(An article of Louis Even, first published in the March-April, 1971 issue of the Vers Demain Journal. The introduction and the comments are from Alain Pilote, and were published  in the November-December, 1995 issue of the Michael Journal.)

The following article was written by Louis Even in 1971, but it still applies to the present situation, where there seems to exist in Canada and the U.S.A. a political shift towards what political commentators call “the right”, or neo-liberalism, or conservatism. By this term, they want to describe politicians who curse “the welfare State”, or any form of socialism or State intervention. But, as Louis Even explains so well, because these so-called “right-wing” politicians do not want to change or denounce the present financial system, which is actually the root of all the evils they denounce, the cures they advocate are often worse than the evils they denounce, since they will hurt the people they are supposed to help.

For example, they will make cuts in social programs, hospitals, health care, education, etc., in order to reduce the deficit. They say that they have no alternative but to “redefine the role of the State” (reduce programs) because they simply do not have the money to finance them. It is policies like these that brought many people in Eastern European nations, that were recently freed from Communism and converted to the “market economy”, to say: “At least, in the days when the Communists were in power, we were not starving!”

These politicians say that they have no alternative. Yet, they would not be forced to make all these cuts if they decided to tackle the real problem, and to reform the financial system; that is to say, to have the sovereign government of each nation resume its right to issue the money for the nation, instead of borrowing money at interest from private banks. If this is not done, poverty will increase and become widespread among the population.

What is needed for every country in the world is Social Credit, and Canada should be the first nation to set the example. This will come insofar as the subscribers to the “Michael” Journal make an effort to diffuse the Social Credit light around them, by soliciting subscriptions and finding new subscribers to the “Michael” Journal, in order to educate the population, so that all the Canadians will shout to the Prime Minister: “Hey, create your money!”

Men of the right…

Men of the right, you indeed refuse Communism and all that leads to it.

You do not admit any possibility of an alliance between the Communist heresy and the Christian truth.

Sure enough, you refuse Communism because of its atheism, and because once in power, it thwarts the free practice of any religion. But even if a Communist government would not forbid religious teaching and practices, you would still say no to Communism because it denies human rights, because it abolishes freedom of choice, because of the tyranny of a Communist State, and because of its materialism and ideology.

You condemn any form of collectivism or State socialism. You repel vehemently the idea of being ruled by a caste of technocrats empowered to dictate the ways of life and to plan the activities of citizens. You hate the interventions of a government, with all its bureaucracy, in the private affairs of yourselves and your families.

You acknowledge that the Government does not have the right to substitute itself for families, free associations, and intermediary bodies for things they could perform themselves. You justly believe and proclaim that the function of governments should be one of subsidiary, letting individuals, families, free and legitimate associations perform themselves what they are well able to accomplish in the line of their chosen policies, the Government better attending to remove obstacles which only legislation can remove.

You condemn the political centralization of power which carries the seat of administration and policy further away from the people, where the pressure of financial lords will be better felt than the grievances of individuals and families.

You also deplore the accelerated concentration of wealth in a few hands, the developing of huge industrial plants in which employees by the hundreds, by the thousands, are mere units, a cog in the wheel, made to work on projects in which they have no say, and turn out products or parts of products of which they have no right to question the nature nor the destination.

You declare loudly your attachment to free enterprise and private property — whether of land, of housing, or of the means of production — and you only wish to see some form of private property accessible to all. You deplore the growing number of tenants in cities who cannot own a house, the growing number of farm-owners who are crippled with taxes and debts, and who are forced to sell their land to go and find a job in the cities. You deplore the disappearance of human-sized businesses, which are either forced to go bankrupt or to be taken over by industrial or commercial monopolies.

The attitude of unrest and rebellion gaining ground among the youth, their distaste of home and family life, their arrogance allied with vulgarity and disrespect for what you have always held sacred, fills you with anxiety. Much alarmed are you also in the face of the rising tide of materialism, of lasciviousness, of a display of pornography, of the unchecked circulation of blasphemous and immoral literature among students, of the abandonment of religion and the practical apostasy at an increasing rate. You deplore the fact that our children leave school without knowing how to write correctly, and with less Faith than they had before attending school — leaving it quite often with no Faith at all!

