The Necessity of Power Over Finance
Oswald Mosley - The Economic System : What is Wrong 1938
"What
a transformation of the present system and what forces you are
challenging," the old world replies. "Yes," we retort. "we
are challenging great forces and we are carrying through nothing less than a
revolution in the subordination of finance to industry." But the key to
the problem is power in Government, and it is for no light or idle reason that
we ask real power.
This
struggle requires in Government a power so all-pervading that the financier,
who resists it and breaks the law, may know with certainty that he will go for
a good spell where the poor go today when they break the law. Once confronted
with overwhelming power in Government, willingly conferred by the people, the
resistance of finance to the new order will break, and the financier will
become the servant and no longer the master of the people.
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.
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
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.