TRY IT ON THE DOG!
by James Reed
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PHILOSOPHY |
POLICY /\ |
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Economics
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Administration
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Consumer control of production | Integral Accounting |
Hierachy
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Contracting out mechanisms |
OBJECTIVE: Social stability by the integration of means and ends.
INCOMPATIBLES: Collectivism, Dialectical Materialism, Totalitarianism, Judaeo Masonic Philosophy and Policy. Ballot-box democracy embodies all these.
BALANCE IN SOCIAL CREDIT
Geoffrey Dobbs in "Balance in Social Credit", "The Social
Crediter" 11th April, 1953 represented Douglas' thought in three
simple diagrams:
PHILOSOPHY |
POLICY /\ |
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Economics
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Administration
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Consumer control of production | Integral Accounting |
Hierachy
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Contracting out mechanisms |
New Testament Philosophy
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Old Testament Philosophy
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Social Credit policy
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Monopolistic Policy
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New Economics | New Politics |
Old Economics
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Old Politics |
SOCIAL CREDIT AND CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY
Dobbs goes on to state in his article "What
is Social Credit?" that social credit is, in two words "Practical
Christianity", but that of course begs the question about what
Christianity actually is. Douglas said of Christianity that it "is
either something inherent in the very warp and woof of the Universe,
or it is just a set of interesting opinions." There are Social
Crediters who believe that Christianity does correctly describe the
"ultimate reality of the Kingdom of God" and not merely fleeting
social conventions as the politically correct mainstream churches embrace
of homosexualism, feminism, internationalism and other collective nonsense
ideologies.
"Religion" is a word which comes from the Latin re meaning
'back' and ligare meaning 'to bind'. Thus social credit philosophy is
a mechanism for binding back to reality. Dobbs points out that "social
credit" is present in all societies because it is the credit (or
trust or faith) which acts as the glue holding societies together.
Social credit is maximised in societies where the Christian religion
is practised and minimised in atheistic materialistic communist societies.
This is what Dobbs meant by calling social credit applied Christianity.
Douglas in many publications, including The Approach to Reality 1936,
The Brief for the Prosecution 1954, The Big Idea 1942, and Eric Butler
more recently in The Moral Implications of Centralised Power published
by The Australian Heritage Society 2003, have pointed out that the Christian
philosophy of Love, is quite incompatible with the philosophy of Collectivism.
Collectivism treats individuals as a means to an end (and a fast "end"
at that); Christianity and Social Credit treat individuals as ends in
themselves, as of value in their own right.
ACCUSATION: "NOT A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY"
The accusation has been made that social credit
is not a Christian philosophy because it has primarily communistic roots.
In his article "Is Social Credit Christian?" (FACS Report,
Vol.5, No.5, May 1986) Ian Hodge makes a number of such claims to discredit
social credit.
First he claims that social credit is inferior to the neo-classical
economic theory of Boehm-Bawerk and Ludwig von Mises, now the standard
economic theory indoctrinated to students at our universities.
Second he takes Major Douglas to task for saying that the ideals of
the Old Testament are in conflict with those of Christianity. Hodges'
position is that God is the author of both books so necessarily they
must be consistent.
Finally after mentioning the League of Rights' opposition to socialism
("or at least the socialism originating in the USSR") Hodges
goes on to claim that Social Credit is a form of socialism.
The Nature of Socialism and Capitalism
Leaving Hodges for a moment, let us consider the nature of socialism
and capitalism.
Socialism in all its forms involves the removal of private property
from the individual and its concentration into the hands of the collective,
typically the State. It is a form of Monopoly.
Global Capitalism does almost the same: It is an economic system where
the ownership and benefits of capital are also appropriated by a small
number of people (Global Capitalists) to the exclusion of the many whose
labour made the capital productive. It is essentially a system of the
autonomous rule by Money. As a form of Monopoly, it too is contrary
to genuine democratic principles.
Hodges takes Douglas to task for his scheme of the National Dividend,
which Hodges believes is just a dole by which "the productive in
society will subsidise the lazy and inefficient."
The claim that Social Credit is inferior to orthodox economics will
be dealt with later in this essay as will the claim that the National
Dividend is "socialistic". For the moment it is sufficient
to say that the idea of distributing a fundamental "living wage"
to all people so that the majority can participate in having 'private
property" rather than being wage slaves is not socialistic at all.