...empty-handed

But, men of the right, you must surely be aware that mere vocal condemnations will not stop political and economic centralization, State socialism.

You won't stop State socialism with empty hands. But is that not what you actually are: empty-handed? Have you nothing else to oppose socialism with but the present vitiated capitalist system, which makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, making small owners lose the little they have left?

Oh! You may well repeat your condemnations of this type of capitalism. But what do you present to improve it? If you have nothing to present, how will you prevent people, who are left out in the cold by the system, from turning to socialism or Communism, even if this means sacrificing their personal freedom? The have-nots, the homeless, the starving people thirst for more than words about freedom, since they practically lose all freedom when they have nothing to eat or to shelter.

You, men of the right, what do you have to present to the have-nots, to the homeless? With what do you want to stop increasing State intervention in areas that come under individuals, families, and local administrations? Can't you see that all this State interventionism is due to the financial incapacity of individuals and families to pay for municipal, school, or health services?

You notice this financial incapacity, but how do you propose to remedy it? What solution do you present, what do you have to offer but speeches in which you are prompt to blame the very victims of the system for their situation?

What do you have to present? Nothing? Well, then you won't stop any nationalization, any State control, any red tape, any technocracy, any welfare State, any form of socialism or Communism.

Your hearts are broken when you see an increasing drift from the land, country people leaving their land for the asphalt of the cities. But what do you have to present to prevent taxes and debts from ruining farmers? Nothing? Well, don't be surprised if they decide to abandon a piece of land that must feed the State and the financiers before feeding their own families.

Some will say that a drift from the land is part of progress. Really? In the past, with fifteen or twenty cows, a farmer could support a family of twelve children; today, one cannot raise four children if one does not have at least sixty head of cattle, a tractor, machinery... and a lot of debts!

Nothing is done to promote family life, to encourage parents to have children, to keep teenagers at home, to defend parental authority. You, men of the right, what do you have to propose to reassert the rights of the family and parental authority? Nothing! Once again, you are empty-handed!

What do you have to propose so that progress and automation will result in free people, instead of people totally or partially unemployed, condemned to live on money taken from the wages of those who have not been displaced by progress? What do you propose? Nothing!

Because you are empty-handed, because you have nothing new to propose, you are reduced either to shutting up or to promoting the same policies as the men of the left, which lead to the same results.

Just consider this: Communists of Soviet countries and governments of the free world, men of the left and men of the right, all advocate a full employment policy.

Since progress in production requires less human labour to satisfy the normal needs of people, governments look for a solution in the promotion of new material needs, to keep production going. One no longer preaches the limitation of material needs, which would be suitable for Christians, but on the contrary, one promotes the creation of new needs, therefore sinking into materialism. Even if you, men of the right, deplore the rise of materialism in our society, you contribute to it, because you do not know how, or do not want to advocate a distribution of goods that is dissociated to the requirement of being employed in production.

Basic goods are already made, even in overabundance, but without requiring all of the available work force. One cannot get these goods without presenting money, purchasing power, but this purchasing power can be obtained only if one is employed in production. This damn rule obliges governments to create new jobs, therefore creating new goods, and therefore new needs to buy these new goods. You know where it leads us all to — materialism. Yet, you, men of the right, are attached to this rule as if it were a Commandment of God.

Supremacy of money

Can't you see, men of the right, that the evil in the economic and social organism lies in the submission to a financial system, of which the rules lead to all the conditions that you deplore. The whole economic life is being motivated by money. Money reigns supreme. It has become the determining end of every economic activity, and it also conditions the operation of these same activities. This supremacy of money is the great economic heresy — and more than merely economic — that Christians are too blind to see, or too bound to denounce, or too coward to overthrow. (...)

