W. T. Mills, E. J. B. Allen, J. A. Lee
and Socialism in New Zealand
IT is now some years since Professor W. H. Oliver asked whether 'left'
could be considered a direction in New Zealand politics. Although
Professor Oliver's main concern was to illustrate a point about New
Zealand society I have often thought, since reading that provocative essay,
that much of what historians have considered the history of socialism in
New Zealand could fruitfully be viewed from this sceptical perspective. 1
The somewhat improbable trinity of W. T. Mills, E. J. B. Allen and
J. A. Lee tried, at different times, to grapple with the meaning of socialism
within the context of New Zealand. They also attempted to work out the
ways in which the context not only defined the meaning but the possibility
of achieving socialism. Mills and Lee, of course, were active politicians
and what they said and thought was usually subordinate to the tactical
imperatives of the political situation. Allen, on the other hand, was an
activist-intellectual. Each man was articulate, each played out some role
within these islands, and together they allow us to take account of the
wider context within which the socialist tradition had emerged; for Mills
was an American; Allen was English; while Lee was born in Dunedin. 2
It may occasion some surprise that the focus should be on these three
men to the exclusion of others with some claim to be considered the
ideologues of socialism in New Zealand. Men like Harry Holland, Rod
Ross, or Sid Scott of the Communist Party, committed to a simple
version of class warfare and faith in nationalization, epitomize what many
New Zealanders have thought to be socialism. There is, indeed, a good
case to be made for this interpretation, but such a restricted definition
usually has been peculiar to the 'left' wing of the Second International and
the Third International. The distinguishing characteristics of the Third
International, however, were ideological fundamentalism, a deep commitment to revolutionary action, and a strange insensitivity to the aspirations
and values of the very 'workers' they claimed to lead (a claim based, in the
best Puritan traditions, on purity of doctrine and fervour). 3 Although men
such as Holland read widely and thought carefully about their political
faith they had little to say relevant to the meaning of socialism in New
112
MILLS, ALLEN, LEE AND SOCIALISM IN NEW
ZEALAND
113
Zealand. This is not to say, of course, that ideological fundamentalists
have not been important actors on the New Zealand stage or that some
groups have not found such revolutionary militance attractive. 4 The
meaning of relevance, as distinct from importance, is the subject of this
paper.
When Mills arrived in New Zealand there was little argument within
the labour movement concerning the goal, only about the method. As one
delegate to the annual Conference of the Trades and Labour Councils'
Federation told a militant miners' delegate, 'we are all Socialists'. 5 While
that appears to have been true of most union officials, a bitter and important argument was raging (although the participants were often exploiting
the diversity of the socialist tradition to other than ideological ends).
Two issues were at stake; first, some members of the ' R e d ' Federation of
Labour were unsympathetic to the idea of enlarging the functions of the
state. They viewed the state as the instrument of the bourgeoisie and the
destruction of bourgeoisie and state was the principal objective of revolutionary socialists. The method — revolutionary unionism — not only
pre-supposed that industrial unions were, by definition, revolutionary but
assumed that New Zealand's working class could impose its sectional view
upon a society which was neither industrial nor, in socialist terms,
advanced. 6 Many socialists, of course, disagreed strongly with those who
discussed 'the New Zealand situation in the language of the American
pamphleteers'. 7 The most articulate by far, however, was the American,
W. T. Mills.
Mills's contribution to the debate about the meaning of socialism in
New Zealand and the methods for attaining that goal can most easily be
understood by means of a short biographical profile. He was, it seems,
born in a hunter's cabin in the Adirondack Mountains in 1856 and moved
with his parents to Iowa in 1868. 8 Like many Americans of his generation
he worked at a variety of jobs, saving the money to pay for a college education at Wooster College and Oberlin (both in Ohio). Either f r o m his
Quaker parents or the cultural climate in Ohio — a state alive with what
one historian has described as protestant pietism — Mills became interested in the relationship between ethics and public life. The major
influence on him was almost certainly Charles Grandison Finney, the
dominant spirit and founder of Oberlin Theology, who modified the basic
tenets of Calvinsim by making 'the well-being . . . or blessedness of the
sentient universe the Summum Bonum, or ultimate good; and the voluntary
regard for this good . . . the grand element of all virtue.' 9 From this period
onwards Mills laboured mightily in the vineyards of Finney's God. In
1888 he published his first book, The Science of Politics, and became joint
editor of a monthly journal, The Statesman. In both Mills urged good men
to arm themselves with the skills of practical politicians and battle for
virtue in the form of prohibition. Even during these years, however, Mills
did not seek to preserve the purity of his thought by eschewing action.
He was activist incarnate, organizing the successful Intercollegiate
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ERIK OLSSEN
Association, evangelizing throughout the Midwest and the Pacific Coast,
and establishing a correspondence school to train reformers in the arts of
practical politics. 10
From his earliest days as a political activist Mills revealed that bewildering combination of visionary zeal and the habits of the huckster. But his
strong sense of the realities of 'the sentient universe' soon led him to
propound the need not only for efficient organization but for the prohibition movement to become political and to espouse a wide range of
reforms. 1 1 He had, of course, come to prohibition through the Social
Gospel and after the Prohibition Party's failure in the elections of 1888
The Statesman declared its independence from all parties and its commitment to 'honest politics and economic reform.' 1 2 Men such as Richard
Ely, John Bascom and John P. Altgeld now wrote articles and the journal
carried essays on subjects as diverse as 'Asylums for the Insane', 'The
Farmers Alliance', 'The Kindergarten', 'Child Labor', and, as Mills was
nothing if not modern, 'Capital Punishment by Electricity'. Mills's failure
at the 1889 Convention of the Prohibition Party to carry the day for a
broader programme merely intensified his interest in other issues and
especially the 'labour problem'. 1 3 In May 1890 he signalled his own
conversion to a new creed when he wrote, 'within a couple of years so
many people of well-known religious convictions have identified themselves with the Nationalist Movement, which finds its inspiration in
[Edward] Bellamy's Looking Backwards, that the real object of the
socialists — the substitution of governmental co-operation for the present
wage and competitive system — is becoming better understood'. 1 4 During
the next eighteen months he often wrote about the co-operative movement
in Britain and the rise of the German Social Democratic Party and he
greeted the founding of the People's Party with enthusiasm. 1 5
The Statesman collapsed shortly thereafter and Mills pursued a number
of ingenious schemes for making converts and money. He tried his hand
at Chicago real-estate speculation (suburbs of 'wowsers' was the aim),
presided over the World's Fair Hotel and Entertainment Company (the
hotel burnt down), served as a director on the board of the Total Abstinence Life Association of America (which went bankrupt), and kept up
his crusade for converts. 1 6 'I am just home from Iowa', he told one friend,
'where I have been trying to save the country.' 1 7 In 1894 he turned his
energies to founding an agricultural commune without abandoning the
benefits of industrial progress and wrote a long essay in defence of his
vision. 1 8 He also organized a People's University (he was the president),
and in 1898 tried to win the Democratic nomination for a Congressional
District in Chicago. 1 9 Defeated but not despondent, he poured his energies
into the People's University and spoke every Sunday to crowded halls
on a variety of questions. He helped start The New Time (the predecessor
of Charles Kerr's International Socialist Review), joined Eugene Debs's
Social Democratic Party, wrote Evolutionary Politics (1898), and in 1901
helped form the American Socialist Party. 2 0
MILLS, ALLEN, LEE AND SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND
115
For Mills, now widely known as 'the pulpit orator of Chicago', socialism
equalled industrial democracy and the creation of political institutions
more responsive to the will of the people. In How to Work for Socialism
(1900) he spelt out carefully the tactics for converting Populists, women,
children, unionists, Christians and the supporters of William Jennings
Bryan to the new faith. He also claimed that the rise of the Anglo-Saxon
race had been achieved through co-operation until the passion for property
became dominant (he cited Lewis H. Morgan) and ushered in civilization's
second stage. The third inevitable stage was socialism, when 'Property . . .
