SOME CANADIAN SOCIAL CREDIT HISTORY
Introduction: The Social Crediter Saturday, June 26, 1943. William Aberhart was Premier of the Province of Alberta, Western Canada, from 1935 until his death which occurred very shortly after he made this broadcast, transmitted on 6 May 1943. The Social Credit Government which he led swept to power in 1935, taking 56 of the 63 seats in the Provincial Legislature. Both before the election and during his years as Premier, Aberhart mobilised support for Social Credit ideas and policies through his broadcasts which informed and encouraged the many, many Social Credit study groups which met throughout the scattered population of the province.
from Wallace Klinck, Canada:
In semi-private correspondence with an engineer from the Province of Alberta (Canada) who referred to the betrayal of Social Credit principles by the Manning Government in that Canadian Province, I replied with a list of relevant websites and some appropriate PDF documentation and am now pasting my response:
I certainly agree that the Manning Administration betrayed the Social Credit movement in the Province of Alberta and Canada overall. Upon assuming office after Aberhart's untimely and suspicious death, an intensive campaign was initiated to purge the Alberta Social Credit League and the Alberta "Social Credit" Party of practically all individuals who were serious students and advocates of Social Credit as it was put forward by Clifford Hugh Douglas and his authentic supporters.
Those who attempted to present an accurate version of Social Credit were subject to character defamation publicly and privately through an invisible and impenetrable rumour mill. I was advised by reliable internal sources that Douglas's works were not only suppressed but even consigned to the incinerator. Before leaving office Manning announced publicly that Social Credit might have had some validity during the Great Depression but ceased to be appropriate for application to the problems of the modern age. His ever-present right hand man told me personally that Social Credit was too good for the (hopelessly depraved?) people!
In one of his Calgary Prophetic Bible broadcasts Manning made his position quite clear in declaring in his well known sonorous and "righteous" voice that all the efforts of man would be to no avail and that the solutions to our problems must await the return of "our Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ."
In other words the SC Movement was taken over and stalled in its tracks by a group of classic "Occupiers"! (The whole story may be somewhat more complicated.) To attempt anything constructive in our daily affairs would evidently be a sacrilege because it would be a human attempt to pre-empt the plan of God for Mankind. Of course, those who became involved in the movement probably got what they deserved when they placed their faith unquestioningly in their "Great and Godly Leader" and stopped exercising responsible initiative through individual thought and action.
Douglas displayed a much more realistic and immanent, as opposed to distal, attitude when he said that the greatest challenge before us was the Incarnation, i.e., the practical incarnation and application of Christian principles in our organic affairs. Obviously, the Province of Alberta turned out to be a rather unfortunate philosophical locale for the initial major "Social Credit" social experiment.
In any case with the advent of the Internet and the miracle of modern electronic information storage and dispersal the Social Credit message is again being spread widely around the English speaking world and elsewhere also. The article on Wikipedia has been visited, I believe, by hundreds of thousands and vigorous Internet discussion is taking place in different group forums, e.g., one established by an economist located in Texas.
The works of Douglas, his close associates and other Social Credit authors have been laboriously retrieved and digitized so as to be available and distributed widely. We see reference to Social Credit with increased frequency in academic and other circles. Academic theses are being produced on the subject. Under the Chairmanship of Dr. Frances Hutchinson, the Social Credit Secretariat in England maintains publication of the quarterly journal "The Social Crediter." The Social Credit position gains credibility with the increasing demonstrable incapacity of world policy-makers to solve our major financial, economic and social problems in the context of current faulty financial institutions and policies.
A vast body of literature on Social Credit produced over some ninety years is now available in digital form for universal distribution now that the general "Press-Ban" has been circumvented via the Internet.
Read Victor Bridger's The A+B Theorem and Social Credit and National Accounting on the League’s website...
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THE NEXT BIG THING : CHINA WAR
by James Reed
Islamic terrorists have been pretty quiet lately, don’t you think? Now doubt they are shaking in their sheiks now that bin Laden has been laided. But I am going to miss the rhetoric of the “war on-terrorism”. Johnny, the boy next door will miss it too, because no more will he have an excuse to ring up the anti-terrorist hotline and dob in a “suspected terrorist”.
An ‘emptiness’ like that experienced on 26 December fills everybody. All the gifts have been opened, all the food and drink guzzled, the national house is in a mess, and seemingly, there are no more enemies.