Men of the right, have you ever seen governments, big or small, worried in their economic plans by anything else than money problems? When they want to build a road, a school, a hospital, do they worry about finding workers to do the job, or of finding materials? Is it not the problem of finding money that is the major headache of governments? Ask the Minister of Finance!

Yet, after ten years of headaches and economic paralysis, from 1929 to 1939, as soon as World War II was declared, all the governments of the warring countries found the billions of dollars required to finance this war for six years. This proves at least that the scarcity of money could have been terminated as early as 1930, since it had been terminated the day the war was declared. It also proves that we are dealing here with a criminal money dictatorship, that starves people during peacetime, and finances slaughter and destruction without any hesitation in wartime, and it proves that the governments of those days were either lackeys, stupid, or accomplices of this criminal dictatorship. Have their present successors changed?

And you, men of the right, still accept this money dictatorship? You attack everything, except it, as though money was a god that could not be submitted to the will of man, as though financial rules could not be changed for rules in keeping with human needs and the possibilities to satisfy them.

Ignorance or refusal?

You, men of the right, are empty-handed in front of all kinds of disorders, in every domain, because you refuse to correct this major disorder: money being sovereign instead of being a servant.

I use the word “refuse” because it seems to me that you cannot ignore what has been presented to the world for over 77 years — and in Canada, with an indefatigable zeal, for over 60 years — under the name of Social Credit.

Oh! I know too well that the news media did everything to silence or misrepresent the proposals of authentic Social Credit. I also know that the creation of political parties using that name, in Canada as well as in Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia, contributed to classing this doctrine of truth and liberation as a vulgar pursuit of power, making of Social Credit a faction of politicians to fight, or electoral speeches to ridicule.

But men of the right should have learnt, a long time ago, to search for the truth elsewhere than in news media infested with leftists and liars, and elsewhere than in the waffle of politicians. And if you are prejudiced against Social Credit, you should put your prejudices aside, for they have no reason to exist in a sincere search for a solution to the serious problems that you recognize and denounce.

Social Credit, an effective solution

Social Credit is an effective solution, since the implementation of its financial principles would turn finance into a flexible servant, instead of a master that dictates decisions in the economic order. It would liberate every level of government from subjection to the present controllers of financial credit.

By matching the issue of financial credit — money — with the possibilities of producing the goods required by the needs, one would no longer see a production capacity paralyzed in front of unsatisfied needs.

Today's production can easily meet the orders of consumers when they have enough purchasing power to make these orders. Social Credit would guarantee to every individual, through a periodical dividend, a basic purchasing power at least sufficient enough to allow the purchase of the necessities of life, in a country in which the productive capacity can easily supply this amount of goods.

Moreover, there would be no inflation in a Social Credit economy. One cannot speak of a high cost of living, since a mechanism of price adjustment (not a fixation of prices) would establish a balance between total effective purchasing power in the hands of consumers, and the sum of the prices of the goods offered on the market to satisfy needs.

Comments of the “Michael” Journal
A dividend, or guaranteed annual income

Present debates about the future of social programs like welfare, unemployment insurance, or the old-age pensions, show the urgency of the implementation of Social Credit, and especially of a dividend given to every citizen, which would be infinitely more efficient than all these measures. Because they are short of money, governments cut more and more into social programs, which will inevitably hurt people very much, especially the poorest.

Welfare recipients become an easy target for bashing because their benefits are paid by the taxes of those who work. And sometimes, wage-earners, especially among the middle class, show discontent, not without reason, for it turns out that some people on welfare are better off than they who have to work “by the sweat of their brows,” as they say.

Well, the Social Credit dividend would be infinitely better than the present welfare system, which presently requires a lot of inquiries to know who is eligible and who is not. Contrary to welfare, it would not be financed by the taxpayers' money, but by new money, created without interest by the Bank of Canada. Moreover, this dividend would be given to every citizen, whether he is employed or not. Those who are employed would therefore not be penalized, since they would receive the dividend plus their wages. Wage-earners could no longer accuse those who don't work of having unfair privileges, since they would also receive the same privileges, in addition to their wages.

