Editorial:
The Green Party’s policy on Land Value Taxation is up again for debate. It is therefore opportune to reprint here the article on it from Green Economics, published in 1999. I will also be distributing copies at the coming Green Party conferences.
A point well made in that article, on the way conventional economics has been distorted to misrepresent and dismiss the issue, applies equally to the arguments for monetary reform, which, like those for LVT, were widely debated and supported in the early years of last century, and it is now an issue climbing back to public attention and concern.
In that earlier period, the proponents of these two issues mostly saw each other as missing the ‘true answer’ to the social problems their proposed reform addressed. It is encouraging that now, increasingly, they are realising that both issues are vital and complementary.
Against the proposals for monetary reform, it is often submitted that any country implementing it would face concerted and disastrous international action to wreck it. Though this is very much debateable, it would anyway effectively be addressed by the implementation of the Simultaneous Policy proposal, as provisionally adopted by Caroline Lucas, among many others – see the website http://www.simpol.org/dossiers/dossier-UK/ html-UK/interface-UK.html or http://www.sustecweb.co.uk/ Monetary%20Reform%20-% 20Making%20it%20Happen.htm
“The Simultaneous Policy is a peaceful political strategy to democratically drive all the world's nations to apply global solutions to global problems, including combating global warming and environmental destruction, regulating economic globalization for the good of all, and delivering social justice, peace and security, and sustainable prosperity.”
I intend to submit a motion at the England & Wales Green Party’s AGM this Autumn to re-introduce a policy of monetary reform into its manifesto of policies. I invite anyone prepared to help draft it to contact me.
As a support for this, I will be distributing copies of James Robertson’s Feasta article as reprinted here on pages 6-11. A common objection I have had to my advocacy of monetary reform is that ‘it is a minor/single issue’, and claims to be ‘a panacea’. I frequently have to deny both these accusations, and assert that it is a common, underlying factor to the many problems the Green Party seeks to address. I hope James’ article will be found to support this assertion.
The tragedy of the recent tsunami tragically illustrates the unreal hold the money system has on society. Clearly, every available source of physical aid should immediately have provided without hesitation. There should have been no question of ‘where’s the money to come from?’ — “Whatever is physically possible and socially desirable must be financially possible”!
Money is a creation of law and custom, and its nature is subject to change by law. Governments throughout the world should have been marshalling the physical goods and people to assist in the rescue operation and clean-up, and providing all money needed for this — as they always do for warfare!