1917 (Three Birthdays All Come at Once)

By  Samuel A. Green

 In 1066 William conquered England. In 70 AD Jerusalem was destroyed and the Diaspora began. The last Roman Emperor fell in 476. These are all big dates, and 1917 needs to be among them. In this year three very different world-wide movements were born.

Communism

    The Bolshevik October Revolution in Russia set communism on its path to becoming a world power. It preoccupied the 20th century until its own ineptitude brought its demise. Estimates vary, but probably above 60 million people died as a result of this tragedy. The worship of this abstraction coupled with the fiercest resolve to imposing it upon society to the point where it would become “reality”, has a biological parallel with the lemmings and the Gadarene swine. Only the most awesome destruction, chaos and yes, genocide, can demesmerise the galloping pursuit of false abstractions once everybody is convinced that everybody else is convinced of them.

    This whole folly was built upon, or extrapolated from, the one false premise that “Labour produces all wealth”. Given our inheritance from nature of minerals, energy and genetic assets (cows, cabbages and apples), and from our forebears of fire, language, the wheel and the lever, the internal combustion engine, the computer and thousands of automatic and semi-automatic processes, man contributes labour decreasingly. From the 21st century onwards, man’s role in the economy is increasingly catalytic.  He needs to be present, but even then, only in decreasing numbers.

   The terrifying, mind numbing and agonisingly brutal truth that, hence forth, we are to be the recipients of “something for nothing”, is just one of those things which we will have to get used to somehow. No man has ever paid for an apple. The concept of an apple, the fact of the apple tree, the earth upon which it stands, the sun, the rain, the air and the insects which fly in it to fertilise the apple; none of these is of human origin, nor has any connection with human labour.

    For a time, in heavy industry especially, it seemed as though labour did it all. Men dug their way into the bowels of the earth for iron and coal, they laboured mightily to construct furnaces and mills, they fed them with shovels and then dragged away the product with ox teams.

    In Australia in 2013 there are three companies which each produce over 100 million tons of iron ore per annum (and a myriad of smaller ones producing fewer millions of tons) and delivering it on ship, with nothing but the catalectic presence of men. Manufacturing, assembling and even agriculture are going (more correctly, have gone) the same way. 

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   There are no problems here. It’s all wonderful, easy, productive, clean, bountiful and inexpensive. Of course if “full employment”, “social equity”, or “political equanimity” are the objects, or if any other abstraction is allowed to interpose itself between men and the object of “efficiency in terms of human satisfaction”, then any distortion to outcome whatever is possible.  

    Of course capital does not produce all wealth either, but two things about capital have produced a largely unrecognised and therefore unaddressed problem. A Labourer’s wage is an issue of consumer purchasing power which, with small adjustments for savings, is spent in the following week. The recovery of the cost of his wage in prices, if it is paid for the construction of a capital item, may be extended over many years.      

    Capitalist production operates by borrowing credit from the Banks (who create it), making a product and selling it, and then using these receipts to repay the Banks. In this process bank credit (money) is created, debited to the capitalist, paid to the consumer as wages (at least in part), recovered in prices, and then repaid to the Bank who cancel the loan, the debt, and the credit money issued to begin the process. Sorry it’s such a mouthful, but it is technically OK, and please, please, persist beyond it because the fog does lift.

    In this way (through capital costs incurred in previous periods) much of the purchasing power needed at the point of sale to distribute production, has already been cancelled out of existence some years previously. When fresh capital expenditure in insufficient to make up for this deficiency of purchasing power, (as is usually the case), then debt must be significantly increased or the economy retreats into recession. This is the “Keynesian Capitalism” of the world at the beginning of the 21st century which has seen off the Marxist/Leninist experiment.

Zionism

    The second world changing event of 1917 was the Balfour Declaration, published on November 2nd of that year. This took the form of a letter of capitulation and surrender to Zionism of Palestine, as it was then known, by Lord Balfour who was a member of the Cecil family which had either run, or mightily influenced British policy since Elizabethan times.

