Replying to a Crediter, a certain Mr. Robert Raynauld, agronomist, writer and editor, once wrote:
"For that which comprises the doctrine of Social Credit, I have not given much study because in my opinion it is basically erroneous. You will never get me to admit that a dividend should be offered to citizens who have done nothing to merit it."
Well, if one thing is true in this statement it is that the author has certainly not given much study to the doctrine of Social Credit. We might even be led to think that he has given it no study at all. Otherwise he would not have said that Social Credit is basically erroneous. Does he know what the base of Social Credit is? And for reasons of comparison what the base of the existing financial system is.
Mr. Raynauld seems to consider the dividend as the base upon which Social Credit is built. In fact, the base is principles and factors which are incontrovertible. These facts and principles are at the base of the dividend as they are the base for other Social Credit propositions. Would Mr. Raynauld, who is an agronomist, mistake the fruit for the root?
Here are the principles and facts:
1 - Financial credit is that which it pretends to be and is not: the exact representation of real credit. (By the "real credit" of a country we understand the degree of facility with which that country can produce and deliver goods in the measure, at the time and at the place stipulated by needs.)
2 — The true price of production is consumption.
3 — Modern production depends less and less upon simple human labour and more and more upon perfected techniques and the utilization of solar energy,
From (1) an (2), it can be deduced that, in order for the financial mechanism to be an exact mirroring of economic realities, it should fulfill certain conditions:
a) The credits furnishings the money necessary to the collectivity for the purchase of consumable goods should, at all times, be collectively equivalent to the total of the prices of the consumable goods offered for sale to the collectivity. These credits will be cancelled out by the purchase or the depreciation of these goods.
b) The credits necessarily to finance production should be new credits in accord with this new production; and these credits are to be recalled only in respect to the relation between total consumption and total production.
In other words: All new production should be financed by new credits. And the price to be paid by the consumer should be adjusted in such a fashion as not to retire these liberated credits except in the measure that the newly produced real wealth is destroyed.
From the fact expressed in (3) we conclude that: The distribution of purchasing power to individuals should be less and less linked to employment. The universal dividend should supplement and progressively replace salaries and wages in the measure that production increases without any increase in the human labour necessary to it.
The ignorance or misunderstanding of these facts and principles is at the base of all the present difficulties in our economic life:
"A dividend should not be extended to those citizens who have done nothing to merit it". So writes Mr. Raynauld. And he is by no means the first to have expressed such a conviction.
If it were up to such individuals, no one would have the right to breathe without first having merited it. It really is too bad that some means has not been found to package the air and sell it to those who have the money with which to pay for it!
Ask these individuals what they have done to merit being born in a land where they have found the means to be educated. Ask them what they have done to merit the existence of the schools, universities and other circumstances which have been refused to so many others.
If Mr. Raynauld should die leaving children whom he would wish to inherit his goods, would he be happy to have them denied such a legacy simply because they had not themselves earned such goods?
The dividend proposed by Social Credit is based upon this very idea of a heritage, on the recognition of an undeniable fact: the existence of a collective heritage, which has been added to by each generation and then handed on to the next.
The preponderant factor of modern vast production is specifically this immense, real capital: acquired techniques and the utilization of solar energy in its various forms. By what right should this capital bring advantages to only one small part of the population?
The attempt is made to load upon the shoulders of the entire population the great national debt which has been contracted for the most part by one or two generations which have passed away. But the people are refused the right to share in the profits flowing forth from all the acquisitions which have been piled up and passed on to us by all the generations of past time.
We maintain that no one should go in want in a rich country, a country whose richness comes above all from the wealth of natural resources, from the accumulation of scientific discoveries which have been handed down, and from the social organization which permits a production enormously greater than would be possible if each one had to produce for himself all that he needed. Consequently, the increase in wealth due to association should be shared in by all who belong to such an association.
We do not here deny the right to compensation for work done. But there is also the common heritage; there is the increase in production without any corresponding increase in human labour. And the wealth from these ought to be shared in by all since it is the fruit of a heritage and not the fruit of actual labour.
In his letter, Mr. Raynald adds:
"Today I am the owner of a business which is worth money, and I can assure you that I am not prepared to take a part of my work of 18 to 20 hours a day to distribute to people who do not work and who do not produce.".
The writer, and all others who might hold such an opinion, may rest in peace on this point. There has never been any question in Social Credit of taking the property of another, or of taking the goods or services he produces without remunerating him for them. The question here is one of furnishing the community with the means of paying for the goods and services which are offered it.
If tomorrow, the unemployed man, who has had no revenue or only half his necessary revenue, were to receive a cheque to the amount of the salary he gained when formely employed, - without at the same time being employed again, is there any merchant in the land who would refuse to sell his wife groceries on the ground that her husband had not earned that particular money? Is there a manufacturer who would refuse to sell to this particular merchant because he had retailed his goods to an unemployed man who had not earned the money with which he paid for the goods? Neither the merchant's business or the plant of the industrialist would by confiscated by the unemployed. Both would be greatly benefited by the fact that their good were beginning to move.
Mr. Raynauld was certainly in good faith. He expressed what he believed and he believed he had thought out what he had expressed. But perhaps the only true statement he expressed was the first: "For that which comprises the doctrine of Social Credit I have not given much study...' It is usually those who have not studied Social Credit who are the most ready to reject it.