But then – suddenly – a US Black Hawk hovers over Canberra! The world’s favourite interracial is coming to town – just like Saint Nick! Special forces dudes in black, looking mean and constipated, will be on the ground and jets in the air (hopefully). Obama has told us that the Yanks are coming because the Asia Pacific is still their football field. A lot of action will take place at the HMAS Stirling naval base south of Perth and US warships and submarines may hide there to “keep them beyond the reach of Chinese missiles”. It seems nowadays, wherever you turn there is a Chinese missile to walk into.
China a threat! They, those right wing fringe dwellers and denizens of the lunar league said that about Japan in the 1930s and tried to stop our capitalists growing fatter selling steel and resources to Japan. Haven’t they seen “Mother Courage” and realised that this Capitalism needs war every so often, just as teenagers need new clothes?
Further reading of Eric Butler’s work:
“Red Pattern of World Conquest” $6.00 + postage;
“Releasing Reality” $5.00 +postage from Heritage BookShop Services.
Also, "War Cycles - Peace Cycles" by Richard Kelly Hoskins. Price $25.00 + postage
Further comment:
In the early part of WWII Eric Butler wrote in the “The Real Objectives of the Second World War: An Exposure of International Finance” (chapter titled ‘China to be Sovietised’):
“At the time of writing there is very little more to be said in connection with the general position in Europe. Broadly speaking International Finance is moving to plan… However, there is one aspect of International Finance’s activities which we have not yet touched upon. I refer to the position of the East.
China, like Russia, offers wonderful scope for development and industrialisation, and it was more than significant that, as soon as the present conflict broke out (WWII…ed), Russia intensified activities in that country. It can be taken as certain that International Finance, with the aid of Russia, is determined to also ‘bolshevise’ China. This viewpoint has been held in many well-informed circles for some time…”
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WHERE WE TOOK WRONG FORK IN ROAD. LOGICAL SUCCESSOR TO WAGE
Last week’s OT article “In Age of Automation: He Who Does not Work will Not Eat!” featured the supervising chairman of China's sovereign wealth fund, Jin Liqun, and his discussion about the suggestion of China supporting a European bailout: "If you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of the worn out welfare society.” I guess one could not have expected any other pragmatic/philosophical response from one such authority within a communist-capitalist regime.
Looking back into social credit history we can also look back to the origins of the “Welfare State” and why it was introduced. Brian Burkitt and Frances Hutchinson explained what happened in “Major Douglas’ Proposals for a National Dividend - A Logical Successor to the Wage” in 1994:
“The “new economics” introduced by Major C.H. Douglas in the years immediately following the First World War predicted both an exponential growth in production arising from technological change and an increase in inequality due to unemployment following the introduction of labour-saving technologies. Douglas additionally forecast a futile search for new forms of employment if income distribution continued to derive primarily from the use of productive resources and if an economy based on the profit motive prevented technical progress from creating an age of leisure.
All social production originates in a common cultural inheritance
To counter this scenario, he designed proposals which attempted to place every citizen on a level economic playing-field. They derived from the view that all social production originates in a common cultural inheritance of past invention, with present individual effort playing a secondary role. The concept of providing citizens with freedom to select employment and consumption patterns according to non-market criteria, i.e. to turn economic theory into a tool rather than a dictator of policy, was well ahead of its time.
Although dependence as an income source on a single form of paid employment throughout adult life has been the exception rather than the rule (most particularly for women), the assumption that provision need only be made for temporary and exceptional interruptions in earning capacities underlies welfare state provision based on the Beveridge Report. Reliance on a “portfolio of income streams” has been the norm not only in pre-and post-industrial society but throughout the process of industrialization itself. From such a perspective the Douglas “New Age” economics of the 1920s (as distinct from the Social Credit movement of the 1930s) offers imaginative insights into the current theory and practice of economic and social policy.
Three Approaches to Security of Personal Income
1. The Beveridge Plan.
The Beveridge Plan was the culmination of measures to relieve, temporarily occurring poverty due to transitional “flaws” in the economic system. From the Elizabethan Poor Laws through the National Insurance Act of 1911 to the Measures advocated by Beveridge in 1942, the explicit assumption was that Incomes are chiefly, derived from employment. “Social security” denoted the provision of an income when earnings were interrupted through the “abnormal” conditions of employment, sickness, old age or widowhood. Maintenance of full employment was regarded as central to the smooth Functioning of a welfare state designed merely to compensate for infrequent “interruption or loss of earnings” (Beveridge, 1942, quoted in Parker, 1989, p. 23). “Full employment” was assumed to be full male employment, i.e., regular full-time work for men from 15 to 65, regarded as an achievable goal for all governments. Married women were usually assumed to be financially dependent on their husbands.