    The significance of this letter to Lord Rothschild was that it gave the cue to the supporters of Zionism that theirs was not a dream. For here was a commitment from the then most powerful Empire on earth to dispossess the Palestinians in favour of Jewish ambitions. The resultant explosion of energy supportive of a Jewish State was an essential element in carrying the matter.

    From the close of World War II until now (2013), the middle-east has been in a continuous state of war, and at least another half century of it, in some form or another, seems inevitable. As a still unfolding phenomenon it deserves examination at some length.

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    Jewish history up to the time of Christ is well known through the medium of the bible. Of the many threats to their continuance during this time, the captivity and disappearance from history of 10 of the original tribes, leaving only Judah and its small subordinate tribe of Benjamin, was of enormous significance as it brought literal decimation. Another, and perhaps more far-reaching challenge, was undoubtedly the Babylonian captivity. How to survive and preserve one’s traditions, language, religion and laws in the midst of a foreign culture?

    The key to the survival of Judaism through the next 2,500 years was discovered here in Babylon. This was the ghetto. Through it a separation, an “apartness” from others, was established in all conceivable ways and areas of life. The suburban ghetto not only precluded neighbourly contact with dissimilar people, kosher dietary laws stopped you from eating with them, a separate language was a barrier to speaking with them, and the religion meant that one didn’t worship with them. One observed different celebrations such as the Passover, different work hours because of the Saturday Sabbath, and wore different cloths and had different hair-dos. Differentiating Jews from others was the great achievement of Judaism. Jews and gentiles each saw each other as weird, for as much as it was humanly possible all commonality of Jewish culture with others was eliminated.

    And it worked! The assimilation of Jews with the human race which one would normally expect, was arrested, or at least severely slowed.   

    In early Christian times the conversion of Jews to Christianity was most significant, and the continuation of Judaism in Moslem countries from the 7th century onwards, appears to have been more successful. The contest with survival received a dramatic boost in (or around) the year 800.

    There had always been a two way trickle of individuals into and out of Judaism. It was positive for Judaism before Christ, and negative thereafter. Only twice in history, however, have whole nations of non-jews been admitted into Judaism. In one instance it was the Idumeans, whose later entry into Jerusalem and participation in the three-way civil war within Judaism and the simultaneous revolt against Rome which ended  in Jerusalem’s complete destruction in 70 AD, brought another close call with death for Judaism. 

    The bonanza which catapulted Judaism into modern times as a considerable force came about 730 years later. A turco-mongol people had entered into Europe south of the Urals and established something of an empire through alliances with others. It stretched from a point north of Moscow (though east of it) and down to the Caucasian mountains. They were rather hard pressed as Islam was reaching its historic (and not seemingly to be repeated) high, and exerting pressure from the South. The Christian expansion out of Orthodox Moscow was simultaneously exerting pressure from the north. The survival of the Empire built by the Kazars was at issue.

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    What to do? Three options presented themselves; an alignment with the Christians, the Muslims, or neither. The Kazar King Bulan, called for deputations from the several contending parties. Representatives from Christianity, Islam and also from the then recognised Judaic cultural centre of the world, in Babylon, where it had been since well  before the year 400 AD to escape from Rome, were in attendance.

    Bulan choose Judaism. Nobody knows why. He may have been resentful of the main contenders’ pressure. He may have valued his independence from both, which in my opinion is the most likely. If belligerent from some former injury/injuries, the sheer joy of pronouncing “A pox on both your Houses” may have had attraction. Nobody knows why, but he choose Judaism. It is thought that it may have been only the ruling class that adopted Judaism, but from there it seeped down. [The Jewish author, Arthur Koestler’s “The Thirteenth Tribe”, Random House, 1976, is certainly one of the important source books for this period.]

