| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] "monetary reform" v. "social credit"--Wally responds | | Date: | Wednesday, December 22, 2004 00:24:28 (-0700) | | From: | Wallace M. Klinck <wmklinck @....ca>
|
Thanks Bill--for your concurrence and for the instructive essay from fascist
quarters containing the characteristic perversion of Social Credit policy.
Labour based approaches to political economy such as fascism and communism
and/or Bolshevism (which appear to have common origins) seem inevitably to
contain the seeds of tyranny, ultimately giving reign to "the will to
power." You are correct in emphasizing Douglas's constant pre-occupation
with the philosophical foundations of Social Credit and his concern that its
policy must reflect that philosophy--that we should never let matters of
technique obscure our perception in this regard. We must build up from the
individual and not down from the State. The group exists to serve the
individual, not the opposite. His last major concentrated effort to combat
confusion is this ideological arena was his "Chart" of 1951 entitled "What
is Social Credit?" which begins: "Social Credit assumes that Society is
primarily metaphysical, and must have regard to the organic relationships of
its prototype." I think that the rest of the chart delineates Social Credit
in a precise manner which deserves the closest scrutiny and consideration.
I hope now that I am into my convalescence to resume the scanning of Social
Credit documents--the next being, possibly, "Property: It's Substance and
Value" (1934) by the late French author Le Comte W. G. Serra.
Wally
----- Original Message -----
From: <william_b_ryan@yahoo.com>
To: <ownership@cog.kent.edu>; <socialcredit@elistas.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 7:26 PM
Subject: [socialcredit] "monetary reform" v. "social credit"
> Wally, I think I agree with every word of this recent
> series of posts of yours. The important
> characteristic that set Douglas's approach apart from
> its "competitors" was not the technical detail of the
> financial analysis, but its fundamental philosophical
> outlook, which he expressed in every address, essay
> and book. The technical detail was after all
> accepted substantially by the Keynesians and Nazis,
> for that matter. The German Nazis put over the main
> gates of their concentration camps the slogan, Werk
> Macht Frei. The prominent British fascist and
> colleague of Sir Oswald Mosley, Raven Thomson,
> asserted the "essential principle of payment for
> service."
>
> It is conflict in fundamental philosophy that has
> engendered true hatred from the opposing camp over
> the years. The faint of heart in the movement have
> fallen away. While regrettable, it is
> understandable. Most of us would rather fit in than
> be hated.
>
> I see no essential difference between the philosophy
> expressed in the following, and that expressed by
> most present-day "monetary reformers."
>
> http://www.geocities.com/w_b_ryan/britishfascism/raven_thomson.txt
> "Fascism certainly recognizes the inadequacy of
> present currency and credit in circulation to
> facilitate the distribution of production from
> producer to consumer, and is prepared to establish a
> managed currency based not upon gold, but upon
> productive capacity. As the volume of currency
> required will obviously vastly exceed that at present
> available, the problem arises as to how this new
> currency and credit are to be put into circulation.
> Douglas says this must be by means of the "National
> Dividend" - a free distribution to every man, woman
> and child in the land. This is, however, an entirely
> democratic, if not Marxist method, more political
> than economic, and entirely contrary to Fascist
> principles of "payment for service." Fascist
> Government would issue the new currency and credit
> direct without charge of usury, in the form of an
> advance upon the existing wages and salaries (which
> does not enter into employers' costs), thus retaining
> the element of service, and at the same time giving an
>
> effective stimulus to consumption without raising
> prices.
>
> "As the volume of currency and credit in circulation
> must be limited to a definite working relationship to
> productive capacity, free distribution of new
> currency must eventually cease, or at least be
> contracted to a proportion of the gradual advance of
> production effected by scientific invention and
> technical improvement. When the point is approached
> where further creation of currency and credit on the
> same scale would cause inflation, the advantages of a
> Fascist method become obvious, as it will then be
> possible to unload the higher wage standard by
> degrees upon the employer, who will be enabled to pay
> the higher rate with no undue advance in prices owing
> to the greater demand for goods and the general
> improvement of trade. By this means a permanent
> higher standard of life will be established upon the
> present wages basis of payment for service, and
> stabilized by the effective control of the Corporate
> system over all economic factors.
>
> "(The question of leisure has not been ignored by
> Fascist economists, but is considered best to meet
> this by reduction of hours of work, advancing the
> school-leaving age and giving pensions at an earlier
> age, as proposed in the Mosley Memorandum of 1930,
> without abandoning the essential principle of payment
> for service.)
