Social Credit

Description

From the Wikipedia:

"Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas (1879–1952), a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity". This philosophy is interdisciplinary in nature, encompassing the fields of economics, political science, history, accounting and physics. Assuming the only safe place for power is in many hands, Social Credit is a distributive philosophy, and its policy is to disperse power to individuals. Social Credit philosophy is best summed by Douglas when he said, "Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic."

According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption, and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of consumers. Each citizen is to have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the communal capital conferred by complete and dynamic access to the fruits of industry assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price.[3] Consumers, fully provided with adequate purchasing power, will establish the policy of production through exercise of their monetary vote.[3] In this view, the term economic democracy does not mean worker control of industry.[3] Removing the policy of production from banking institutions, government, and industry, Social Credit envisages an "aristocracy of producers, serving and accredited by a democracy of consumers."

The policy proposals of Social Credit attracted widespread interest in the decades between the world wars of the twentieth century because of their relevance to economic conditions of the time. Douglas called attention to the excess of production capacity over consumer purchasing power, an observation that was also made by John Maynard Keynes in his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. While Douglas shared some of Keynes' criticisms of classical economics, his unique remedies were disputed and even rejected by most economists and bankers of the time. Remnants of Social Credit still exist within Social Credit parties throughout the world, but not in the purest form originally advanced by Major C. H. Douglas." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit)

More Information

• http://douglassocialcredit.com/
• http://social-credit.blogspot.com/

See also the related movements:

1. Distributism
2. Binary Economics

Book: In This Age of Plenty, http://www.michaeljournal.org/plenty.htm