[3
May, 2013: That these essential works do not go out of circulation.
Please read and distribute widely.]
The
Surprise Weapon
PRIVATE
ENTERPRISE MONEY
A
Non-Political Money System
By
E. C. Riegel, 1944.
• To
put money power into the hands of the people and maintain constant
buying.
• To
maintain a constant price level and prevent inflation and deflation.
• To
preserve and perfect private enterprise.
• To
avert financial collapse and economic chaos.
• To
provide a world currency and preserve peace.
CONTENTS
(For
description of book see back of wrapper)
PREFACE
INTRODUCTORY
The
heritage of old world errors and now the American departure.
How
the political money system perverts all economic activities and
political policies and breeds war.
The
threatening inflation chaos and how to avert it.
The
consummate economic and political ideal, encompassing all freedoms.
The
assertion of man's inherent money power and the denial of political
money power.
THE
VALUN SYSTEM
Checks
and currency and their basis.
Determination
of each person's limit of money issue and its redemption, and the
maintenance of adequate supply without inflation and deflation.
The
method of fixing and stabilizing.
Organization
State-wise of a private enterprise money system, either by the
leadership of the Governor or the initiative of businessmen.
The
local beginning of a potentially universal system, developing
economic union with political isolation.
The
intellectual revolution.
[Back wrapper] THE BOOK THAT MEETS THE CRISIS
[Back wrapper] THE BOOK THAT MEETS THE CRISIS
THERE
is a fundamental evil of which the convulsion of war is but the
dramatic manifestation and of which the nations must be purged before
reconstruction can begin.
THIS
EVIL IS THE ECONOMIC SIN OF ISSUING MONEY WITHOUT BACKING IT.
Billions
upon billions of such unbacked money units are being created by
governments and injected into the money stream. This has the same
effect upon the politico-economic system as water has upon the food
value of milk - it thins it until it will no longer sustain the
business system. Hence we are developing economic anemia which is
approaching the crisis of world-wide inflation and monetary collapse.
The
obvious remedy is to back money. How can this be done? The only way
is for the issuer to be prepared to give value in exchange for it
when tendered. To do this, a money issuing government must go into
the production of goods and services, just as Russia is doing,
otherwise it produces inflation and perverts business. The
so-called capitalist governments are destroying business by issuing
unbacked money. The Russian government backs its money but prohibits
free enterprise. Must business be destroyed by one process or other?
By no means. We now have "the book that meets the crisis."
PRIVATE
ENTERPRISE MONEY is the first book to master the subject of money and
thus solve the capitalist-collectivist enigma. It shows that money is
necessarily perversive as a political instrument and that to escape
both inflation and communization, its issuance must be the exclusive
prerogative of private enterprisers who can back their issues with
goods and services and thus maintain a sound end stable money system
and once and for all remove the threat of communization.
The
whole issue between private enterprise end communism turns on the
decision whether money shall issue from private enterprise or from
government. The die is cast when choice is made between these
alternatives. Accept the political money system (as we have up to
now) and inflation must come, with collectivism the only escape.
Adopt the private enterprise money system, and private enterprise and
stable money must prevail.
The
Author
E.
C. Riegel's pen has brought him to the present product through a
trail of expository and iconoclastic books and pamphlets on politics
and business, particularly in the field of credit and money.
His
last two books, The Meaning of Money, published in 1936, and Dollar
Doomsday [so far, unavailable], published in 1941, continued the
attack upon the prevailing theories and systems. But now he becomes
constructive and sets up a radically new theory that others may
choose to shoot at.
This
new concept is a challenge to the academic economist and a bid to the
layman to enter into the practical mastery of a subject that has
heretofore
been enshrouded in mystery.
HARBINGER
HOUSE
381
FOURTH AVENUE
NEW
YORK 16, N. Y.
Copyright*,
1944, by E. C. Riegel
[*Now
public domain.]
Printed
in the United States of America
Other
Books by E. C. Riegel
THE
MEANING OF MONEY http://riegelimf.com/?cat=4
THE
CREDIT QUESTION
DOLLAR
DOOMSDAY
[Neither
of the last two titles is available.]
MONEY
OR YOUR LIFE
The
life of modern man depends upon his mastery of money.
Our
political money system is breaking down and must be displaced by one
that serves the needs of modern exchange. Otherwise our civilization
will perish.
