Socialism as it is

by William English Walling

AGRARIAN "STATE SOCIALISM" IN AUSTRALASIA

Australia and New Zealand are commonly taken as the most advanced of all countries in government ownership, labor reforms, and "State Socialism." Indeed they are often pictured as almost ideally governed, and the credulity with which such pictures are received shows the widespread popularity of "State Socialism."

The central principle of the Australian and New Zealand reforms is, however, not government ownership or compulsory arbitration, as commonly supposed, but a land policy. By means of a progressive or graduated land tax it is hoped to break up all large estates and to establish a large number of small proprietors. When it was said to Mr. Fisher, the new "Labour Party" Premier of Australia, that this policy was not Socialism, he replied laconically, "It is my kind of Socialism."[78]

The "State Socialism" of Australia and New Zealand is fundamentally agrarian; its real basis is a modernized effort to establish a nation of small farm owners and to promote their welfare.

Next in importance and closely connected with the policy of gradually bringing about the division of the land among small proprietors, is the policy of the government ownership of monopolies. Already New Zealand is in the banking business, and the Australian Labour Party proposes a national bank for Australia. National life and fire insurance are instituted in New Zealand; the same measures are proposed for Australia. Already many railroads are nationally owned, and it is proposed that others be nationalized. Already extensive irrigation projects have been undertaken; it is proposed that the policy should be carried out on a wider scale. But the Australian Labour Party is not fanatical upon this form of "State Socialism." It does not argue, like the British Independent Labour Party, that the civilization of a community can be measured by the extent of collective ownership, for Australasia's experience has already shown the immediate and practical limits of this kind of a movement. New Zealand is already burdened with a very large national debt; Australia proposes that its debt shall be increased only for the purpose of building commercially profitable railways or irrigation schemes, etc., and not in any case for the purpose of national defense or for other investments not immediately remunerative.

The national debt, aside from that based on profit-making governmental undertakings, like railways, is to be reduced, and nationalization of other monopolies is not to be undertaken until new measures of taxation have become effective. These are a graduated land tax and an extension of the graduated income and inheritance taxes.[79]

The program concludes with vigorous measures for national defense. Australia is to own her navy (supported not by loans, but by taxation), and is to be as independent as practicable of Great Britain. She feels a need for military defense, but she does not propose to have a military caste, however small; the whole people is to be made military, the Labour Party stands for a citizen defense force and not for a professional army. Finally, Australia is to be kept for the white race, especially for British and other peoples that the present inhabitants consider desirable.

There remains that part of the program which has attracted the most attention, namely, the labor reforms: workingmen's insurance, an eight-hour day, and an increase of the powers of the compulsory arbitration courts. Already in fixing wages it has been necessary for the court to decide what is a fair profit to the employers, so profits are already to some degree being regulated. It has been found that prices and the cost of living are rising still more rapidly than wages; it is proposed that prices should also be regulated by withdrawing the protection of the customs tariff from those industries that charge an unduly high price.

I have mentioned the labor element of the program last, for the Australian Labour Party is a democratic rather than merely a labor movement. The Worker's Union, and the Sheep Shearer's Society of the Eastern States, enrolled from the first all classes of ranch employees, and "even common country storekeepers and small farmers."[80] Some of the miners' organizations have been built on similarly broad lines, and these two unions constitute the backbone of the Labour Party. The original program of the New South Wales Labour Electoral League, which formed the nucleus of the Labour Party in 1891, proposed to bring together "all electors in favor of democratic and progressive legislation," and was nearly as broad as the present program; that is to say, it was by no means confined to labor reforms.

But are there any other features in the Australian situation, besides the dominating importance of the land question, that rob this program of its significance for the rest of the world? It cannot be denied that there are. In the first place, it is only this recent social reform movement that has begun to put New Zealand and Australia under real democratic government, and this democratization is scarcely yet complete, since the constitutions of some of the separate Australian States and Tasmania contain extremely undemocratic elements; while the federal government is dominated by a Supreme Court, as in the United States. Consequently it is only a few years in some of the States since such elementary democratic institutions as free schools were instituted. It is evident, on the other hand, that countries establishing democratic or semidemocratic institutions under the conditions prevailing in the world as late as 1890, when the great change took place in New Zealand, or during the decade, 1900-1910, when the political overturn gave Australia to the Labour Party, should be more advanced than France, Germany, Great Britain, or the United States, where the latest great overturn in the democratic direction occurred in each instance a generation or more ago.