[would] become the servant of humanity'. 2 1 Mills realized, to the disgust
of the well-schooled ideologues of the East, that in most states there were
too few workers to allow socialism to be surrendered to the working class.
Probably influenced by Henry Demarest Lloyd and Eugene Debs, and
certainly conscious of the predominantly agrarian nature of the Midwest,
Mills joined other 'constructivists' in fighting the 'impossibilists' (who
believed that politics was a diversion, reforms were palliatives, industrial
unions the embryo of the future, and only the unskilled worker a member
of the proletariat). In Illinois, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Washington
Mills fought the militants with considerable success; he established himself
as one of the leading Midwestern socialist evangelists; and in 1904 he
wrote the 'constructivist' text, The Struggle for Existence.22 This enormous
and influential work was not shaped by the materialistic premises common
to most socialists, but by an evolutionary-ethical perspective indebted
more to Finney than to Marx. 2 3 Like Lloyd, Mills also used categories
of analysis such as 'Monopoly' and 'Tyranny', which some historians
loosely refer to as pre-industrial, but such concepts had more meaning for
farmers (and, indeed, many workers), than notions of 'surplus value'.
The central features of capitalism were, in fact, 'monopoly, tyranny and
inequality of opportunity.. . ,' 24 By proceeding in this manner Mills hoped
to enlist many others besides workers in the socialist crusade, thus making
the Socialist Party a national organization with some prospect of winning
political power.
This, then, was the 'little man with a fancy beard' who arrived in New
Zealand to promote unity. 2 5 Mills provided moderates with coherent
arguments with which to rebut the local 'impossibilists' whose ablest
spokesman, H. Scott Bennett, met Mills in a series of justly celebrated
debates. 2 6 Although Mills did not convince the leading 'Red Feds' of the
error of their ways he did arm the moderates with a strong theory of
political evolution, of a series of steps that would attract farmers and
liberals, help educate sceptics, yet lead inevitably towards socialism. He
also armed them with reasons for their belief, which few of them could
articulate, that democratic methods were a major historical achievement
and that the course of evolution lay along the trajectory of increased
political and economic democracy. Mills's wide, if facile, knowledge of
socialist theory and the social sciences, together with his prowess as an
evangelist, helped revitalize the camp of the local moderates. Mills also
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ERIK OLSSEN
made an important contribution to the debate about the strategy for
achieving socialism, for his experience in the Midwest had convinced him
that the vision of a revolution by the class-conscious members of the
proletariat had no validity in a predominantly rural and agricultural
society. To achieve power labour needed allies, and with promiscuous
enthusiasm Mills wooed Single Taxers, Prohibitionists, women and
Christians. 2 7
Because of his background and his almost instinctive revisionism Mills
recognized the importance of what, for want of a better term, can be
described as 'middle-class radicals'. He wooed them with some success
not only by speaking their language and emphasizing appealing issues such
as land monopoly but because his justification for labour and socialism
rested not on a concept of class warfare — as the 'Red Feds' complained 2 8
— but on an evangelical moral tradition. While he helped convince many
'Red Feds' that their insistence on appealing only to the working class
would isolate them and make defeat inevitable (a point driven home by
the Waihi strike of 1912 and the great strike of 1913), he and many of his
'Unity Campaign Special Workers' helped make 'socialism' palatable to
many 'middle-class radicals'; helped show that 'socialism' was Christianity
applied. 2 9 Of course, Mills could draw upon a lively Anglo-American
tradition. He was deeply versed in the Social Gospel, and he was a spellbinder long practised in using the techniques of revivalism to further the
socialist gospel. 30 Indeed, in Dunedin members of the Socialist Party
co-operated closely with the United Labour Party, despite Bennett's
charge that Mills's party 'kow-tows to the Hon. George Fowlds and the
"wowsers" ', and in 1913, despite the Executive of the 'Red' Federation,
delegates to the Unity Conference invited the United Labour Party to send
two delegates. 31 Mills thus wooed 'middle-class radicals', but not at the
cost of alienating workingmen. 3 2
Mills not only helped direct a generation of 'middle-class radicals' —
usually protestant, pietist, and in favour of prohibition — towards labour
and socialism but helped revive the idea of a farmer-labour coalition as
part of New Zealand labour's political strategy. 33 Mills, of course, was
influenced less by the 'Lib-Lab' victory of 1890 than by his experience
in the United States. For ten years he had laboured mightily in states such
as Kansas and Nebraska and had become very popular with radical
farmers. Few issues divided more deeply 'constructivist' from 'impossibilist'
during this period and few issues so accurately symbolized the debate, for
the 'impossibilist' saw farmers as capitalists whereas 'constructivists'
viewed them as a species of wage-slaves. Neither viewpoint is entirely
satisfactory but the 'constructivists' won the battle by reference to the
prophets of the Second International and to political necessity. In New
Zealand Mills quickly duplicated his American strategy. He toured the
small towns of rural New Zealand with gusto; he organized branches of
his United Labour Party in hamlets and villages across the land; and he
persuaded many provincial newspapers to carry party material and
MILLS, ALLEN, LEE AND SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND
117
messages on a regular basis. He also devised a platform for his Working
Farmers' Union which reveals his instinctive and intimate sympathy with
small farmers and his intuitive realization that New Zealand, like Kansas
or Nebraska, was a colony. Although Mills's platform was deeply influenced by Henry George — graduated tax on unimproved value and all
titles on a use-occupancy tenure — this largely reflected George's influence
on 'constructivists' in America and moderates in New Zealand (indeed
the Land Values League, which leading members of the U.L.P. promoted,
affiliated with the party). 34 Mills also advocated that the State act as sole
land agent; the establishment of state-owned factories to produce farm
implements, seed and stock; the establishment of a State Bank to lend
money 'at the actual cost of service'; state-owned creameries, slaughterhouses, cold-storage plants, and coastal shipping service; and a stateoperated export-import agency with a view to eliminating parasitic
middlemen and stabilizing markets. 3 5 While New Zealand labour adopted
Mills's strategy, for fifteen years ideological fundamentalists were to
dominate debates over land policy.
