We
recently (this week) heard from our correspondent in Germany, located near Ulm,
in the state of Hesse, right over the border from Bavaria. Like you care. Anyway, one of her questions — all of them
rather insightful for someone without an education in economics (or maybe
because of that) was to ask why, when obviously many people aren’t being
productive, and things are generally on the skids in Germany and elsewhere, why
is the stock market booming? And why are
the more conservative financial analysts looking so scared?
 |
| 100% debt-backed currency. |
We
could only say that the Euro is — in common with most other currencies — backed
completely by government debt, not private sector hard assets . . . and that
means the currency is worth something only as long as people think it’s worth
something, not because it’s worth something.
Much of this, of course, we can blame on the virtually worldwide
adherence to the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes. . . .
And
now for the news:
• Somewhat to our surprise (but not
much), in reading Edward Pease’s The
History of the Fabian Society (1916) we discovered that the economics of
John Maynard Keynes and the proposals of the Fabian Society are virtually
identical, particularly the emphasis on “full employment” and the necessity of
a job as the only source of income for the great mass of people. Interestingly, the Fabian socialist E.F.
Schumacher, author of “the New Age Guide to Economics,” Small Is Beautiful (1973), was a protégé of Keynes, bringing the thing full circle.
 |
| Edward R. Pease |
• Other interesting tidbits from
Pease’s book are that Hilaire Belloc wrote his most important book, The Servile State (1912) as a harsh
criticism of the Fabian program (especially the mandatory full employment
proposal), while Belloc and Chesterton developed their theory of “distributism”
(which the Fabians called “distributivism” for some reason), as a moral
alternative to Fabian socialism and its offshoots, such as Arthur Penty’s (or
Richard Orage’s or George Cole’s, whomever you prefer) guild socialism and
Major Douglas’s social credit. Oddly,
today’s Chestertonians and distributists promote the work of Schumacher, Penty,
and Douglas almost as much as that of Chesterton and Belloc for some reason.
Another odd thing is that, while non-socialists have no trouble seeing
the similarities, and Fabian socialism begat guild socialism, and guild
socialism begat social credit, adherents of the systems insist to this day that
they are completely different . . . except when they are the same! As Pease insisted, they were all still true
socialists, but they just couldn’t get along because those others (not the Fabians, of course, they made a mantra of being
open minded — and, by golly, their brains did fall out!) insisted on everyone doing it their
way; “it’s not our way” was sufficient to cut off communication. Ultimately what mattered for all of them was
not whether anyone was a socialist, of course, but whether they put socialism
in place, whatever anyone called it.
• The CESJ Quarterly Board Meeting
is scheduled for Monday of next week.
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| Msgr. John A. Ryan ... modernist? |
• Guy Stevenson recently gave CESJ
a book on the New Deal from a liberal Catholic perspective. Interestingly, all mentions of Archbishop
Fulton J. Sheen are rather negative, giving the impression that he was against
organized labor. Msgr. John A. Ryan, for
whom the Msgr. John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought is named, is
portrayed as a modernist, or (in non-Catholic language) a dissenter from Catholic
social thought. The book is useful in
demonstrating how little someone has to know in order to get a Ph.D., teach at
a university, and write a book.
• Fr. Edward Krause, a member of
the CESJ Board of Counselors, reported that he had made contact with the
“Censor Librorum” who had reviewed Easter
Witness for an imprimatur. The
Censor claimed he had concluded that an imprimatur was not required, but said
he would review it again, especially since he had forgotten to inform CESJ of
his decision. We await the results of
the second review.
• CESJ’s latest book, Easter Witness: From Broken Dream to a New
Vision for Ireland, is available from Amazon
and Barnes
and Noble, as well as by special order from many “regular” bookstores. The book can also be ordered in bulk, which
we define as ten copies or more of the same title, at a 20% discount. A full case is twenty-six copies, and
non-institutional/non-vendor purchasers get a 20% discount off the $20 cover
price on wholesale lots ($416/case). Shipping
is extra. Send enquiries to publications@cesj.org. An additional discount may be available for
institutions such as schools, clubs, and other organizations as well as
retailers.
• Here’s the usual announcement
about the Amazon Smile program,
albeit moved to the bottom of the page so you don’t get tired of seeing
it. To participate in the Amazon Smile
program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift
through. Once you’ve typed (or copied
and pasted) “Center for Economic and
Social Justice Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you
will be taken to the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• As of this
morning, we have had visitors from 54 different countries and 47 states and
provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two
months. Most visitors are from the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Germany,
and the Philippines. The most popular postings this past week in descending
order were “Book Review: A Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey,” “Thomas Hobbes
on Private Property,” “The Purpose of Production,” “Wilson and the Fed, XV: The
Fight for Reform,” and “Why Did Nixon Take the Dollar Off the Gold Standard?”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