>
> "The result of the increased purchasing power of all
> wage-earners will be to improve the home market, and
> thus take a definite constructive step towards the
> solution of the world-wide problem of
> underconsumption. We can only hope that other nations
> will follow suit, but even if they do not, Fascist
> Britain is not afraid to show the way."
> -
>
>
>
> ----original message----
> Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 03:46:38 -0700
> From: "Wallace M. Klinck" <wmklinck@shaw.ca>
> Re: Wally replies to Michael Bindner
> To: ownership@cog.kent.edu
>
> Dear Mike,
>
> I am quite certain that I understand the
> "Participant's" point with absolute clarity--having
> observed and dealt with this type of objection to the
> Social Credit Consumer Dividend for over half a
> century. If you will read his comments again, you
> should see that he feels a financial income which is
> not tied to an individual's contribution to the
> production of wealth would be corrupting--and he is
> crystal clear in saying that an individual has the
> right to MAKE a living but not a right to
> automatically GET a living. This type of thinking
> strikes at the very heart of Social Credit. It
> derives from Puritanism at the core.
>
> From a technical standpoint, I agree that the
> "Participant" does not appear to understand the
> nature of either the Social Credit analysis of the
> price-system or the nature of the issue and
> cancellation of direct consumer credit as offered by
> Social Credit as a remedial measure required to
> correct the flaw in the price-system as revealed by
> Major Douglas's "A + B Theorem." He seems to be of
> the opinion, quite erroneous, that the Consumer
> Dividend and Compensated Price are somehow based upon
> a form of taxation, part of the burden of which will
> fall upon himself.
>
> The Social Credit Consumer Dividend (in combination
> with the Price Compensation) is indeed required to
> restore liquidity to the financial system--but it is
> most certainly NOT intended to keep consumption up so
> that ANYONE may be kept working. The introduction of
> financial debt into the equation as CURRENTLY
> practiced ensures that everyone must be kept working
> more and more in order to meet debts which are
> increasingly impossible of redemption. The Social
> Credit Dividend is to make possible circumstances
> where fewer people are required to engage in paid
> "work" and to introduce them increasingly into the
> leisure class.
>
> Social Credit is not a labour-based theory, but
> rather inheritance-based. Labour is properly
> reimbursed by the monies received through their
> participation in industry and commerce. If labour
> were intelligent, they would favour every possible
> labour-displacing technology and forget about
> increased wages (which only come through via
> increased production costs as increased financial
> prices) based upon their input to production
> processes and demand instead an increasing
> inheritance-based independent income by way of the
> (Social Credit) Consumer Dividend and Price
> Compensation to supplement their earned incomes.
>
> Social Credit emphasizes the problem of distribution,
> not production, as the primary economic problem. We
> are not concerned with the ownership or
> administration of industry by workers. As a mere
> individual in an organization, the worker cannot
> really, as an individual, control policy or
> significantly benefit by such an arrangement. We
> advocate a society wherein economic security is an
> increasing reality for ALL citizens as consumers.
> This includes all paid workers as well. We are all
> consumers and political democracy can only be
> disastrous without the parallel introduction of
> genuine economic democracy, the exercise of which
> properly belongs with all citizens as consumers.
> The control of policy is not to be vested in either
> the owner, administrative or worker segments of the
> productive system--but firmly with the consuming
> public which can either encourage or atrophy an
> economic function, policy or product by exercising
> their real demand backed by adequate money votes
> allowing full and effective _expression of that
> demand.
>
> The Social Credit approach deals with aggregate
> price-creation and income distribution. The final
> product includes ALL the financial costs incurred to
> make up final price. Therefore, production includes
> all processes involved in completion of an economic
> cycle--including "design, sales and shipping, etc."
>
> Although you criticize "socialism" (without really
> defining the term according to your understanding of
> it) my impresssion is that your position re worker
> ownership (as I understand your meaning of it) seems
> to be based upon a labour-oriented concept of
> economic organization. It seems to me, therefore, to
> have at least partly Marxist origins in theory or
> concept and practical implementation.