In 1912 Mills was the subject of virulent controversy, especially in
Auckland, and on more than one occasion 'Red Feds' used direct action
to intimidate 'United Campaign Workers' and threatened to 'deal with
that little bastard Mills'. 36 Events helped persuade many 'Red Fed' leaders
to see the wisdom of Mills's ways but one of the major ideologues of
revolutionary unionism in Britain, after living here some years, arrived at
similar conclusions and began to elaborate Mills's intuitive appreciation
of New Zealand's colonial status. From the date of his arrival in 1913
E. J. B. Allen made himself unpopular with men such as Robert Semple
by pointing out that Mills was the architect of the strategy which now
absorbed the energies of leading 'Red Feds'. 3 7 Allen's mana as a revolutionary theorist, however, rendered him immune to character assassination.
Although born into a comfortable English family and educated at Oxford,
where he specialized in languages, Allen joined M. H. Hyndman's Social
Democratic Federation during his student days. In 1903 he followed the
Scottish de Leonites into the Socialist Labour Party (S.L.P.) which,
according to one historian, 'by its unprecedented insistence on purity of
doctrine, its disregard and even contempt for the cult of numbers, and its
almost fanatical propaganda for the revolutionary role of industrial
unionism, came to play a role totally unrelated to the material resources
at its command.' 3 8 Allen wrote for the party's newspaper, The Socialist,
defending 'impossibilism' or, in other words, the tactic of destroying 'the
various movements of the working class . . . '. He also emerged as one
of the party's London leaders. 39
Allen hurled himself into several sectarian disputes but began to show
impatience with the 'hair-splitting' of the 'impossibilists' as he became
more deeply involved in promoting industrial unionism. He helped found
and formulate the strategy for the Advocates of Industrial Unionism 4 0
and championed a latitudinarian policy towards new members, boasting,
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ERIK
OLSSEN
to the discomfort of the popes of the party, that activists for the A.I.U.
were being recruited from the Clarion Fellowship, the Independent Labour
Party and the Social Democratic Federation. When the S.L.P. rejected
growth in favour of purity Allen resigned. 'The S.L.P. will only appeal
to . . . [the workers'] minds', he warned, 'as one of the political sects out
of four or five claiming to be the party of the working class' and hence
would merit the contempt visited upon 'the spasms and gyrations of the
Plymouth Brethren . . . the strict Baptists of the total immersion, and the
Bible Christians.' 4 1 In an essay on 'Anarchist Communism' he hit still
harder at the S.L.P. and then, with a tiny band of followers, formed the
Industrial League. He now devoted himself to the promotion of industrial
unionism and in 1909 published a brief but widely read defence of revolutionary industrial unionism in which he also spelt out the tactics of direct
action (including the sit-down strike and working-to-rule). 42 In 1910 he
joined Tom Mann's Industrial Syndicalist Education League and moved
to Huddersfield as an organizer and propagandist for this highly successful
organization. 4 3
In the same year Allen wrote an important article on 'Working Class
Socialism' which provides a model of 'left' socialism that Allen would
•later modify but not abandon. He began this essay by arguing that the
state in all of its roles (judiciary, employer, or army for instance), was the
instrument of the class enemy. 'Our rulers obtained what they wanted by
the exercise of force . . . . Direct action is the only way for the workers to
achieve their emancipation, and the industrial union will be the training
ground.' Later he declared that 'The industrial union movement is a
declaration of the Social War'; the only valid form of organization which
allowed workers to survive under monopoly capitalism; a state within
a state, 'the embryo of a working-class Republic', and 'a bulwark alike
against a State bureaucracy or a military despotism'. Allen never lost this
suspicion of bureaucracy or his vision of a free society.
The union movement, by making the individual worker conscious of the power
that his class can wield, creates the desire for power in his mind. He begins to
despise his condition as a wage-slave who is bought and sold . . . like coal . . .
or a bale of shoddy. The revolutionary worker longs for room to develop his
creative faculties, to exercise the social power he is entitled to, for a greater
freedom in every way; and the industrial union shows him the way . . .; and by
its voluntary discipline . . . and by forcing on him his responsibilities . . . gives
him that sense of moral responsibility to his fellows that fits him for the task of
controlling society.
A general strike, he believed, would usher in the millennium. 44
It is not known why Allen came to New Zealand in 1913 but he was
soon employed as assistant editor of the Maoriland Worker and wrote
regularly for the paper. In the aftermath of the waterfront strike he
justified strikes, even when lost, because of 'the feeling of class solidarity
. . . and revolutionary thought that is invariably generated . . . \ 4 5 Like
other revolutionary socialists in New Zealand however, defeat politicized
MILLS, ALLEN, LEE AND SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND
119
him. 'The action of the Massey Government in pouring armed strikebreakers . . . into the town has awakened a SPIRIT OF BITTERNESS and
resentment which will find no satisfaction until the Massey Government is driven from office and the Reform Party put down and out as a
political force . . ,'. 4 6 Allen also wrote a series of articles stressing, on the
basis of British experience, the imperative need for unity and the necessity
for organizing into unions the 'industrial Goths and Vandals', the rural
workers who, as in 1890, had served as strike-breakers. 47 But Allen did
not consider unity worth any price and argued that 'it must be unity that
aims at emancipation from the wages system or it will be of no avail'.
