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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Student's Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 10 May 28 1968

[A review of A Guidebook To New Zealand's Future by Owen Gager]

* * *

Nationalism has traditionally been used to camouflage capitalism; Mr. Rosenberg's book is another example of this tired polemical device. At no point in his book does he make one criticism of New Zealand capitalism, even (pp. 183-4) though arguing it must necessarily, as a result of import controls, become more monopolistic.

Predictably, he opposes "foreign" borrowing, though he admits it has co-existed with import controls, and even at times safeguarded full employment, and opposes any Australian competition with New Zealand industry— though he does not discuss the possibility that such competition might lead to a fall in the price of the commodities involved, a rather strange omission for an economist.

Mr. Rosenberg's book is best regarded as an essay in politics rather than economics, even though it is shorn of the introduction from Mr. T. E. Skinner Mr. Rosenberg was at one stage soliciting for it.

There is a popular impression that Mr. Rosenberg is a left-winger or socialist of some kind. What he is, however, is simply an apologist for New Zealand business, as this book makes clear. His book should be treated on the same level as any other effusion of patriotic self-congratulation and complancency; that is, it should be ignored and time spent on writers honest enough to admit there are one or two areas where New Zealand capitalism actually doesn't work well.

A Guidebook To New Zealand's Future by W. Rosenberg. Caxton Press, Christchurch, 1968. $2.50 Reviewed by Owen Gager.