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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 302, 18 June 1912, Page 4

RELATION TO SOCIALISM. Socialism as a policy or movement has always from the first and in its forma been concerned essentially -with the ownership of property (continues the Times). It seeks to abolish the present system oi ownership, not necessarily of all property, but at least of land, minerals, machinery, and so forth—"the means of production, distribution and exchange," to use the accepted formula. All the movements which have this for their aim »r« forms of Socialism. Where they differ is in the means they would employ and in the .system of ownership they would substitute for the existing one. There are three main forms—(l) Common ownership or communism—that is, ownership by everybody or nobody economic anarchism; the term "Socialist" was originally applied to this form, and Marx himself was a Communist. (2) State ownership, commonly called Collectivism, and including municipal ownership; this ha* hitherto been th# dominant form and it has appropriated the term "Socialism." (3) Grtup ownership, of which Syndicalism is an exftxrplt; it would give eaxhi trade the ownership and control of its own resources. These forms, of which there are many sub-varieties, are mutually exclusive; but those who advocate them have one They quarrel furiously in anticipation over the system to be •substituted for it; but meantime they are actually faced by the common enemy and support each other in getting a blow at it. The attraction of Syndicalism for organised labor needs no explanation. The idea is old; but when it was originally propounded some eighty years ago trade unions were in an early, feeble, and struggling stage, and there was hardly any organisation. To-day the case is entirely different, and they take to it with avidity. It is far more attractive than the tedious political propaganda of the Collectivists, which offers workme* at best a very roundabout way of improving their position and never fulfils its promises. In France the working classes are utterly weary of politics and have the greatest distrust of the State, which has become to them merely an «ngine of corruption and oppression. The 'Syndicalists regard the State as the greatest enemy. They maintain that it is sufficiently oppressive when exercising political control; if it exercised economic control as well, they would be absolute slaves. They would rather have the private employer. Consequently they eschew Parliamentary polities altogether, and have much more affinity to anarchism than to collectivism; but since they possess the power of organised labor they drag the political Socialists after them. The same thing is visibly happening in other countries, and is bound to happen to a greater or less extent wherever the teaching of

Socialism falls oil trade union soil. The doctrine is that they produce everything and ought to enjoy the whole product. Syndicalism promises it them in a simple, direct and intelligible form which they can understand. And meanwhile, until it is realised, strikes and everything that injures employers are steps towards it. To the young men who have neither experience nor responsibility, but more ambition than the older ones, and whose ears are open to specious theories, all this is very alluring.