GREAT BRITAIN LIMITED

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18928, 24 April 1933, Page 12

GREAT BRITAIN LIMITED

WORLD PROBLEMS. MAJOR DOUGLAS’S SOLUTION. destroying credit monopoly. (Major C. H. Douglas). Unless wrecked by catastrophe, the world is on the threshold of an era in which the claims upon food, clothes, •housing and the amenities of civilisation must of necessity rest upon a new basis. Work, or employment, as we phrase it, is not to be in future the main claim upon these things, since the provision of universal economic employment will become quite autorustically an impossibility. This is not to say that the world will become idle, because I do not believe that it will. The idea that the rich class in the past has been an idle class is one of those myths which, resting in the main on a too, narrow conception of work, a little observation would have been x suffleient to disprove.

Problem of Distribution. To a man digging potatoes in the field an artist painting a picture destined to become a national heirloom is an idle trill or, but it is quite possible that the artist could oi 0 potatoes, although the man digging potatoes would be quite unable to paint a picture. The problem, then, is not a problem of employment, and any solution which depends on the re-employment of any considerable proportion of the unemployed population in economic production must in its nature be both ■unscientific and unsound. It is one of distribution, and the question of employment is one which in the future, to a large extent, each individual will have to solve for himself, just as the rich man solves it. Now, orderly distribution Is almost Invariably accompanied by something which can be called a ticket system. When you exchange a thin bit of paper issued by the Bank of England for a thicker bit of paper issued by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company you are only exchanging one kind of ticket - , another. The Bank of England ticket entitles you to a certain amount of any goods and services; the railway company’s ticket entitles you to a certain amount and quality of transportation. So that distribution is wrapped up with this question of the right to issue and to own tlokets. When any suggestion is made to increase the quantity of money tickets, it is met by a cry of “inflation,” and it is suggested that inflation and ruin •are one and the same thing. For this reason, it is very Important to understand cxacfly what is the correct definition of Inflation, which is not an increase of money, but an increase of money accompanied by a rise of prices thus robbing everyone of a portion of his wages. Curiously enough, numbers of professional economists and bankers who stigmatised my own proposals as disguised inflation, whatever they meant by that, are now asking for undisguised inflation, with the objeot of raising prioes. So far as I can see, the only requirement on which insistence is made from orthodox sources at present in regard to inflation is that it shall bo accompanied by the creation of a still further debt to the banks. However that may be, it is essential that the" issue of a considerably greater amount of purchasing power should not he accompanied by an-in-crease of prices, and should, if possible, be accompanied by a fall of prices.

■I Protection of the Producer. This is quite possible, but it is necessary at ‘the same time to see that the producer of goods docs not malic -a toss as a result of a fall in prices, and thus become discouraged from producing. That is half of the problem,' but the other half is concerned with the fact that production wilt increasingly be a matter of machine production, and we require to put purchasing power or tickets, or whatever you like to call ■this thing that we now refer to as “money," into the hands of large numbers of people who are not in employment, and we require to do this without taking it from the peoplo who are in employment. Wo are quite familiar with 'the necessary mechanism for this purpose—it is the dividend system.

It is quite possible to conceive of Great Britain in the light of what financial experts call a “holding company," that is to say. an undertaking which, without interfering with the numerous smaller undertakings that It controls, yet issues additional purchasing power on the credit of all of them and distributes this as dividends to its shareholders. Let us call this holding company Great Britain, Ltd., and let us suppose thaL.Great Britain Ltd, takes back from the Bank of England, which is a private company controlled by financiers, probably not English, the power of actually creating money, which It ■has surrendered. Then, without interfering with the management of industry Jn the country, it Is possible for Great Britain, Ltd., to issue purchasing power in the form of a national dividend, not by taxing its shareholders, but by creating tlio rnonoy in exactly the same way tha't the banks create it at present, and to such an amount as will ensure that all goods which are produced can be bought. To mako such a scheme effective it is absolutely vital that It should Jnolude a method of controlling prtoes, so that the additional money does not cause prices to rise, white at the same time ensuring to the producer that, as such, he Is remunerated. There are methods by which this can be done, which have been proved to ie successful.

rroodom From Poverty, These methods and other arrangements which would he desirable in tho organisation of the country on the lines I have Indicated are- from Iheir nature technical, and they arc, of course, only indicated in outline in tho preceding paragraphs. In general, the result which might bo anticipated from Hie destruction nf 'tho monopoly of credit, and ils distribution somewhat along the lines 1 have described, would be that the whole of Hie population would not. only fie free for ever from poverty and the fear of poverty, but that this

fredom would toe granted on term® which would remove for ever the •stigma at present attached to unemployment when, at the same time, It is accompanied by financial distress, and the resentment of the “worker" at being taxed to keep the "idle.” Every individual, no matter what hiß occupation or want of occupation, would realise what I believe to be the ■fundamental fact that he is by birthright a shareholder in the heritage of civilisation, and that the wealth which flows from this heritage is part ■of the birthright. The competition for employment in the economic system would, I believe, become even keener than It is at the present time among those who are fit for employment in it, since both the prestige and, at any rate for a time, the remuneration of the worker might easily be higher than that of those who, by temperament or Inclination, were found to toe unsulted to operate the delioate machine of the modem productive system. It will be realised that, so far as industry itself is concerned, the remedies which are suggested* do not touch questions such as are oommonly referred to under the name of the nationalisation of Industry. Matters of Administration. These matters are matters of administration, not of fundamental policy. There is room for legitimate difference of opinion as to the ultimate decision in regard to such matters, and my own opinion is that the.size of the unit which is found most convenient will largely determine the question of •so-called private or public administration, and that we owe very little of the progress we have made to State institutions.

The point to recognise clearly is .that Whether or no our present administration of industry is the best .possible, it has been amply sufficient, to provide us with enough, and more Ilian enough, actual production to make us all wealthy, and that to interfere with this existing organisation, which by common consent lias resulted in a glut, before making arrangements for the improved distribution so urgently necessary to distribute that glut, is completely to fail in an understanding of the nature of the problem. Finally, it should be recognised that it is an entirely different matter to understand what is required to end the present tragic on the ■one hand, and to have the power to put those plans Into operation, on the other hand.

We are too prone to imagine In Great Britain that it Js only necessary to have a majority of opinion In favour of a certain line of action, and that when this is achieved we have ready to our hand a Parliamentary machine waiting to translate this opinion into effective operation. It is more than doubtful if this is the case. We have far less freedom in the choice of our Parliamentary representatives than we think we have, still less freedom as to the issues on which we elect them; and least of all have we the ability to ensure that when they get to Westminster their attention shall be devoted to dealing with those problems which we consider vital. Nevertheless, in theory, at least, Parliament is supremo in tills country, and every Member of Parliament, no matter to which Party ho belongs, is the representative of every voter in his con's lit uency.

It is quite probable that tho most practical step which can lie taken at the moment is for every voter, no matter what his political complexion may be, and without wasting time in trying to change his Parliamentary representation, to make it his personal business to apply pressure with a view to making plain to ills Member that every day’s delay in dealing with the money problem Is an additional argument for the abolition of the Parliamentary system. Do it now I