‘Idleness’ one of the five evils
Although “Idleness” was listed as the last of the five evils, following “Want, Disease, Ignorance and Squalor” (Beveridge, 1942, p.6), the fear of encouraging “idleness” has haunted the provision of welfare benefits. The “dole” represented a transfer of income from those in employment through income tax and national insurance payments. It was normal to regard “paid work (as) the only work which concerns policymakers...(and as)...more valuable than unpaid work” (Robertson, 1993). Means-tested benefits designed to reinforce the paid-work dependant culture created the unemployment and poverty trap [2] which inhibit the unemployed and low-paid from taking casual and part-time employment and unpaid voluntary work. For the full-time employed the option to spend less time in paid employment in favour of unpaid caring or voluntary work or of greater leisure is rarely available (Hewitt, 1993).
2. Citizen’s Income:
The complexity of means-tested benefits, the expense of their administration and the harassment and insecurity faced by citizens when their circumstances necessitated making a claim gave rise to research into the feasibility of a Basic or Citizen’s Income (CI) (Jordan, 1987; Parker, 1989; Purdy, 1993, Walter, 1989). By amalgamating all cash benefits and tax allowances and thereby reducing administrative costs of the present social security system, a non means-tested, non job-related income could be paid to each individual regardless of household circumstances.
Such security of income offers potential for flexibility in work arrangements (e.g., part-time, career changes and interruptions, job-sharing) in line with changing economic circumstances.
These proposals bear some superficial similarity to Douglas’ National Dividend proposals in that the individual is the unit of assessment for a payment which does alter with household, or employment. However, payment of a CI of subsistence proportions would be necessary to remove the complexities and expense of means testing. Moreover, it would require an income tax rate of 70 per cent. Thus the redistribution of income from the employed to the unemployed through a CI lacks political and economic feasibility.
3. National Dividend:
National or Social Dividend schemes envisage direct allocation of income by the State to all citizens. No transfer of wealth from those in employment to recipients is involved. Proposals of this type, made by Meade (1936, pp. 197, 250-1; 1989a) and implemented in Alaska (O’Brian and Olson, 1991) can be traced to the work of Douglas and A. R. Orage, the Guild Socialist editor of The New Age… As an attempt to correct the imperfections of orthodox economic theory, Douglas’ proposals were found wanting (Gaitskell, 1933; Hawtrey, 1937; Hawtrey and Douglas, 1933; Keynes, 1936). However, the body of work published between 1918 and 1924 in collaboration with Orage (Orage, 1926) forms a coherent critique of the capitalist financial mechanisms which regulate production and distribution in a technologically advanced society. Douglas’ proposals for a National Dividend form an integral part of a series of recommendations for the social control of credit.
Economic Growth:
Douglas observed that financial mechanisms determined the nature and quantity of production and the distribution of subsequent revenue (Douglas, I921). Production was debt driven. The repayment of debt plus interest necessitated an increase in financial credit at an accelerating rate in order to distribute the proceeds of technical progress [6]. Financial speculation dictated a constant drive to economic growth, any increase in material production being deemed an increase in wealth regardless of its usefulness so long as money value was attached to it so that its production generated profits for the producer and financier[7]. Since money and financial structures were socially constructed, they could be brought under the control of the community as a whole.
The Common Cultural Heritage belongs to every citizen:
Douglas drew a distinction between “financial credit” and “real credit”. “Financial credit”, which drives production and determines distribution, is generated by the banking system and is based on the probability of delivering money. “Real credit” represents the creative energy of society, and is the means, actual and potential, to produce goods. Potential real wealth is communal in origin. Without the Common Cultural Heritage of the accumulation of technological innovations, the myriad inventions of materials, machines and processes there would be no real wealth for individuals or past generations, groups to appropriate for their own use on the basis of their “ownership” of capital or labour. This heritage, plus the “unearned income of association”, constituted the “real credit” of the community and belonged to every citizen. The right to determine the extent, nature and distribution of future production should equally belong to all citizens. A small caucus who control financial institutions should not be the sole arbiters of future patterns of production and distribution (Douglas, 1974).
The Acceptability of Unearned Income – For Owners of Shares:
An income from dividends without any work test (i.e. past or present employment) was perceived as normal for owners of shares, Douglas demonstrated that, contrary to common perceptions, did not necessarily derive from savings, i.e. consumption (Douglas, 1979, p. 135). They were a claim by some citizens on a share in the wealth of the whole community arising out of paper transactions. Though the “dole” could be regarded as a precursor of a National Dividend for all, its form in constituting a burden of taxation on those in work made it politically unappealing, no more attractive than the payment of unearned income via dividends to a select few (Douglas, 1979).
