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The Political Theory of Social Credit*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

C. B. Macpherson
C. B. Macpherson*
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

This paper is concerned with the political theory developed by Major C. H. Douglas, the English founder and leader of the Social Credit movement, and not specifically with the ideas of the Canadian Social Credit movement, although the English theory has had a continuous, if not always a decisive, influence on the Canadian movement. Since the Douglas political theory stems from the Douglas social critique we shall begin with the latter.

The frustration of the engineer by the business control of industry may be seen as the starting point of Major Douglas's social thinking. Deeply impressed by the waste of industrial capacity and potential, Major Douglas developed a sweeping critique of industrial civilization. A man of broad sympathies and with a professional view of his engineering calling, he saw that whatever held back the progress of science in industry made it impossible for the technologist to serve the people and give them the benefit of their heritage. He saw further that the concentration of power in the control of industrial production was only a part of a trend toward concentration of power in government, in trade unions, and in every institution which affected the life and opportunity of every individual both as worker and consumer. In his earliest writings his main concern was to expose this trend toward the submergence of the individual, to establish its pervasive nature, and to warn that it must be defeated if the human quality of civilization was not to be destroyed. His case was presented with restraint and with telling effect. His recommendation of a monetary device, which later became commonly identified with social credit, as the most probable direction in which a solution might be found for freeing men from the tyranny of concentrated power, was also presented with restraint in the writings of the first few years, and was subordinated to the main analysis. His point was that men could not be free in any other way until they had secured a freedom of choice, both as producers and consumers, and a level of material well-being which the existing system of production and distribution denied them. The economic system must therefore first be reformed. Socialism was not the answer, since it would mean still further centralization of economic and political power. Monetary reform was the answer because it could destroy the mechanism by which economic power was being increased and by which the material well-being and the freedom of the individual were being diminished. Always Major Douglas presented monetary reform merely as a means toward the end of establishing a new society in which human beings would be free to develop their individuality in a way that had never been possible before.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , August 1949 , pp. 378 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1949

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Halifax, June 9, 1949.

References

1 Douglas, C. H., Credit Power and Democracy (London, 1920), p. 145.Google Scholar

2 Social Credit, July 1, 1938.

3 Douglas, C. H., Social Credit (London, 1924), pp. 90 ff.Google Scholar

4 Douglas, C. H., The Monopoly of Credit (London, 1931), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

5 Douglas, C. H., Economic Democracy (London, 1920), pp. 40–1.Google Scholar

6 Douglas, , Social Credit, p. 144.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., pp. 141-2.

8 Douglas, C. H., Security, Institutional and Personal (Liverpool, 1937)Google Scholar, quoted in the Social Crediter, Oct. 14, 1944.

9 The Douglas System of Social Credit, Evidence Taken by Agricultural Committee of Alberta Legislature, 1934, p. 95 Google Scholar, evidence of Major Douglas.

10 Social Crediter, May 16, 1942.

11 Douglas, C. H., The Policy of a Philosophy (Liverpool, 1937), p. 12.Google Scholar

12 Social Credit, July 22, 1938.

13 Douglas, , Social Credit, pp. 142–3.Google Scholar

14 Social Crediter, May 16, 1942.

15 The Douglas System of Social Credit, p. 95, evidence of Major Douglas.

16 Douglas, C. H., The Nature of Democracy (London, 1935), pp. 13–14 Google Scholar (the Buxton speech, June, 1934).

17 Social Credit, Oct. 14, 1938.

18 Douglas, , The Nature of Democracy, p. 13.Google Scholar

19 Douglas, C. H., Warning Democracy, 1931, quoted in Mairet, (ed.), The Douglas Manual, (London, 1934), p. 45.Google Scholar

20 Social Crediter, Apr. 15, 1939.

21 Douglas, C. H., The Big Idea (Liverpool, 1942), pp. 55–7.Google Scholar

22 Social Crediter, Apr. 23, 1949.

23 Douglas, The Big Idea.

24 Douglas, C. H., The Brief for the Prosecution (Liverpool, 1945), p. 77.Google Scholar

25 E.g. Credit Power and Democracy, p. 18; Social Credit, p. 87; The Use of Money (London, 1934), p. 4 Google Scholar; The Policy of a Philosophy, p. 15.

26 Social Crediter, Apr. 23, 1949, p. 6.

27 Douglas, , The Brief for the Prosecution, p. 68.Google Scholar

28 Social Crediter, May 24, 1947.

29 Ibid., Jan. 17, 1948.

30 Ibid., Feb. 23, 1946 and May 24, 1947.

31 Ibid., May 24, 1947.

32 Ibid., June 12, 1948.

33 Ibid., Feb. 19, 1944.

34 Douglas, C. H., Programme for the Third World War (Liverpool, 1943), pp. 51–2.Google Scholar

35 The term “Alternate-party system” is used in this paper to include two, three-, and multi-party systems, and to distinguish all these from the one-party system; some such terminology is needed since some recent writers have used “party system” to refer to everything from a one- to a multi-party system.

36 Introduction to Bagehot's, The English Constitution (London, 1933), p. xxiv.Google Scholar

37 Social Credit, Apr. 10, 1936.

38 Douglas, , Warning Democracy, quoted in Mairet, (ed.), The Douglas Manual, p. 146.Google Scholar