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Alfred Russel Wallace : Alfred Wallace : A. R. Wallace :
Russel Wallace : Alfred Russell Wallace (sic)

 
 
Dr. Wallace's Remedy for Unemployment
(S674a: 1909)

 
Editor Charles H. Smith's Note: A letter to the Editor printed on page 369 of The New Age issue of 25 February 1909. To link directly to this page, connect with: http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S674A.htm


To the Editor of "The New Age."

     When I asked you for criticisms of my tract on "The Remedy for Unemployment," I expected that a Socialist paper would at least criticise it from a Socialist point of view. But Mr. Sharp's denunciation (for it is in no sense a criticism) is frankly capitalistic throughout, with all the crude or erroneous assumptions of the usual capitalist diatribes, such as we find in the "Saturday Review" or "Daily Mail." If it means anything, it clearly means that "production for profit" is always better and more economical than "production for use." His two "supposes," by which he thinks he has answered me, are both founded on this view, which, if true, denies the economic possibility of co-operative production for use, and thus demonstrates the fallacy of Socialism.

     His misrepresentations, too, are amazing. He describes the scheme (in his third paragraph) as to be carried out by each "Local Authority." But I say that the problem "must be treated on broad national lines and with national resources" (p. 3); and, again, "It is pre-eminently a work to be devised and carried out by the Executive Government itself" (p. 4).

     His statement that I propose "close protection to prevent competition from outsides industries" is an equally absurd misrepresentation, and none but a writer imbued with the whole series of capitalistic and individualistic dogmas which are the cause of the very evil we have to remedy could have made it.

     Such an article is too absurd to be answered in detail, since every point in it is answered in my tract, which I hope every reader of The New Age who is at all influenced by the criticism will expend a penny in obtaining and reading.

Alfred R. Wallace.


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