    The existence of about 6 million Jews in Eastern Europe in 1900, with no discernable historic migration of Semitic Jews northward into the area on record, speaking the Yiddish language which seemingly consisted of a minimum of Kazar original words and a preponderance of Volga German and other borrowed words, indicates two things; the pauperism of their original language, and a certain historic amnesia because is was convenient religiously to Eastern Judaism.

  During the next 1,000 years Judaism deepened its separation from others and enriched its culture. At the end of this period, however, there was a “sea change” taking place in the broader world.

   By 1800, after, among other things, the American and French Revolutions, the world was “going liberal”. This emerging spirit, for a time, crystallised in the person of Napoleon. In what must be, even for him, a most remarkable achievement he successfully called together, for the first time since antiquity, the Sanhedrin. The traditional 71 members (46 rabbis and 25 laymen) were assembled from Europe and North Africa, and met in Paris in February, 1807.

    His questions went to the heart of the matter. Did they regard Frenchmen as “strangers” or as brothers? Did their law permit mixed marriages? Did they regard France as their native country, the laws of which they were bound to obey? Did they discriminate between Jewish and Christian debtors? 

    The answers given by the Sanhedrin began a tidal wave of emancipation for Jews in the West, and an explosion of reaction against them amongst the numerically strong Eastern Jewry, which Napoleon probably never knew existed.

    The findings of the Sanhedrin admitted “the extinction of the Jewish nation to be an accomplished fact.” That it existed “only as a religion” and “no longer looked forward to any national rehabilitation.” And further, that “the Talmudic laws of daily life were no longer effective.”

    Western Jews began to participate in the public life of the Nations in which they found themselves, often holding high office. Further, by about 1880, one in seven Jews were “marrying out”. Entrapment in “total separation” was repudiated. The ghetto of the mind was breaking up.

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    What was little appreciated was that Western Jewry was of little import. The big battalions were in the east, where Western liberalism had barely touched them, if at all, and they were angry at the “betrayal” of their Western Co-religionists. 

    Eastern Judaism split into three acrimonious factions in the 19th century. Firstly, there were those who welcomed participation with the rest of the human race, perhaps we can call them “the emancipationists”. Perhaps few at first, but this became an extremely strong current, and typically, they immigrated to America and discovered (or invented) “the American Dream”. 

    Secondly, there were those who wished to recast the whole of society, radically and thoroughly, and establish an egalitarianism which would be inclusive of them. Lenin found this faction to offer rich pickings, and a considerable percentage of early Bolshevik leadership was Jewish, and whole Jewish battalions fought under Stalin during the revolution’s defence against the Whites.

    Thirdly, though not lastly, there was the Zionist faction. These people sensed, and history will probably show, correctly, that Judaism could not survive outside of the ghetto. At least, certainly not long term. In the now all pervasive liberal world, the suburban ghetto was untenable. Most Jews rejected it, and its continuance would spore increasing defections. Yet the ghetto is indispensable! 

     If the small ghettos were unviable, but essential, the answer was in a bigger ghetto.

A National State of Israel established in Palestine; the last and greatest ghetto ever to be constructed; this alone could preserve Jewishness.

    It has not been an easy road. The locals in Palestine resented their dispossession and consequently tended to “make trouble”. By 2013, more Jews were leaving Israel than entering it, and their birth rate was below replacement levels, so the demographics were terminal. A fact not helped by the high birth rate of the Palestinians remaining within Israel.

    Externally, things are even worse. Israel is a small economy and cannot survive without massive economic blood transfusions from elsewhere, mostly America. The American Jewish Lobby which receives half of all America’s foreign aid, is the one indispensable umbilical cord of Israel. Yet in America, over 50% of American Jews are marrying non-Jews. They are not differentiating themselves, not prejudiced, not bigoted, not intimidated by external threat into an “us and them” mentality, not religiously motivated in an increasingly sectarian world, not impressed with cultural nuances of only remote symbolic significance, and certainly not about to enter any ghetto-like cloister. Indeed, their propensity to sacrificially support others who want the sequestered life in diminishing. Has there ever been anything in all the world so ominous as nonchalance?

