1932
Manifesto of The League for Social Reconstruction. (LSR)
Manifesto of The League for Social Reconstruction. (LSR)
February 1932
by Frank Underhill (1889-1971)
The League for Social Reconstruction is an association of men
and women who are working for the establishment in Canada of a
social order in which the basic principle regulating production,
distribution and service will be the common good rather than
private profit.
The present capitalist system has shown itself unjust and
inhuman, economically wasteful, and a standing threat to peace
and democratic government. Over the whole world it has led to a
struggle for raw materials and markets and to a consequent
international competition in armaments which were among the main
causes of the last great war and which constantly threaten to
bring on new wars. In the advanced industrial countries it has
led to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small
irresponsible minority of bankers and industrialists whose
economic power constantly threatens to nullify our political
democracy. The result in Canada is a society in which the
interests of farmers and of wage and salaried workers - the
great majority of the population - are habitually sacrificed to
those of this small minority. Despite our abundant natural
resources the mass of the people have not been freed from
poverty and insecurity. Unregulated competitive production
condemns them to alternate periods of feverish prosperity, in
which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of
catastrophic depression, in which the common man's normal state
of insecurity and hardship is accentuated.
We are convinced that these evils are inherent in any system
in which private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort.
We therefore look to the establishment in Canada of a new social
order which will substitute a planned and socialized economy for
the existing chaotic individualism and which, by achieving an
approximate economic equality among all men in place of the
present glaring inequalities, will eliminate the domination of
one class by another.
As an essential first step towards the realization of this
new order we advocate:
(1) Public ownership and operating of the public utilities
connected with transportation, communications, and electric
power, and of such other industries as are already approaching
conditions of monopolistic control.
(2) Nationalization of Banks and other financial institutions
with a view to the regulation of all credit and investment
operations.
(3) The further development of agricultural cooperative
institutions for the production and merchandising of
agricultural products.
(4) Social legislation to secure to the worker adequate in
come and leisure, freedom of association, insurance against
illness, accident, old age, and unemployment, and an effective
voice in the management of his industry.
(5) Publicly organized health, hospital, and medical
services.
(6) A taxation policy emphasizing steeply graduated income
and inheritance taxes.
(7) The creation of a National Planning Commission.
(8) The vesting in Canada of the power to amend and interpret
the Canadian constitution so as to give the federal government
power to control the national economic development.
(9) A foreign policy designed to secure international
cooperation in regulating trade, industry and finance, and to
promote disarmament and world peace.
The league will work for the realization of its ideal by
organizing groups to study and report on particular problems,
and by issuing to the public in the form of pamphlets, articles,
lectures, etc., the most accurate information obtainable about
the nation's affairs in order to create an informed public
opinion. It will support any political party in so far as its
programme furthers the above principles, and will foster
cooperation among all groups and individuals who desire in
Canada the kind of social order at which the League aims.
***
Source: The Canadian Forum, April 1932
