"The Social Credit Idea" — Such was the subject of the address given by Mr. Eric Butler at the Annual "New Times" Dinner, in Melbourne, Australia. (Story in last issue). This is how the "New Times" sums up the points stressed by the speaker:
In his first work, "Economic Democracy", Douglas had dealt primarily with the vast subject of human associations and their effect upon the individual. He was concerned with demonstrating that:
All organization — whether it be political, económical or financial — must serve the individual.
Mr. Butler drew his listeners'attention to the extract from "Economic Democracy" printed on the front of the menu:
Society must be built up from the sovereign individual, not down from the State.
After dealing with Douglas' discovery of the flaw in present financial costing methods, Mr. Butler said that it was unfortunate that many who had become interested in Douglas's views on financial reform during the great depression, had never grasped Douglas's fundamental idea. Many who call themselves Social Crediters were in reality only Socialist reformers.
Social Credit was most definitely not the replacing of a private monopoly of credit by a State monopoly, which Douglas has warned was the worst form of credit monopoly. Social Credit challenges the monopoly of any description, and by appropriate technique which Douglas outlined, seeks
to place the individual in effective control of his own credit.
While the temporary policy of credit deflation during the great depression certainly introduced many people to Social Credit, it was not generally grasped that the major exploitation Douglas exposed was
the forcing of the individual to take part in unnecessary economic activity of some description in order that he could get access to a little of his own financial credit.
Douglas was the only man who had exposed the Satanic policy underlying the Full Employment doctrine.
Work was a material function; and to elevate it from a means into an end was to further the philosophy of the anti-Christ. Ironically enough, this was what all the Christian Churches were doing today.
The issue was not "work or no work“, but
whether increasing technological progress was going to enable the individual greater freedom to choose the type of work he desired, or whether he was to work under direction.
The controllers of credit policy are determined that all must work under direction, the result being that there is a continuous expansion of new credit, not to enable the individual to have an immediate higher standard of living, but to force him to participate in enormous capital expansion, both private and State, which depresses the present standard of living.
Superimposed upon this, is the vast bureaucracy and the "worķ" of filling in forms, etc.
One of the results of this policy of enslavement was rising prices, a fact which Douglas accurately predicated in one of his first books, "Credit Power and Democracy".
It is tragic to hear so-called leaders talking about preventing inflation while they support the present credit policy.
In a survey of the vast field which Douglas's work covered, Mr. Butler said this genious clarified every aspect of human activity. Not only had he exposed the fallacies of the present financial and economic system, he had penetrated to the core of international politics in his war-time works; while in the latter years he had dealt exhaustively with the menace of the modern allpowerful State, and the mass voting system which was being used to destroy all constitutional safeguards. Douglas had said that there was
no hope of salvation unless the people were effectively demesmerised.