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Social Credit

    The other Movement born in 1917 was Social Credit. At that date, it began in the mind of one man, C. H. Douglas, at Farnborough. No attempt will be made here to define or explain it, as there is sufficient material on various web sites to enable that to be had by any serious student.

Relationships

    The most significant thing to emerge from this triplet birth, is that none could identify any commonality.  

Communism and Social Credit

    Communism and Social Credit had the following problems (inter alia):

    One said Labour produced all wealth; the other said that labour was continually diminishing in the face of our Industrial Inheritance.

    One said that the State should administer everything, while Social Credit said that the problem was not of an administrative nature at all, but due to an accounting phenomenon, and that its correction was impossible via “nationalisation”, or “rationalisation”, or socialism.

    While Communism found salvation in the exultation of the State, for its part, Social Credit (in the time-out-of-mind honoured tradition of the Anglo-Saxons), could see nothing but the anathema of servitude in this approach. The idea of everything being run from a central point was, given their experience of actually running colonies on the edge of the world, nothing but utter madness. Shooting people out of hand had surprising little appeal, either. 

    In any event, Communism had fallen over by 1990, so pursuit of the argument serves little purpose. 

Social Credit and Zionism   

    This relationship was more difficult. It need not have been, for not one Social Crediter in a hundred could give a bother as to whether Zionists, Islamists, or screaming hill dwellers occupied Palestine. OK, if fair play and natural justice were disturbed it would raise eyebrows, but not so much as to be acted upon. So what was all the kafuffle about?

    As the historian, Professor Carroll Quigley has observed, amongst many others, there was a time when “Dynastic International Banking Houses” were more potent in affairs than the exhibitionism of statesmen. This period was drawing to a close after World War I, and with the growth of all manner of public funds, and the spreading recognition that creating credit was the hottest number in town, finance could no longer be channelled into tidy streams. 

    While Social Credit was still in its infancy, these dynastic families were at a pitch of ascendancy. At the post World War 1 peace conferences Paul Warburg represented the financial interests of the United States, and Germany’s financial interests were represented by Max Warburg, his brother. This blatant hauteur culminated a century in which Britain, the great empire, regularly sought the consent of the Rothschilds in its ambitions, and graciously accepted their consent to fund such purchases as the Suez Canal. The community’s credit was firmly in private hands.

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    This did not mean that International Finance was the preserve of Jewish families. The Houses of Morgan, Rockefeller, Mellon, and others were ascendant to Jewish interests in America, and the protestant families associated with the Bank of England were probably dominant in that country.

    It is very difficult looking backward one hundred years, to comprehend the innocence of Englishmen in many respects at that time. They believed that Politicians genuinely sought to represent their electorates, that those in authority acted for the common good, and that their country was worth dying for. All very doubtful idealism if viewed from today.

    When Douglas diagnosed the financial malady of the economy, he sincerely believed that all he had to do was to explain it to the appropriate authorities, and it would be put right. When at last, it became clear that while his diagnosis was accepted, there was no intention whatever of adopting his solutions he was deeply shocked, and the Movement’s approach had to be rethought.

    In June 1934, having just returned from a world tour, Douglas crossed the Rubicon with his Buxton address. He said “Now I have no doubt whatever that that select group of international financiers who desire to rivet the rule of finance upon the world are observing this process with complete satisfaction, and they are using the situation which they themselves have brought about, and with which governments are ineffectively meddling, to support the idea that the whole cause of the trouble is the meddling in business of governments and government officials who do not understand business. They are using this argument most effectively as an argument for sweeping away that control over their own destinies which peoples, or, if you prefer it, mobs, were in process of attaining through the centuries, and substituting a dictatorship which will enthrone an international oligarchy permanently.”

