Thunder On The Left

 A DREADFUL DENTIST :: THE DILEMMA OF LIBERALISM :: AMERICA WITHOUT HUSTLE ::THOSE CHARMING PEOPLE

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Economics, was once "that dismal science," and politics, in Saki's day, the plaything of bored young men who sipped polite tea at Edwardian garden parties.
The war, and its bleak aftermath, changed all that. Now, a generation after the armistice, these things are real, immediate, and vital. Young men are no longer bored by politics. They can't afford to be. The world is in flux, and we all want to know where we're going.

YOUTH has found its wings. And because they are mostly left-wings, books on Socialism and Communism, on Lenin and Marx, have become best-sellers. A healthy curiosity informs all this. The young man who reads a book about Communism is not necessarily preparing to hoist a red flag on the local gasworks. This is the sad error into which the myopes of Commonwealth Customs Department often fall.

He is more likely finding a flaw in a plausible bit of propaganda, and so steeling his mind against demagogy from both left and right. He is charting a path through the quicksands of falsehood, upon which one day his liberty, the things he values most, even his life, may depend.
Australia, a lush Arcady for politicians, has produced very little political thought. We have no Laski, no Strachey, no Palme Dutt, no Edmund Wilson. For the most part, our opinions are imported. And sometimes it is as dangerous to get political views by mail as false teeth.
So Mr. Montague Grover's excursion in political prophecy, "The Time is Ripe," will be welcomed even by those who disagree, on historical grounds, with its conclusions. Writing with wit, with clarity, and with feeling, Mr. Grover sounds an amiable trumpet before capitalism's tottering Jericho. The walls are bound to fall, he says. Capitalism is dying of senile decay.

THAT HOARY MYTH

It is not the money which Capitalism takes out of industry which makes it an evil; it is the obstruction to capacity working of the industrial machine.
The pathetic myth about Socialism taking away the rich man's money and whacking it out among everyone is neatly disposed of. What Socialism aims at, Mr. Grover points out, is a planned economy, such as Great Britain had during the Great War and Russia has today, increase of production by the abolition of non-productive jobs, and the use of new technique now kept bottled up, and a gradually increasing standard of living starting with a basic wage of £6 a week.
In Marxian words, unlimited production for use, instead of rationed, production for profit.
So far, Mr. Grover follows orthodox Marxian lines. But now his socialism becomes tailored to fit Australia. We are an amiable people, who don't like trouble. So when The Day comes, our capitalists will all be pensioned off on a basis of their previous earnings, the pension to stop at death. Their personal property and the homes they live in will be left to them, their investment property seized by the State.
The flag, the church, the home will be preserved. Art, science and sport will flourish. "While nine-tenths of the population of Australia will have their material positions improved at least 100 per cent., not one honest person will be one whit worse off."
Where's the money coming from? Mr. Grover rightly points out that money has no meaning, if you have labor, machinery, and organised production.

HONEST INFLATION

In the first stages, the new Australia would be financed as the old Australia is financed today— by inflation. But after a Five-months' Plan or so, money will lose its significance. We will think in terms of goods and services, which will be available to all in ever-increasing quantities.
A pleasant prospect, and economically quite a sound one. But how is it to be realised? Here Mr. Grover shows a sad faith in the power of orthodox parliaments. He harks back to the quaint bedtime stories of German Social Democracy, of British Labor in the days before Mr. Ramsay MacDonald had found his top-hat, Mr. Snowden his title, and Mr. Thomas his important friends in the City.
In other words, he foresees the millennium coming to birth amid cheers from both benches, after a bloodless debate in the House of Representatives, Canberra.
The dreamers of similar dreams in Germany woke up in concentration camps, that is, those who survived the bullets and knives of Hitler's persuasive Brown Shirts.
Their Austrian brothers, who thought they could build a Socialist Vienna out of ballot-boxes, saw their fine structure shattered by a few shells from Fascist howitzers. Their English kinsmen continue to dream, but no one, least of all themselves, takes their pretty fantasies seriously. They are the licensed stooges of Conservatism, the raw material of tomorrow's Fascisti.
Then why will parliamentary socialism succeed in Australia? Because, says Mr. Grover, with the example of a triumphant Russia looming larger and larger before them, with a deepening crisis in Australia, the die-hards of the U.A.P. will suddenly become the champions of a Socialist Australia.
Everyone will know the truth about the U.S.S.R. Everyone will realise that socialism is the only way out for Australia. Political differences will disappear. The Langs will lay down with the Lyons. A Canberra-made Utopia will arrive, neatly wrapped, in an enabling Bill.
Mr. Grover evokes a reassuring vision, and does it courageously and well. His is the dilemma of the Liberal who, pushed to the left by logic and necessity, still thinks it possible to take the middle of the road.

