Democracy and Socialism in New Zealand

The swing to the left, discernible at present in many countries, has given a new urgency to the old problem of hyphenating the politics of democracy to the economics of socialism. What was in the past mainly a matter of theoretical discussion and parliamentary rhetoric has shifted to the stage of legislative enactment and executive application. It is worth while, therefore, to pay attention to some of the world's smaller states whose experiments over a number of decades are pointers along the path now trodden by larger nations like Britain. One of these smaller communities which has persistently moved in a socialist direction by piecemeal and peaceable methods is New Zealand.The history of New Zealand as a state organized along Western European lines can count but a little over a hundred years. Just because of its youth, however, this nineteenth-century colony and twentieth-century Dominion has provided from its birth a fertile field for governmental activity. The discovery of New Zealand by Tasman and Cook, and to a large extent the early colonization and settlement by white immigrants, were due to public enterprise. The extension of state functions was facilitated from the beginning by the vesting of large tracts of land in the Crown, and was necessitated by the inadequacy of available private capital.