelligence which the public showed in discriminating between real and false issues must try to understand what Socialism meant and just what was its political significance. “It is necessary that those who wish to understand the socialistic movement should begin with some accurate appreciation of the whole complexity of historical and moral influences that has made society what it is to-day,” said Mr Hill, “for intellectual students will discover its roots to be very different, far more intelligent, rational, and humane, than the tyrannical and corrupt system under which we are living at the present time. Its inspirations are both religious and economic, and it takes voice in the Labour Party which for thirty years has been influencing public opinion and political action. “Man is not naturally bad,” continued the speaker, “but the struggle for existence has made him selfish and suspicious. To make man good, kind, and noble his material needs must be satisfied, for if his whole energies are necessary to fight for the bare necessaries of life there can be no opportunity for cultivating those higher qualities which distinguish man from the brute. Poverty is not a genial soil for culture ; B only the weeds of ignorance can thrive on it. Thus, when a man asks for work he is pot asking a boon, for he has a right to live and there is plenty of everything in- the world. “For many ages man had only the most primitive access to the great storehouse of Nature’s resources, for the labour of his muscles only took him, as it were, to the first ante-room. Now vast new store-rooms have been discovered in the great mechanical, chemical, and electrical powers which can be harnessed so that production, with the same amount of muscular energy, is multiplied hundreds. of times. These are the sources of wealth, so the existence of poverty and insecurity can only mean that man has not yet developed intelligence to direct his energies on the lines of full service to humanity. The plain fact is that there is no social organisation or social purpose, as yet, by which the sources of wealth have been worked. There has been nothing but a scramble in which each man clutches what he can, for his own private gain, entirely regardless of social consequences. Capitalism not only has no social purpose, but is, in its theory and practice, a denial that there should be any social purpose. The storehouse, the common bounty of nature, is the property of a few against the general community. “The masses produce more to-day than they could a hundred years ago,” the speaker continued, “yet it cannot be said that they are remunerated in proportion. But the people who own the means of production? have increased their wealth and power according to the increased speed with which the workers have produced wealth. When we add to its moral failure, its periodical breakdowns in regular cycles of unemployment which it cannot prevent, its wastefulness, its inability to provide decent living conditions and an adequate income to the great masses of the people, the present system cannot be regarded as anything more than one of the phases of our social evolution ; a system which will steadily grow into a better one, and which will secure what all systems are only a means of securing—the end of private wealth, maximum production, and just distribution.” Mr Hill went on to say that even as a system of production capitalism was" breaking down, and Labour was blamed. The fact was that as Labour became more intelligent the less willing, it was to produce under the capitalistic system. A crowd without any sense of individual liberty and content to drudge .for a bare living and die pretty much where' it was born, or a crowd spurred on by the fear of starvation, would produce under capitalism. But so soon as men understood the economic organisation of capitalism and z the distribution of wealth under it, stinted production was inevitable, and the system as an efficient system of motives and reward to an end. After dealing w’ith the operation of trusts and showing the tendency of capital to co-operate to eliminate competition, which was affording the community some measure of protection, the speaker showed that the time had come when the control of capital became an urgent communal concern. The problem of the future, as the Socialist saw it, was how to supply by the education and training of youth the necessary brain power and skill ; how to elevate the muscle labourer to the status from where he could take an intelligent interest in the whole operations of the industry in which he was engaged, so that he would become a willing worker in it; how to associate the technical and management agents with the manual workers in a union of social service properly equipped with skill for production, energy marketing, and intelligence for keeping things going with a maximum efficiency. Socialists knew that society was like a human body that must be kept in as vigorous life as possible while its character was being changed, and that it was not like a machine that could be scrapped and replaced with something better. Therefore Socialists knew that all changes must

come by evolutionary arid not by revolutionary methods. The only political party worthy of support was one which had a practical conception of the ideal good which it was trying to accomplish, which drew upon history for* principles to guide it in its work and ideas, thus enabling it to discriminate between patchwork effort, which was of no permanent value, and organic modification, which would produce permanent improvement. It was therefore very important that people should clearly make up their minds what was the meaning of socialism. At the conclusion of his address Mr Hill was subjected to much questioning and was accorded a vote of thanks.