'A well-conditioned servile class may be a material improvement for the
workers . . . but it is not the ideal of the Socialists'. 48 And then the war
came; Allen followed Hyndman, supporting both the war and conscription,
and lost his position on the Maoriland Worker. In the interests of unity,
however, he appears to have held his tongue and sheathed his pen,
apparently finding work as an unskilled labourer in Auckland. 4 9
In 1919 Allen returned to the fray, speaking as one of Labour's Sunday
orators on Quay Street and writing for both the Maoriland Worker and
the Auckland Labour News.b0 In his various essays for Labour News he
touched often on the implications of trying to achieve socialism within a
colonial economy. For instance, in two detailed defences of the Auckland
Labour Representation Committee's (L.R.C.) scheme for municipal farms
and municipal milk, he partly justified the policy on the unusual grounds
that the domestic price for milk and its by-products had to be isolated
from 'the American and European markets and their fluctuations'.51 In
these years he also rejected the classical economists' concept of comparative advantage, arguing, for instance, that New Zealand ought to produce
wheat even if the cost per unit exceeded the foreign cost. Profitability he
deemed outmoded and socially inefficient as a criterion of utility (the
essence, of course, of the socialist case against the allegedly 'free market'). 5 2
Allen envisioned a world of self-sufficient 'working-class Republics [with]
a free-trade in our various surpluses' (the need for self-sufficiency being
in inverse relation to the number of 'working-class Republics'). 53 He also
recognized that although New Zealand 'is an almost complete miniature
of the older capitalist countries' 54 it was distinctive and 'happily placed
in as much as there is not yet fully developed a purely parasitic class in
society . . .'. More to the point, many of the parasites living off the New
Zealand ' "wage-slave" and "mortgage c o c k a t o o " ' lived abroad, especially
in Britain. 55
These remarks of Allen's have been isolated from articles directed,
almost invariably, to other ends. But scattered and isolated though these
insights are they consort easily with Allen's major attempt to relate his
conception of revolutionary socialism to the New Zealand reality. In
Labour and Politics, a pamphlet published by the Auckland Labour
Representation Committee in 1922, 56 Allen urged that each nation's
socialists, despite the Third International, had to 'formulate their own
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ERIK OLSSEN
plan of campaign to win their freedom from the economic, social and
political domination of the property-owning class, both local and
European, who control the means of life'. Tactics could only be effective,
he held, if related to each nation's 'own stages and circumstances of social
evolution . . .'. Having struck a blow for relativism he asserted that
'Australia and New Zealand offer the best chance of the workers being able
to abolish the wages system of slavery and establish a co-operative commonwealth by the use of peaceful constitutional means.' He had no intention
of minimizing his revolutionary objective but argued that 'We cannot
slavishly accept the formula of any country, either European or American.'
Allen's major thesis was, however, that 'Capitalism is not fully developed
in New Zealand.' The total population hardly equalled that of a 'fair
sized' town in Britain or America; 'apart from the miners, watersiders
and railwaymen, there are no large bodies of workers concentrated into
large masses that raises to red heat their class feeling and . . . antagonism';
and thus the class struggle, while still important, had to be preached before
it could be fought.
Most industries in New Zealand, Allen proceeded, were small and the
industrial sector was of little importance. This, together with 'the comparatively easy avenues of escape' to a suburban shop or a 'three acre'
farm, he pointed out, 'blurs the vision of the worker as far as the class
struggle is concerned'. Nor, he held, is there an 'alchemy in the form of
organisation which makes an unclass-conscious worker into a revolutionist'. Worse, working-class conservatism was often a result of precipitate
action and subsequent defeat, of allowing 'theories and. . . tactics to march
ahead of their material environment, and . . . [preaching] 'One Big Union'
and 'Direct Action' as though they were an 'Open Sesame' to the New
Zealand worker's emancipation.' No union or combination of unions in
New Zealand, he went on to say, could 'win out in opposition to the
Government'. And this all meant that not only could unions in New
Zealand not achieve revolution by direct action but that they could not
hope to win nationalization or 'joint control'. 'Even a successful strike
does not affect the question of "ownership" of the means of production
and distribution', he warned, and in most cases 'an analysis of the wage
gains show but poor results against the increased prices all the workers
as well as the strikers have afterwards to pay'. These pessimistic remarks
led Allen to his main point, 'that to get a revolutionary working class the
prime essential is propaganda. Propaganda is essentially the function of a
Political Party'. Indeed, he waspishly concluded, without political power
'One Big Union' was illegal; 'how is the anti-political going to accomplish it?'
One further quotation illustrates the tactics that Allen thought appropriate to New Zealand during the post-war years.
Physical force is the weapon of the barbarian. We have to act on the assumption,
difficult as it may sometimes be, that our masters are civilised. We have to
endeavour to settle our disputes in a peaceful, civilised manner. We preach and
MILLS, ALLEN, LEE AND SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND
121
argue and debate, and then test the public opinion by the ballot. That is political
action, it is the diplomacy of the revolutionary labour movement. On the plane
of political action we carry on our educational campaign, . . . the criticism and
analysis of capitalist society, and show our fellow workers and other honestminded citizens [a fulsome bow to Mills], the desirability and necessity of
fundamental change. By the peaceful method of the ballot . . . we register the
amount of public opinion that is with us. We convert our fellow wage-slaves from
being the passive adherents of the present social system to intellectual revolutionists
who propagate unceasingly the necessity for change.
The object of the exercise was socialism — public or common ownership,
worker control, functional democracy — but only if a government tried
to disfranchise the working class or rob labour of its gains would 'direct
action' or insurrection be a sensible tactic. Although we have not conveyed
the full range of Allen's small output in this period, Labour and Politics,
together with his occasional comments about New Zealand's economy
and society, indicate the extent to which he kept his vision yet modified
his tactics. Allen had accepted many of Mills's strategies but not his
revisionism, and by 1926 he was upset because 'Parliamentary Democracy
has. killed the virile activity of Proletarian Democracy'. 5 7 Nevertheless,
on the foundations provided by Mills and Allen the third subject of this
article built still further.
J. A. Lee had lived in Auckland during 1912-13 and had heard both
Mills and Bennett. Little is known of Lee's response to the ferment of
these years, although he read widely in the vigorous literature of socialism,
but it can safely be said that he accepted Mills's evolutionary strategy
(shared, of course, by the Fabians), the commitment to political action,
and a Fabian conception of the goal and the method for getting there.
During the war he read most of the Fabian pamphlets and subscribed to
The New Statesman, the paper of the Independent Labour Party, and
Sinn Fein, and during 1918-19, while convalescing in England after being
wounded in France, he read some of the major works of J. A. Hobson,
described by some as a radical liberal and by others as a socialist. 58 Lee
apparently met Allen in 1922, for he was President of the Auckland L.R.C.