Socialism and capitalism are intrinsically monopolistic systems; the
very aim of Social Credit is to break down such systems of centralised
power.
Hodges, like many other critics has seized on a few quotations from
Douglas, quoted out of context and jumped over logic to his conclusion.
Major Douglas did not deny the Old Testament's truth in the sense that
atheistic philosophers might do. In speaking of "conflict"
he was saying that the philosophy of Love of the New Testament conflicts
with the extreme Zionism of the Old where the tribal God of the Jews
leads the "Chosen People" in rampages of genocide of innumerable
peoples.
In the Realistic Position of the Church of England
C.H. Douglas said:
"Speaking for myself, I should reject the so-called Old Testament
as containing little which for the purposes of contemporary religion,
is not purely negative - a warning. Its connection with 'the Chosen
People" myth has distorted any usefulness it might have, and if
it is to be retained, it requires treatment in a highly critical spirit,
completely divorced from reverence. It is only necessary to observe
the extent to which the world tragedy is complicated by Zionism to recognise
its vicious effects. The Jewish question is a mass of untruths, half-truths,
and fake materialism, and one of the essentials of any solution is to
strip it of occultism which is its chief ally."
Janine Stingel in Social Credit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the
Jewish Response, (McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal 2000) says
that Social Credit is "wholly dependent on an anti-Semitic conspiracy
theory". This claim is only true under a high re-definition of
anti-Semitism where any criticism of Jewry is by definition anti-Semitic,
which of course is what the term now means in the present politically
correct climate. But closing off important aspects of reality from analysis
and criticism merely constitutes another form of totalitarianism - a
totalitarianism of thought, and like all such totalitarianism, it will
ultimately unwind.
With these groundless criticisms still in mind it is worthwhile to consider
the words of some of the Popes on the same issues which Douglas addressed.
Pope Pius XI affirmed the same principle accepted by Douglas of the
decentralisation of power:
"It is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of right order
for a larger and higher organisation to arrogate to itself functions
which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies."
Pope Pius XI said in a radio address of 1st June 1941:
"Material goods have been created by God to meet the needs of all
men, and must be at the disposal of all of them, as justice and charity
require. Every man indeed as a reason-gifted being, has from nature,
the fundamental right to make use of the material goods of the earth,
though it is reserved to human will and the juridical forms of the peoples
to regulate, with more detail, the practical realisation of that right."
Pope John Paul II in Encyclical Solicitudo Rei Socialis 30th December
1987 recognised the perils to freedom posed by the money power:
"Among the actions and attitudes opposed to the will of God, the
good of neighbour and the "structures" created by them, two
are very typical: on the one hand, the all-consuming desire for profit,
and on the other, the thirst for power, with the intention of imposing
one's will upon others."
This is problematic for the same reason that Douglas thought it was,
as Pope John XXIII said on 15th May 1961:
"The Church's teaching on social matters has truth as its guide,
justice as its end, and love as its driving force
The cardinal
point of this teaching is that individual men are necessarily the foundation,
cause and end of all social institutions."
SOCIAL CREDIT AND ECONOMICS
The claim was made earlier by a critic of social
credit that neo-classical economics is superior to social credit and
is more "Christian". Let us look briefly at the basic textbook
model of "rational economic man" and see how truly unchristian
and materialistic rational economic man is.
Mainstream Economics a 'Religion"
The textbooks generalise so that their model is an abstraction from
reality - and this is so as rational economic man lacks all of the essential
moral and spiritual ingredients that make one human. Rational economic
man is a utility maximiser: "It" acts so as to produce the
maximum happiness and pleasure for "itself". Rational economic
man is thus purely selfish: the philosophy of hedonistic utilitarianism.
Although the technical details cannot be sketched here, from this flawed
philosophical conception of human nature a model of microeconomics can
be devised - with, for example forward-sloping and backward-sloping
supply and demand curves, respectively. Macro-economic aspects - that
is the "big-scale" phenomena of the capitalist economy such
as the theory of the firm are also based on this same utilitarian framework.
Thus a firm's primary reason for existence is (short-term) profit -
maximisation.
