Recently we received an email
from one of our numerous fans and followers asking us to comment on a couple of
articles covering “social credit” he had seen on a distributist website. He had seen us mention social credit a number
of times, but we did not really go into what it is, or explain in any depth why
we classify it among the seemingly countless varieties of socialism with which
the modern world is afflicted.
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| What's wrong with this picture? |
Not wanting to put words into
anyone’s mouth, we decided we couldn’t comment on the articles or even social
credit itself without giving a definition of the term. Unfortunately, the author of the articles
just assumed that everybody knows what social credit is, and didn’t define
it. Nor were the various social credit
websites or even the Wikipedia entry on social credit very helpful. There is a massive amount of material on what
social credit will (presumably) do, and how it is “Christianity in action” and
all sorts of other very fine sounding phrases . . . but no quick, easy-to-grasp
definition that you could give in an elevator if someone asked, “Hey, what is ‘social credit’, anyway?”
You know, like the quick
answer to, “Hey, what is this ‘Just
Third Way’ shtick, anyway?” One quickie
answer: “A system built on the dignity of the human person securing economic
empowerment to every child, woman, and man through broad-based capital
ownership financed by the future profits of the capital itself and
collateralized with insurance instead of existing savings. It is applied in the ‘Capital Homestead Act’
that is a comprehensive package of monetary, tax, and legislative reforms to
encourage as many people as possible to become owners and provide them with the
means of doing so.”
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| "But we haven't finished telling you about the A+B Theorem!" |
You don’t get to say much
more than that, because by then the other person has reached his or her floor
and is running down the hall as fast as a pair of chubby little legs will carry
someone, is edging away with a fixed smile, or is asking for the URL for the
website. No, the material on social
credit, even the summaries we found, all seemed to take for granted that you
already know what it is, and are therefore fine with page after page of
nice-sounding phrases and gilded promises telling you how great everything
is. Right before they start talking
about an “A plus B theorem” and your eyeballs start rotating backwards into
your head.
Having no luck looking for
social credit directly, we found something by googling “Major Douglas,” who
invented social credit. We found
something barely adequate, but still hardly pithy and to the point — and,
frankly, rather incomprehensible. It is,
however, short(er) than most of what comes out of the social credit community. Rather than run the risk of paraphrasing, we
took this straight out of the
Wikipedia entry on Major Douglas, so direct your comments to them, not to
us if you disagree with it:
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| Major Douglas |
“There were two main elements to Douglas's reform program: a
National Dividend to distribute money (debt-free credit) equally to all
citizens, over and above their earnings, to help bridge the gap between
purchasing power and prices; also a price adjustment mechanism, called the Just
Price, which would forestall any possibility of inflation. The Just Price would
effectively reduce retail prices by a percentage that reflected the physical
efficiency of the production system. Douglas observed that the cost of
production is consumption; meaning the exact physical cost of production is the
total resources consumed in the production process. As the physical efficiency
of production increases the Just Price mechanism will reduce the price of
products for the consumer. The consumers will be able to purchase as much of what
the producers produce that they want and automatically control what continues
to be produced by their consumption of it. Individual freedom, primary economic
freedom, was the central goal of Douglas's reform.”
Trying to be as objective as
possible, there appear to be some fundamental contradictions in this
description. We realize we’re going out
on a limb here, because the Wikipedia is not an authoritative source for
anything, and the author(s) of the entry may have gotten one or two things
wrong.
There may even be different
schools of social credit; we recall some time back getting into a controversy
between one adherent of social credit who was very angry that we took
So-and-So’s understanding of something-or-other in social credit instead of
his. After all, there may be as many as
three schools of “guild socialism,” from which social credit spun off after
guild socialism itself split away from Fabian socialism, which was itself an expansion of the theories of Henry George which came out of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. So, no matter what we say, somebody is going
to think it’s wrong because it’s not his
(or even her) version of social credit.
But we can start upsetting
people tomorrow. Unless (of course) you’re
already offended.
#30#