The history of a working class party, 1918-40

Abstract

It will be recognised by most that in view of the successful establishment of Communism in Eastern Europe and China, the existence of a Communist Party in New Zealand, a nation in which, apparently, by the establishment of the Welfare State the class war of employer and employed has been eliminated, is important. Although in the whole country Communism has probably not more than about ten thousand adherents, its very survival after thirty years' existence, demonstrates that it is of some significance. Periodically, particularly at election times, mushroom parties launch forth with a new programme but just as often, following their inevitable defeat at the polls, they die away. Even the Liberals have, through losing their programme to Labour, been swept out of existence. The Communists have had no success at the polls but they still survive. Moreover their very existence, few though they are, has not inspired in the existing parties contempt, but fear. The spectre which was haunting Europe in 1848 is present here today. In the neighbouring dominion, for instance, a government pledged to ban the Communist Party, has been elected to power. It should not, however, be any more necessary to prove the sincerity of the Communists than it is to prove the good faith motivating the followers of the other political parties. As Laski has said: "Nothing is gained, in any discussion of communism, by treating it as a wicked doctrine which would never have arisen if a handful of criminal adventurers had not devoted themselves to its propagation. Like any other system of belief, its rise is the outcome of its environment, and its acceptance by large bodies of men is no more unnatural than their acceptance of other creeds." "Communism", (p.238) by H.J. Laski