when it published Labour and Politics, but they saw little of each other for
some years because Lee belonged to the 'in-group' whereas Allen had
been cast into outer darkness during the war. The problem described by
Allen as that of 'relativity' interested Lee greatly, however, and in 1927-28
they began to meet frequently (Allen joined Lee's campaign committee
and Lee used some of the £200 donated by Ernest Davis to pay Allen
regular wages). 59
Except with regard to land policy Lee made little contribution to the
transposition of international socialism into New Zealand terms until the
late 1920s. But the debate over land policy was not entirely irrelevant to
the issue of 'relativity'. First, as Mills and Allen hinted, there was the
problem of stabilizing land values without 'fixing' prices. Others too, saw
the validity of the point but only in 1926-27 when the Party agreed to
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stabilize prices by means of scientific marketing and bulk-purchase agreements, was any sort of solution spelt out (and Lee did not accept it as
adequate). 6 0 More important however, the debate over land policy underlined what Mills had known, that New Zealand was not an industrial
society but predominantly agricultural and pastoral. Not only that,
whereas socialist theorists had always assumed that the maturation of
capitalism would bring in its train larger and larger farms, that the tendency
towards monopoly would be as evident in agriculture as it appeared to
be in industry, this process had obviously not occurred in New Zealand
in either the agricultural or the industrial sector. In three long letters to
the National Secretary, written between 1923 and 1925, Lee spelt out
clearly the inadequacy of nationalization of land and, indeed, its irrelevance. Instead, he believed, co-operation had first to be fostered
because production had to be socialized before it was feasible to nationalize
land. Besides, as Mills and the American 'constructivists' had clearly
recognized, an evolutionary strategy for socializing production and
distribution could be made attractive to farmers and thus help the Party
escape the wilderness to which exclusive reliance on working-class support
condemned it. 6 1
By 1928 the party had accepted a land policy to Lee's tastes (although
others in the party had seen the same point as early as Lee and done as
much to effect the changes). But the onset of depression together with
rising unemployment after 1926 intensified the contradictions between
inherited ideology and the New Zealand reality. First, where Lee, like
most of his colleagues, accepted J. A. Hobson's theory of underconsumption and his claim that the problem could be solved by redistributing wealth from rich to poor, as the depression worsened it
became clear that New Zealand's well-to-do did not possess enough wealth,
at least in liquid form, to render redistribution worthwhile. According to
one Commission New Zealand's middle classes were in such straitened
circumstances by 1930 that the Government could not even finance
unemployment insurance by taxation. 6 2 Second, whereas from 1926 until
1929 party spokesmen, including Lee, emphasized excessive immigration
and technological change as the causes of unemployment the same Commission showed conclusively that immigrants, most of whom were skilled,
constituted but a small proportion of the unemployed. The vast majority
of the unemployed, indeed, were unskilled labourers whose jobs had not
been taken over by machines. 6 3 Even more striking, and Lee skirted this
problem in 1927, the depression in New Zealand was not a function of
domestic productivity but of low export prices. In 1927 he had noted that
borrowing abroad could stave off retrenchment, but concluded that borrowing would only compel more vigorous retrenchment in the long run. 6 4
This paradox of a nation producing sufficient to feed, clothe and house
its people but unable to do so because the British housewife could not
afford to buy our products became the central nagging question. And, of
course, the importance of British housewives and money-lenders in the
MILLS, ALLEN, LEE AND SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND
123
New Zealand equation distinguished New Zealand from the traditional
socialist model of a capitalist society.
Inherited socialist theory offered no solution to these paradoxes.
Socialists of all persuasions assumed the existence of a mature industrial
society dominated increasingly by giant corporations and monopolies,
dependent for their economic health on their ability to export profitably
increasing quantities of manufactured goods and capital while importing
unprocessed raw materials. Socialists had assumed, in short, that socialist
forms would grow within the legal and institutional framework of capitalism until, at some point, capitalism would collapse or be destroyed and the
principal contradiction in capitalist society — between individual appropriation and social production — would be resolved. New Zealand just
did not fit the equation; far from exporting capital and manufactured
goods it imported both and exported primary produce; far from its economy being dominated by industry it was dominated, if at all, by banks,
breweries, stock and station agents, and insurance companies (often
owned abroad); far from concentration and consolidation having characterized our economic development for the past century the critical sectors
of the economy were dominated by the family farm and the small firm.
Most trade unions had less than 100 members and most factories employed
less than ten persons. New Zealand was less a mass-production industrial
society than an economic colony. 6 5
No socialist theorist had studied the strategies for realizing socialism
within a colonial economy because almost all of them believed that
socialism would come only in societies where capitalism had reached its
highest form of development. While developments in Russia had challenged
this belief little was known outside the Soviet Union of the relevant
debates. 6 6 Yet the debate over Russia which occurred during the 1920s
was important, for Lee's contribution to policy debates was shaped by
his belief, and he was following Karl Kautsky, that the Soviet Government
had attempted too much too quickly and so had become a dictatorship. 6 7
Equally important in shaping Lee's views was his belief that the depression
was less a crisis of capitalism than one of capitalists too ignorant to
realize how easily the worst features of the depression could be ameliorated.
This meant, in other words, that there was nothing automatic or inevitable
about the collapse of capitalism and the arrival of socialism; the former
had to be engineered, the latter planned. These realizations, together with
the paradoxes of New Zealand's situation (which the 1928 election brought
into sharper focus) led Lee to search for a more realistic set of socialist
objectives and a strategy for realizing them within a democratic community. In the course of 1929-30, clearly influenced by policy debates in
Britain and Australia, he concluded that maximum economic insulation
must be the first step on the road to socialism in New Zealand and the
escape route from the depression. 'A solution . . . requires more than a
mere distribution of purchasing power [the answer given in the 1920s],
we must be able to stay the violent price fluctuations, must be able to
124
ERIK OLSSEN
determine that increases in purchasing power are not so used as to create
exchange crises. For we are only a small people in the world economy
and such standards as we create we shall have to insulate against the
shocks which can be dealt by larger outside systems.' Given insulation
through control of finance and credit, and apart from a reference to
exchange controls the means for achieving this were vague, a Labour
Government could achieve price stabilization and planned industrial
growth.
The solution to unemployment and the problems posed by colonial
status was neither increased agricultural productivity nor its classical
justification, the concept of comparative advantage, but the encouragement of secondary industries. Labour, of course, had championed industrial
development in the 1928 election and both the notion of self-sufficiency
and the desire for secondary industry can be traced back easily to the
1880s and 1890s, but for Lee these policies had acquired a new meaning.
For, placing his weight upon Hobson's calculus of social welfare, he no
longer cared whether industries were efficient because industrialization
would help make insulation effective, thus protecting New Zealand from
international capitalism, and ensuring that gains in welfare could not be
destroyed by falling export prices. 'If a high price is the difference between
a rice standard and our own', he wrote, 'it is a price I shall pay cheerfully.'
'The only way to safety', he wrote, is
Along the line of Secondary Industry [where] lies employment, lies prospect of
increased population, a wide field for our diverse talents, the squaring of a
lop-sided economic system, and the greater chance of insulating New Zealand
so that we can advance beyond the real wage standard of other countries. Along
the line of manufacturing development lies freedom from dependence on
overseas finance. Along this road of expanded population and expanded consumption of local production lies the prospect of a growing market for primary
produce at a stabilised and profitable price. There is no road to high wages for
workers or farmers if internal prices are based upon world conditions, except an
improvement in world conditions. There is no way to local high wages if these
wages are used to purchase imports to create exchange crises. We must pay our
debts, we must liquidate our overseas debts. Only the curtailment of borrowing
and imports will do that.