LIBERALS IN DOUBT

It is general dilemma today. Mr. Stephen Spender makes it the thesis of his study, "Forward from Liberalism." Mr. Grover is a veteran Australian newspaperman, Mr. Spender a young English poet. A common crisis unites them. Both are moving falteringly towards a new Liberal ideal.
Mr. Spender, too, believes that in the modern world, the socialist, classless society is Liberalism's final goal. He believes, too — as Marx did, of England—that a bloodless revolution is possible.
But he pins his faith on the pressure of a Popular Front, organised on the French model, rather than on the miraculous overnight conversion of a Tory Cabinet. The conclusion that we must achieve a classless, democratic world-state is inescapable. If everyone who accepts this joins the Popular Front, the means, as well as the ends, are simplified, in democratic countries, for a bloodless revolution is still possible. . .. . It is just possible in England for a Popular Front to gain power, thus putting capitalism on the defensive.
But this Popular Front must be organised quickly, while some measure of political freedom remains. It should aim at parliamentary power, and Mr. Spender thinks it would have a far greater chance of attaining it than the present Labor Party. And when it gets power, it must introduce a sweeping programme.
The two chief aims of the programme would undoubtedly be Collective Security, based, not on the selfish alliances of capitalist powers, but the extension of the International Popular Front in Russia, France, and Spain, as a beginning of International Socialism. The internal policy of the Popular Front would aim at adjusting the present economic system, weighted in favor of capitalism, in favor of socialism, and of internationalism.
It would not be enough to nationalise the banks and begin the task of socialising industry, it would be necessary to see also that the military forces, the police, and the bureaucracy supported the Popular Front wholeheartedly. In short, a complete break with the past must be made; so that if a counter-revolution should be attempted, socialism will defend an established government against a capitalist attack.
The alternative to international socialism, says Mr. Spender, is war, and the collapse of civilisation. We have not long to decide. Our future defends on our willingness to co-operate quickly with all who share our final aims of peace and liberty.
But Mr. Spender has written more than a doctrinnaire essay on what is to be done. As a distinguished poet, and a member of one of England's most famous Liberal families he is concerned first with analysing his own approach to Communism.

ANSWERS QUESTIONS

As a result, he has written a book that will answer many of the self-questionings of youth today.
To light up the road along which he has travelled, Mr. Spender devotes a chapter to answering a series of questions which he has asked himself. This is, perhaps, the most valuable part of the book.
At the end of this chapter we have a unique cross-section of the mind of a poet reacting to political necessities. It is a valuable revelation, and Mr. Spender rounds it off with a clear statement of his position.
"I am a Communist because I am a Liberal. Liberalism seems to me to be the creed of those who, as far as it is possible in human affairs, are disinterested, if by disinterestedness one understands not mere passivity but a regard for objective truth and an active will towards political justice . . . the love of humanity rather than separate nationalities, of justice for all men rather than class privilege, of universal peace rather than imperialist competition and war — these are the features of disinterest.
Mr. John Strachey, like Mr. Spender, comes from a distinguished English family: He is also a Communist, but a much more uncompromising one. In "The Theory and Practice of Socialism," Mr. Strachey expounds the philosophy and metaphysics of Marxism.
Despite its uncritical nature, it is a valuable introduction to Marxist theory.
These three books, so diverse in origin and presentation, are part of a great ferment of political thought that is bubbling up all over the world today.
To ignore them is to plunge an ostrich-head between the sleepers as the express approaches.
THE TIME IS NOW RIPE, by Montague Grover, Melbourne; Robertson and Mullens.
FORWARD FROM LIBERALISM, by Stephen Spender,  London; Victor Gollancz. Ltd.
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF SOCIALISM, by John Strachey London: Victor Gollancz. Ltd.

Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW : 1931 - 1954), Saturday 6 March 1937, page 9