The Present Economic System? — — — And Social Credit?
From an Address to Toc H, by H.R. PURCHASE published in "The Social Crediter", (Liverpool) — Subheadings are ours.
Major Douglas described Social Credit as being “the policy of a philosophy." At first glance this does not seem to say much. But that is mere superficial appearance.
Most of you will, I hope, agree without further argument that since about 1911 our economic system has been most unsatisfactory. It has failed to satisfy the just and reasonable demands of the citizens of this country.
An economic system operates within whatever political system it is conditioned by whoever controls the political system, i. e., the organisation of the individuals within the State, will arrange the economic system so as to carry out the political objectives of the controllers. These latter will arrange the economic system in accordance with whatever is their philosophy. That philosophy in turn is the expression of their fundamental beliefs, conscious or unconscious, their Faith, their religion...
As to whether a scheme, a legal enactment, an institution and so on is Christian or pagan is, as a rule, easily tested by its effect on the individual.
As you know, to the Christian, the individual is of paramount importance. To the pagan, he is but a cog in a machine to be controlled by whoever turns out to be the most ruthless maniac.
In a Christian State, the individual is given more and more freedom to develop himself to the best advantage. Freedom and Responsibility go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. The degree in which a State is organised is a measure of its pagan nature. The chains used can be political and economic.
Domination is probably the key word in describing the conditions of the world today. That is achieved by centralisation. Monopoly is the aim of both what is called Capitalism and of Socialism. It should be obvious that any kind of centralisation of control is injurious and as a rule fatal to the interests of the individual.
To make quite clear the principles involved in the structure of any organisation, I should like to give you a homely illustration of how all society is built up:
Let us picture a typical tennis club. The object, purpose and origin, i.e., the policy of such a club is to facilitate the playing or watching of tennis by a number of individuals. It must be stressed that there is no Act of Parliament passed to force anyone to join a tennis club — as for instance is the case with the Health Service. Anyone is at liberty to join the club or leave it, within the limits of the rules of the club, without any penalty other than the withdrawal of facilities.
The policy of all members is identical. They proceed to elect a committee to be the administrators of that policy. The Committee appoints a chairman, secretary, captain, etc., each with personal responsibility, duties, powers, and privileges. You will see that the administration, to function properly, must be hierarchical, and centralised. But woe betide the officers and committee if they fail to carry out the policy of the members as a whole, because the final sanction, being able to depose a committee and appoint another, is in the hands of the club members.
That club is in a small way a political organization just as the State is in a large way. I have been trying to make you see what is meant by policy, administration, and sanctions, a trinity that must form the skeleton of every administration. Unless these principles are correctly applied, particularly in a State, disaster is inevitable.
I have pictured a club run on democratic and therefore Christian principles. I do not of course mean the sham democracy from which we suffer to-day. Now try and picture a tennis club run in such a way that policy is centrally controlled. It's laughable, but please try. Once in five years a chairman is elected and in between he has full powers without any possible interference. In other words the members can apply no sanctions. The chairman announces that no more tennis shall be played, but only shove-halfpenny. As the saying is,'they've had it.'
Let us now consider ourselves as members of Great Britain (Canadians would say 'as members of Canada'), as the inheritors of a great and good tradition, of great wealth and of the responsibilities attaching to these. What is our policy? What is it that we and the vast majority of our fellows really want? Let us sum up a few of these things. We want Peace; externally we want to be secure from attack, or from the effects of "cold” wars; internally we want to be left in peace to develop our own personalities in our own way without interference, i.e., we want freedom of action. We want a reasonable standard of living and to be assured against poverty. We want security of ownership of all we possess and a reasonable chance to augment it. We want spiritual freedom and leisure to give us the opportunity to learn the Christian Truth. There is a lot more that can be added.
What in fact do we get? Collective insecurity, bigger and better wars, a hạrrowing war of nerves with all politicians rushing from one health resort to another without achieving anything for our benefit. Internally we have on our necks hordes of bureaucrats, some armed irresponsibly with judicial powers, who can and do use these to interfere in our lives. We live in an age of rush, stress and difficulty unknown to our more backward ancestors. The spectre of poverty is grinning at all of us all the time. If by our exertions we earn more than the average person, a large slice is taken from us to be spent in various frivolous and objectionable ways by persons over whom we have no control. Exhorbitant, penal taxation, direct and indirect, including inflation, takes away what is ours and largely prevents those who wish to save up for a rainy day or some years of leisure, from doing so. A lot more could also be added to this indictment. Don't listen to excuses by politicians or jargon by economists. Judge the system and the men by results. Unless you regain control over your politicians, things will get worse and worse,
Social Credit is based wholly, exclusively, and securely on the Christian principles explained. We are prepared to be judged by results. That those results can not be in doubt, is shown by the hostility shown us by those in power who have gone to quite extraordinary lengths.
During the last 50 years centralisation has been growing wider and more intense. Up to about 1924 the centralisation of control of policy were secret and operated through the financial system imposed on all countries and linked together. Up to 1917 the headquarters were in London. Then they were moved to New York.
