***>I don't want to repeat what I have already posted here over the past five days, Joe, but suggest that you read them, including the attachment to "Reply to Victor's latest clarification", if you want to get the flavor of my epiphany. <***
I overlooked that attachment initially, and when I first tried to open it this morning it wouldn't open. I've now converted it to plaintext and appended it below: -- Keith Wilde One of the objectives identified by Bill Ryan in launching this discussion group was to explore the reputation of anti-Semitism that Social Credit acquired over the years. Victor's most recent statement went a long way to explaining and clarifying that issue. (In effect, just because a few Jewish families have been involved in the group or groups that control money power doesn't make the control group an exclusively Jewish conspiracy.) The literature I describe below seems to fit that perception of the issue. The first eight of the items below are part of a small collection that a former MP told me bear on the philosophy of Social Credit. I am pleased to be finally making the use of them that he intended in passing them over. (I listed the entire collection on this site several months ago.) In the order of publication: 1. I. A. Caldwell, Money: What is it?. Garden City Press Study Club, 263 Adelaide Street West, Toronto and Gardenvale, Quebec. Not dated, but content suggests 1935. Foreword says the author had the collaboration of a manufacturer, a merchant and a banker, all of them significant representatives of their fields. Furthermore, that it "gives expression to the school of thought on the subject of money for which Mr. Neil McLean of Saint John N.B. is responsible." (The author is also from New Brunswick.) 182 pp. Includes a list of other books on monetary reform issued by the same publisher. 2. W.E. DeWitt and Keen Polk, Free Money: A New System of National Finance. Free Money Study Club, 937 2nd Ave., Salt Lake City, 1936. (The Club lists several other recommended books on the subject, including one by "Coin" Harvey.) 159 pp. 3. Stanley F. Allen, Money: The Question of the Age. Published by the author, a chartered accountant and government auditor, from his home at 88 Pitt Street, Sydney, Australia. 1938. 48 pp. 4. John H. Blackmore, Money: The Master Key. Published by the author, a federal MP and leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada. Printed by Garden City Press, Gardenvale, Quebec. Not dated, but content confirms 1939. 191 pp. 5. Etta M. Russell, Basic Principles of Constitutional Money. (A Textbook for High Schools and The General Public). The Constitutional Money League of America, Washington, D.C., 1940. With glossary, bibliography and index. 120 pp. 6. John R.. Elsom, Lightning Over the Treasury Building. Meador Publishing Company, Boston, 1941. 111 pp. 7. Eustace Mullins, The Federal Reserve Conspiracy. Common Sense, Union, New Jersey. Revised Edition, Copyright 1954 by Eustace Mullins. (I add the copyright detail because current websites featuring a more recent and fully documented version contain a comment by Mullins that this 1954 book was altered without his consent from the original 1952 version which appeared in print as Mullins on the Federal Reserve.) 144 pp. Later versions are still in print as Secrets of the Federal Reserve: The London Connection. 8. Wickliffe B. Vennard, The Federal Reserve Corporation. Meador Publishing Company, Boston. 320 pp. Undated, but content requires 1956 or early 1957. Later editions are currently advertised on Internet sites as The Federal Reserve Hoax. The following items were acquired by me individually, at different times, and are listed in the order in which they came into my hands. 9. W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Capitalist: A review and commentary on Dr. Carroll Quigley's book TRAGEDY AND HOPE. Self-published, copyright 1970. 144 pp. (I purchased this shortly after its publication, read it thoroughly and wrote a long and indignant evaluation, detailing the ways that the author misrepresented the content of Quigley's book: Several years later, in the mid-eighties, some contemporary colleagues asked to read my critique and the Skousen book, because they were persuaded that there is a substantial degree of truth in his accusations. One of these colleagues was a Polish professor of philosophy who came to Canada as an adult after a lot of harrowing experience in eastern Europe during WW II. He introduced me to the Sutton book below, and recommended it.) 10. Anthony C. Sutton, The Secret Cult of the Order. Research Publications, Inc., Phoenix, AZ, 1984. 189 pp. The book exposes the secret society of Skull & Bones at Yale University, of which the Presidents Bush are members. 11. Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy. Concord Press, Seal Beach, Calif. 1971. 