As
technological improvements tend to specialize and confine each man's
production, the need for the exchange of products increases, and,
therefore, man's dependence upon money makes the mastery of this
vital agency more and more imperative.
Production
grows more mechanical, while consumption, on the other hand, has no
machine technique; it still operates by our hands and bodies.
Therefore there can never be mass consumption to coordinate with mass
production. Consumption remains private and individual. Production
grows more interdependent - requiring the coordination of many
machines and many hands - while the function of consumption cannot be
shared or mechanized; it is human, individual, self dependent.
To
fulfill the function of consumption (without which production is
purposeless) the individual must be, as buyer, a self-starter and
self stimulator, and therefore, money power, sufficient to buy his
production, must be at the command of every man. Otherwise the people
cannot coordinate their consumption with their production and this
deficiency causes the production machine to clog and recoil with
vicious consequences. Not only are these economic results painful in
themselves, but they cause the people to turn to political
intervention as a remedy, and this complicates the problem and
increases the peril.
WE
MUST HAVE LESS RATHER THAN MORE POLITICAL INTERVENTION AND THIS BOOK
WILL SHOW THAT IT IS POLITICAL INTERVENTION THROUGH THE MONEY SYSTEM
THAT BREEDS ALL OUR ILLS. PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MUST, IF IT IS TO BE
PRESERVED AND PERFECTED, HAVE A PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MONEY SYSTEM. THE
POLITICAL MONEY SYSTEM IS INHERENTLY ANTIPATHIC TO PRIVATE ENTERPRISE
AND INEVITABLY TENDS TO COMMUNIZATION.
Our
mass production power must be balanced by our individual buying power
and our buying power is dependent upon our individual money-creating
power. Money cannot meet modern needs by descending to the people; it
must rise from them. Until this is comprehended mass production must
continue to miscarry. We, as consumers, must literally make money or
be stymied.
Government
cannot assume this responsibility for us. Every individual producer
must exert the right and assume the duty of creating money, if there
be need therefore, to buy the value of his own production. There
cannot be full distribution of wealth without full distribution of
money power. He who would make must also take - in ratio. Each of us
must have the ability to create fountain pen money with our own
hands. Machine production must be coordinated with hand-made money.
Recurrent
business slumps, mal-distribution, over-production, unemployment,
panics and depressions are but the gentler reminders that our
industrial life is in danger. In the end war presses a gun against
our head with the demand - money or your life. Must our economic and
political maladies be compounded into periodic cataclysms and our
civilization be destroyed before we master money?
Typical
of the stress laid by economists upon the need for sustained
purchasing power is the following quotation from "The Dilemma of
Thrift" written in 1926 by William Trufant Foster and Waddill
Catchings:
"In
fact, adequate, sustained consumer-demand would do more than pay
other means now within human control toward increasing wealth,
abolishing poverty, maintaining employment, solving labor problems,
increasing good will among men generally, and maintaining the peace
of the world. No means of preventing war holds out such large
immediate possibilities as this... It is, therefore, difficult to
exaggerate the importance of finding a means of sustaining purchasing
power. The next world war, if it does come, may well be the last war
- at least the last war in which the present nations will have any
interest, for it may well destroy civilization itself."
Well,
"the next world war" has come and is upon us, and whether
or not it is leading to the destruction of civilization will not be
determined by the outcome of the military phase of the war. The issue
cannot be determined by military victory. Its cleavage is not the
battle front. Both Axis and Allied Nations are committed to the
system of government-created purchasing power, whether they be
classed as fascist, communist or democratic. The broad question that
will determine the fate of humanity is whether the evil practice of
synthetic buying power by governments shall continue to the
inevitable collapse of the social order or whether the producer of
wealth will exert his natural buying power and thus avert disaster.
Without
reservation I assert that the whole fate of society hinges upon the
one question of whether it can at this critical juncture gain mastery
through the mastery of money and thus coordinate purchasing power
with producing power. The issue is - money or your life.
-
E. C. Riegel
INTRODUCTORY
INTRODUCTORY
Man
has two major problems.
His
first problem is:
HOW
TO PROSPER.
His
second problem is:
HOW
TO GOVERN GOVERNMENT.
The
solution of one is the solution of the other. It lies in the
understanding and exercising of his inherent money power through a
non-political money system.
