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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 -----
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 |
Fwd: Re: OWNERSHIP
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