143 pp. I found this a couple of summers ago while cleaning the attic of my childhood home in Alberta after the demise of my aged parents. I recognized the title and contents immediately, from reputation, and kept it as a curiosity. Judging by the name penned on it, it had been passed to one or the other of my parents by a woman of the community, well-known to me in my youth. 12. Jon Ronson, Them: Adventures with Extremists. Simon & Schuster, 2002. 330 pp. This is a partly jocular account of the author's exploration of a variety of secret societies and the people who believe in their potent perfidy. 13. Alexander Del Mar, History of Monetary Systems. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago, 1896. 444 pp. My copy, which I found earlier this year while browsing in a used book store, is a facsimile reprint issued by The National Poetry Foundation (University of Maine at Orono), 1983, as part of The Ezra Pound Scholarship Series. 14. The Lost Science of Money : The Mythology of Money - The Story of Power.1 By Stephen Zarlenga, American Monetary Institute, Valatie, NY, 2002. ISBN 1-930748-03-05. xii + 724 pp. Selected bibliography; chapter end notes; index, liberally illustrated. Descriptive notes and instructions for ordering may be seen at http://www.monetary.org. The last book named provided a key for understanding how the others are linked. Alexander Del Mar was an American student of coinage and the precious metals whose research and writing were conducted mainly in the second half of the 19th century. A "Publishers'Advertisement" in Del Mar's History of Monetary Systems says that the author was a mining engineer and became Director of the Bureau of Statistics as well as holding and being nominated for several other high level appointments in the U.S. federal system in the second half of the 19th century. His research into coinage systems began before the Civil War. From that research he observed that effective and successful monetary systems were operated in antiquity by governments in the general interest, in contrast to the modern practice of granting charters for small groups to control the money and credit supply for their own benefit. Ergo, he concluded, the state can and should be responsible for the issuance of money and the calibration of its supply. (Whereas Del Mar focused on coinage, other critics have argued that credit money should also be under public control to a greater degree than it is.) While Del Mar is cited here and there in books that cover some history of economics or economic history, his key conclusion about state control of money supply appears to have been ignored until picked up by Ezra Pound. That's Ezra Pound the poet, who was the tutor of four men who won the Nobel prize for literature, but who was himself imprisoned by the U.S. in a mental hospital for many years. In The Lost Science of Money, Zarlenga says that "Pound understood the abstract nature of money....One of the requirements he set for his students was that they read all of the available writings of Alexander Del Mar." Eustace Mullins was one of those students while also serving as a librarian at the Library of Congress. At Pound's recommendation and with some financial support from him, Mullins used the resources of that Library to carry Del Mar's thesis forward in research on the 20th century American monetary system. The cover of The Federal Reserve Conspiracy characterizes the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 as a plot in which Congress abdicated its responsibility and "placed the nation's banking reserves in the hands of the Jewish International Bankers for the purpose of carrying out their nearly fulfilled world dictatorship plan." Those words on the cover have for years governed my impression of all the items listed above from the MP's bundle. A couple of the others have either similar cover comments or illustrations that reminded me of the "radical right" literature of the 1960s and '70s with its fear and loathing about communists and Jewish bankers. The quality of that literature, which seemed to be screaming from every corner when I was in my twenties, left me with a permanent skepticism, bordering on contempt, for the conspiracy theory itself and its many paranoid variations. Part of my experience suggested that maintaining a successful conspiracy requires attributes of attitude and behavior that are not normal. . Efforts to organize and conspire against evil establishments seem generally futile, the sole success story being that of Gandhi. Longer experience has loosened me up on that position, however, and inspired some revisionist thoughts. One of my first reactions while reading Lost Science (before I realized I had the Mullins book) is that its heft and style lend credibility to my perception of those moldering pamphlets, and even to some of that post-McCarthy-pre-Watergate hysteria over capitalist-sponsored communists under every bed.. The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Richard Hofstadter) seems to be a well established tradition, reaching back at least as far as the Populist