“There have been times in the history of the world when some event or discovery has enabled the human race to take a great step forward. Major Douglas’s discovery is of this type. It brings economic emancipation within our reach, if we can free our minds sufficiently from economic superstitions to understand and grasp what is offered.”1
“What are we trying to get? What are we aiming at? We are endeavouring to bring to birth a New Civilization. We are doing something which really extends far beyond the confines of a change in the financial system. We are hoping by various means, chiefly financial, to enable the community to definitely step out of one type of civilization into another type of civilization, and the first and basic requirement of that, as we see it, is Absolute Economic Security.”2
In considering the Retail Discount and the National Dividend, we have noted some of the many advantages contained in each. But before leaving them we must understand that both the Just Price and the National Dividend are inseparably linked together in a constructive economic program. The importance of this coordinated functioning of the two cannot be overstated. Both must operate together. The Just Price equates purchasing power with total retail prices, prevents inflation and stabilizes price levels. The National Dividend supplies buying power to those of us who have none at present. The two are conjoined in purpose, in operation, and in effect.
Our everyday experience proves that the outworn financial formulas of the past can never again be made to provide a lasting prosperity. It is unthinkable that we can find the way out by burying ourselves under new and higher mountains of debt. The way out is not through more debt, it is through the use of our REAL CREDIT.
The knowledge of what Social Credit is and how it will provide Economic Security is imperative to every intelligent American today. The issuance of National Credit direct to consumers, based on America’s Real Wealth, is our greatest single necessity. How long must the artificial illusion of scarcity stand between our physical needs and the Real Wealth that is ours? The opportunity to grasp prosperity is here at hand; we must take it now, or be regimented in poverty.3
Of the present world crisis Major Douglas has written, “The breakdown of the present financial and social system is certain.... A comparatively short period will probably serve to decide whether we are to master the mighty economic and social machine that we have created, or whether it is to master us; and during that period a small impetus from a body of men who know what to do and how to do it, may make the difference between yet one more retreat into the Dark Ages, or the emergence into the full light of a day of such splendor as we can at present only envisage dimly.”
We are just beginning to realize that human values are equally as important as money-values. But we can never begin to say that “we love our neighbour as ourselves” until we are first freed to live together liberated from our slavery to money.
Wishing and waiting will not solve the problem — the necessity is to act. There is overwhelming evidence that the present Administration is day-by-day being driven in the direction of the Social Credit proposals. In the Government’s failing struggle to overcome the problems of unbearable taxation and unpayable indebtedness, many observers see the beginning of the coming turn to the philosophy of plenty. Social Credit provides the only known means for increasing buying power but at the same time preventing inflation. When the hypnotic spell of the illusion of money-scarcity begins to lose its hold over sensible Americans, the servitude of man to money will at last be abolished and economic security for all will become a fact.
This booklet has only presented in a general way the major principles of Social Credit. We have given little more than an outline of the practical application of these proposals to prices and purchasing power. We have not even touched upon how the Just Price and National Dividends would enrich our personal lives. Indeed that would require a book in itself.
This booklet is only a first step toward the understanding of what national action is necessary to achieve economic security in the United States.
Some further facts are added here in the hope that they will prove of value to the reader.
America is the richest nation in the world. We can produce WEALTH in abundance. But MONEY is scarce. To move goods from producers to the hands of consumers MONEY MUST MATCH the facts of WEALTH.
Most money is CREDIT — we cannot deal in WEALTH without it. REAL CREDIT, based on Wealth itself, is the soundest foundation for money. Social Credit says: “MONETIZE our REAL WEALTH — make Financial Credit match REAL CREDIT.” Then we can satisfy the needs of our people with the wealth we can produce.
There is no excuse for poverty when we can produce enough wealth for all. Anything that is PHYSICALLY possible is FINANCIALLY possible. That is only common sense.
Social Credit is sound and practical. It is based on methods already in use in business.
Social Credit guarantees business recovery, a new era of lasting prosperity for Americans. Social Credit will reduce Taxes and liquidate Debt. It will ABOLISH Poverty and PREVENT War.
Social Credit is not Socialism or Fascism. It is not based on state ownership or state control of production. It involves no confiscation or redistribution of existing wealth but would provide instead more wealth for all of us based on our ability to produce that wealth.
Social Credit stands for the American principles of individual initiative, freedom and liberty. It is opposed to financial or any other sort of dictatorship. Major Douglas says “Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man, which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political, or economic.”4
Social Credit does not advocate the nationalization of the banks. Social Credit would save the banking system. But it would require the nation to resume its sovereign power to issue money and regulate its value, while the banks would co-operate with the Treasury and distributive agencies of credit, receiving their recompense by service fees.
1) H. M. M., An Outline of Social Credit, pp. 46-47.
3) The reform suggested is not put forward as an alternative to Capitalism, but as an alternative to chaos. So long as the present system can provide the majority of people with a living of some sort, no alternative, however attractive, has much chance of being considered. But if it becomes obvious that the system is breaking down — and the manifest difficulty of providing employment and doing profitable business are two of the evidences that it is breaking-down — the only alternative that has a chance of being successful is the one that can reconcile the greatest number of interests with the minimum of disturbance. The Social Credit proposals of Major Douglas fulfill these conditions. Their title to general support is that they can make the poor rich without making the rich poor, and involve no change in administration, only a change in financial policy.” — H. M. M., An Outline of Social Credit, p. 48.
4) C. H. Douglas, Economic Democracy.