| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] The Control of Production | | Date: | Monday, September 18, 2006 18:09:34 (+1200) | | From: | Peter Haines <cymric @.......nz>
|
The finishing note recalls the issue of 'community credit' and how it is
best facilitated, reducing the commercial banks to finance companies re
loans with all new credit entering the economy via a public utility or a
split deal where the banks continue to create credit for customers and the
Credit Authority create new money for the dividend and the Just Price and
possibly govt needs.
I think Douglas is pointing to a complete take over of the credit creation
from the banks.
I dont know if this has been discussed indepth, I know it has been touched
on in the last fifteen months I have been involved. It certainly is an
issue any social crediter may be called upon to give an opinion on.
Peter H
----- Original Message -----
From: "MODERATOR" <socredus@yahoo.com>
To: <socialcredit@elistas.com>
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 10:40 AM
Subject: [socialcredit] The Control of Production
>I believe this is Douglas's second essay to be
> published in *The New Age.*
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
> May 1, 1919
>
> The Control of Production.
>
> By Major C. H. Douglas.
>
> It has frequently and rightly been emphasised in *The
> New Age* that the essence of any real progress towards
> a better condition of Society resides in the
> acquisition of control of its functions by those who
> are affected by the structure of Society; and it is
> well if somewhat vaguely recognised by the worker of
> all classes that this control is at present not
> resident in, but is external to, Society itself, and
> that in consequence men and women, instead of rising
> to an ever superior control of circumstance, remain
> the slaves of a system they did not make and have not
> so far been able to alter in its fundamentals.
>
> This system is assailed under the name of Capitalism;
> but of the millions who are convinced that by the
> destruction of Capitalism the Millennium will be
> achieved, not very many have yet awakened to the fact
> that Capitalism died an unhallowed death twenty-five
> years ago, more or less, and that the driving force of
> the system which, more than any other single cause,
> has produced the tangle of misery and unrest in which
> the world now welters, is Creditism.
>
> Credit is a real thing; it is the correct estimate of
> capacity to achieve, and the function and immense
> importance for good or evil of this real credit will
> be impressed on Guildsmen and others with cumulative
> insistence in the difficult times ahead. But for the
> moment it is desirable to consider a narrower use of
> the word; one conveying, however, a sense with which
> it is more commonly associated--financial credit.
>
> Financial credit is simply an estimate of the capacity
> to pay money--any sort of money in legal or customary
> tender; it is not, for instance, an estimate of
> capital possessed; and its use as a driving-force
> through the creation of loan-credit is directly
> consequent on this definition. The British Banking
> system has, since the Banking Act of 1844, based its
> operations on the ultimate liability to pay gold, but
> in actual fact the community, as a whole, has
> dethroned gold, and bases its acceptance of cheques
> and bills on its estimate of the bank credit of the
> individual or corporation issuing the document, and
> for practical purposes not at all on the likelihood
> that the bank will meet the document with gold. This
> bank credit simply consists of certain figures in a
> ledger combined with the willingness of the bank to
> manipulate those figures and at call to convert them
> into purchasing power. What, then, is likely to induce
> a Bank to increase the credit by the creation of
> loans, etc., of an applicant for that favour? The
> answer is contained in the definition: the capacity to
> pay money; and the credit will be extended absolutely
> and solely as the officials concerned are satisfied
> that this condition will be met. It is quite
> immaterial whether the judgment is based on existing
> "securities" or contemplated operations; the basis of
> bank credit to-day is simply and solely the capacity
> within an agreed time-limit, which may be long or
> short, to pay money.
>
> Now apply the consideration of this to such a problem
> as control of the provision of decent housing for the
> miners at rents not exceeding 10 per cent. of the
> miners' earnings. There are a number of idealists who
> cannot be labelled otherwise than half-baked, who will
> say that it is a "sound business proposition" to house
> the miners properly at low rents. There are also a
> number of people by no means half-baked who are
> prepared to lose a little on housing to retain control
> of industry. That it is in the highest sense sound is
> unquestionable; but as to being a business-proposition
> we suggest to those well-meaning people of the first
> class whose minds are above detail, that they go to
> the banks unsupported by security, and endeavour to
> borrow money for such a project.
>
> We see, then, that it is purely a question of the
> financial effect likely to accrue from an enterprise
> which will induce the banks to back it with credit,
> and the use-value or inherent desirability of doing
> certain work is a pure by-product. But the deduction
> to be made from this is of transcendent importance--it
> is that to control industry in the interest of use
> values you must back use-values with credit. And that
> means the control of credit. And in order to control
> credit the base on which it rests must be altered to
> meet the changed aspirations of Society. The economic
> power of Labour is a potential power. By withholding
> it, Labour (using the term, in its widest sense) can
> break down civilisationtion; but it cannot build it up
> again by any agency that the mind of man has yet
> conceived which does not involve the use of credit
> capital in some form or other. The community creates
> all the credit capital there is; there is nothing
> whatever to prevent the community entering into its
> own and dwelling therein except it shall be by sheer
> demonstrated inability to seize the opportunity which
> at this very moment lies open to it; an opportunity
> which if seized and used aright would within ten years
> reduce class-war to an absurdity and politics to a
> disease.
> -
>
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