You all know how important in your lives money is. In itself it has little or no value. You accept it for your efforts, your goods and services merely because of your belief, amounting to certainty, that in due course you can exchange the money for goods and services you desire. If you look at it in this way you will readily grasp the fact that the money system is a quick, and very handy accountancy system on the one hand and on the other a means for distributing goods an services. To function properly, money should therefore circulate so as to facilitate production up to its natural physical limits and to satisfy the demands of the consumer. You know perfectly well that it does neither. This is not surprising when you consider that the money system today operates without any direct connection with the production of goods or with any consideration for consumers' demands. Instead of a system of free distribution it is operated as a means of government, as an instrument of tyranny. Money is merely a claim to wealth, not wealth itself, just like a railway ticket is a claim to a seat — a standing room — in a railway train.
The distinction is very important. Industry both capital and labour, creates real wealth. Real credit is defined as the ability to create goods and services as, when and where required; in other words real credit is a correct estimate of the potential wealth of a person, a body of persons, or a nation can produce. Financial credit is no more than a licence to distribute real wealth. Financial credit can not exist without real credit. It is violation of natural laws to make the production of wealth dependent on the creation of financial credit and to allow the latter to be manipulated as a monopoly for the benefit of the controllers of money. But that is the situation today. When a bank gives the Government an overdraft it merely issues as financial credit the real credit of the nation.
The present irrational use of money goes back to the satanic urge to domination over their fellows by a minority. These men are drunk with power and yet want more and more of it. Their religion is pagan and their high priests are almost without exception One Worlders.
It is just as well for your minds to be clear on certain questions. Does industry produce goods for consumption or does it exist to provide full employment, meaning abolition of leisure? Has it never occurred to you that the scientist and industrialist have long ago lifted the curse of Adam from our shoulders, and that they are busy all the time finding means of producing more for less human energy? Yet every politician's aim is to make employment and more employment. Cannot you see that here the body politic suffers from a split mind, a disease? Have you never asked yourselve why we were always being exhorted to produce more for exports and for armaments, that are not good to anybody? The answer is quite simple that those in power are at their wits ends to find work for people for whom there is in fact no necessary work.
Some of you will remember the 1930's, when our productive capacity, despite organised destruction then called rationalisation, was so great that only a fraction of the working population was needed to produce all necessities and luxuries. The problem was one of distribution and nothing else. Because of the glut of wealth, a large part of the population was sunk in poverty and humiliation. Isn't that a violation of Divine Law? It is done because the financial system is so arranged that you cannot get access to what has already been produced without working to produce what the Money Power dictates you shall produce, under conditions laid down by them.
Although the real nature of the problem was even then quite obvious, the "Authorities” misrepresented it as an unemployment problem. There could only be one solution to the problem, the free distribution of the glut; but that was carefully hidden from the public eye, because it is only through the creation of artificial scarcities that the people can continue to be dominated.
The master control over the life of any country and over the lives of its citizens is where money is created. The banks are manufactories of financial credit just as a baker is a manufacturer of bread. But bread is something directly useful, you eat it, you consume it. Financial credit is merely a licence to acquire something useful. Although the money created by the banking system obtains its value from the wealth of the nation and not from any action by the banks, it is created as a debt to the banks. The result is that the harder a nation works creating wealth, the deeper does it get into debt. Our national debt is 27 billion pounds, and is growing. What our industrial and private debts total, no one will estimate or disclose. In this and in other ways our financial system is fraudulent.
Centralisation of the Money Power would probably have sufficed to enslave the world, so long as it could be kept a secret. Once Major Douglas however had disclosed the nature of the control and its objective, open political repression had to be called in. What we have suffered here in this way is known to all of you. Yon can read in your papers every day of the efforts to centralise the world still more: United Europe, Federal Union, One World. Mr. Foster Dulles only the other day admitted in his rage against the French people that the supra-national aspect of E.D.C. is essential. It is essential for the success of the plotters who aim to dominate the world.
So far this has been mainly a criticism of the pagan principles underlying our political and economic systems; but a diagnosis of the disease must precede any effective prescription. The nature of our criticism should show the direction of our policy.
We say:
The idea of the British Empire was that of a decentralised commonwealth of peoples who respected each other's special aspirations. Under One World, Christians will be outvoted 5 to 1. We condemn this and all other centralisation of policy.
We encourage private enterprise and are against all monopoly, particularly State Monopoly. We have shown how money can be created without being a burden of debt. We have shown how the individuals as a whole in any nation can be ensured of possessing sufficient purchasing power with a maximum of leisure to buy their own product. Social Credit would ensure that every man, woman and child had access to the necessities of life, free from today's perpetual money worries, access to the abundance God has put at our disposal. For the first time in history, most people, and not merely the few, would have the opportunity of education, the development of their gifts and talents in their own way, for that, and that only, is true education.
The technical adjustments you must leave to the technician, so long as you retain control over him. Those who want to study the technicalities of Social Credit can do so. We have no secrets. It is desirable to have a feeling for, better still, a knowledge of mathematics at some places, but Social Credit can be understood without such knowledge. What is important is an understanding of the principles:
... It was Burke who said that it was only necessary for good men to do nothing, for evil men to win the day. For over a third of a century, we Social Crediters have fought evil practically single-handed. There is now evidence of a general awakening among good men. The question is, will the plans of the evil men mature and enslave the world before the good men can organise and confound their evil politics. It is up to you!
H. R. PURCHASE