CLIFFORD HUGH DOUGLAS

 

Clifford Hugh Douglas' institutional analysis of the role of banking and finance in the corporate world economy continues to provide the missing link necessary to develop economic thought beyond the rational choice theories of academia. In order to make some sense of the political economy of the twenty-first century it is necessary to understand how economic, political and cultural policies are determined primarily by finance. 

Once upon a time people were able to provide for themselves, using the resources of the natural world and their own skills and knowledge. Now we are governed by an incomprehensible machine technology, under a dictatorial financial system. How this situation came about is explained in a in a series of texts which have been placed on this website and are made available for study purposes.

 By the early 21st century very few people could say with any certainty what money is, how the financial system operates, or why finance dominates policy formation in the political economy. This has not always been the case. During the inter-war years of the 1920s and 1930s countless ordinary men and women conducted an informed debate on the flawed economic thinking which led simultaneously to war, waste and poverty on an unprecedented scale. The worldwide Douglas Social Credit movement of this period gave rise to a practical political venture in the Canadian province of Alberta. In The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism and Understanding the Financial System, the reasons for the systematic misrepresentation of the Alberta Experiment (1935-1948) in mainstream literature, the press and media are revealed. 

 What could happen in future will depend upon ordinary citizens, in their own local environments, studying the financial and physical infrastructures that provide them with food, clothes, shelter and the luxuries of life in the so-called "developed" countries of the world. The choice is between fully informed debate leading to local economic democracy, or permanent subjection to Big Brother. If conventional un-wisdom and meaningless sound bites continue to stand in for informed discussion, the ordinary citizen will face increasing subjection to a faceless, centralised technocracy. 

Douglas' monetary analysis continues to be studied amongst leading scholars of the day. If socially, ethically, environmentally and spiritually sound farming policies are not to continue to flounder for lack of funds, finance must be converted from a dictatorial master into a useful tool. The modern world is in the grip of technological progress which has little relationship with reality. As a result, the developed worl staggers from one crisis to another with gathering momentum. Many are coming to the conclusion that perhaps the Luddites were right. Science and technology are now out of control because the sheer size of organisation has become so enormous as to render them beyond human control.  

"A civilisation that genuinely reflects all that human beings long for and aspire to can only be created on the basis of each person's freely acknowledged power to decide on each of the many questions that affect his life." Founding editor of Resurgence and Fourth World Review, The Revd John Papworth (1921-2020) appealed to scholars, radicals and visionaries everywhere to act whilst there is time, to establish centres of learning and teaching in subjects closest to their concerns, however modest in size, in whatever part of the world they may live, in terms of the human scale and subject to human control. Like Douglas, he called for the creation of a global network of responsible scholarship, in the quest to create a new world of ecological sanity and spiritual vitality. His short book Why Schools of Economics and Political Science Should Be Closed Down is a most valuable introduction to his thinking.

 

Shortly before his death in 1952 Clifford Hugh Douglas (biography) surveyed the landscape near Aberfeldy in Scotland, turned to a close colleague and said:


“You know, T.J., I think the time is approaching when we shall have to challenge this monstrous and fantastic overgrowth of industrial expansion – fundamentally. Really, you know, I personally can see nothing particularly sinful about a small dynamo; but this thing we’ve got is past a joke. If it isn’t a joke, it is Satanic.”

 THE CAUSES OF WAR:

IS OUR FINANCIAL SYSTEM TO BLAME?
C. H. Douglas text of a BBC broadcast delivered in November 1934, 
published in
The Listener
5 December 1934
and reprinted in the 1937 edition of
THE MONOPOLY OF CREDIT 

For a transcript of this broadcast, please click here.

Writing by C.H. Douglas

Douglas' Earliest Articles

The English Review, (December 1918)
The Delusion of Super-Production
C. H. Douglas


'It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the insistence with which we are told that in order to pay for the war we must produce more manufactured goods than ever before...' Read more

 

The English Review, XXVIII (1919): 49-58
The Pyramid of Power
C. H. Douglas


'At various well-defined epochs in the history of civilisation there has occurred such a clash of apparently irreconcilable ideas as has at this time most definitely come upon us.....[there] is a clear indication that a general re-arrangement is imminent...' Read more

 

The English Review, XXIX (1919): 166-69
What is Capitalism?
C.H. Douglas


'When two opposing forces of sufficient magnitude push transversely at either end of a plank--or problem--it revolves: there is Revolution...' Read more

 

The English Review, XXVIII (1919): 368-70
Exchange and Exports
C.H. Douglas


'In the welter of economic propaganda served up to us, like the powder in the jam, with our morning and evening prize-fight , murder and motor-bandit thrills, and labelled the news...a certain group of features recur and are inter-connected...'Read more

 

The New Age, No. 1373, XXIV, No. 9 (1919)
A Mechanical View of Economics
C. H. Douglas Read more

 

The New Age, (June 1920) 4305 words
These Present Discontents
C. H. Douglas Read more

 

The New Age, (22/29 January 1925)
A + B and the Bankers
C. H. Douglas


"Whatever may be the case on other matters, compromise in arithmetic seems singularly out of place." Read more

 

The Fig Tree Vol 2 (1936):139-147
Money: An Historical Survey


"The Fig Tree" Vol 2 September 1936 pages 139-147 3425 words. (Notes for Major Douglas's speech on July 26 at the Social Credit study course for Conservatives at the Bonar Law College, Ashridge)
C. H. Douglas Read more

 

Social Credit (1936) 4 pages
Tyranny: Taxation System
C H Douglas Read more

 
 

Douglas' Evidence to the Canadian House of Commons Select Standing Committee on Banking and Commerce, 1923

Click here (Please note that owing to its size, the file may take a few minutes to download.)

 

 

Major Douglas Analyzes 'Social Credit' in Alberta: What went wrong
This document includes three articles:


The Social Crediter August-Septmenber 1948
Social Credit in Alberta, C H Douglas
The Social Crediter 8 February 1947
An Act for the Better Management of Alberta, C H Douglas
The Western Producer 4 March 1948
'Rumblings in Alberta'

 

Books and pamphlets by C.H. Douglas

 

'Economic Democracy' 5th (Authorised) edition 1974, published by Bloomfield, Epsom, Surrey, England.

'Credit, Power and Democracy'- Part1, Part2, Part3, published in 1920 by the Social Credit Press

'Social Credit' , published in 1924 by Eyre & Spottiswoode

'The Old and the New Economics', 1932.

'The Big Idea', 1942, published by Veritas, Western Australia.

 

 

Further Reading

 'The Douglas Manual' by Philip Mairet- an introduction to Douglas' new economic principles for the general reader

Please click on the links below to download the above book section by section.

Introduction, foreword and contents

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4