Because
man has not mastered the problem of achieving prosperity, he has
turned to government for its solution. Thus he has complicated his
problem, for government offers no solution to the problem of
prosperity, while its intervention in this primary problem brings the
additional problem of how to govern government. When government
undertakes to solve man's problem for him it undertakes the mastery
of society and it cannot be both master and servant. Thus it has
failed in both spheres. By intertwining the prosperity problem with
the political problem man has snarled the threads and no solution of
either is possible without separation.
When
man has mastered money he shall have mastered not only his economic
problem of prosperity but also his political problem, for he will see
that money has no place in state functions, and, the money power
being entirely in his own hands, he will easily master the state and
clearly define its services. Thus money must be seen as the means of
mastery of all economic and political problems. Until we have
mastered money we shall not master any of our problems. Not money,
but a false money system, is the root of all evil.
We
shall find that money power is inherent in all of us; and that this
power can not be exerted for us. We must either exert it or become
suppliants to some authority that issues money, and which, when it
issues, can do so only in its own behalf. Since we have looked to
government to exert the money power, either directly or indirectly by
the legalizing of the banking function, we have innocently fashioned
our own subjection from which nothing but the correcting of this
error can extricate us.
It
is useless to fret over our self-imposed oppressions or to quarrel
with our government over ills that have resulted from our having
placed upon government the impossible task of issuing money in our
behalf. Public officials are just as ignorant of the real cause of
economic and political miscarriages as we. However earnestly they may
strive to exert the money power in the public interest, they are
doomed to failure because the laws of money make it impossible.
The
first cardinal truth of money is that no one, whether individual or
government, can issue money without buying something. By inviting
government to become a money issuer, we invite it to become our
customer. Then we quarrel with it if it tries to buy something that
we deem within the province of private enterprise.
The
second cardinal truth of money is that money must be backed with
something, and the act of backing can only be the act of selling.
Since we object to government buying and selling anything useful, but
nevertheless insist that it issue money, we force it into
boondoggling or public works that do not conflict with our private
enterprise. Thus we compel government to issue unbacked money by
making it impossible for it to sell anything in exchange for the
money it issues. As this process of issuing unbacked money continues,
each unit grows weaker and thus the dosage must be increased. Hedged
about, as government is, by our objections to its invading private
enterprise and yet keeping it under the pressure to issue money, it
is ultimately forced to the most consummate public works spending
program, which is war.
Obviously,
the economy must have money supply; and, since we are too ignorant to
understand that not only the power but the duty to issue money
resides in ourselves, pressure falls upon government to issue it. To
issue money, government must buy something. We divide on what it
should buy and from this division arises our favor for fascistic or
agrarian or proletarian programs of expenditure. While we do not
realize it, nevertheless, our partisanship is merely a preference as
to the channel through which the government is to pervert the
economy, for perversion it must be, since expenditures by government
lead either to government ownership or inflation. Each channel of
expenditure has its proponents and opponents and the one that has the
broadest appeal and the least opposition is armament building - which
in turn broadens into war. Thus Mars is continuously beckoning to the
politician as the easiest way out of a difficult political problem.
We bring all our ills upon ourselves, including the affliction of
war, through our ignorance of the laws of money which no
government
can alter or suspend.
We
must first of all assume responsibility for the solution of our
primary problem of prospering ourselves. To do this we must master
money. Having done this, we shall find that vicarious money issuing
power is a pure illusion and that we can and must exert the money
power by and for ourselves. This step accomplished, we shall find
that we are no longer petitioners of government but that government
is completely dependent upon us. Ipso facto we solve all political
problems and end war.
Government
must be governed by a principle that defines the separate spheres of
business and politics. When we take the money power out of politics,
and allocate it to its natural sphere in private enterprise, we
establish a proper coordination between the profit and non-profit
motives of society. Without this allocation the two spheres are in
constant conflict, breeding all manner of pressure groups and isms
that seek to reconcile the irreconcilable. Money is an
instrumentality of the profit motive and must be issued and backed
only by private enterprisers. Economic and political perversities are
inescapable while government is admitted to money power. Since all
national governments have, up to the present, been money issuing
powers, we may justly attribute all the economic and political ills
of mankind to this single error. This is a sweeping claim - but it is
made deliberately and in full consciousness of its broad
implications. We have not yet learned how to constitute government,
nor do we comprehend the full meaning of private enterprise and its
power to bring universal prosperity.
