| Subject: | [socialcredit] "monetary reform" v. "social credit" | | Date: | Tuesday, December 21, 2004 18:26:44 (-0800) | | From: | william_b_ryan <william_b_ryan @.....com>
|
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
-
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________________________________
http://www.eListas.com/
The Most Complete Mailing Lists, Groups and Newsletters System on the Net
|
"monetary reform" 
Reply to this message