[3
May, 2013: That these essential works do not go out of circulation.
Please read and distribute widely.]
The New Approach to Freedom
Together
with Essays on the Separation of Money and State
by
E.C. Riegel
Edited
By Spencer Heath MacCallum and George Morton
THE HEATHER FOUNDATION
Los
Angeles California
Copyright
© 2003 The Heather Foundation
AUTHOR
PREFACE
Self-government,
so-called, is the art of governing government. It has been slowly and
painfully developed. Now, through an Open Sesame to tyranny offered
by the universal ignorance of money, it is threatened with becoming a
lost art. The state's modern method of deceiving the citizen with
counterfeit money menaces civilization through a confusion of
monetary tongues and renders society unfit for self government until
its ignorance of money shall be dispelled and government of
government restored by the separation of money and state. In view of
the transcendency of this issue, where is there a friend of freedom
who will not give its solution priority over any and all other
reforms?
I
ask you, Earnestly, E. C .Riegel
EDITORIAL
PREFACE
THIS
BOOK was printed privately by its author in 1949, under the name of
the Valun Institute for Monetary Research, of New York City. The
author died in 1954. When I acquired his papers from the widow of his
friend and colleague, Major Ivan Firth, on the latter’’s death
ten years later, the papers included a small inventory of a few
hundred copies of this paperback booklet.
Among
the people to whom I gave copies was Harry Browne, who was later to
write a series of best-selling, popular books on personal economic
survival in troubled times. In one of these (You Can Profit from a
Monetary Crisis, Macmillan, New York, 1974), he made this reference
to The New Approach to Freedom: “The best explanation of the free
market I’ve seen.” The result was a flurry of orders that are
still continuing at the rate of several per week. It was obvious that
the supply would soon be exhausted. I decided to reprint the booklet,
therefore, to keep it available, and this also seemed a good time to
read through and organize Riegel’’s papers——a task I had
procrastinated for ten years.
Perhaps
new material would come to light that should be printed with it. This
led to an extraordinary discovery: the manuscript of a major book,
Flight From Inflation, which Riegel had managed (painfully, as his
correspondence revealed, because of the progressive effects of
Parkinson’’s disease) to complete before his death. The existence
of such a manuscript had been totally unsuspected by me. There were
also numerous essays, as well as a partial file of correspondence
covering the last ten years of his active life.
Reading
these papers, both for the thinking they contained and for the
occasional glimpses into the extraordinary personality of E. C.
Riegel, especially his idealism and his uncompromising personal
integrity, was a fascinating education. Bringing Riegel into print,
therefore, in a way appropriate to the highly original views which he
had to offer the world, now became a primary objective. With the very
able help of friend and associate, George Morton, I edited Flight and
prepared it for simultaneous publication with New Approach.
In
preparing the present edition of The New Approach to Freedom, I made
very little change in the main text beyond some judicious pruning.
The Appendix material, however, which sets out Riegel’’s thoughts
on the practical application of his monetary ideas, seemed wholly
inadequate, particularly now in the light of the newly discovered
Flight From Inflation. I have deleted it entirely, therefore, and in
its place pieced together a new essay in Riegel’’s own words but
drawn from various places in his unpublished writings. This essay,
“Design Requirements for a Personal Enterprise Monetary System,”
describes only the main features that Riegel believed a natural
monetary system would have to incorporate in order to be successful.
The reader who is interested in the more practical aspects of
Riegel’’s thought, therefore, as well as a further development of
his underlying philosophy, is referred to Flight From Inflation.
The
presentation of the Valun Plan in the latter volume is more complete
and differs in substance from that in the first (pamphlet) edition of
The New Approach to Freedom. In addition to these changes, I have
added eight short essays, previously unpublished, that I feel will
add interest to this little volume.
In
all of his writings, Riegel was interested in human freedom. In the
present volume, that is the main thrust, and the understanding of
money is presented as a vehicle to serve that end. In Flight From
Inflation, on the other hand, understanding money and inflation is
the main subject, and the implications for human freedom are
secondary, even if very much present. Because of this difference in
orientation, it did not seem appropriate to try to combine both in a
single volume. Each has its separate integrity. The material in each
is complementary to the other, and the degree of over-lap is not
enough to detract from either. The reader who enjoys this volume,
therefore, is invited to look into Riegel's major presentation of his
monetary ideas in Flight From Inflation.
S.H.M.
San
Pedro, California July 21,1975
FOREWORD
WHY
IS IT that human aspirations to freedom are thwarted in spite of all
the devices that man has thus far adopted? To answer that question
and offer a new approach is the purpose of this book.
Man
has ever dreamed of a promised land of freedom and steadily pursued
his ideal. Though ever dissatisfied with today's accomplishment, he
has held to his hope of tomorrow. He has rejected the autocratic
idea of government and adopted the democratic. But in his assertion
of self-sovereignty he has, through ignorance, abdicated his most
vital inherent power. He has not only permitted the state to pervert
this power, but he has actually thrust it upon the state, to the
inevitable miscarriage of all his devices to conserve freedom.
