Capitalist
As we approach ANZAC Day for another year, and with yet another failed socialist government crashing around like a bull in a china shop destroying the living standards of the working man, it is important to note they are in good company – following a long, long Labour Party tradition.
Back in World War I, as our ancestors were being machine gunned on the beach at Gallipoli or in the trenches of Passchendaele, leading figures of the Labour Party, due to cowardice (let’s be honest here folks), were offering full support of the enemy. Savage, Fraser, Nash and Semple along with plenty of other Labour figures were all at it. In amusing Orwellian fashion, this cowardice and treachery has been spun as somehow virtuous ever since (I am not making this up folks!); these men are draped with halos by historians and Labour voters everywhere.
Even you – in true Kool-Aid guzzling fashion – while reading this may be gasping in horror that anyone questions the usual, agreed view of the first Labour Government.
There was one exception to this Hun-loving rabble: John A Lee, who not only fought in World War I but had the scars to prove it after having lost an arm in battle – poor chap. As a result, in true ‘Mean Girl’ fashion, he was widely hated by his colleagues, probably because of their own guilty consciences.
In the mid 1930s Lee wrote The Politician, which wasn’t published until decades later. A fairly obscure book: according to the publisher when I contacted him for a copy, I was the 11th person other than public libraries (and not many of them) to buy one.
The Politician is an autobiographical novel that gives an interesting insight into Auckland day-to-day life, NZ politics and how Parliament functioned 85 to 100 years ago. If you can find a copy (good luck with that), it is well worth reading. Much of the book is a bit self serving for John A Lee – the ‘frustrated political giant surrounded by pygmies’ routine doesn’t ring true, any more than it rang true when Jim Anderton tried it half a century later. Still worth a read though.
Anyhoo, there is one curious passage where Lee (presumably inadvertently) not only answers his own question – and that of socialists everywhere for a century and a half – but doesn’t seem to realise he has done so.
I am paraphrasing a bit here: a conversation takes place between the politician (Lee?) and a businessman acquaintance. The politician says how he seeks to improve the lot of poor people and hopefully stamp out poverty; the businessman scoffs at a socialist government being the way to stamp out poverty. The politician says to the businessman ‘your solution to ending poverty is the poor man should imitate the rich man’.
Ummmmmm… Yes! You have got it in one John.
That is indeed the answer to the problem of poverty and the lot in life of poor people; rich people behave in certain ways (not all of them involve money) and the result is not being poor. Most poor people, by contrast, engage in activities which keep them poor. One can only speculate on how rich and poverty free New Zealand would be were everyone to imitate what rich people do; it really is that simple folks!
