by Robert Edwards
Published in ESA No 43
We continue to lurch
towards further economic crises and there is no one in power with any
idea of how to save us. The main political parties carry on the same
old pantomime act of blaming each other for the nation’s continuing
decline, with the excuse they ‘inherited’ all these problems from
a previous government. A government that blames a previous government
for over-borrowing now borrows more then ever. All governments have
played a part in this slow, painful and agonising rot. All of
them are to blame. We can now add the Limp Democrats to this
misbegotten bunch to whom the curse, be careful of what you wish for
when you hunger for power at any price, applies so appropriately. No
one gets let off the hook on that score.
What can you expect
when we are ruled by spoilt-brat multi-millionaire toffs, most of
whom have never done an honest day’s work in their lives? The worst
of all are the old Etonians who were brought up in privileged
circumstances and educated at schools for the very same privileged
class where the curriculum included a doctrine of elitism drummed
into them at a young age ... “You are born to rule and to rule over
all others”.
I watched part of the Tory
conference where the main clues were with the cameras panning the
audience. If you are any good at reading faces, preferably at first
sight as with physiognomy, then Toryism was expressed in the
unfeeling arrogance and smugness on the faces that have long
caricatured your average Tory delegate at conference. They are as
much a social type as your average old school bellicose trade union
leader ... albeit a different sort altogether. The hardened old faces
of the polarised leaderships of the opposing social classes.
Before I am tempted to
embark on a stormy voyage of class war polemic, I need to point out
what I consider to be the worst and the best aspects of British
politics. Here goes.
The worst is exemplified
in the cold-blooded indifference to the suffering of others less
fortunate, in the saying, “Because they failed so miserably at
being as thrifty as we were”. Perhaps they were not given the
opportunity to save on the poverty line. Struggling to survive does
not offer the chance of acquiring such bourgeois virtues.
This reactionary treatment
of the working class, now relegated to the position of an under
class, is perhaps the biggest factor in dividing a nation. The
British long ago made an art of it and it is little altered today.
Class war is a two-sided coin, for sure, whether Left or Right.
The Tories are
overwhelmingly concerned with ‘business’ and the workers regarded
as secondary to this, merely attributed the role of serving business,
which success is determined by the acceptance of the lowest wage
possible. If the Englishman will not work for peanuts then they
import foreigners who will ... the entire blame for this most ugly
aspect of immigration being placed on the “lazy Englishman”. The
import of cheap labour serves business and never the workers. Profits
come first and the workers last.
No one attacks the
bankers, who are entirely responsible for our continuing economic
woes. The creation of money and its supply is entirely within the
domain of private banking and the government is basically helpless
there. Within the practice of lending with interest, the banks create
money out of thin air, which is nothing more than phantom currency.
Paid back, it disappears to nothing again. That’s right, it is a
scam ... simply numbers on a computer’s database. A performing
illusionist would understand the trick.
Yet the system is such
that everything depends on the banks functioning as they do and we
bail them out with taxpayers money while insisting the taxpayer lives
in comparative poverty. Bankers can then award themselves massive
bonuses without consulting anyone. At the same time, austerity is
imposed upon the masses as a matter of government policy.
European Socialism is
opposed to the money supply being exclusively under the control of
private banking, which is a law unto itself. A private set-up that
can withhold money from the system by simply ceasing to lend through
alleged “lack of confidence” should not be tolerated in any
country that calls itself democratic and ultimately answerable to the
people.
Then there is the
borrowing deficit and its urgent reduction, the beginning and end of
Tory-led government policy. Cuts here and cuts there because the
cartel of private banking, that rules over most economic systems in
the world, says so. “Do what we say or you don’t get any more
money”. So the millionaires that currently rule over us tighten the
screws to please their banker chums. Everything becomes alarm and
urgency when it comes to “reducing the deficit”. Why not simply
underwrite the debt and start all over again? That would mean the end
of debt slavery and the end of the rule of international banking and
finance.
You have to ask yourselves
what money is and what purpose it should serve. It is a means of
exchange which the people should own. Its purpose should be to assist
in the easy and secure exchange of goods.
Instead, it has been
completely hi-jacked and used as a means of control. The result is
that the greater part of the wealth in the world is in very few hands
while the “prols”, the great majority, have very little. Is that
morally right?
That, then, is the worst
of British politics ... this total subservience to the Money Power.
Banks love to loan to those who struggle to pay it back. Default on
the loan and they will seize your goods and assets. This is all
achieved by the act of borrowing on interest, the simple act that
creates money out of thin air. They now do this to entire nations.
The best is yet to come.