The problem with this theory of capitalism is that it is based on axioms
and principles which are known to be wrong: established by a group of
Cambridge economists under the critical leadership of Professor Joan
Robinson. There are a large number of technical books detailing these
flaws (e.g., M. Hollis and E. Nell, Rational Economic Man 1975), but
the standard economic degree ignores these criticisms. The reason is,
that mainstream economics is not a science but an ideology or a religion,
the religion of capitalism. Thus the "criticisms" and "paradoxes"
are matters for professionals to ponder after hours, not in the course
of doing "real" economics.
Social Credit Founded on Rich Christian Culture
This situation contrasts sharply with the philosophical basis of Social
Credit. Social Credit is founded on the rich theological and philosophical
foundation of Western Christian culture. The individual in social credit
is not the soulless atom of neo-classical economics, but a person with
a soul, morality and culture.
Neo-classical economics by stripping the person of all their essential
spiritual qualities readily allows collectivist entities such as corporations
to dominate individuals. This conventional economics sees corporations
as more real than individuals since corporations are the ultimate causal
agents of capitalism.
Neoclassical economics, as a form of reductionism (a theory that all
complex systems can be completely understood in terms of their components)
has also been unified with the ultimate materialist reductionist theory
- socio-biology - which sees individuals as nothing more than masses
of chemicals at the mercy of "selfish genes" which aim at
self-replication.
Social Credit does not see economic reality as dominated by "economic
laws" as orthodox economics does. Rather economics is, to use contemporary
jargon "a social construction", a series of social conventions.
This applies especially to the financial system. If money is a reality
for the orthodox economist, as fundamental as the electron is for the
physicist, for the social crediter, money remains only a convention,
a representation of the 'effective demand".
In The Use of Money 1934, Douglas said:
"The financial system is nothing but a ticket system". Money
differs from railway tickets in being universally accepted in exchange
transactions.
Douglas belongs to a long tradition of thinkers and actionists who opposed
the monopoly of the money power and proposed that nations should control
their own credit issue (the national credit).
Thus Abraham Lincoln said:
"The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and conspires
against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy,
more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces,
as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon
its crimes."
Lincoln also said:
"Money is the creature of law, and the creation of the original
issue of money should be maintained as an exclusive monopoly of the
national Government. The monetary needs of increasing numbers of people
advancing towards higher standards of living can and should be met by
the Government. Government, possessing power to create and issue currency
and credit as money, and enjoying the right to withdraw both currency
and credit from circulation by taxation and otherwise, need not and
should not borrow capital at interest as the means of financing Government
work and public enterprise. The privilege of creating and issuing money
is not only the prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's
greatest creative opportunity. Thus money will cease to be master, and
become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the
Money Power."
Creation of credit has been monopolised by the Money Power at least
since the existence of the modern nation state, and earlier when goldsmiths
learned that they could issue credit notes without having the same reserve
of gold in their safes, provided that not everybody called on their
reserves at the same time.
The United States, before the American Revolution had bucked this monopolistic
trend and had issued their own money - Colonial Scrip - which was issued,
in the words of Benjamin Franklin "in the proper proportion to
the demands of trade and industry".
The social reformer Robert L. Owen had noted that the Money Power was
soon to hear of this:
"It was not very long until this information was brought to the
Rothschild's bank, and they saw that here was a nation ready to be exploited;
here was a nation that had been setting up an example that they could
issue their own money in place of the money coming through the banks.
The Rothschild bank caused a Bill to be introduced in the English Parliament,
therefore, which provided that no Colony of England could issue their
own money. They had to use English money. Consequently, the Colonies
were compelled to discard their "Scrip" and mortgage themselves
to the Bank of England in order to get money. For the first time in
the history of the United States our money began to be based on debt."
Benjamin Franklin said that it was financial manipulation, rather than
the tax on tea that lead to the American Revolution.
Major Douglas was well aware that the money power controlled the fates
of nations; indeed as M.A. Rothschild had once boasted: "Let me
issue and control a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws."
Douglas saw that the system of fractional reserve banking - where the
private-based money power elites controlled credit creation, being able
to lend out or extend credit whilst only maintaining a fraction of the
reserves, was a form of economic and financial parasitism. By this system,
money is created as a debt to the banking system. Circulated money is
a loan and must be paid to the bank - with compound interest.
