Where Are We Heading?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 809, 28 January 1955, Page 8

Where Are We Heading?

CONOMIC well-being and security are among the essentials of a good life, many people argue, and in the world of today only a planned economy can secure them. Is this an illusion? Does the planned economy inevitably lead to slavery--to the sort of society described by George Orwell in 1984? Is there an inherent contradiction in ‘the desire of socialists for security and the fullest opportunities for the development of the individual? These are the sort of questions which provide the starting point for Little Lord Frankenstein, a controversial series of talks on the dangers of centralisation and State control which is to be heard from YC stations. In the first of this series, to be broadcast from 2YC at 9.30 p.m. on Thursday, February 3, D. K. Fieldhouse, lecturer in history at Canterbury University College, takes a long look at the growth of the power of the State and at the possibility of our democratic system sliding into total bureaucracy. "I want," he says, "to discuss briefly the forecasts of men as widely divergent in their hopes and fears as Marx, Wells, Aldous Huxley, Orwell and Hayek, and to attempt to decide how reliable their predictions are, and whether we shall like what they have to’ offer us." Mr Fieldhouse believes there are three inevitable steps by which a democracy would turn itself into a collectivist dictatorship. The first is the gaining of power by a party which promises to plan economic life so that all will have

a fair share in the products of the machines; the second is the acquisition by the State of the means of production; the third, "automatically made necessary by the second," is the compulsion of the individual to do whatever work of national importance he is considered most suited for at the wage he is thought to deserve. From this proposition Mr. Fieldhouse goes on to discuss what he considers the further consequences of the planned State and to say something about how we can reap the benefits of the machine age and at the same time preserve the advantages we already possess. Well or ill launched, according to your viewpoint, with this explosive- "piece, Little Lord Frankénstein then calls in Professor A. J. Danks to discuss the cen-

tralisation of economic power in the State, in business combines and in trade unions. "Shadow on the Hearth" follows, with Eileen Saunders looking at the influence of the State and of other "pressures" on the family unit. In "Last Days of Farmer Giles,’ Professor L. W. McCaskill examines the effect of subsidies and guaranteed prices on the farming community and leads on to a warning. The sixth talk, by W. W. Sawyer, asks the question, "What country, after Russia, has the most centralised education system?" and suggests that the answer could be "New Zealand." The last. aspect discussed ig religion: the Rev. Alun Richards has something to say about the worship of the State and compares this "religion" with the Christian faith. In a final talk D. K. Fieldhouse returns to

the microphone to comment on what other speakers have said, and to sum up.