Empowered,
as governments are today, to control the money system, they are a
constant menace to the peace and prosperity of mankind. Mad men,
selfish men, ambitious men, fanatics and crackpots may at any time
seize the reins of government and drive the state like a juggernaut
over the people. When government is invested with money power it
rises above the citizen and under the profession of protecting him
may actually constitute the greatest threat to his well-being and
safety. The power which control of the money system gives to
government to interfere in and direct and even take the life of the
individual should not exist on this earth. No man or group of men is
warranted in holding this terrible power over fellow men.
Democratic
government to date has been a pure illusion. All that has been
accomplished by voting or revolting is a change in the personnel of
government. The perversive money power remains to serve the evil
designs of the dishonest politician and to frustrate the plans of the
virtuous. Money power means budget power and it is folly to imagine
that the citizen can control government unless he can control its
budget.
Political
democracy is a system of tolerance; not one of active support. The
citizen is engaged with the duties and problems of his private
affairs and if government does not especially annoy him he takes it
for granted. It is only when it burdens or bothers him that he is
stirred to action. As a citizen he functions negatively, i.e., he
doesn't trouble to give approval; he registers only disapproval.
Since this is the citizen's natural attitude toward government, he
must be put in position not only to protest a completed act but also
to veto a proposed one. He must have both voting and vetoing power.
Therefore government must be so placed that it can have no existence
independent of the citizen, and must ask for every penny it proposes
to spend. This monetary control by the citizen over the state is the
only form of democracy that is effective. Until we have attained it,
we merely beguile ourselves with our elective processes.
We
must have a broader voting process than the mere marking of a ballot
annually or quadrennially. We must vote money - and, to vote it
freely and effectively, we must control this all-powerful ballot,
without government interference. Thus we will have elections every
day and every hour, controlling both business and government by the
simple process of granting or withholding patronage. Until we have
monetary democracy we have only the shell of democracy without the
substance.
As
long as we cling to the superstition that we must look to government
for money supply, instead of requiring it to look to us, just so long
must we remain the subjects of government and it is vain to follow
this or that policy or party or ism in the hope of salvation. We can
control government and our own destiny only through our money power
and until we exert that power it is useless for us to debate the pros
and cons of political programs.
THE
FIRST STEP
The
first step toward complete economic and political freedom through the
ultimate abolishment of the political money system is the
establishing of the private non-political money system to demonstrate
its feasibility.
The
new concept of money is that, to be sound and stable, and adequate,
it must spring solely from the same source from which all wealth
springs, namely - the people, and that, to effectively coordinate
with our mass production system, the people must issue the money
necessary, to buy their production.
The
program is for state-wise action by the people in their respective
states, to set up Valun Exchanges. (The word "valun" is
compounded from VALue and UNit and pronounced vallen.) The Valun
Exchanges will clear checks for their members and with each other
nationally and internationally - making one money system, unifying
trade regardless of political divisions, and obviating foreign
exchange.
The
proposed new money unit is called valun and is to be issued in
checks, bills and coins. The valun is to be made par with the 1939
dollar, but entirely disassociated from it and every other political
unit. Thus it offers escape from the coming inflation.
The
projected plan for a private money system, designed both to perfect
private enterprise and preclude political perversions, rests on this
basic proposition:
Money
can be issued only in the act of buying, and can be backed only in
the act of selling. Any buyer who is also a seller is qualified to be
a money issuer. Government, because it is not and should not be a
seller, is not qualified to be a money issuer.
This
cardinal statement brings the money function clearly within and makes
it a part of private enterprise, and takes it out of the political
sphere. Thus private enterprise becomes truly private, and money is
transformed from being a tool of politics and finance to a utility
for mass distribution of mass production of goods and services.
By
democratic control of the proposed Valun Exchange, each person and
business would have the power to create money equivalent to his or
its power to produce, and there would be no aristocracy to hold this
power exclusively or disproportionately. In brief, the capitalist
system would be a popularized and equitable system, because everyone
would be a capitalist, and would command the sphere of his own
activities. The composite of such command would be a popular mandate
for prosperity and peace and economic union of all peoples.