There is another kind of politics that is in revolt. Tightening the
austerity screw in countries like Spain and Greece has produced
such a movement that identifies the International Monetary Fund as
the tyranny that kills. Oh, yes ... pensioners in these countries are
now committing suicide as a consequence of severe austerity measures
imposed upon the people by the money-lenders. What a shame and
disgrace.
They call it a “bail-out”
as if it were some kind of altruistic service. It is nothing of the
kind. It is, in reality, more of the same debt slavery with terms
that can never be realised because austerity measures imposed destroy
businesses and jobs, thereby preventing any form of meaningful
growth. Italy had to sell off its state-owned companies on
defaulting, Greece had to sell off all its unpopulated small islands
on defaulting ... and so on. This scam is nothing more than highway
robbery on a massive scale.
The movement in revolt is
in preparation and appears on the streets of some countries suffering
under severe debt slavery. It is a movement that is neither left nor
right but cuts right across the political spectrum. Neither the
far-left nor the far-right can lay claim to this movement in revolt
because neither of these opposite polar political extremes have ever
identified the real enemy in the terms of the new revolt. The enemy
is the global economic order in the hands of a few. All the rest is a
mere bagatelle. It deflects from the only real important issue which
is the life and death struggle we all face today and being another
reason that nationalism is part of the problem. Divide and rule ...
the rulers being international finance.
So how do you get
out of this situation and on to the road to recovery? Well, it will
not be by remaining as small, isolated countries pulling up the
drawbridge. They will simply pick you off one by one. A veteran
British nationalist gave a talk to The
London Forum recently, hosted by the
affable Jez Turner, where he rambled on about the entire world being
‘bankrupt’. He blamed the Saudis and the Chinese for this. At the
end of his ramble he offered his solution, which was to revive
British industry, produce only what we need and not to live beyond
our means. He called it ‘economic nationalism’. In other words,
old fashioned autarky, ... meaning more austerity.
The problem with such a
policy is that you end up surrounded by the rest of the world pulling
in an opposite direction. You could never compete successfully on
world markets to sell your goods, so tiny little Albion, a small set
of islands out in the North Sea, is going to supply everything that a
population of fifty-odd million requires. It would not work.
You need a large enough
area with room for expansion and, of course, every foodstuff and raw
material that we require for a good standard of life. “To do great
things in a great way”, is an old Mosley maxim.
Oswald Mosley offered a
solution to the rule of money in the 1960s. He said it could be
achieved with existing European governments if they had the will. He
said all they had to do in order to be rid of debt slavery was to
agree to meet at an appointed hour. They had to do this in unison.
All these heads of European governments would then declare their own
system, united in common purpose, with complete control of the money
supply out of private hands and under the control and direction of
European government. All previous debt would be null and void. Our
own banking system, under new guide lines, would then serve the
European people in a constructive way without the curse of usury,
which is lending at interest.
All politicians today are
obsessed with the ‘debt crisis’. They live with debt and they
think of little else. In other words, everything is subservient to
meeting this ever-present borrowing deficit.
It has become a new
religion, little different to pagan worship when the angry god must
be placated with more human sacrifices. The World Bank and the IMF
are the new pagan gods of global politics ... and they want to see
more suffering before they are finished.
It is happening now with
pensioners dying, not just in Greece in acts of suicide, but here,
too, every Winter, as fuel prices rise beyond the means of ordinary
old folk. That’s another issue, while privatised utility companies
provide massive riches for the Fat Cats, our people struggle as never
before. These essential utilities should all be back in public
ownership with a fair deal for all. An end to this culture of
privatisation and greed. It works for the rich but not for the poor.
Europe a Nation
would be very different to the United States. The United States is
based on greed. Kenneth Clark, in his BBC series Civilisation,
when referring to ‘heroic materialism’, he said, in
relation to America, “It’s godless, it’s brutal, it’s
violent”. America is the ‘spiritual’ home of a soulless
materialism where big money rules. Watch Presidential elections.
Our Europe would have the
steady foundations of social responsibility with real opportunity for
all. It will be the essence of European Socialism. The Americans hate
socialism, somehow equating it with communism, to the point they
really do believe in the survival of the fittest, that if you can not
afford medical care then you can damned well die in pain and agony.
They do not care. They love their guns more than their fellow man.
Our National Health Service is a beacon
of light amid so much darkness in the world. In a world without
predatory banking and the grip of usury, we can organise a society
where nothing can impede growth and ‘austerity’ was just a bad
dream. Organising within a self-sufficient European system, with the
lead of European government, science and labour will lift us up
through their own efforts ... and money will simply be a means of
exchange.