resentments of the late 19th century. Nonetheless, the inference of conspiracy just might be more than the reaction of impotent outrage. Given Zarlenga's implicit endorsement, therefore, I examined Mullins book more closely. Notwithstanding the cover, the content is a factual narrative, although not documented in the fashion of scholarship. (Sources do appear to be generally well identified, nevertheless.) The author acknowledges the cooperation of the Librarian of Congress and his fellow staff members of that institution during nineteen months of research, and he notes that the information had to be gleaned piecemeal from a vast number of periodicals (several of them are professional economics journals), for there existed no single narrative account of the origins of the Federal Reserve System. Can this be so? Have professional historians neglected such an important subject? Have any of them refuted Mullins' claim? For starters, he is not mentioned in the Harvard Guide to American History, but then my copy is a 1967 reprint of a 1953 original. His book had obviously not drawn the immediate attention of relevant scholars. The Financial History of the United States by Studenski and Krooss was also published at the same time as Mullins, so acknowledgment is not to be expected there. Friedman and Schwartz' Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960 came a decade later, but it quite obviously failed to generate fame for Mullins' thesis, and I have not yet examined their book to see if any notice was taken of his effort (or that of Del Mar). In 1975, John Kenneth Galbraith published Money: Whence it Came, Where It Went, in which he devoted several pages to the origins and establishment of the Federal Reserve System. His account is consistent with the larger elements detailed by Mullins, but without the sinister and conspiratorial implications--and there is no citation. (The professorial chair occupied by Galbraith at Harvard was endowed by Paul M. Warburg.) While Mullins may have made the most thorough investigation and exposure of the origins of the Fed, he was by no means the first to disagree profoundly with its creation, purpose and policies. The items that precede it in the list above all date to the period near the end of the Depression and before the start of World War II. Of the latter group, two are of Canadian origin, one is Australian and the remaining three American. It was the period when the Bank of Canada was just getting started and Australia was also drafting legislation for the establishment of a central bank. The writers of the books were united in their preference for a government-provided and regulated money system and in their firm rejection of the familiar (and already stale) arguments against it. And all of them reflect the jaundiced view of the Federal Reserve System that is a feature of both Mullins' book and Lost Science. However, now that I have been softened up by Lost Science and taken a closer look at them, I see that my former impression of them as shrill and inflammatory was not quite justified. The titles are mostly pretty tame, and even though they are indignant in their call for concerted action to save democracy in prosperity, the expositions are factual and methodical. One of them is even written in textbook style in the hope that it would become a tool for educators. The Canadian and Australian books acknowledge the thinking of C.H. Douglas. The American ones focus heavily on Lincoln and the Greenbacks, but also review the history of U.S. banking, and two of them identify the Federal Reserve System as a foreign imposition transmitted through Paul M. Warburg. Item eight above was written only shortly after Mullins' and is straightforwardly cites his findings as factual. It is an intemperate diatribe against the UN and all internationalists--including Communist parties and governments--as tools of an ancient conspiracy of money and power manipulators identified as Zionists and Illuminati. It characterizes The Federal Reserve Corporation as "42 years of subversion in 100 Acts" (and 320 pages in one chapter!). It is distinctively different in content as well as tone from the previous seven, for it is not fundamentally an analysis of how the Federal Reserve System works or where it came from. The Fed is simply one of the tools of the devil vilified by the author (Wickliffe B. Vennard), who was clearly writing under the influence of the hysteria ignited by Senator Joseph McCarthy. (It says "Fifth Edition" and was received in the MP's office in 1957.) The author's immediate objective seems to have been keeping Walter Reuther out of the White House. (Kelso and Adler seem to have been motivated by the same worry over labor power.) To sum up, six of the first eight items were written from 1935-40 as mainly didactic tools for cultivating a sufficient body of informed voters to effect a democratic transition to government-managed money. There is no doubt that the authors