What
we have had to date is a politico-capitalism - an unnatural alliance
between politics and business, corrupting to both. Capitalism cannot
realize its purpose of prospering the people and thus pacifying the
world, and the state cannot become a true and impartial public
servant until the political money system, the tie that binds them, is
severed and the private enterprise money system is instituted.
EVILS
OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM
The
present money system has three basic evils:
a)
It permits money to be issued privately, only by a limited number of
persons and corporations who have bank credit, and makes such credit
subject to fee. Thus it establishes credit as a privilege rather than
a right, and makes it an object of profit rather than a utility to
further the production and distribution of wealth. It denies to
producers generally the right to issue money, thus making it
impossible to expand buying power to potential producing power. This
results in defeating the mass production system.
b)
It permits the government to issue unbacked money. The only way the
government could back its money issues would be to go into the
production of goods and services; and this would compete with private
business. Thus the problem offers the two horns of a dilemma, both of
which lead to socialization. If it backs its money issues with goods
and services (and there is no other way it can be backed), it
executes a frontal attack on private enterprise. If it issues money
without backing it (as it is doing), it executes a flank attack on
private business through inflation - since to issue money without
creating equivalent values is to inflate.
c)
It permits ambitious or designing or fanatical men who are in control
of government to light the fires of war, threatening the lives and
fortunes of untold millions. This terrible power lies solely in the
political money system since armaments spring from money and money
springs from government fiat, whereas it should spring only from the
fiat of the people who would thus hold the veto power.
SOCIALIZATION
THROUGH SPENDING
Government
spending in all nations throughout the world is leading directly,
through government ownership, to socialization and the destruction of
private enterprise. It is not a triumph of socialistic ideology; it
is simply a condition forced by the political money system. Our own
government has become a "buyocracy" that operates a
bureaucracy employing (December 31, 1943) 3,162,199 civil employees.
These Federal employees, residing and operating in our states,
outnumber the employees of each state government from three to six
times. Our state governments, because they have not the money issuing
power, are being subordinated to one centralized government and home
rule is being impaired. Besides the 11 millions in the military and
the 3 million civil employees of the Government, there are about 30
millions employed in producing for the government, making a total of
about 44 million persons working directly or indirectly for the
Government, leaving only about 30 millions in private enterprise and
local government service.
The
"buyocracy" at Washington is literally buying its way into
control of our very lives. Yet there is nothing back of the money it
so freely issues except what the people put back of it with their
labors. The Government, popularly believed to be the backer of money,
is in fact the only one that does not back money. Except for postal
service, there is practically nothing purchasable from the Government
with the money it issues. Even gold and silver cannot be bought from
the Government, and therefore these commodities are not back of its
money. Private enterprise supplies practically all the backing that
exists for our money. Since private enterprise is the sole backer of
money, simple logic dictates that it should be the sole issuer.
When
government issues money and offers nothing in exchange therefore, the
issue is the same as counterfeit money, with this difference:
counterfeit money can be detected and extracted from the money
supply, while unbacked legal tender merely blends with all other
money, making each unit weaker.
The
Federal Government, through its "buyocracy," now holds
mortgages on two million farms (1/3 of the farms of the nation) to
the extent of $3 billions. It owns 2,500 war plants at a cost of $16
billions and comprising 1/4 of the nation's entire industrial plants.
The H.O.L.C. and F.H.A. and F.P.H.A. own 719,329 city dwellings at a
cost of $2,198,542,204 of which $1,883,543,602 is temporary war
housing. Mortgages held on urban homes amount to $1,360,154,742. It
is constantly acquiring new lands and properties. The following is
from the Congressional Record, November 18, 1943, page 9767:
"This
total of 363,600,533 acres owned or to be acquired by the Federal
Government is equal in size to the combined area of Maine, New
Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West
Virginia, North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Ohio, Alabama, Kentucky and Indiana. It represents 20% of the area of
the United States.
"From
July 1, 1940 to January 30, 1943, land acquisitions totaling
14,884,244 acres have been acquired or are in the process of
condemnation or purchase. This represents a total of 23,256 square
miles, a land area nearly equalling West Virginia."
This
land ownership (within the states and exclusive of the territories)
held by the Federal Government, ranges from a minimum of .02% of the
area of Connecticut, to as much as 76.3% of the state of Nevada.
