The following article on Moral Re-Armament was written for Salient by Mr. Conrad Bollinger, M.A., in answer to one in our last issue by Mr. James Baynard-Smith, a member of the MRA force at that time visiting Wellington. Mr. Bollinger graduated at VUC with Honours in English in 1953 and is now studying Law here. He has been well-known in student affairs in the college for some years as a prominent member of the Socialist Club and winner of the Plunket Medal for oratory.

Owing to shortage of space this article has been slightly abridged ED

The Con Viewpoint

The article was thus chiefly notable for what it did not tell us about MRA.

The emphasis of stilling class strife and on beating back the ideological frontiers of Moscow explains the enthusiasm for MRA shown by employers, Tory politicians, and Labour "front-benches of the "neither for nor against" breed. It also casts some interesting light on MRA's past, and on where its policies logically lead.

In January 1947, the very pro-MRA president of Australia's Council of Employers' Federations stated that "industrial peace would be established once for all if the Labour movement would only abandon the theory of class warfare." The "Southern Cross" was moved to comment editorially (17/1/47).

"To say that the class war is a theory is to imply that it could be abolished if only the workers would refrain from subscribing to it. . . . Marx did not invent the class struggle, he merely happened to observe that it is inherent in an industrialized society in which one class owns the means of production, and the other much more numerous class works for wages. Since the employer naturally wants to make as much profit as possible, and the workers went to be paid as high a wage as possible, and since these two aims are opposed, a conflict of interests is inevitable. . . .

"An employer's call for the abandonment of the theory of class warfare is an employer's plea for the workers to take what they are given. . . Employers will always seek to have the class struggle eliminated from society. Workers prefer to travel in the opposite direction, and they are as keen to see the end of the class struggle as any employer is."

"Fascist" label

It is obvious that the abolition of the outward manifestations of the conflict of interests between private employer and employee, while maintaining unbroken the economic relationship between private employer and employee, means precisely the freezing hard of existing class divisions while disarming the employee of his normal channels of social and political protest—unions. Labour and Socialist parties—and leaving him to the mercy of the employer and a State which brings force of law down on the employer's side, That is a neat description of Hitler's "Labour Front" and Mussolini's "Corporate State." It is also the logical end of the policy preached by MRA.

It may sound far-fetched to label the policies of MRA, so sweetly reasonable on the surface, as "Fascist." But MRA has already labelled itself.

Moral Re-Armament was founded in 1921 by the American pastor Rev. Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman (recently on show in New Zealand). It was originally known as the "Oxford Group Movement." Its basic themes have always been "industrial harmony," "rapprochement between capital and labour."

Ruth McKenney (author of "My Sister Eileen") recounts in her book "industrial Valley" how the rubber magnates shipped an MRA team into Akron, Ohio, at the height of the great slump, to preach patience to the unemployed An MRA team visiting New Zealand in March, 1960 (see Wellington Teachers' College paper Stud Op for that month) boasted its successes in the United Kingdom in encouraging "production speed-up." Patience in 1930, speed-up in 1960: the policy exactly reflected the momentary interests of big business.

The American Roman Catholic journalist, George Seldes has described in detail ("racta ana Fascism," pp. 134-136; "One Thousand Americans," pp. 216-219) how MRA won such disinterested enthusiasts as Henry Ford (car king), Harvey Firestone (rubber king), and William Randolph Hearst (yellow newspaper king). Seldes summarises Buchman's lice-work, "making an excellent living getting money from big businessmen to preach a 'philosophy' of appeasement to labour, Everyone was to co-operate, there were to be no strikes, the lion and the lamb were to lie down together: and if the labour-lamb was frequently inside the belly of the capitalist-lion, it could only result in more contributions to Buchmanism."

Hitler and Communism

Prof. Robert A. Brady (Economics, California) in a study on Fascism, cites this, famous utterance of Rev. Dr. Buchman himself: "Human problems aren't economic. They're moral. And they can't be solved by un-moral measures. . . They could be solved through a God-controlled Fascist dictatorship. ... I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front-line of defence against the anti-Christ of Communism." (New York World Telegram, 21/8/1936.)

Hitler Fascism was thus not only the logical goal of MRA, but it's proudly proclaimed one.

No wonder MRA gained the support of leading Nazis and Fascists.

In his confessional work "I Paid Hitler" (p. 189), the Nazi steel-king Fritz Thyssen refers to the fact that "Heinrich Himmier was a member of the Oxford Group." (For those who do not remebber the ghoulish things for which this man was responsible Himmler was the chief of Hitler's Gestapo from 1935 to 1945,)

Then there was Prince Konoye, Japanese Premier, involved in the rape of China and, the Pearl Harbour attack. He cabled one MRA convention in the U.S.: "Believing necessity for Moral Re-Armament for solution of world problems, sincerely hope for every success for your noble experiment.

Jew-baiting

And there is more evidence than just an aberrated speech of Buchman's to suggest that the MRA movement reciprocated the friendly feelings of these Fascist gentlemen.

Noted American Protestant, Dr. Guy Emery Shipler (editor of The Churchman) reported in one wartime issue of his journal on a Moral Re-Armament dinner which he attended right on Wall Street, where the speeches were "almost entirely devoted to Jew-baiting."

We should not forget that it was, in so many words, Hitler's claim that he had provided an "ideological answer to Communism." Hitler also used the technique of turning aside queries about economic condition, and political [unclear: fpm] with pomp is verbiage about "inspired" and "God-given" "ideologies of renaissance," about "decaying civilisation"' and "impurity," and solutions that are "universal" and "realistic."

MRA's window-dressing is very attractive. But in practice its "ideology of renaissance" means refraining from challenging the status quo, however iniquitous, and preaching claptrap about "regeneration" to the underdog. From there to beating the underdog senseless every time he challenges the status quo, is a short step.

Buchman's movement is a hangover from the horrible thing which crumpled up and died in Berlin and Tokyo just over a decade ago, only after it had slaughtered millions of human beings in its crusade for a "new society."