100
Questions
State and Citizen
The Corporate State
Stability and Progress
Power Over Finance
Strike Action
Fascist Europe
Foreign Policy
Conclusion
Peace Statement
Regulation 18b
Roll of Honour
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The Necessity of Power Over Finance
 The
financiers have long compelled the people to work for them. We now propose
that the people shall compel the financiers to work for them. Further,
that process will be greatly assisted by the preliminary deportation of
alien financiers, who have abused alike the hospitality of Britain and
the credit power which the British have created. The remaining British
financiers will be confronted with the alternative of playing the nation's
game, in place of the alien's game, or facing the nation's retribution.
Their normal patriotism, thus stimulated, will make them the servants
of the nation, within a Corporate system
of finance that subordinates and utilises every existing instrument and
ability of the financial system to a new national purpose. Thus British
Union's attack on the citadel of finance will not be partial but universal.
The power of Government conferred by the people will be absolute and will
be asserted.
To play with the problem of finance, merely by nationalising a Bank of
England which for all practical purposes is nationalised already, is only
worthy of the make-believe of a Labour Party which has no serious intention
of putting any of its theories into practice, and resists in principle
the power in Government by which alone finance can be subordinated to
the nation. We do not propose, by nationalising the banks, to substitute
for financial ability a miscellaneous collection of civil servants and
party hacks to play with intricate problems of which they have little
understanding. We propose, by the exercise of ruthless power in Government,
to make those who understand finance do what the people want done, and
to let them know in plain fact what will happen if they do not do the
job the nation commands.
Credit
Within such a system the supply of credit must be adequate to a system
of greater production and greater consumption. The credit system will
rest on certain clear and basic principles: that British credit created
by the British people shall be used for British purposes alone; that British
credit shall be no monopoly in the hands of a few people, and often alien
hands at that, but shall be held in high trusteeship for the British people
as a whole; that British credit shall be consciously used to promote within
Britain the maximum production and consumption by the British of British
goods; that the credit system shall maintain a stable price level against
which the purchasing power of the people is progressively raised in the
development of higher wages.
Tomes could be written on credit policy, and have been written, with infinite
diversity in particular if with broad agreement from modern minds in general.
The writer in earlier years has contributed to these diverse studies of
one of the most fascinating subjects that can engage the modern mind.
But experience brings some lessons, and one lesson is that the creative
urge of modern man to build a modern credit system, that serves the people
and not the financier, may well be lost in the desert sands of diverse
detail. The broad principles of action are agreed by most thoughtful and
modern minds. The full details must await the vast resources of a Government
armed with power, and a full mobilisation of the finest intellects of
our time to evolve the final pattern. But the principles here stated shall
stand, and a new credit system shall be opened by the key of revolutionary
Government entrusted by the people with real power. To play with credit
problems, in the absence of real power, is merely to court the classic
inflationist disaster of an impotent reformism.
Taxation
The problem of taxation is lifted naturally by the general economic policy
of British Union. Taxation depends upon revenue, and revenue in turn depends
upon national wealth production. A lesser burden of taxation can produce
a larger revenue, if based on a greater national production of wealth.
Therefore a system which is designed to evoke the maximum wealth production
of the nation automatically lifts the burden of taxation. We rely for
greater wealth production not only on the absorption into productive industry
of those now unemployed or working short time, and not only on the maximum
production of all present machinery; the elimination of redundant middlemen,
and the great network of purely parasitic occupations which have grown
up of recent years in the decline of productive industry, will release
great new forces for wealth production, in addition to the labour of those
unemployed or on short time. Any analysis of the swing over from staple
productive to distributive industry, and still more redundant quasi-luxury
occupation in service of the profiteering rich, will yield the most startling
figures.
In a civilisation in which the rich profiteer can buy too little of the
essential, a disequilibrium takes place in the national economy, and hundreds
of thousands are drawn from productive to non-productive industry. The
elimination of overlapping and redundant distributive services, and the
re-absorption of such labour, together with labour employed in ultra-luxury
trades, back into productive industry, in response to the people's new
demands for "real" goods, will increase the productive power
of the nation in almost incalculable degree. The proportion of the people
actually engaged in real productive processes is small to the point of
being one of the outstanding anomalies of the system. This phenomenon
is created by the low purchasing power of the mass of the people and the
extraordinary purchasing power of the ultra-rich. Consideration of the
latter category belongs to the next chapter, but here we may note that
the release of workers, from redundant distribution and ultra-luxury occupations,
will enable the new economy vastly to increase the nation's wealth production.
From this it follows that revenues will greatly increase and taxation,
despite the extension of service to the people, can be greatly lightened.
Oswald Mosley - The Economic System : What is Wrong 1938
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