The Monetary Mechanism of Social Credit

The preceding chapters demonstrate that in order to correct the economic system and put production at the service of consumers there is no need to change the present method of production which happens to be highly efficient.  All that is needed is to provide the consumers with the means enabling them to claim what they want from production, until maximum productive capacity has been reached. 

To this end, Social Credit calls for a regulation of the monetary system that will put money in keeping with the facts of production and put that money at the service of consumers.

A certain quantity of money already reaches the consumer through wages and salaries for work done or through profits or through income derived from investments. But nothing guarantees that the consumers will have at all times enough purchasing power to purchase all of the available production. Besides, money must be removed from a tutelage which causes it to be taxed at its origin and which imposes upon it a time limit that is not related to the duration of the productive capacity.

The monetary propositions formulated by Major C. H. Douglas, the Scottish engineer who invented Social Credit, appear to be an effective means of correcting the monetary system without causing harm to anyone, without disrupting the present methods of production, without doing away with the pursuit of profit which stimulates production, without undermining personal freedom and without the State interfering in economic activities.

We can therefore summarize the monetary propositions of Social Credit as follows:

1. The national control of money;
2. A national credit account, reflecting the country's real wealth at any given time;
3. The issuance of all new money needed for consumption in two ways that complete each other:
4. a) Through a national dividend to each citizen, thus recognizing everyone's right to a common inheritance, a factor of production;
5. b) Through a price adjustment that would equate definitively the total purchasing power with the prices of the products being offered so as to avoid all inflation as well as all deflation.