Today is the first day I look at my emails with nothing coming in from the green economics discussion list. For the last 12 months there has been a long and fruitless debate between monetary conservatives who are unshakable in their conviction that it is right that private corporations should have a monopoly on money creation for the purpose of making profits, and monetary reformers who can see no earthly reason why government should not create at least a proportion of new money coming into the economy, for the purpose of protecting and healing society and environment.
What is really amazing to me is that the monetary conservatives include Derek the Red among their ranks. Others on the Green Left have dubbed monetary reformers as "mad" without even trying to justify this position with any form of rational argument. I cut my political teeth in defending Russian dissidents who had been put by the Soviets in psychiatric institutions, so I am sensitive to this kind of abuse.
This year's debate has imo been a total waste of time and energy, which should have been spent in debating and writing to audiences outside the Green Party. Though where to go is a problem. OpenDemocracy.net is the only place I know of, but that is infested with right wing trolls.
[spiteful final word deleted]
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6 comments:
Hi Naval, thanks for your kind words. I have a few short stories over here: http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/Short%20Stories.htm
Poetry too, on the same website.
I liked "Wings are never cheaper": but is there a typo in the last line? Fling or flying?
Hi Richard,
Personally I am open minded on monetary reform.
I do have a problem with some of the other ideas held by some monetary reformers. Many well known social creditors were anti-semites , for example, but "bad people" can have good ideas.
Perhaps the pro monetary reform lobby don't only need not to hold anti -semitic views, but alsoto make a clear statement that this is the case.
Sorry that people are bandying accusations rather than arguing with you in a rational way.
""bad people" can have good ideas."
Totally agree, Nick. In my view nobody owns an idea (leave aside intellectual property debates), and every idea should be judged purely on its own merits.
For the layperson, could someone explain who the monetary reform people are (Frances Hutchinson - she's a contemporary social crediter, isn't she?) and what they're proposing, or give a link to a reasonably simple run-down.
I can't understand how any Greens could possibly stay "unshakable in their conviction that it is right that private corporations should have a monopoly on money creation for the purpose of making profits"
Huh???
All you lovely people, thank you for writing on my blog!
RedGreen Nick, you have given me a eureka moment! It is the association with antisemitism that is the underlying block against people understanding of monetary reform. Looking back, I can see it now - in several people that have discussed MR it has cropped up.
In CBT, we look for the cognitive basis of emotional states. In political disputes we must also look for the emotional basis of cognitive choices. Hmm. Very useful insight.
Donna, Frances Hutchinson is OK, but a bit flaccid imo. Huber and Robertson have a nice slim volume (can't put my hand on it at the moment). If you poke at my wiki here
http://green-monetary-policy.wikidot.com/start/
you will find some other references.
And here: http://www.sustecweb.co.uk/
Brian Leslie's site.
Donna said: "Someone emailed in to R4 PM this evening asking where all the money had gone. The presenters just fudged around desperately. There was me yelling at the radio (like you do) "It's all imaginary, there is no real money, they just make it up, digits in computers" ..."
Love it. And this "You can even get died-in-the-wool old Tories involved and het up about how the quality of life is being ruined over the last thirty years! The focus should be hey, we've got a lot of problems here, so how do we sort them out? "
I agree. My mother in law is a lifelong Conservative activist, but she is getting very Green in her thinking. Taking the Guardian instead of the Torygraph "There's such a lot of good stuff in it..."
PS Thanks for liking the song. My poems are here: http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/Poetry%20Index.htm
Cheers
Thanks for the reading matter, very useful, should keep me occupied. I have read Hutchinson's book "Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism", but exactly how SC would work is still mysterious to me. Most people (those who think at all about such things) seem certain that it could never work.
Nick has definitely hit the nail on the head - monetary reform's birth in the interwar years and our persistent inability to examine this crucible period with a clear head, even some seventy years later, are key reasons why MR remains beyond the pale. Mark Drakeford and Jo Campling's book "Social Movements and Their Supporters: The Green Shirts in England" is very interesting for the light it sheds on a piece of monetary reform and social history that has been all but written out of the officially approved versions of history that we are fed. It can be obtained from the library, as being an academic book of restricted readership it is very expensive to buy.
I believe the DT is actually referred to as the Labourgraph in many circles now.
:-)
Hi Dona
Interesting that the Social Credit movement viewed themselves as a way of resolving the antithesis between fascism and communism. SCs failure is put down to Major Douglas himself - why, I am not sure, though I see that he dabbled with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Again, this anti-semitic theme.
It is good that people should read history, but my path is to address the present crisis, because of the unique consciousness that we are facing not one, financial, crisis, but a triple crisis - financial, climatic and oil supply.
Intellectually, the way forward is very clear, the Green New Deal. In financing the GND, we are going to have to look at MR, because it is absurd to seek to borrow from banks to finance the GND, when the banks are unwilling and unable to lend, having blown their wealth on Ponzi finance.
Therefore the Governments are going to have to issue the money for the GND. I heard someone on the Today programme mention government issue of money.
Money is a topic with an infinite capacity to confuse, but all will become clearer if/when the system really crashes. Necessity is the mother of invention...
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