Lee had, as it were, rejected Allen's preference for international specialization in favour of self-sufficiency because New Zealand could count on
no other nation. 6 8
Many of the ideas in Lee's paper were vague and remained vague for
years to come but, to some extent, almost all of his subsequent contributions to policy debates can be considered footnotes to it. But in 1930-31,
as he began to propound his new plan (and those whose sympathies lay
with J. T. Lang in Australia or with Sir Oswald Mosley in Britain would
have found little in this policy to cause dissent), he came under attack from
one Malcolm Brown for having replaced nationalization with insulation,
industrialization, and credit expansion. Such criticisms aroused his ire
MILLS, ALLEN, LEE AND SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND
125
but he knew, in all probability, that his new policy lacked any clear
ideological direction and that it divested socialism of its millennial overtones. Socialism in this sense was concerned with policy priorities and
strategies of change but no longer expressed the alienation of the working
class. 69 Although he was not indifferent to the religious significance of
socialism nor to the alienation of the working class from the New Zealand
community, and indeed briefly appears to have believed that conventional
revolution was possible in New Zealand, 7 0 he never surrendered his hardwon insight that only maximum insulation and self-sufficiency held out the
hope of freeing New Zealand from the anarchy of international capitalism.
Not that insulation and self-sufficiency constituted socialism, but in the
context of New Zealand they were the indispensable foundations for
socialism.
One clear implication of this insight was the confirmation of the
widespread popular feeling that in New Zealand the banks constituted
the major source of economic power in private hands. Mills, thanks to
his experience in the Midwest, clearly understood the role of 'Wall Street'
in exploiting the producer-dominated states and the United Labour Party's
land policy reflected this suspicion of banks and bankers. The suspicion,
of course, had strong indigenous roots (especially among small farmers
and skilled workingmen). Allen arrived at the same conclusion. When
British bankers were reported to have said that they would refuse to
accommodate a Labour Government he promptly wrote that no socialist
government could survive unless it nationalized the banks. Such a policy
was even more urgent here because 'New Zealand is in pawn to wealthy
parasites of the Old Country, more so than it is to the local specimens of
the same parasitic species'. 71 Lee accepted both arguments; not only were
credit and finance the nervous system of the economy but the banks
subordinated New Zealand interests to British or Australian requirements.
Besides, only by controlling financial and credit policy within an insulated
economy could industrial growth be fostered. Failure to take these steps
would mean that Labour's ability to achieve its socialist goals would
remain dependent on export prices and the approval of bankers and
bondholders. 7 2
Mills, Allen and Lee played an important role in defining a possible
meaning for socialism within New Zealand. The trajectory isolated here
did not lead into a cul de sac nor did it lead away from socialism. Indeed,
many major socialist and communist theorists since the Second World War,
in grappling with the prospects for socialism in under-developed economies,
have followed a similar path. 7 3 Even readers of the New Statesman and
Nation, during the early 1930s while never finding such a clear and forceful
statement of an alternative to deflationary economics, could have read
G. D. H. Cole and J. M. Keynes defending economic nationalism and the
irrelevance of revolutionary rhetoric as a substitute for a detailed strategy
for achieving socialism. 74 Only Mills of these three, however, can claim
to have won his points so successfully that almost all socialists in New
126
ERIK OLSSEN
Zealand ultimately accepted them. Allen and Lee, and they possibly
worked together closely in the critical years of 1928-29, followed Mills
on the major questions of strategy and elaborated one approach to the
problem of the meaning of socialism in New Zealand. During the 1930s,
however, the policy of maximum insulation and industrialization did not
win the support of all members of the Labour Party, some of whom,
like Walter Nash, doubted the feasibility and desirability of economic
nationalism, and many of the disputes and squabbles within the parliamentary party in the 1930s revolved around the latent question of insulation
(for Lee preferred, probably for political reasons, to debate the issue in
terms of credit policy although he knew that credit expansion without
insulation, and a vigorous commitment to the development of industry,
would prove disastrous). Time, however, has rendered the alternative
strategies suspect and the policy of insulation, although vague, ambiguous
at some points and poorly developed, has proved to be the most fruitful
socialist analysis of New Zealand's predicament in a capitalist world. For,
and this was Lee's central insight, without the maximum degree of
insulation socialism in New Zealand was impossible. Whether or not one
decides, as a result, that socialism is or is not a practical objective for
New Zealand it is difficult to disagree with the economist, C. G. F. Simkin,
that 'insulationism . . . compels respect as a serious and effective attack
upon a major social problem, and more especially as an advance upon
the methods used to deal with the last depression'. 7 5
ERIK
OLSSEN
University of Otago.
NOTES
'W. H. Oliver, 'Reeves, Sinclair and the Social Pattern', in The Feel of Truth, ed.
Peter Munz, Wellington, 1969, pp. 179-80.
^Others, such as Lloyd Ross and Mark Silverstone, may have contributed to this
discussion but too little is known about the views of either man.
3
See Peter Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg, London and New York, 1966; Julius Braunthal,
History of the International, 1914-1943, London, 1967, II; and Walter Kendall, The
Revolutionary Movement in Britain, 1900-1921, London, 1969.
4
See for example P.J. O'Farrell, Harry Holland: Militant Socialist, Canberra, 1964
and P. G. Morris, 'Unemployed Organisation in New Zealand. 1926-1939', unpublished
M.A. thesis, Victoria University, 1949.
5
Report and Proceedings of the Trades and Labour Councils' Annual Conference,
Wellington, 1910, pp. 16-17.
6
Not all affiliates accepted such views; for an attempt at a balanced profile of the
'Red' Federation of Labour see the author's brief essay, 'The "Red Feds" ', New
Zealand's Heritage, Part 74, pp. 2066-72.
7
J. T. Paul, Labour and the Future, Dunedin, 1911, p. 17.
8
For information about Mills's early life I am indebted to Professor John M. Gates
of Wooster College, Ohio, and Ms. Gertrude Jacob of Oberlin College, Ohio, for
copies of files on Mills possessed by the Alumni Records' Department of both colleges.
9
F. G. A. Beardsley, A Mighty Winner of Souls: Charles G. Finney, New York, 1937,
p. 147.
MILLS, ALLEN, LEE AND SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND
127
10
See 'Editorials', The Statesman, III (November 1887), 54-55; 'Prospectus of
American School of Polities', ibid., (October 1887), 24-27; 'Recent Events', ibid., 29;
'College Echoes', ibid., IV (April 1888), 239.
" ' F r o m Walter Thomas Mills', ibid., IV (April 1888), 216-17.
