In the grouping of men which we call society, organization plays a very important part. Organization, for our purpose here, may be defined as the disposition of men info a pre-arranged order under a definite set of rules, regulations or laws for the purpose of attaining a specific end.
A goodly part of man's daily life in society is governed by organization. Men may be organized voluntarily or involuntarily, depending upon whether or not they are free to enter into organization or to go out of organization when and where they will to do so. A man may be organized into a hockey match if he wishes to play hockey; but normally he may not be forced to do so. On the other hand, when conscription becomes a fact in a country during time of war a man is not free to enter or not to enter, or leave or not to leave the army as he wills, regardless of how deeply he may like or dislike the military life.
As regards the organization of society itself, it may be considered to be a free organization. Theoretically, a man is free to live organized with the others into society, or to go off by himself and live free of the trammels of society and also free from the enormous benefits and safeguards which society bestows upon its members. But practically, today, this is an impossibility.
It is with the involuntary type of organization that we are primarily concerned in this article.
In the April issue of The Union of Electors, we discussed the problem of socialism under the heading, The Emerging Pattern of Enslavement. We said that there was a pattern pervading society throughout the world, a pattern which leads to centralization, the concentration of power in the hands of the state. We also pointed out that this was due to the existing financial system which kept the vast part of mankind either chained to poverty or living in the spirit of continual insecurity and the fear of what tomorrow might bring with regards to the three essentials of his life, food, clothing and shelter.
In their desire to escape these twin evils many have listened to the voices of those preaching socialism; these voices say: "Let the state look after everything and you'll want for nothing.". What these voices do not say is that in letting the state look after everything man must, of necessity, surrender his freedom. He loses all right to initiative and delivers himself up to be organized by the state.
A child is not free. His every want is provided for by his parents. But in turn, his parents organize every minute of his day until he is capable of looking after himself. So too with Socialism. As Virginia Cowles remarked in her impressions of her travels through countries under communist or socialist forms of government: "The government was the clothes you wore; the cigarettes you smoked; the food you ate; the schools you went to; the books you read; the streets you walked along. It conditioned your thoughts and fashioned your ambitions.".
Socialism, the pattern of enslavement, promises to provide for your needs, but in return it exacts the price of organizing, of planning the minutiae of your daily life. It is based on the principle that man should serve the state and that consequently he must be regimented. Socialism believes that the State must own all and that industry must be organized under bureaucratic control. This bureaucratic control results in a vast nation-wide network of controls manned by a large, closely-knit family of bureaucrats who guard their power over their lesser fellow citizens jealously, and are adept at fending off any effort of any group inside or out of the parliament to break the power they wield over the daily lives of citizens. Socialism does nothing about the loan-debt system of finance. It claims that the problem is production, and not consumption, and as a consequence it makes of the state a work-state. Socialism breeds class struggle and the dictatorship of one class, the so-called proletariat; though just who the proletariat is today, is not quite clear.
In a word, socialism would deprive man of his freedom and reduce him to the status of a tool of the state.
Now, Social Credit recognizes the need for organization in society. The ideal of personal liberty doesn't go so far as to maintain that the few to whom a particular regulation or law might be repugnant should, for this reason be exempted from observing the law. The manifold benefits of life together in society require that a man sacrifice some measure of personal independence.
But Social Credit would seek to reduce such organization to a minimum and keep it there on the grounds that when men are over-organized, regardless of the agent, or when there lives are subjected to over-planning, say by the state, they lose their independence, their initiative and their pride as men. And when men lose their pride in their manship there is very little separating them from animals. And then, like animals, they can be herded and disposed of according to the whims of the planning or organizing agent.
In such a state man cannot rise to the heights of which he is capable when a free agent. Spiritually he is stifled, for socialism recognizes no god but the state; intellectually he becomes barren, for the socialist state cannot permit free rein to the thinker; physically, he will produce material wealth only under duress — he has no incentive work and such a production is of a poor quality. Witness the difference in this latter respect, between Russia and the United States.
Social Credit says that man will only realize the fullest potential of his nature, physically, mentally, spiritually, when he is in possession of the fullest freedom possible to him, having regard to all the circumstances and limitations of our natural life. Social Credit says that if man is to attain that "fullest possible freedom", he must first begin at the bottom; he must achieve independence at the lowly, animal-level of food clothing and shelter. In other words, if he must go into slavery to get enough to eat and to wear and to find a place in which to shelter from the elements, then there is absolutely no hope that he will ever find intellectual or spiritual freedom. As Hugh Walpole once wrote:
"Every great and beautiful thing in the world, art and progress, seemed to me to have been created by the freedom of the individual. I believe it to be by far the most important thing in life."
The principles of Social Credit The basic tenets of Social Credit have been laid down in various manners by diverse writers on Social Credit. We like the manner in which the late C. Barclay-Smith presented them, in his book "The Answer To Socialism":
(1) Parliament to be an instrument of the popular will.
(2) The central government to enjoy complete sovereignty over money.
(3) The volume of money to be controlled by a National Credit Authority, working on the principle of a National Balance Sheet (in contrast to the present budget system of receipts and expenditure).
(4) The National Capital Account to be credited with the cost value of all production, including capital appreciation, and debited with the cost value of all consumption and depreciation, the annual credit balance to be monetized to finance the following policy:
(a) The progressive liquidation of the national debt;
(b) The steady reduction of taxation;
(c) All public and semi-public works, including state and municipal undertakings.
(d) A National Price Discount scheme.
(e) All social services on a far more generous scale.
(f) A scheme of national dividends to supplement the wage and salary system and finally replace it altogether when the machine replaces manpower.
(5) Hours to be progressively reduced as the Leisure State supersedes the Work State.
(6) Personal freedom in security to be the inalienable right of every human being.
In short, Social Credit is a debt-free, tax-free, fear-free economy with full opportuinity for personal development. It is a social order based upon the axiom that the State was made for man, not man for the state.
Even from such a sketchy outline of the basic proposals of Social Credit, it is evident that the realization of such ideals would give to man what man, from the very depths of his God-given nature, hungers for. He would have, first of all, freedom from that most primitive of all fears, the "fear for tomorrow's dinner". He would have not only that freedom from want but he would have security on his own terms — he would have freedom with security. He would be able to satisfy that thirst for an education, that thirst for knowledge which is something divine; he would be free to exercise his own particular talents to their fullest, and thus would make a far greater contribution to society than if he were harnessed, from economic necessity to some dreary, humdrum occupation. He would be free to raise his family as he saw fit and to give to it all the opportunities to which it has a right. He would be free to enjoy a rich, full natural life, to develop his mental faculties to their highest degree and, not the least of his requirements, to enrich his spiritual life and bring it to its finest flowering, the last being the ultimate attainment of which man is capable.
This is the ideal which the principles and doctrine of Social Credit holds forth. It is an ideal so practical that the only obstacle to its realization is the existing financial system (a man-made thing) which today shackles man in his efforts to rise. It is an ideal for which countless Social Crediters the world over are laboring to realize. It is an ideal which the Union of Electors and all those Canadians supporting it are striving for.
Social Credit is the pattern of freedom just as socialism is the pattern of enslavement. It is the pattern which you and I, all of us, must follow and preach if we and our children are ever to possess our birthright in its fullness.
EARL MASSECAR