understand the identity and nature of their adversary, but their expositions are generally not strident or hysterical. Leap across fifteen or more years, however, and the tone and content are much different. The two later books are from the collection of the same MP who had represented the same electoral district continuously for more than twenty years (and who himself authored the most lengthy of the didactic works), and of the two, the most hysterical one (Vennard) seems to be the most thumbed. What had happened to account for this shift in attitude? It seems that intervening events had validated the generally common analysis of the various authors by confirming its most distressing implications. Their premonition was summarized as follows in a publication identified as the Instructor, "a Canadian economic magazine": QUOTE: [T]he Rothschilds evolved the following plan: Firstly--To place rulers and leading politicians under obligations by loaning them (and their governments) large sums. Secondly--To prostitute the press by granting or withholding patronage through business organizations which had borrowed, or hope to borrow, money. Thirdly--To obtain the favours of colleges and churches by large donations and by posing as generous philanthropists. Fourthly--By paying writers constantly to spread the idea that money is a mysterious subject that can be understood only by a very few people. UNQUOTE (Italics in the original) The quoted lines and the claimed source are from Stanley F. Allen, Money: The Question of the Age. The author identifies himself as a chartered accountant (Australia) with thirty years' practice as a Government Auditor. My copy says "Sixth Edition, 1942", but the first was in 1938. He also quotes from a book by Sir Vincent Vickers who had resigned as a governor of the Bank of England in 1919 after ten years service, and who died in 1939 afer writing a book, Economic Tribulation. "No greater threat to humanity and the progress of civilization can be conceived than the general spread of the Hitler regime of brute force...Are we now fighting to uphold freedom and democracy or are we fighting to uphold and strengthen the dictatorship of International Finance?" World War II and its aftermath, including especially the international monetary and financial institutions, were doubtless a clear answer to any of the pre-war writers who had survived to write again. And certainly to Ezra Pound, who persuaded the young Eustace Mullins to use his location in the Library of Congress to explore the origins of the Fed. (See Mullins description of this collaboration and its aftermath at http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm or at http://www.playtowinmoney.com/federal_reserve.htm .) Fast forward (from Vennard) another fifteen years, across a period of unprecedented prosperity mixed with Cold War fears and the flourishing of right-wing political economic ideology and what does the next generation of the international bankers conspiracy literature look like? The Naked Capitalist and None Dare Call It Conspiracy (copyrights 1970 and 1971 respectively, by Cleon Skousen and Gary Allen). The Allen book got around a lot. The copy in front of me is a cheaply made paperback, printed in four million copies for mass distribution through the mail, having already sold over a million in two earlier printings. A copy like mine, in new condition, is now advertised for $15 via Internet, and the book is available as a hardcover reprint for $28 since 1997. It appears to have been reprinted in 1990 as well. The Skousen book is described at his "official website" as completely out of print. The picture of it is however exactly the same as my copy, which was purchased when the book was newly published. A reprint is available in Library Binding from Amazon, however, for $21, as of 1998. The Gary Allen book looks almost like a retread of Vennard's 1956 effort, but diligent skimming found no acknowledgment. Nor does Allen acknowledge Skousen's precedence in the "discovery" of Carroll Quigley's exposure of "the world's secret power structure". For the big news in that last 15-year interval was publication (in 1966) of Tragedy and Hope by Quigley, the Georgetown University historian identified by President Bill Clinton as one of his influential professors. Small portions of that book riveted the attention of elements in the American radical right and the crowd who were convinced that the Federal Reserve System was a conspiracy of private bankers. Skousen crowed that he had discovered it by inference from his commie-hunting and police work, giving no acknowledgment to Vennard or to money reformers of the thirties. Regardless of literary proprieties, Quigley's work provided reinforcement of the old suspicion. Further reinforcement was provided by Zarlenga himself, serendipitously it seems, when he encountered a manuscript among Quigley's papers after the latter's death. It was titled The Anglo-American Establishment and