12
'Editorials\ ibid., IV (December 1888), 179.
13
ibid., V (April 1889), 48; and Canadian Voice, IX (March 1889), (cited in ibid.).
'«'Economic and Social Notes', The Statesman, VII (May 1890), 120-21.
15
ibid., (January 1890), 238-40; 'Editorials', ibid., (August 1890), 305-7 and'Economic
and Social Notes', ibid., 308-9.
"See an advertisement for Walter Thomas Mills and Co., Building, Land and
Investment Commissioners in The Statesman, VIII (October 1890). For the hotel see
W. T. Mills to 'Dear Friend', 10 January 1893, T. C. Richmond mss., Wisconsin State
Historical Society. For his venture in life insurance see William F. Singleton to T. C.
Richmond, 14 June, 8, 11 and 18 July 1893, Richmond mss.
17
Mills to T. C. Richmond, 9 November 1893, Richmond mss.
1
'•The Product-Sharing Village, Chicago, 1894.
"Mills to Richmond, 21 March 1898, ibid and 'The People's University', The New
Time, II (March 1898), ix.
20
Mills to Richmond, 14 and 16 March 1898, Richmond mss; 'Now Ready: Evolutionary Polities', New Time, II (March 1898), viii; also Mills's comments in 'The
Unity Convention at Indianapolis', International Socialist Review, II (July 1901), 36-39.
'Even before the party was organized', one historian has written, 'W. T. Mills foreshadowed the gradualist approach in Evolutionary Politics...', T. D. S. Bassett, 'Socialist
Political Action', in Donald D. Egbert and Stow Persons, Socialism and American Life,
2 Vols, Princeton, 1952, II, 286-87.
21
How to Work for Socialism, Chicago, 1900, Pocket Library of Socialism, p. 31.
22
The only published comments about Mills during this period are by Ira Kipnis in
The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912, New York, 1952, pp. 147, 176-80, and
373-74. Kipnis gives a jaundiced view, however, as he argued that socialism failed in
the United States because the 'Right Wing' captured the party and Mills, thus, was one
of his betes noires.
23
For a perceptive review see 'Book Reviews', International Socialist Review, V (August
1904), 121. The Christian Socialist, VII (June 1910), on the other hand, described the
book as 'the greatest American work on scientific socialism'.
24
The Struggle for Existence, seventh edition, n.d., p. 161.
25
The description is from David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America, New
York, 1955, p. 27. Mills, who had been engaged by the Australian Labour Party for
some seven months, was invited to New Zealand by the executives of the New Zealand
Labour Party and the Trades and Labour Councils' Federation (see Report and Proceedings of the Trades and Labour Councils' Annual Conference, Wellington, 1911, p. 4
and Voice of Labour, 9 June 1911, p. 9, cols. 1-4).
2
<>[W. T. Mills and H. Scott-Bennett], The Bennett-Mills Debate on the Unity Scheme,
Wellington, 1912.
27
See 'Land Monopoly and How to End It', New Zealand Times, 25 July 1912, p. 13,
cols. 1-10. His actual policy — 'Free hold in Use' — had as much in common with the
second Labour Party's 1927 policy as it did with Henry George's policies. Mills lectured
for the New Zealand Alliance during the 1911 referendum but otherwise cultivated
prohibitionists quietly; Voice of Labour, 6 April 1912, p. 10, col. 1. Instances of his
attempt to appeal to women can be found either in the Housewives' Union or the Voice
of Labour, 22 September 1911, p. 3, cols. 1-3 while his vigorous attempt to woo
Christians can be illustrated either by articles, such as 'Political Meetings on Sundays',
New Zealand Times, 23 July 1912, p. 4, cols. 1-3, or the space devoted by the Voice,
which he edited for six weeks during 1912, to the views of prominent American exponents of Christian Socialism and the Social Gospel (such as Walter Raushenbusch).
28
Proceedings of the Annua! Conference of the Federation of Labour, Wellington,
1912, p. 48.
29
For his basic theoretical statement see 'Religion and Socialism' in The Struggle
for Existence.
30
For a report which reveals his skilful use of Biblical allusion and metaphor see
Voice of Labour, 16 June 1911, p. 4, cols. 1-3.
31
Arthur McCarthy [Treasurer of ULP] to John Robertson M.P., 7 May 1912,
McCarthy mss, Hocken Library. For Bennett's charge see The Bennett-Mills Debate
on the Unity Scheme, p. 7 and for the events at the Unity Conference of January 1913
128
ERIK OLSSEN
see the report of the proceedings, Basis for Unity, Wellington, 1913, pp. 11-18.
32
It is easily forgotten that the 'Red Feds', with their atheism and revolutionary
rhetoric, alienated many of their own rank and file to whom Mills could appeal. For
instance, when he and Webb addressed the timber workers in 1912, Mills won the day;
see Southland Timber Yards and Sawmills Industrial Union of Workers, Annual Report,
Invercargill, 1912, p. 4.
33
In 1911 the Labour Party contested only urban seats.
34
For the Otago Branch see New Zealand Times, 22 July 1912, p. 4, col. 3.
35
See 'The New Zealand Farmer', Voice, 23 February 1912, p. 10, cols. 2-3 and
'The Land Question', p. 13, cols. 2-3 and 'Land Monopoly . . .', New Zealand Times,
25 July 1912, p. 13. Prior to the Unity Conference of Easter 1912 Mills apparently
enjoyed almost complete freedom in enunciating policy, so long as he opposed 'Red
Fed' syndicalism. After the Unity Conference he was bound by the policy resolutions
passed there, most of which were broad in nature, and he was responsible to the ULP
Executive. Before the argument over policy towards the 1913 Unity proposals, however,
Mills continued to enjoy a free hand.
36
'The Red Terror', Voice, 3 November 1911, p. 6, cols. 3-4; p. 7, cols. 1-2, and p. 8,
col. 1.
37
Allen, 'Robert Semple: Revolutionist', Auckland Labour News (ALN), 1 August
1921, pp. 5-6.
38
Lee, 'Obituary', John A. Lee's Weekly, 4 July 1945, p. 16. For the sectarian background see Kendall, p. 63.
39
'S.L.P.ism\ The Socialist, V (January 1907), 1.
40
'The Advocates of Industrial Unionism', ibid., p. 8; 'London A. of I.U.', ibid.,
V (April 1907), 8; and 'Why and Where the SLP is Growing', ibid., VI (December
1907), 2.
41
'The Industrial Union', ibid., VI (March 1908), 8.
