[Socialism As It Is by William English Walling]@TWC D-Link bookSocialism As It Is CHAPTER VI 10/20
It does not yet propose to keep out immigrants, but it makes a beginning with all non-white races, and it stands for a policy of high protection and a larger army and navy.
Naturally it does not even seek admission into the International Socialist Congress, where if any Socialist principle is more insisted upon than another it is Marx's declaration that the Socialists are to be distinguished from the other working class parties only by the fact that they represent the interests of the entire working class independently of nationality or of groups within the nation. Moreover, the militarism necessary to enforce isolation may cost the nation, capitalists and workers alike, far more heavily than to leave their country open to trade and immigration.
Indeed, it must lead, not to industrial democracy, or even to capitalistic progress, but to stagnation and reaction.
The policy of racial exclusion will not only increase the dangers of war, but it will bring little positive benefit to labor, even of a purely material and temporary kind, since the farming majority will not allow it to be extended to the white race. Instead of restricting immigration, the new government projects require a thicker settlement, and everything is being done to encourage settlers of means and agricultural experience, and we cannot question that the coming of white laborers will be encouraged when they are needed. The size of the farms the government is promoting in New Zealand proves that the country is deliberately preparing for a class of landless agricultural laborers, and Australia is following the example.
Since these new farms average something like two hundred acres, we must realize that as soon as they are under thorough cultivation they will require one or more farm laborers in each case, to be obtained chiefly from abroad, producing a community resting neither on "State Socialism" nor even on a pioneer basis of economic democracy and approximate equality of opportunity similar to that which prevailed during the period of free land in our Western States. Unmistakable signs show that in New Zealand an agrarian oligarchy by no means friendly to labor has already established itself.
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