Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr says while some of Henry George's ideas like Land Value Tax are supported by Plaid Cymru we now have proto Fascist Ein Gwlad going further right in support of the Major Douglas and Social Credit - applying old right wing ideas seem to have some fascination for Ein Gwlad types.
It fits the beyond left and right proto Fascism and syncretism of Ein Gwlad and distracts from the very real question of a Welsh Public Bank - Major Douglas hated the idea of public ownership and socialism to him was satanic.
It is no accident that the Welsh Cambrio Brit right has been activated in the run up to the 50th anniversary of the anti investiture protests in Wales - much as we expected to divert us from the real Republican issue to ones of their own creation.
Douglas described Social Credit as "the policy of a philosophy", and warned against considering it solely as a scheme for monetary reform.[45]
He called this philosophy "practical Christianity" and stated that its central issue is the Incarnation.
Douglas believed that there was a Canon which permeated the universe, and Jesus Christ was the Incarnation of this Canon.
However, he also believed that Christianity remained ineffective so long as it remained transcendental. Religion, which derives from the Latin word religare (to “bind back”), was intended to be a binding back to reality.[46]
Social Credit is concerned with the incarnation of Christian principles in our organic affairs. Specifically, it is concerned with the principles of association and how to maximize the increments of association which redound to satisfaction of the individual in society – while minimizing any decrements of association.[47]
The goal of Social Credit is to maximize immanent sovereignty. Social credit is consonant with the Christian doctrine of salvation through unearned grace, and is therefore incompatible with any variant of the doctrine of salvation through works.
Works need not be of Purity in intent or of desirable consequence and in themselves alone are as "filthy rags". For instance, the present system makes destructive, obscenely wasteful wars a virtual certainty – which provides much "work" for everyone.
Social credit has been called the Third Alternative to the futile Left-Right Duality.[48]
Although Douglas defined social credit as a philosophy with Christian origins, he did not envision a Christian theocracy. Douglas did not believe that religion should be mandated by law or external compulsion.
Practical Christian society is Trinitarian in structure, based upon a constitution where the constitution is an organism changing in relation to our knowledge of the nature of the universe.[32] "The progress of human society is best measured by the extent of its creative ability.
Imbued with a number of natural gifts, notably reason, memory, understanding and free will, man has learned gradually to master the secrets of nature, and to build for himself a world wherein lie the potentialities of peace, security, liberty and abundance."[49]
Douglas said that social crediters want to build a new civilization based upon absolute economic security for the individual – where “they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”[2][3]
In keeping with this goal, Douglas was opposed to all forms of taxation on real property. This set social credit at variance from the land-taxing recommendations of Henry George.[50]
Social credit society recognizes the fact that the relationship between man and God is unique.[51]
In this view, it is essential to allow man the greatest possible freedom in order to pursue this relationship. Douglas defined freedom as the ability to choose and refuse one choice at a time, and to contract out of unsatisfactory associations.
Douglas believed that if people were given the economic security and leisure achievable in the context of a social credit dispensation, most would end their service to Mammon and use their free time to pursue spiritual, intellectual or cultural goals resulting in self-development.[52] Douglas opposed what he termed "the pyramid of power".
Totalitarianism represents this pyramid and is the antithesis of social credit.
It turns the government into an end instead of a means, and the individual into a means instead of an end – Demon est deus inversus – “the Devil is God upside down.” Social credit is designed to give the individual the maximum freedom allowable given the need for association in economic, political and social matters.[53] Social Credit elevates the importance of the individual and holds that all institutions exist to serve the individual – that the State exists to serve its citizens, not that individuals exist to serve the State.[54]
Douglas emphasized that all policy derives from its respective philosophy and that “Society is primarily metaphysical, and must have regard to the organic relationships of its prototype.”[55] Social credit rejects dialectical materialistic philosophy.[55]
"The tendency to argue from the particular to the general is a special case of the sequence from materialism to collectivism.
If the universe is reduced to molecules, ultimately we can dispense with a catalogue and a dictionary; all things are the same thing, and all words are just sounds – molecules in motion."[56]
Douglas divided philosophy into two schools of thought that he termed the "classical school" and the "modern school", which are broadly represented by philosophies of Aristotle and Francis Bacon respectively.
Douglas was critical of both schools of thought, but believed that "the truth lies in appreciation of the fact that neither conception is useful without the other".[57]
Social crediters and Douglas have been criticized for spreading antisemitism.
Douglas was critical of "international Jewry", especially in his later writings.
He asserted that such Jews controlled many of the major banks and were involved in an international conspiracy to centralize the power of finance.
Some people have claimed that Douglas was antisemitic because he was quite critical of pre-Christian philosophy.
In his book Social Credit, he wrote that, "It is not too much to say that one of the root ideas through which Christianity comes into conflict with the conceptions of the Old Testament and the ideals of the pre-Christians' era is in respect of this dethronement of abstractionism."[58]
Douglas was opposed to abstractionist philosophies, because he believed that these philosophies inevitably resulted in the elevation of abstractions, such as the state, and legal fictions, such as corporate personhood, over the individual.
He also believed that what Jews considered as abstractionist thought tended to encourage them to endorse communist ideals and an emphasis on collectives over individuals.
John L. Finlay, in his book Social Credit: The English Origins, wrote, "Anti-Semitism of the Douglas kind, if it can be called anti-Semitism at all, may be fantastic, may be dangerous even, in that it may be twisted into a dreadful form, but it is not itself vicious nor evil."[59]
In her book Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response, Janine Stingel writes that "Douglas' economic and political doctrines were wholly dependent on an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory."[60]
John L. Finlay disagrees with Stingel's assertion and argues that, "It must also be noted that while Douglas was critical of some aspects of Jewish thought, Douglas did not seek to discriminate against Jews as a people or race. It was never suggested that the National Dividend be withheld from them."[59]
Source: Wikipedia
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