>
> In Social Credit, the worker does not obtain his
> rightful reward and treatment from being absorbed
> into some large administrative economic enterprise
> over which, as an individual, he really has no
> control. Instead, Social Credit would provide the
> worker with increasing financial independence which
> would allow him to simply atrophy a function or
> policy which he finds oppressive or with which he
> does not concur, and so extricate himself from it, by
> contracting out of the association without life-
> threatening financial penalty. He or she would be so
> enabled by the Consumer Dividend working in
> conjuction with the Compensated Price to provide
> increasing independence of financial income and
> falling prices. The objective is Freedom, Abundance
> and Leisure.
>
> Sincerely
> Wally
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: Michael Bindner
> To: ownership@cog.kent.edu
> Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 3:41 PM
> Subject: Re: OWNERSHIP: Social Teaching for
> Business Majors: Wally comments
>
> Wally,
>
> I think you missed the participant's point. It
> was that he was not going to work to support someone
> who is not working. In other words, if he works,
> everyone must work. He of course did not understand
> that social credit is about compensating for B in the
> A + B equation by putting in enough liquidity to keep
> consumption up (in other words, for him to keep
> working, some form of compensation to offset B is
> necessary). I don't think you need to read
> puritanism into it. I have the same kind of concern,
> but it is more with binary economics. This concern
> is with non-worker owners of capital credit having a
> say and benefiting from the labor of workers. There
> cannot help be alienation of the worker from the
> product, even if the technology is doing the work, as
> long as someone in the enterprise has to put forward
> effort in the economic process (note I did not say
> the production process, since while production may be
> totally automated, there is still design, sales,
> shipping, etc.)
>
> In social credit or binary economics, great care
> must be taken to compensate the public only its
> technological birthright or the owners of capital
> (even if it is distributed to society) for ONLY that
> portion of cost AND profit which is owing to capital.
>
> That part of cost and profit due to workers must be
> scrupulously paid to them, including bonuses for
> innnovation. In order to assure this, and to assure
> that governance comes from within rather than
> without, I advocate employee-ownership based
> solutions and a widening of the use of profit based
> enterprise into what is now the non-profit sector.
> Those enterprises which cannot be for profit must
> still be democratic to the greatest extent possible.
> Note this is at the enterprise level rather than the
> societal level. Socialism is an abject failure
> because it assumes that somehow a societal vote is
> better than enterprise level decisionmaking, whether
> it be in a school or a car plant.
>
> Mike Bindner
> www.christianleft.net
>
> "Wallace M. Klinck" <wmklinck@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> The following comments are offered to Greg
> Southworth, Michael Bindner, John Medaille and any
> other interested parties on the list. They were
> written in response to a participant in the
> socialcredit@elistas discussion group--a participant
> who seems irrevocably committed to the very non-
> (indeed anti) Social Credit idea, advanced as a
> "moral" precept, that the act of consumption is
> justified only by the direct contribution to
> production by the individual concerned, to quote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> Subject: Re: [socialcredit] Re:- Swanwick
> Princpiples
>
> Hello Joe,
>
> It would be lovely if such payments [direct
> consumption credits in the form of Consumer Dividends
> and Retail Price Compensation--Wally] could be made
> without a negative effect on people. I think your
> examples of very northerly climes might skew things a
> bit, though. Even if it does seem to work in the
> short term one cannot base the economic model on it
> having to work by relying on something as fickle as
> the human psyche which may take 3 generations to work
> out its long term response. I believe we already have
> the beginnings in our social services, but not viewed
> as a form of economic stimulant. DFM used to fund
> this?
>
> As to rights. Everyone has a right to MAKE a
> living, but not a right to GET a living IMHO. If they
> do have such a right, then I have an equal or even
> GREATER right to abdicate from paying taxes of any
> kind. If one person can unilaterally decide to
> contribute nothing then so can I, and I have a
> greater ! right to do that as I am only not paying as
> opposed to both not paying AND receiving. [End of
> participant's message]
>
> My (Wally's) Response:
>
> This exchange demonstrates the folly of
> attempting to discuss Social Credit without giving
> due regard to its philosophical origins. While some
> other "religious" beliefs may have limited
> overlapping points of agreement with Social Credit,
> attempts to understand or evaluate Social Credit
> without going back to its essential metaphysical
> foundation can only result in confusion, denial and
> wasted energy.
