Editor's note: In 1956, the Liberal Party of Quebec had included in its platform the basic proposal of Social Credit. It lost the election. The Bankers had done their job to make sure that Social Credit would not been implemented. They are the ones who control political parties and election campaigns. That is why one must not rely on elections to change politicians from slaves into free servants of the people. The pressure of an enlightened population, joined to the grace of God, is the only way to obtain a just economic system.

by Louis Even

Louis Even addressing the crowd in front of the Quebec Legislature on September 4, 1955.

The importance of money

Under the economic system of primitive times, when my neighbour produced what I needed and I produced what my neighbour needed, barter was a simple, out-in-the-open affair.

But this type of primitive trade is something of the dim, past ages. Today, with the exception of some types of farm products, each produces for the public market, and each buys from the public market. In such an economic system, money plays a vital role.

A man no longer works by himself. Production is pooled just as physical labour is pooled. There are employers and employees. There is a division of work. Regarded universally, this can be called progress because more products are placed on the market.

But if this immense machine of production is to function properly, something else besides the means of production is necessary; there must be a means of paying for the produce or products.

The employer must reimburse his employee for his work. Now, that reimbursement cannot be the product resulting from the work of the employee. All day long, day in and day out, Paul makes shoes, but his employer isn't going to pay him with shoes. Paul needs something besides shoes for himself and his family. Jim works all year making wood pulp, but he wants something other than wood pulp in return for his services.

That “something” is what Paul and Jim, or Mrs. Paul and Mrs. Jim, pick from the shelves of the public stores according to the needs of their families. And there you have the reason for the invention of money. Paul's boss pays him in money, and sells his shoes for money. Jim's employer likewise pays him in money, and sells his wood pulp for money.

If the employers of Paul and Jim had no money, they would be unable to hire workers nor run their factories. Production would stop for the lack of money. Physically, it would still be possible to produce shoes or wood pulp, but financially, such production would be impossible, incapable of realization.

Similarly, if all the Pauls and Jims and their families in the country have enough money, they can buy on the public market whatever products they need. Lacking money, they can't buy, even if the stores are glutted with goods.

Finance dictates

Now all of this is not theory, but the bitter story of experience. How many manufacturers in the past have had to close down their factories, partially or completely, temporarily or permanently, because the bank had refused them credit! And how many among the consumers — fathers, mothers, entire families, young men and young women — have had to suffer want, do without necessities, or contract long-term debts just to ward off starvation, and all because they had not the means to pay for the products offered on the market!

The production of goods was physically possible. Their distribution, too, was physically possible; there was no shortage of transportation nor merchants. And, nevertheless, distribution halted because what was physically possible was not financially possible.

This was brought about by the lords of finance, and not by the makers and producers of material goods. And it's still the same today, the same old story!

What we have said above is true also when we come to consider that corporate being, the municipality. There is no problem building a water system when the community has the means to pay for it. If it hasn't these means, it has to wait, or, as is many times the case, it goes into debt, which means it must fatten the purse of the financier who produces nothing.

Any number of public projects are materially, physically possible and capable of realization, as is proved by the fact that when the money is at hand, they are carried out. But they are not financially possible. The proof? These projects are delayed, grants are begged to carry them out, citizens' property is mortgaged to get the necessary money.

The fact is: the filling of material needs, either of the individual or the community, is something which, in the final analysis, is regulated by the decision of finance. Men did not initially set up a system of finance just to make life more difficult, or to place themselves under a dictatorship.

Such a turn of events has come about gradually in the financial system and has made it the matter of men, though it was originally intended to serve men.

To overthrow this tyranny

Social Credit denounces, without let-up, this financial tyranny over our entire economy.

There is no good reason why a financial problem should exist. Today there is nothing easier than money to produce. And this is attested to by the fact that the world, which was without money for ten years, was able, in the space of one short night, to find all the money, all the billions of dollars necessary to wage a global war lasting six years.

Social Crediters state: “Whatever is physically possible and desirable should, by that very fact, be made financially possible.”

On March 29 of the year 1956, the Political Commission of the Provincial Liberal Federation of Quebec included in the Liberal Party's program a like declaration, followed by a political commitment:

“The Provincial Liberal Party considers that whatever is physically capable of realization in the province should also be made financially possible according to the needs of the population, the municipalities, the school commissions, and other public bodies of the province. Consequently, whensoever there shall be a Liberal Government in Quebec, it will take the necessary means to achieve this end.”

A feasible promise

Now, the Liberal Party was not promising us the moon. It committed itself to take the necessary steps to realize a promise that is entirely feasible. We are not the only ones to state that this sort of a program is practicable. A man well versed in the ways of finance, Graham Towers, who was also the first governor of the Bank of Canada, held the same position.

In 1939, before the House of Commons' permanent committee of banking and commerce, a question was put forward by Norman Jaques, M.P., and answered without hesitation by Towers. Here is the question and the reply as recorded on page 771 of the Minutes of Common' Banking and Commerce Committee for 1939:

Jaques: Would you admit that anything physically possible and desirable can be made financially possible?

Towers: Certainly!

This was in 1939. A few months later, war broke out. And subsequent events proved that it was quite easy to make financially possible all that was materially possible. There was no purely financial problem as far as conducting the war was concerned.

These purely financial problems were called by President Roosevelt “nonsense” — and they are! When his country entered the war, he declared that he would not permit the war effort to be handicapped by financial nonsense.

But what the president failed to do was to prevent the financial barons from making a temporary measure of this suspension of financial "nonsense", and from putting it on the nation's books as an accumulation of debts once the war was over.

A motivated economy

The Social Credit resolution adopted by the Liberal Party of Quebec was more humane than the declaration of Roosevelt. It envisaged an economy of peace, and not one of war. It was not concerned with rendering financially possible for the purposes of war, but “to make financially possible whatever is physically possible according to the needs of the population and the public bodies of this province.”

The needs of the population are the needs of the individuals and the families, of all the individuals and all the families comprising the population of the province.

The primary needs of the individual are those who must be met if he is to live: food, clothing, shelter, medical care.

Is it physically possible to provide enough food, clothing, housing, and medical care in this province in order that each person might have the necessities to live decently?

No one would dare deny that it is possible — materially. So, if needs are not met today, it is either because the producer lacks the money to produce, or the consumer hasn't the cash with which to buy.

The Social Credit — and Liberal — resolution refuses to admit this separation between what is physically possible and what is financially possible. According to it, the question no longer is, “Can it be paid for?” but “Can it be produced? Can it be transported? Can it be delivered?” If the answer is “Yes”, if the product or produce is materially possible, then logically (and humanely) it should, by the very fact of its material possibility, be made financially feasible.

And this holds true in the degree for municipalities, school commissions, and other public bodies. In as much as public development projects are physically possible, they should be made financially possible. Money should be the complement and reflection of real produce, not its adversary striving to crush it. New money should come into being whenever there is a question of developing new sources of natural wealth, and money should not be cancelled except in the same measure as the dissipation by consumption of natural wealth.

Thus you have an economy truly fitted to men's needs, not an economy designed by and for bureaucrats and politicians; an economy regulated by the consumers themselves, private and public; an economy motivated by the clearly-stated needs of free men possessing the means (money) to demand and get what they want.

The Liberal resolution did not mention the words “Social Credit”. But it is obvious that the resolution cannot be realized under the rules of present-day finance.

So beyond doubt, it's a solid Social Credit measure without the title of such. But then, it's not the name but the thing that counts.

This article was published in the May-June-July, 2003 issue of “Michael”.