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The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, October 1918

"Service v. Robbery"

"Service v. Robbery"

Mr. Fitzherbert is one of the few of our University men who have directed their attention to that ever-present and ever more complex problem: the future relations between capital and labour. The need for a solution of the problem has long been apparent; but the upheaval which has rent the whole fabric of the world has rendered that need appallingly urgent. Unless some solution be found, the chaos of war between nations may become the inferno of a seething hatred and discontent within a nation.

Any such work as "Service versus Robbery" is therefore, to be welcomed as an effort to assist the bringing about of a better system of economic organisatio than that which the civilised peoples of the world now labour under.

One of the fundamental ideas underlying Mr. Fitzherbert's somewhat obscurely expressed thought is that the highest ideal for mankind is that of service of all for the good of all, and not for the good of the individual. It is an ideal which has found expression all down the ages in all manner of forms, and which to-day is as true as ever. But in his endeavour to reduce this ideal to practical methods, the author of "Service versus Robbery" is no more successful than have been all his predecessors in that endeovour.

The book, to a certain extent, is dangerous, in that many of its fallacies are so attractively camouflaged as to require close scrutiny to strip them of their appearance of truth. So stripped, however, the outline of Mr. Fitzherbert's work is after the following fashion.

page 42

He commences with an ingeniously complicated and totally unnecessary classification of various kinds of capital. The group of persons controlling capital he regards as parasites; capital is in the nature of a fungoid growth which it has sprung. It is a mere dull, inert thing, for the sue of which no reward should be given or taken. Interest in organised robbery: rent is blackmail sanctioned by the law: dividends are legalised theft. To liberate society from the suffocating grip of this evil system, Mr. Fitzherbert has a charming faith in the efficacy of the sovereign remedy of legislation.

To usher in an industrial millennium, all that is required is that a Parliament elected by and enlightened people shall forthwith proceed to legislate:

(1)Repudiating all national and municipal debts;
(2)Destroying all rights of landlord and tenant;
(3)Prohibiting payment or receipt of interest in any shape or form;
(4)Dispossessing all shareholders in companies and transforming all the companies into workers' co-operative concerns.

In this manner would Mr. Fitzherbert have us believe that the ideal of service will be effectuated.

Alas, he in his own fanatical belief in the omnipotence of legislation, cannot see that his proposed remedy involves the State in an orgy of robbery and plunder.

A more reasonable portion of the book, however, contains a series of practical suggestions for present day reform—suggestions which the author regards as mere palliatives to be applied only until his drastic remedy is finally used to cure (or kill) the body politic.