This interest was not created by the bank and was not created by the
debtor. As it is impossible to pay back that which does not exist, debts
accumulate at an exponential rate. The public debt thus is an impossible
contract that governments can never repay. It is impossible to escape
debt when all the money to pay off the debt is created by creating a
debt.
"CONTRADICTION" OF CAPITALISM
Douglas went much further than the "national
crediters" in his critique of Capitalism - and Socialism for that
matter. Douglas saw the banking fraud, "that the money that they
create is their own money" as a "tyrannical fraud" (Dictatorship
by Taxation 1937). Nevertheless the core problem of the financial system
was the maintenance of a condition of financial scarcity in the midst
of an abundance of production produced by technology. Consequently individuals
must work harder and longer hours rather than enjoy the leisure and
creativity of an advanced civilisation.
Douglas' "A"+ "B" theorem is a proof that there
is a fundamental gap between purchasing power and prices. Let Group
"A" payments in an economy represent the rate of distribution
of purchasing power to individuals in the form of wages, salaries and
dividends.
Let Group "B" payments be all payments made to organisations
for raw materials, bank charges and other external costs. "A"
represents the rate of flow of purchasing power to individuals. All
payments go into prices. Therefore, the rate of flow of prices must
be greater than or equal to "A" + "B".
For a non-zero "B", "A" will be less than "A"
+ "B", so "A" will not purchase "A" +
"B". Hence a proportion of the product of at least "B"
constitutes a form of purchasing power that must be filled in the same
period by a purchasing power other than wages, primarily by loan credit
(bank overdrafts) or export credit. Put another way, industry as a whole
creates prices at a faster rate than it distributes money to pay for
them. Additional money must be obtained from some source outside of
the industrial system.
Douglas proposed that the gap between prices and purchasing power be
the financing of consumption by means of a National Dividend distributed
to every citizen as well as an automatic regulation of prices according
to the ratio between total production and total consumption. This National
Dividend is a way of giving private property back to individuals and
thus decentralising power because financial freedom is the foundation
of all freedom.
The National Dividend is not a dole or a charity but is given to each
person by virtue of their membership in the community. Productive capital
is only productive because of the background of the community inheritance
of "social capital" which enables capital to exist at all.
That which is produced using the common cultural heritage of a community
rightly belongs to the community as a whole, and the National Dividend
is a reflection of this.
Would Solve a Number of Pressing Socio-Economic Problems
It is not too difficult to see how social credit proposals would solve
a number of pressing socio-economic problems. For example in Australia
one in four workers are employed as casuals and Australia has the highest
casual workforce of any nation. Elisabeth Wynhausen in an article in
the Weekend Australian 5-6/3/05, states that "millions of Australians
are still scraping by on a minimum wage of $467.40 a week, less than
double median weekly rent of a two-bedroom unit in Sydney or Melbourne."
She has recently published a book, Dirt Cheap: Life at the Wrong End
of the Job Market (Pan MacMillan, 2005) which describes this journalist's
12-month undercover work in low paid domestic and cleaning jobs. The
book is an eye-opener about how exploitative work relations are at the
lower end of the scale and of how much worse they will get. The National
Dividend will lift such people from the poverty trap in which they are
in.
Most importantly, social credit represents a mechanism for revitalising
national economies and disarming economic globalisation, which as Graham
Strachan brilliantly describes in his book 22 Steps to Global Tyranny
(available from the League Book Services) is destroying the foundations
of Western Christian civilisation.
Guest Workers to 'Prop Up' Economy
The Weekend Australian 5-6 March 2005 contains a lead article with the
above heading. The article begins:
"Hundreds of thousands of unskilled foreigners are propping up
the economy as pressure mounts on the Howard government to create a
contentious new short-stay visa category to allow migrant workers to
fill growing job vacancies." Needless to say, social credit policies
will never allow this form of national and racial suicide to flourish,
as it now does.
This paper has been only a brief 'cook's tour' of the philosophical
foundations of Social Credit, but having a theoretical answer to our
problems gives us hope that we will find the right strategies to make
theory a reality. The League offers a comprehensive range of books on
Social Credit, including all of the major works by C.H. Douglas and
our own Eric Butler. A good starting point for beginners - and more
advanced readers wanting a different perspective - is an excellent series
of books by Anthony Cooney: Clifford Hugh Douglas 1996, Social Credit:Asterisks
1995, and his more recent Social Credit: Obelisks 2003.