In the wake of the recent freezing workers pay deal we now have the amazing spectacle of a Federated Farmers' official lashing the Muldoon administration for becoming dangerously "socialist". We were told that the state was getting out of hand and involved where it had no right to be.

Clearly, the official was correct inasmuch as the state has increasingly become involved in New Zealand's political and economic life over the last few years. And if one held the shallow views of some "left" Labourites and the Socialist Unity Party on the question of what constitutes socialism one would have to agree with the Federated Farmers official.

However, increasing state intervention in the economy and political and social life is not the result of a secret conspiracy by Muldoon to establish socialism on the sly. In New Zealand society it never could be, regardless of whether it was administered by a National or Labour administration.

No. The increasing omniprescence of the state, which has prompted people like Justice North and Sir Guy Powles into angry eloquence, has been the direct result of the economic crisis into which New Zealand plunged in mid-1974. As the dislocation of our dependent economy has increased and as growing mass struggles on a wide front have threatened the political power of the bourgeoisie the state has been used, first by a Labour administration and now by a National one, to help salvage New Zealand Capitalism.