    The above identifies a vested interest, namely, the principals holding the sanctions over the issue of national credit. The Baptist Rockefellers and the Episcopalian captains in P. J. Morgan and Co. were not excluded. Nevertheless, in the innocence of the trusting hearts of that era, only a “foreign” and “alien” force could do such a thing, surely!

     What was so wrong with ending the depression with an application of the just price mechanism and paying a national dividend, and moreover, progressively lifting the curse of Adam onto the backs of machines. The social, economic and cultural benefits would surely accrue to all men? 

    Lord Acton did not say that “Absolute power corrupts others absolutely”. Creating a nation’s money supply, assuming ownership of it, and directing it at one’s absolute discretion is far more than any mortal flesh can withstand. Just a small participatory role in this is sufficient to buy almost anyone’s allegiance to the Golden Internationale. 

   In was an accident of Social Credit’s birth that it coincided with the absolute zenith of the dynastic banking families, a fair proportion of which were conspicuously Jewish. Further, within 30 years of that birth, in a most powerful display of international lobbying, every country in the world (save 2) had submitted to Zionist pressure and voted at the United Nations to disinherit the Palestinians in favour of Zion. These early Social Crediters, many often not very worldly, stunned that the ready ending of the Great Depression with Douglas’s proposals was accepted in its diagnosis, but rejected in its solution, were trying to understand this. Perhaps these Jewish lobbyists and bankers are the real power with which we contend?

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The Jewish people, obviously supersensitive after their experience with Hitler, went nuclear at any suggestion of this type of thinking. Where, after all was this leading? We’re not going there again! You must be anti-Semites and fascists! And you’re the bedfellows of Communists and manipulative Bankers with designs on the world. In all the furore, especially where some figures had shot themselves with imprudence, it was nothing but a media conducted shouting match.

It would be 50 years before the madness of this period subsided and Social Credit, which has no inherent interest in Zionism, things Jewish, or the State of Israel or their opponents, could refocus on what interests it; Social Credit, the benefits of which have always been seen with insistence, as flowing to all people.

   This thing, the Golden Internationale, has many nerve centres, each connected to all the others by real time communications. It is at home in Hindu India as in Shintoist Japan, in Protestant Scotland as in Catholic Brazil, in Jewish Israel or New York as in Islamic Egypt. It has no head, it is a mosaic of nerve endings. As Shakespeare said of Caesar at a simpler time, “He strides the world as a colossus.”  As an old testament prophet said of a colossus “ …he has feet of clay.”

     Still, it is the business of coming generations not to suffer our disinheritance, to seek, to strive to gently drop access to social credit into every unresisting interstice. Heroics and martyrdom will be best avoided. At some distant day, in whatever form and by whatever events; accidental, incremental, instinctual or mental we will man the barricades, but we should never, never forget, that the most far-reaching and irreversible of all historic victories have always been won by default.

Associated reading;

        The Complete works of Josephus, Hendrickson Publishers.

           The Thirteenth Tribe, by Arthur Koestler, Random House Inc.

           The Controversy of Zion, by Douglas Reed, Dolphin Press P/L

           The Holy Bible,

           The Nature of Democracy, by C. H. Douglas, 1934, Inst. of 

                                 Economic Democracy’s 3rd Edition of 1978.

           The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx, 1848

           The Keys of This Blood, by Malachi Martin, 1990, Touchstone (a Simon                         & Schuster Inc. trademark) 

Footnote:
 A further event of 1917 needs mention here. While it was enormously influential, it did not produce a new movement, but certainly galvanised an old one. Approximately one billion Roman Catholics were prepared for the Church’s historic struggle with Communism through the testimony of thousands of people who witnessed a phenomenon on the 13th of October, 1917, which could not be described in any but supernatural terms. Those familiar with the events at Fatima and the literature associated with it, will, whatever they believe, understand its influence on the Catholic mind and action

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