THE REAL CLEAVAGE - .
[To the Editor of - the.SPEc-rApcar.] • - - - - one of the thousands of young' women who voted Labe& last mbntli and took an active part oh the'iorki-f bori'ai well as at indoor. meetings, I -should very much like' to comment o& inme' of the points raised by -your cdrie- spondents. , If by SoCialism " is Meant "State Socialism" it seems to many of us- that the issue has -become- merely one ofex- pediency. ConservatiVei aceePt the principle Of a national- post office, police force, pensions and so forth, the Liberals put forward an unemploYinent'poliey that 'Might have come straight from Laths -Blanc. The -IAibOur. Party no longer stands for the'wholesale" nationalization of 'the means of production,' distribiitiOn and exchange," but for the national' ownership Of a few monopolistic industries: As a matter Of fact, the Laboiir Party's' theory of Socialism is slowly developing' from the rigid' formulas Of the 'eighties toWards- an almost mediaeval conception of the rights and duties of the State. To those who may doubt this -1 Worild quote Lord Justiee Slesser's article on " Why lam a niembel' of the Labour Party" in his " Religio Laici." Equal distribution of wealth in the forin of income is gradually giving to the ideal of equal distribution of wealth in the form of property. I cannot understand how Mr.' BoothbYcini claim that the latter Is or Can belritrt of the Conservative Prograirime: One of our trump cards in propaganda-at the last Ereetion Widthat you cannot have personal liberty without economic inde- pendence—and that the most striking characteristic of post- War finance has been the- rapid concentration of wealth in the hands of a few (as shown, for instance, in the reports of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue); a process which the Conservatives have done nothing whatever to arrakt.—I am '
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