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system, issue the community’s
“money tickets” (for wealth-pro-
duction and distribution) to the
community as a debt to themselves
(with interest), and recall and can-
cel these same tickets (through
prices for a portion of the wealth
produced) before the total wealth
thus produced is exchanged for
use by consumers. This causes an
ever-widening chasm between the
community’s purchasing power
as consumers, and the total of ac-
counted prices (which is the total
money due to the banking system)
for the wealth which the commun-
ity has produced.
Hence, a forced export and
Families cannot have access to God-given plenty because competitive struggles of nations for
governments bow down to Mammon, the golden calf foreign markets, the accumulation
(a) production (including transport), and of international debts, economic
conflicts leading to wars, the pro-
(b) distribution of products to consumers by ex- gressive mortgaging of the whole industrial plant and
change (trade, commerce). capital and wealth-sources of society to the world-
The former is becoming ever more and more ef- monopoly of banking.
ficient. Therefore, the defect lies in the latter; it is dis- The state has become a slave
tribution that has broken down.
Another disastrous consequence, indicated by
The medium of distribution is money. The mon- the Pope, is the effective enslavement of the state
etary system is not discharging its natural function: (i.e., of all modern governments of all political or-
i.e., goods are not being distributed. ganizations and authority in the modern world) to
A defective monetary system a superstate plutocracy in which supreme political
Money is essentially a system of “exchange tick- power is usurped and wielded by the monopolistic
ets”, the value or validity of which is based on men’s controllers of the very lifeblood of economics and
belief (credit) in the wealth-producing capacity of the industry, which is finance.
community using them. Its sole correct function is Now there is an utter perversion of right order
to ensure that all the wealth which the community is for the industrial and economic organization which
capable of producing is continuously produced and ought to be (in the temporal domain) supreme. This
exchanged among consumers for their use. authority derives rightly from God, and not from the
It is the duty of the state to so control the sys- superior might or craft of those who have usurped
tem of issuing “money tickets” for wealth-production, economic domination and who are swayed by greed
and cancelling them through wealth-consumption, for power.
that the system effectively discharges the above But, as a consequence of the growing financial
mentioned function. But all modern governments impoverishment of the masses, and of progressive
have neglected that duty by committing the entire mortgaging of the community’s productive plant,
system of money to the unfettered control of groups capital and wealth-sources to the finance-controllers,
of private citizens, who have ignored that essential the state had perforce to take over and administer
purpose of the system, and have made it subserve many of the economic organs within the state.
an opposite and anti-social purpose: which is noth- Pope Pius XI, in Quadragesimo Anno, indicated
ing less than monopoly and consolidation of all eco- some of those cooperative organizations — guilds or
nomic and even political power, and domination of corporations — of wealth-producers, the purpose of
society, in their hands. which would be to secure a better-planned and more
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical letter, Quadra- efficient production of wealth.
gesimo Anno, explicitly called attention to this inter- But they can accomplish this purpose only if the
national world-monopoly of finance and indicated state first makes the money system subserve indus-
some of its disastrous consequences. try by legally directing this money system to keep the
The controllers of this financing, or banking products of the community’s industry (as producers) u

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