42
'Anarchist Communism', ibid., VI (April 1908), 4 and 'A Desirable Disclaimer',
ibid., (June 1908), 6. The history of the Industrial Union League is largely unknown
although according to Kendall, p. 71, Allen had been editing the AIU's paper and tried,
unsuccessfully, to capture it for the new League. See also B. Pribicevic, The Shop
Stewards Movement and Worker Control, 1910-1922, Oxford, 1959, pp. 12-13. Allen's
pamphlet was entitled Revolutionary Socialism, Notting Hill, [1909]. Tom Mann
claimed that Allen helped crystallize his views; see Mann, Tom Mann's Memoirs,
London, 1923, p. 195.
43
See information about Education League speakers and organizers in Industrial
Syndicalist, I (September 1910), 2-3; Kendall, pp. 144-46, 338-39 n. 40 and Pribicevic,
Shop Stewards, pp. 2-3.
44
Industrial Syndicalist, I (November 1910), 10-15.
45
'Some Limitations', Maoriland Worker (MW) ,17 December 1913, p. 8, cols. 2-3.
46
'The Situation in Auckland', MW, 7 January 1914, p. 2 col. 3.
47
'The British Labour Movement', ibid., 14 January 1914, p. I, cols. 5-8 and ibid.,
21 January 1914, p. 1 cols. 4-8. On rural workers see 'The Agricultural Workers', ibid.,
6 May 1914, p. 5 cols. 2-3 (although the telling phrase is Pat Hickey's in his article on
'Our Irresistible Army', ibid., 11 March 1914, p. 5, cols. 4-5).
"•«'Labour Unity', ibid., 10 June 1914, p. 5, col. 4.
4
'See 'Violence', MW, 11 May 1921, p. 8, col. 4 and 'Labour and Revolution', ALN,
1 November 1920, pp 3-5.
50
Most of his articles for the MW followed conventional socialist lines, portraying
the Massey Government as a puppet of the capitalists and the Peace Settlement as an
instrument of reaction, see 'Burning Men Alive', MW, 2 March 1921, p. 7, cols. 2-3;
'Sane Labour', ibid., 30 March 1921, p. 7, col. 4; 'Violence', ibid., 11 May 1921, p. 8,
col. 4 and 'It's our wages they want', ibid. 17 August 1921, p. 2, col. 3.
5i'The Milk Supply', ALN, 1 November 1918, p. 5 and ibid., 1 December 1920,
pp. 13-14.
s 2 'All Power to the Workers', ibid., 1 October 1920, pp. 13-14.
53
'The Politics of the Furure', ibid., 1 November 1921, pp. 3-5.
54
'The Class War in New Zealand', ibid., 1 November 1920, pp. 3-5.
55
'The Spiritual Necessity for Socialism', ibid., 1 February 1921, pp. 6-7.
56
Many Labour Party leaders were obsessed with the need for working-class unity,
the Alliance of Labour and the New Zealand Workers' Union having rejected political
action, and Allen's pamphlet was first and foremost an attempt to disprove the thesis
that socialism would only be achieved through industrial action.
MILLS, ALLEN, LEE AND SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND
129
" ' B o o k Review', ALN, 1 February 1926, p. 9.
58
Most of this information is based on letters from Lee to the author and his copy
of Hobson's Work and Wealth, London, 1918, which he had annotated.
59
Lee to author, 13 October 1975.
60
The best discussion of this complex issue is by R. J. M. Hill, 'The Quest for Control:
the New Zealand Dairy Industry and the Guaranteed Price, 1921-1936', unpublished
M.A. thesis, University of Auckland, 1974.
«'Lee to Walter Nash, 1 February 1923, cit. Hill, p. 110 and in slightly less detail by
O'Farrell, Harry Holland', p. 141. See also Lee to Nash, 4 and 18 June 1925, cit. O'Farrell,
pp. 145-46.
62
R. M. Burdon, The New Dominion: A History of New Zealand between the Wars,
Wellington, 1965, p. 127.
63
'Unemployed in New Zealand', Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1929, H-11B and 1930, H-11B.
"New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 213, 1927, pp. 498-99.
65
The thesis was effectively propagated in the 1950s and 1960s by the New Zealand
Monthly Review and, most notably, by W. B. Sutch in The Quest for Security in New
Zealand 1840 to 1960, Wellington, 1966, and Colony or Nation? Economic Crises in
New Zealand from the 1860s to the 1960s, ed. Michael Turnbull, Sydney, 1966. In
1924-25, however, the Labour Party had emphasized the view that New Zealand was
the victim of financial imperialism (see, for instance, Walter Nash's Financial Power
in New Zealand, Wellington, [1925]). The argument was not long central to a diagnosis
of capitalism in New Zealand, however.
66
Richard B. Day, Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation, Cambridge,
1973, offers an incisive analysis of the debate.
67
Lee only once discussed the issue in these terms when he said that the outcome of
the war had led him to revise Kautsky's estimate of the costs of Soviet Communism;
see 'Medievalism is Defeated in Asia', John A. Lee's Fortnightly, 1 December 1948,
pp. 8-9.
68
'Roads to Prosperity' (xeroxed copy in author's possession, the original having been
lent by Lee). The paper is undated but internal evidence suggests that it was written
in October or November 1930. This paper is probably identical to another paper by
Lee, cited by Sutch in The Quest, p. 173n. and entitled 'The Problem'. Lee also expressed
the same views more briefly in a talk to the Auckland Fabian Society, reported in
New Zealand Worker, 5 November 1930, p. 8 and elaborated on in a letter to the editor,
ibid., 3 December 1930, p. 8.
6,
I t has been pointed out, however, that the adoption of such a policy in Britain
(where Mosley advocated it), would have entailed a revolutionary redistribution of
political and economic power; see Ross McKibbin, 'The Economic Policy of the
Second Labour Government, 1929-1931', Past and Present, LXVIII (August 1975), 95123.
70
'The revolution is here', he told his wife, after making a public declaration of
'social war' on the Government; see Lee to Mrs Lee, 5 April 1932, Lee mss (kindly
lent by Lee).
7
''Something to Think About', ALN, 1 November 1922, p. 3.
72
The thesis was elaborated most fully in Money Power for the People, Auckland,
1937 and Socialism in New Zealand, London, 1938. It was also clearly stated in the official
statement, written by Lee, Labour Has a Plan, Wellington, 1934.
73
See, for instance, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy in Monthly Review: An Independent
Socialist Magazine. For a critique see Peter Clekak, Radical Paradoxes: Dilemmas of
the American Left, 1945-1970, New York, 1974, ch. 5.
74
See Keynes, 'Proposals for a Revenue Tariff', New Statesman and Nation, I, New
Series (7 March 1931), 53-54, or Cole, 'The Future of the Labour Party', ibid., II
(7 November 1931), 564-65. Lee subscribed to this journal.
15
Insularionism and the Problem of Economic Stability, Melbourne, 1946, p. 4 (reprinted from The Economic Record, June 1946).