State payment to citizens of an income which did not derive from paid employment was established in principle in the UK before the First World War. The state Old Age Pension introduced by a Liberal government in 1906 was available to all, the limiting criteria for access being the age of the citizen. In subsequent decades other European nations adopted pension schemes on a similar basis…”
The Full article (including references) found here |
BIRTH OF A NEW ‘AUSSIE’ TRADITION? REBIRTH OF THE NATION?
The following suggestions, circulated via email are worth passing on. They are some ideas for ensuring your fellow Aussie and his/her family also enjoy the coming Christ Mass Season. Read on:
As the holidays approach, the giant Asian factories are kicking into high gear to provide Australians with monstrous piles of cheaply produced goods --merchandise that has been produced at the expense of Australian labour. This year will be different. This year Australians will give the gift of genuine concern for other Australians. There is no longer an excuse that, at gift giving time, nothing can be found that is produced by Australian hands. Yes there is! It's time to think outside the box, people. Who says a gift needs to fit in a shirt box, wrapped in Chinese produced wrapping paper?
• Everyone -- yes EVERYONE gets their hair cut. How about gift certificates from your local hair salon or barber?
• Gym membership? It's appropriate for all ages who are thinking about some health improvement.
• Who wouldn't appreciate getting their car detailed? Small owned detail shops and car washes would love to sell you a gift certificate or a book of gift certificates.
• Are you one of those extravagant givers who think nothing of plunking down the Panasonic of a Chinese made flat-screen? Perhaps that grateful gift receiver would like his driveway sealed, or lawn mowed for the summer, or games at the local golf course.
• There are a bazillion owner-run restaurants -- all offering gift certificates. If your intended isn't the fancy eatery sort, what about a half dozen breakfasts at the local cafe. Remember folk, this isn't about big National chains -- this is about supporting your home town fellow Australians with their financial lives on the line to keep their doors open.
• How many people couldn't use an oil change for their car, truck or motorcycle, done at a shop run by the Australian working guy?
• Thinking about a heartfelt gift for mum? Mum would LOVE the services of a local cleaning lady for a day.
• My computer could use a tune-up, and I KNOW I can find some young guy who is struggling to get his repair business up and running.
• OK, you were looking for something more personal. Local crafts people spin their own wool and knit them into scarves. They make jewellery, and pottery and beautiful wooden boxes.
• Plan your holiday outings at local, owner operated restaurants and leave your server a nice tip. How about going out to see a play or ballet at your hometown theatre.
• Musicians need love too, so find a venue showcasing local bands.
• Honestly, people, do you REALLY need to buy another 10,000 Chinese lights for the house? When you buy a $5.00 string of light, about 50 cents stays in the community.
If you have those kinds of bucks to burn, leave the postman, garbo or babysitter a nice BIG tip.
You see, Christ Mass is no longer about draining Australian pockets so that China can build another glittering city. Christmas is now about caring about US, i.e., you, me, encouraging our small businesses to keep plugging away to follow their dreams.
When we care about other Australians, we care about our communities, and the benefits come back to us in ways we couldn't imagine.
THIS is the new Australian Christ Mass tradition. Forward this to everyone on your mailing list -- This is a revolution of caring about each other, and isn't that what Christ Mass 2011 (love your neighbour as yourself) is all about?
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CHUG, CHUG, CHOGM: GLOBALISTS FALLING OVER THEMSELVES!
by Brian Simpson
As Perth was transformed into a police state, with no-go stickers slapped on various activists’ foreheads, the CHOGM globalist circus came to town. No disrespect is meant to the Commonwealth; contrary to Greg Sheridan (“Nothing in Common”, The Weekend Australian, 29-30 October, 2011, p,15) the Commonwealth is not “the comic book Phantom of international organisations… form without substance, emanation without source.”
On the contrary, matters of great importance to the participating Commonwealth nations are discussed, not all to Australia’s benefit. Thus “Gillard Throws Open Market to World’s Poor” The Australian, October 26, 2011, p.7), giving Third World Commonwealth nations 100% absolute access to Australia’s trade markets. Surely this alone would have led globalist Sheridan to fall over himself?
Then we have homosexual Michael Kirby wanting “commitment to abolishing laws against homosexuality, which exist in 41 of the 54 Commonwealth nations.” (The Australian, October 26, 2011, p.13) I am sure that the African nations will be eager to embrace all of the ideals that Kirby and others have succeeded in having Australia embrace.
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