gave even more details of links between London's Bank of England and origins of the Federal Reserve System than he later included in Tragedy and Hope. Zarlenga was in the publishing business at the time, and so put that work of Quigley's into print for the first time. (This information is on the cover of Lost Science.) An appreciation of Quigley by Zarlenga, in the form of a review of Tragedy and Hope, is available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8/message/8198 It provides a few more details about The Anglo-American Establishment, including the publication date of 1981, after the manuscript had been gathering dust since 1949. More recent editions of Mullins' work (Secrets of the Federal Reserve: The London Connection) are in print and have also been published on at least two Internet sites. (See two URLs above.) A Foreword purportedly by Mullins is dated 1991. This version is just over 200 pages, has obviously more recent material, and contrary to the 1954 edition is very completely documented. Nevertheless, although it recognizes Tragedy and Hope, there is no mention of The Anglo- American Establishment in text, footnotes or bibliography. (There are citations to Lyndon LaRouche, which does not reinforce my personal impression of credibility.) Amazon lists a published version at $28 but says it is out of stock. It does offer three used hardbound copies, however, at $45 each. An interview with Mullins, now 80 years of age, is published on the Internet at http://www.rense.com/general39/EUSTACE.htm by one James Dyer, who claims to be Mullins' neighbor. I have confirmed its authenticity and that of the later editions of Mullins' book with the author's explanatory comments. It appears from Google searches that Eustace Mullins has also done research on the medical establishment and found (surprise) links to the finance and banking complex. The Internet sites which feature Mullins claim that his is the first and only book to provide original research on the origins of the Fed, and also that no one has ever refuted it. (Interestingly, Mullins also appears in these places to assert that no one ever showed that Joseph McCarthy was speaking falsehoods against the persons he denounced.) These sites furthermore recognize Mullins as the mainstay of American right-wing movements--that is, as their principal research resource. It seems that Mullins and Pound are inescapable as sources for the Federal Reserve origins. Since Mullins insists on a strong (although not exclusive) Jewish connection to the International Bankers' circle, he is contemned by the Anti-defamation League of B'nai B'rith, etc., and was in recent years a cause celebre in Canada, where he was invited to speak at a conference on health issues. It is claimed that he is a holocaust-denier as well as a proponent of other notions that raise the hackles of the ever-vigilant Jewish defense league. MY INFERENCES FROM ABOVE The work of Pound, Mullins and Quigley seems to have confirmed conclusions reached by Douglas somewhat earlier, or possibly simultaneously. American researchers may have started out with an advantage, due to the long history of monetary experiments and controversies in the United States, and also a long- standing suspicion of centrallized banking institutions. But they as well as Douglas came round to recognizing that British traditions and connections did amount to a means by which a small interest group exercised form of slave-holding over the majority of citizens. Without widespread recognition of this situation, there is not much that can be done to institute a more democratically effective system. -- 1 Reviewer joined Canada Department of Agriculture in 1972 on invitation to pursue implications of works like those of Ferdinand Lundberg and G. Myers for SFDP. Reading assistant went to Bank of Canada and turned against them. Readings for diss. History of great American fortunes; Robber Barons; Populism, Marginalism and its connection to Austrians. Zarlenga got me to see that. Program was scrapped. by Whelan and his supporters, as part of a move to squelch organic farming, which could not be so easily controlled by big business. Ultimately to strategy and policy. The essence: Use top science to regulate; for tech assistance concentrate on organic techniques. No one would comment. Silence, until my screaming about it finally got me dismissed. -- ----original message---- >From : Keith Wilde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To : [EMAIL PROTECTED] To : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date : Tue, 2 Sep 2003 08:32:54 -0700 Hi Joe, Your message below prompts the following comments: I didn't mean to be pointing a critical finger at the efforts of individual proponents of Social Credit or to their collective decision to take a political party approach--even though retrospectively that one did fail. I was instead pointing out and lamenting what seems to me (and I will be pleased to be corrected on