Some people will say that giving such a dividend to everybody would make people idle; that is to say, knowing they would receive a guaranteed annual income, people would no longer want to work. To this, the Social Crediters say that, on the contrary, with a guaranteed dividend, there would be a flowering of creative activities, people being then placed in a position where they could take part in the type of activity which appeals to them, for which they are suited.

This stand was confirmed by a study of the Science Council of Canada, as reported by Canadian Press in the newspapers of July 31, 1991:

“The fears that a guaranteed annual income to each Canadian family would harm the will of the people to work are groundless, say Derek Hum and Wayne Simpson, the two researchers who signed the document... A government spokesman pointed out that this project of a guaranteed income was on the shelf for now, but could surface at the next general election.”

We know that this project did not surface for the October 25, 1993 elections in Canada, and so the Conservatives were just swept out, passing from 157 seats to only 2!

Interestingly enough, in November, 1985, the Macdonald Commission (created by Prime Minister Trdueau a few years earlier) had released its three-volume, 1,100-page report, which recommended three major changes: 1. Free trade with the U.S.A.; 2. A shift in tax policy toward consumption; and 3. A guaranteed annual income. The Mulroney Government went on to implement the first two recommendations (with the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Goods and Services Tax), but did not implement a guaranteed annual income, which would have certainly done much more good to the Canadians than the two other measures. Was it because of the pressure of the Financiers?

It is now the Liberals who are in office. Will they be more courageous than Mulroney's Tories? The idea of a guaranteed annual income is not unknown to the Liberals. Columnist Richard Daigneault wrote in the January 4, 1985 issue of the Quebec City “Le Soleil” newspaper:

“A certain number of Liberals believe that the guaranteed annual income — a minimum income to which every citizen would be entitled — is the system of tomorrow. According to Mr. Armand Bannister, chairman of the Reform Committee of the Liberal Party of Canada, the issue of unemployment, for occurrence, can no longer be seen in the light of the past, in the viewpoint of the thirties. The setting up of modern technology in all levels of production and commercial activity will create unemployment. Can we continue claiming that each citizen, man and woman, is entitled to a job? Mr. Bannister says that it is an unrealizable hope in the context of the technological era.”

In 1982, John Farina, a professor in the faculty of social works at the Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, Ont., had said:

“Man invented machines so that man would not have to work, and we've succeeded to the point of one and a half million unemployed. But instead of cheering about it, we're in despair. To me this is sheer raging idiocy.”

In June 1990, Paul Martin, who was then a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, promised that if he was elected Prime Minister of Canada, he would hasten to set up a guaranteed annual income system for every citizen. In 2004, Paul Martin is now Prime Minister. Is he still willing to implement this idea?

For the Canadian Government to give this guaranteed annual income, and to serve the Canadian citizens, instead of blindly complying with the orders of the International Monetary Fund, the readers of the “Michael” Journal must keep up their apostolate work to educate the population (by distributing our offprints and by soliciting subscriptions to our journal), so that the pressure of the people on the Government will be stronger than the pressure of the Financiers.

This is the only effective method to obtain a change in that direction. For example, as it was mentioned in the June 25, 1995 edition of “The Toronto Star”, Finance Minister Martin attacked the banks because of the support of the population, saying that he was only responding to public anger. This support of the population also led another Liberal minister, Roy MacLaren, to say, about the banks: “Who are those sons of bitches to be telling us how to run the country when they're hauling in so much money?”

Readers of the “Michael” Journal, let us not deviate from our mission: let us continue to solicit subscriptions to “Michael”, to make Social Credit known and to increase the support of the population, and the Government will soon send the bankers packing for good, and give a dividend to every citizen. There is no other solution but Social Credit, so let us concentrate all our efforts for the triumph of this cause; all other issues are just a waste of time and energy.