Lands and buildings held by the Federal Government become tax free,
thus diminishing the tax income of the state in which it is located.
In his recent book, "Bureaucracy Runs Amuck," Lawrence
Sullivan says:
"Where
shall we turn today to find the acknowledged area of free enterprise?
Not in agriculture, surrounded completely by quotas, parities and
soil-conservation allotments; not in housing, banking, amusements,
insurance, electric power, medicine, labor or shipping. Through all
its agencies, the federal government now is engaged directly in
forty-six different lines of business activity. And through loans and
liens, it has a proprietary interest in 77 additional economic
pursuits.
"Adolph
A. Berle, Assistant Secretary of State, and one of the original
brain-trust elders of 1932, thus presented the official logic of our
march to socialism in his testimony before the Temporary National
Economic Committee on May 22, 1939:
"...If,
therefore, wealth is to be created by creation of government debts,
the scope of government enterprise must be largely increased.
Briefly, the government will have to enter into direct financing of
activities now supposed to be private; and a continuance of that
direct financing must be, inevitably, that the government will
control and own these activities. Put differently, if the government
undertakes to create wealth by using its own credit at the rate of $4
billion or so a year, and if its work is well done, the government
will be acquiring direct productive mechanisms at the rate of $4
billion worth a year, or thereabouts. Over a period of years, the
government will gradually come to own most of the productive plants
in the United States."
Continuing,
Mr. Sullivan says: "When Mr. Berle uttered this sweeping
prophesy, the federal investment in U.S. industry, transport and
finance stood at about $12 billion. At the end of the fiscal year
1943 this investment stood at $37 billion."
It
may serve the purposes of partisan politics for the "outs"
to blame conditions upon the "ins." But the causes that are
developing the federal government into a "buyocracy" are
much deeper than administration policy. The political money system
that began before the United States was born, and was given approval
by the framers of the constitution, is merely beating the fruit of
the parent seed and will not be altered by a change in
administration. Crediting the present and all past administrations
and all future ones with the most patriotic efforts within the
political money system, it must nevertheless operate adversely to
both government and people; and this statement applies not only to
our government but to all governments. What is happening in America
is happening all over the world. The political money system is
forcing socialization everywhere and the only escape of private
enterprise lies through the private money system which also offers
the state its only security against ultimate public revolt. The
dilemma previously outlined confronts statesmanship everywhere.
Approximately
60% of everything produced by the people today is being bought by the
government. Therefore our current production is 60% socialized. To be
sure, this is a war condition from which we hope to escape, but
before we can escape, we must pass through the serious trial of
inflation, during which our present money system may break down
completely. But, no matter how much the dollar may depreciate through
the process of government spending and lack of backing, the title to
the property acquired thereby will remain with the government.
So
let us get this clear: The issue between private enterprise and
collectivism is not a matter of choice as long as the political money
system prevails. If the government holds the money issuing power, it
will either buy out the people and control them or ruin their
enterprise system through inflation. If the people exert the money
issuing power, they will buy the services of the government and
control it.
The
source and flow of money determine the social, economic and political
outcome. The state being a single unit, its money issuing power
develops autocratic control of the people, but money issuing power in
the hands of the people develops - since the people are many - a
democratic control of the state.
Therefore
sovereignty of the people and democracy can be assured only if the
people exercise their money power; and dictatorship in some form or
other can be realized only by the government's exercise of the money
power.
Consciously,
or unconsciously, we align ourselves with either private enterprise
and democracy, or with collectivism, as we take our stand in favor of
either the private money system or the political money system.
If
we would oppose collectivism we can do so effectively only by
opposing the political money system. If we would uphold private
enterprise and democracy we must do so by supporting the private
money system.
In
the play of propaganda there are many false passes. Let us keep our
eye on the determining factor and not be diverted by dissembling
phrases and ideological opiates.
As
the inflationary crisis approaches, it is fortunate that we have the
private money concept that this book presents. We can begin at once
with a plan of reconstruction that will reverse the trend toward
socialization and forever preclude future disturbances and the
economic perversions that are inherent in the political money system.
