State Competition.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 1, Issue 5, 20 January 1911, Page 12

State Competition.

(By H. I. JENSEN, in "The Queensland Worker.") To be sure, State competition is not only highly desirable, but necessary, in order to protect the public, in some industries, as, for example, sugar refining, metal smelting, etc. In all the large industries for the production of public necessities State competition must precede nationalisation, where immediate total nationalisation is inexpedient. But, as Hobson clearly demonstrates in " The Social Quee tion," there are many industries Avhich from the mode of production can never reach the monopoly stage, and many others which are better left in the hands of individual zeal and private enterprise, as market gardening, for example. In the latter kind especially, where so much depends on the individual energy, zeal, and intellect of the operator, and machinery does not make all labourers equal, or nearly so, it would be stupid for the State to compete or nationalise. Yet public health demands that vegetables should be cheap, and that market gardeners do not form themselves into an octopus ring. Practicability here favours the prices board. I do not wish to disparage State competition, nor to unduly worship the idea of prices boards, but I believe that both should be employed, each in the right place, so as to give expression to the reasonable desire of the people for fair play for all. State monopoly, and likewise State competition, in a country that allows some departments to be run wholly by capitalism, invariably confers a boon on some section of the capitalists. Thus State tramways and railways may carry the people more cheaply and effectively than privately run concerns, but the landlords use the construction of a line near their property as a pretext for increasing house rent. Landlordism benefits most. The working man existed before the line was built; he can only barely exist after it has been constructed, but the landlord collects the boodle. To mc it seems only logical that in a State Avhich undertakes monopolistic enterprise rents and profits must be fixed Avithin certain limits, or the State monopoly will benefit a section of capitalism more than the masses. Both State competition and prices boards are only expedients and palliatives. Socialism is the ideal we aim at, bur society is not ripe for the ideal. It will take generations to achieve land-nationalisation (the socialisation of land values), which is a fundamental principle of Socialism. Meantime the rapacity of landlords must be checked. It will take decades to convince the masses that interest and any other form of unearned increment are dishonest gains, and that banking, insurance, money-lending, etc., should be State monopolies: or to convince the people that those who are mentally dull or slow in their work have as much right to the comforts and pleasures of life as the most clever. We have, therefore, to compromise by allowing, for the present, a certain limit of unearned increment to enterprising capitalists of all kinds. However, if capitalistic greed be checked by prices boards, death dues, State competition and wages boards, and at the same time the mentality of the workers is raised by happier surroundings, mankind will improve and naturally drift into Socialism. The conservative instincts of mankind are but slowly erased, and meantime we must compromise in various Avays.