>
> [Participant], Social Credit is a policy
> which derives from a specific philosophical
> foundation--AND I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES IT IS
> NECESSARY TO REITERATE, THAT FOUNDATION DERIVES FROM
> CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES. From a Christian perspective,
> "salvation" is not derived from "work" as
> specifically in Judaism and implicitly or otherwise
> in other "religious" beliefs--but rather from
> "unearned Grace", and the object of Social Credit is
> to give meaning to this principle by incarnating it
> in the organic affairs of man, which include our
> economic relationships.
>
> When Christ said to "toil not" and that if
> God would feed the fowl of the air, the beasts of the
> field and the fish of the sea, how much more would he
> feed his human flock (those of "little faith"), what
> do you think he meant? And when he demonstrated what
> he meant by multiplying loaves and fishes and feeding
> his flock without asking them to go out on the side
> of a hill to dig holes and fill them up again to
> justify receiving their "something for nothing" do
> you think he was merely falling into some kind of
> temporary aberration?
>
> The fact seems to be, in my opinion
> [Participant], that your psyche appears to be
> infected with a severe case of Puritanism (an
> impediment to Social Credit from the beginning) which
> seems to have resulted in an obsession with the
> potential weaknesses of your fellow humans. I think
> there is a Christian admonition about taking
> cognizance of our own failings before prejudging our
> neighbors. Douglas reminded us of the old
> (essentially Christian) saying about minding one's
> own business because it is sadly in need of
> attention. If you are so convinced of the "fickle"
> aspects of human nature, I assume that you include
> yourself in this assessment. If so, perhaps you
> might best give first attention which may be due to
> your own "fickleness." I do not take pleasure in
> being so blunt--but in some cases, this seems to be
> the only approach which is open in the face of
> dealing with seemingly intractable psychological and
> philosophical misconceptions which derive from a
> misapprehesion of fundamental reality.
>
> I suppose that if you were stranded on the
> proverbial desert island, you would be stricken with
> guilt about eating the bananas or coconuts which
> might exist in abundance. Does a worm when finding a
> morsel for which he has not worked freeze with guilt
> (as misguided humans are wont to do) because he has
> not "worked" to justify his meal--and first venture
> to engage in some other "productive" (or destructive)
> act in order to justify his eating? No, he is not
> corrupted by Puritanism and he simply eats--not
> because he is really more intelligent than humans
> (although he certainly acts as if he were!) but
> because he has not abstracted himself from natural
> law and acts in accordance with it (unlike
> "intelligent" humans!).
>
> Whether you like it or not, [Participant],
> (because of the influences of indoctrination which
> have shaped your views) we are all part of nature and
> to put it bluntly, there is a sense in which we are
> all "parasites." We can accept the beneficence of
> God and nature with Grace and thankfulness, or we can
> blasphemously reject it. I would like to know what
> is your concept of equity if you think everyone
> should work for everything that comes their way when
> labour is demonstrably, undeniably and rapidly being
> replaced by non-labour factors of production?
>
> Social Crediters are COMPLETELY emancipated
> from the delusion (and conceit) that our "salvation"
> is based upon our individual "work" or "labour" and
> our object is to to create conditions where there is
> less of it so that we can get on with more important
> and edifying spiritual and cultural pursuits. One
> thing is certain. This destructive obsession with
> the "moral" value of "work" is the one factor above
> all else which has prevented Social Credit from
> advancing as it would otherwise have done. Douglas
> said that society is "hypnotized" and that only a
> drastic dehypnotization can save it. That
> hypnotization is primarily due to human obsession
> with the "moral" merit of "work" and the "moral"
> imperative (really the will to power over others)
> that drives that obsession. Social Credit has the
> mission to destroy this false moral imperative
> because the spiritual, psychological and economic
> liberation of mankind can never be achieved until
> this conceit that man creates by his labours
> everything of value to him is finally discredited.
>
> That we are bogged down in this kind of
> discussion nearly a century after Douglas originated
> the Social Credit ideas is really pathetic and
> explains why progress has been so limited in
> advancing the philosophy and policy of Social Credit.
>
> Surely, the time has come when we should get our
> philosophical heads straightened out so that we can
> get on with the relevant task of promoting Social
> Credit policy in the real world.
>
> Sincerely
> Wally
>
> P.S. Somewhere, I believe, Douglas pointed
> out that when we become obsessed with "justice" we
> can be led to an excessive preoccupation with
> achieving it so that we can actually miss it. This
> is a special danger of any approach to economics
> which is "just wage" or work-based rather than
> predicated upon the principle of universal
> inheritance.-- Wally
> -
>
>
>
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