We
can build a money mechanism that will coordinate with our mass
production mechanism and thus give free rein to our productive
capacity. We can assure ourselves that every unit of money is backed
by value, and can thus prevent inflation and maintain a stable price
level. We can not only abolish unemployment, but we can assure every
worker the full enjoyment of his production. We can abolish booms and
slumps and maintain constant production. We can end Government
deficits and the insidious socialization that follows from it. If we
would accomplish all these things and thus perfect out private
enterprise system and save it from imminent inflation and ultimate
communization; if we would preserve the sovereignty of our states and
our federal system of government, we must adopt a private money
system designed as a utility, responsive to the needs of mass
distribution. This is a challenge and a bid for private enterprise to
vindicate its philosophy and perfect its operation and thus assure
its triumph in its issue with collectivism.
FREEDOM
AT LAST
We
are really going to be free at last, because we are going to discover
that the power of liberation is within us. We need only to comprehend
our inherent money power.
Freedom
means freedom to manage one's self and freedom from management by
others. Obviously then, the political management philosophy, so
prevalent today, cannot bring, but rather denies, freedom. It is
racing to its doom; we are in the midst of a great revolution.
A
new dignity is coming to us. From the wreckage that is being wrought
about us, we shall emerge as commanders of our private lives rather
than guinea pigs for political quackery. Every social problem, every
national problem, every world problem is but the composite of the
problems of individuals arising from the evil of external management
and from interference with self-management. The individual has been
thwarted in his pursuit of happiness; and the sum of these individual
frustrations produces social convulsions. We have delegated, or been
robbed of, too much power; we have exerted too little. We must have a
democracy of private dictatorships.
Though
our beginnings and our endings be inscrutable, we know that we exist
in accordance with a natural plan. Is it not then the basest
profanity to rest our aspirations upon man-made laws rather than
those of nature? Could anything be more irreverent and vulgar than to
entertain political promises which offer to provide for us from the
cradle to the grave? Could we live and move and have our being if
nature were planless? Why then are we beguiled by political planning?
How can we, by entertaining the paternalistic planning of the
would-be father-state, be so depraved as to imply an absence or
failure of nature's plan? We are meeting a well merited rebuke in the
failure of political planning that is falling upon us, a failure from
which we shall be turned to introspection and respect for natural
laws and the dignity of the individual.
This
new-found dignity of the individual will renounce external support
and assert the inherent power of self. It will reduce the state to
the status of a servant and denounce its pretenses of being a patron
and guide. So much power will be self-asserted by the individual that
there will be little left for the state to exert. Such sovereignty of
the individual will follow from the simple discovery that the money
power is inherent in man and perversive when exerted by the state.
This
truth we shall know and this truth shall set us free. This freedom,
once won, will be the guarantor of all freedoms; the end of all
tyrannies of every character. Parchment freedoms, political
proclamations, charters and constitutions are hollow verbiage without
money freedom - and with it, they are mere surplusage.
Assailing
us from all sides, come propaganda, pretense, hypocrisy, incompetence
and futility as the result of the malexertion of the money power by
the state. We can, we must, we shall become masters of our inherent
money power and thus assure tranquility, prosperity and happiness to
ourselves and our fellowmen.
Turn
if you will from the war's carnage; from statesmen's sterility - from
contemplation of the ominous aftermath - and visualize a community of
men and women within the community of one of our American states,
laying the foundation of a new world order.
Because
a group of common folk in one spot of the earth shall have declared
the principle that money power is inherent in man, and that money
power is sovereignty, democracy shall rise from the bloodsoaked earth
to triumph over war and economic adversity.
Among
the casualties of the war will be the national political money units
of the world, killed or maimed by inflation. Born will be the new
principle of private money for private enterprise; non-political,
nonisolationist, non-manipulative and non-inflationary.
In
one of our forty-eight states reside the pioneers of this new order -
wherein the will of the common man to work and win in prosperity and
peace shall not be defeated; wherein man will govern government and
will reflect through it his impulses of honesty, amity, frugality and
tolerance rather than be subject to its perversive power.
In
one of the forty-eight states of this Union the leadership of the new
America will give hope to a distracted world that humanity shall not
be frustrated, and that the dictator, political, economic and
financial, shall pass from the earth, leaving universal prosperity
and perpetual peace.
This
book is but a rough draft of the charter of freedom, prosperity and
peace that will be projected by the men and women who effectuate its
principles in action, in democratic dynamic action, with flesh and
blood and mental resolve rather than with paper and ink.
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