Index

14  From The Social Crediter - For Economic Democracy 45 Summer 2003

Editorial

Money has been around for thousands of years, as have trade and farming. However, in ancient times money did not govern virtually all social and economic relations. People may have traded surpluses for money, but they did not farm primarily for money, they did not care for the sick for money, ‘and they did not decide on financial grounds when to have their children. Exchange for money was not an everyday event upon which all life depended. ‘Wages’ would often be paid in kind (the term ‘salary’ has arisen from the salt paid to Roman centurions) and until well into the 19th century taxes could still be paid in kind. The industrial revolution brought about a new state of affairs where the goods and services necessary for everyday life were increasingly produced with a view to being sold for money. Now money itself ‘makes’ money. On the international financial markets 95% of the dealings are concerned with speculation and only 5% relate directly to material goods. Nevertheless, the ‘winnings’ on this vast speculative gamble give entitlement to the goods and services provided from the land and the exploited labour Of its poorest inhabitants. We all collude in this system in order to obtain our food, clothing and other necessities of life.

Social credit philosophy suggests it is our primary duty to examine what we do for and with ‘our’ money, and what we call others to do by our toleration of a financial system which is wrecking the earth.

We do not need GM or newly financed biotechnologies to ‘feed the world’. On the contrary, we need to call a halt to the growing financial stranglehold on the means of human survival. Already vast swathes of the third world have seen their traditional agricultural patterns being swept aside so that cheap land and cheap labour can be made available to grow cash crops for export (forming the basis of the speculative international ‘financial system). With their land taken from them, small family farmers end up on poor, marginal soils and face starvation or are driven into the sprawling shanty towns, where they form a pool of cheap labour producing manufactured goods for export. Meanwhile it is no longer ‘economic’ to produce traditional crops in the UK. There are plans for ten further countries to join the European Union, so that European farming will suffer further planned devastation. In Poland, for example, much farming is still organic, using natural rotations suited to the climate and the soils, using knowledge and skills handed down and adapted through the generations. Subsidies will be made available to eradicate the small farms and for the land to be taken over for commercial farming, so that the ‘cheap’ land and ‘cheap’ labour can be used to produce agricultural crops for export to this country: All this will further render British farming financially redundant, whilst bringing social devastation to the people of Poland and the other European countries. Note that the so-called, ‘free’ market is anything but free the system of taxes and subsidies forces people to make changes which their better judgment advises against, so that somebody, somewhere can make a financial ‘killing’. ‘The market’ is a highly engineered power house which has caused poverty, starvation and environmental degradation as it has rampaged across the world.

The destruction of self-sufficiency in India is undertaken by the same economic interests through which we "asses in clover" receive our everyday needs. Arundhati Roy’s Brazil speech helps us to realize that the hardworking "men in suits" are dealing across the world on behalf of the elite interests of a few very powerful men in each country. The resources of all of us, our land, our labour" and our technical skills are being commandeered by the men who run the system, and have to be bought back by us on terms which are not, presently, our own. It is time to take time to take stock.

***********************************

Book review:

The Politics of Money: Towards Sustainabilty and Economic Democracy by Frances Hutchinson, Mary Mellor and Wendy Olsen, Pluto Press £16.99, is being highly recommended at meetings across the country.

The book opens with a review of the role of money in current society, an overview of the history of money creation and a critique of the main theoretical developments in economic thought. Alternative perspectives on money are then presented through a review of a number of radical perspectives but focussing mainly on the work of Marx, Veblen and the social credit perspective of Douglas and the guild socialists. In the final part of the book contemporary monetary theories and experiments are analysed within the theoretical and historical perspectives provided in the earlier chapters. The main argument of the book is that it is necessary to understand the crucial role of finance in driving the ‘free market’ economy if a democratic and sustainable economy is to be achieved.

Next