So
universal is this innocence of self-power and this self-imposed
frustration in the pursuit of freedom that man is himself the tyrant
over man, and no imposing power exists to be overthrown. Only a
revolution in the mind of the individual is needed to accomplish the
greatest stroke for freedom of all time. The present perplexity
induced by the worldwide perversion of the social order is conducive
to introspection as the impotency of the state becomes apparent in
its effort to free man from a vice that man has imposed upon himself.
Man must free the state, not the state the man.
When
the earth was believed to be flat, the belief was based upon the
immediately obvious and hence was universal. Until there arose
thinkers who dared to challenge the obvious, mankind remained
oblivious of its self imposed physical, intellectual and moral
limitations.
So
it is today. The obvious must be challenged by reason. A universal
misconception must be abandoned and replaced with the true concept to
effect the liberation of mankind—indeed, to save it from decline
into another dark age. What is this universal misconception?
It
is the belief that money issuance is a function of the state. True,
men divide in their ideas as to just how the function is to be
performed, some believing that so called safeguards must be imposed,
others at the other end of the gamut believing that the state alone
should exert the money power, to the complete exclusion of private
issue. Take a world poll of the academies, the parliaments, the
banking houses, the market places, urban and rural homes. Include
persons of all ages, from the child barely conscious of money to the
gray heads, and you will find 100 percent holding to the superstition
that the state serves some indispensable part in the monetary system.
From school primer to scholarly tome, all literature salutes the
political money idea. Is it not just as obvious to us that money and
state are inseparable as it was to ancient man that the world was
flat? Do we not see the Government's name stamped on bills and coins?
And if we are enlightened enough to know that checks are as truly
money as currency, do we not see the Government issuing checks? Do we
not see the banking system under the apparent necessity of regulation
by Government? Is not the monetary unit defined by law, and are there
not innumerable laws apparently regulating it?
Set
against this evidence and traditional belief the statement—which
this book undertakes to prove—that no government ever has or ever
can emit anything but counterfeit money, which gains its substance by
robbing the genuine money with which it blends, and the issue is
sharply joined between old and new thought. If the new thought, which
asserts that money can spring only from private sources, is correct,
it may be realized that society has enslaved itself under a false
concept and left unopened the door to the liberating concept of the
new approach to freedom.
It
is a remarkable fact that no constitution of any state, nor any
declaration of human rights, has ever proclaimed the right of freedom
of money issue. Yet this right is inseparable from the right of
bargain or exchange, which is the very foundation of liberty. Man's
ignorance of the laws of money has blinded him to the very touchstone
of freedom, without which the state cannot be curbed or his own
capacity for progress and prosperity facilitated. We stand now at the
dawn of a new approach to the ages old problem of human emancipation
from superstition, with prospect of a tremendous lift to the spirit
of conquest over the forces of darkness and depression.
Since
all schools of monetary thought honor the political money concept, it
follows that the new approach is a challenge to all. It matters
little whether the reader has been academically taught his ideas of
money or whether he has merely absorbed them; he must be prepared to
reexamine the subject, without prejudice, if he could gain the
mastery and liberation that this book promises.
There
are no black beasts or scapegoats in this treatise upon which the
reader can pin the blame for the evils from which we suffer and thus
ease his conscience or vent his emotions. Where guilt is found, the
finger points straight at you, and there are no alibis. There are no
monetary master minds who have conspired to enslave or exploit
society by imposing the prevailing system. All are as ignorant of the
fundamentals of money as you, though some are cunning enough to
favorably align themselves with the existing order, just as you would
like to do.
But
since all responsibility is yours, so is all power. Is it not a
satisfaction to begin the study of a problem that offers a solution
within your own power to realize? For once you are not confronted
with the discouraging, if not hopeless, endeavor of seeking relief
through political action with all that that involves. You are indeed
sovereign, if you but realize that your money power is your sovereign
power. You need no political laws to liberate your power for
prosperity and peace; you are the master of your fate by natural law,
if you but discover that law.
Realize
that the state's power of disservice as well as service springs
solely from your delegation of wholesome power and your imposition of
perversive power . Money power is one power that you cannot delegate,
nor can the state usurp it. It can only pervert it and thus pervert
the whole social order. You and your fellows must exert it, for
unless you exert it, this greatest of all social agencies lies fallow
and human progress is stayed.
As
you scan the world scene with all its miseries, its drab outlook, the
discouraging prospect of a solution for humanity's problems by
political means, and the remoteness from you of the capitols through
which promised salvation is desperately hoped for, you are saddened
by a sense of frustration. But if you realize that the citadel of
power is your own home and that yours is the majesty and sovereignty,
sadness will be dispelled by gladness.
To
bring this transformation, you must comprehend the power of money and
that you are the money power. The world is not flat, as we now know,
and the money power of the state is a delusion. The inherency of
money power in man is a fact, as we shall learn. This revolution in
the minds of men will assure freedom, for freedom is constituted in
unrestricted power to exchange, which in turn means prosperity and
peace.
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