this) to be the absence of a major effort by scholars in history and philosophy to expand on two Douglas themes in particular: 1. That individuals can and do successfully conspire behind the scenes to orchestrate big events so that they move in a desired direction; 2. That moral philosophy deteriorated, starting with Aquinas (is that M.J. Adler I hear, turning over in his grave?) so that teachings of the Christian church departed from New Testment norms and gradually took on an Old Testament flavor, deteriorating especially at the hands of Calvin (and reaching a nadir with the paramount influence today of Ayn Randism on social policy). Now those are big, heavy subjects and they compare to the economic issue as tacking a 14-foot sailboat compares to turning an oil tanker at sea. That first trench is huge, but until it is crossed mere political campaigners will continue to fall on the bayonets of its defenders. In other words, I think Bill Ryan is right in pointing out that the economic arguments are ready to hand, but I fear he will not get the appointment he deserves to a reputable university department of economics until some heavy- hitting historians and philosophers have dampened the powder of the trench defenders. Acceptance of the Douglas economic policy prescriptions depends on a shift in popular opinions--a cultural shift. And a direct approach is unlikely to pull it off. That has been demonstrated by the political party. And that is why I suggested several months ago on this list that people who want to propagate the cultural shift would help their cause by avoiding the term Social Credit--for exactly the same reason as Bill wishes we would not bring up the anti-semitism word. Economic history, or history from the economic perspective, is a reputable subject, but I wonder how many people know that many of its outstanding practitioners have been Marxian? (Cf. Hayek on Capitalism and the Historians.) That is because Marx' own orientation to economic analysis was that of processes (impersonal) operating through time. A lot of historians seem to take that large-scale, process orientation to interpreting human and social events. In that perspective, prominent individuals are reduced in significance to something like automatons moved by destiny. By contrast, some interpreters believe that history is shaped by well-positioned individuals who are able to seize the levers of power and manipulate people and events in their own interest. In the conventional culture of academic historians (and journalists--hence most of the rest of us), these persons are dismissed as "conspiracy theorists". Douglas was one of those, and many of his admirers seem to have trod the same path. And that is one reason why the anti-semitism label sticks. Before going further I want to emphasize that I can see that intelligent, resourceful, honest and dedicated individuals have made many persuasive expositions of Douglas" ideas over the past half century--judging only by contributions recommended to me by participants on this list. Most of them appear under the Social Credit label, however, and for many readers that is taken as the equivalent of something like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. "Don't need to bother reading that!" I have experienced something like an epiphany on this subject over the past couple of months, however. Although once contemptuous of conspiracy theorists, I have had to recognize that not all of them are self- deluded liars. I don't want to repeat what I have already posted here over the past five days, Joe, but suggest that you read them, including the attachment to "Reply to Victor's latest clarification", if you want to get the flavor of my epiphany. Preparing the ground for acceptance of Douglas policies will take more efforts of the kind represented by Zarlenga's Lost Science of Money and by Michael Lane's ongoing focus on the philosophic superiority of some pre- modern thinking. That kind of work has to become mainstream along with Ryan's expositions of the economic arguments. Part of the former task will be to clean out the odious stables of conspiracy theorists--an example of which appeared recently on the ALOR site, promoting uncritically the slimy, misleading text of The Naked Capitalist. Rather than partisan arguments, maybe Social Crediters should focus on getting some academic research focused on these first trench questions-- keeping quiet about the origins of the idea like the economic historians were about their Marxian orientation. And try it someplace far from Alberta or B.C., like St. F-X in the Maritimes or St. Paul's in Ottawa, and in some RC bastion in Baltimore, e.g. Keith ____________________________________________________________ Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^---------------------------------------------------------------- This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^----------------------------------------------------------------
