For the Triumph of the Immaculate

Danger of socialization
Even so, increasing social relationships is not without
danger. Like all human endeavors if we do not take
care to watch over, examine, weigh, think, choose and
orientate them. From being primarily a factor of enrichment,
the increase in social relationships may end up,
with the organization, regulation and legalization that accompanies
it, suffocating the human person.
If man was created to be sociable, he was also created
to be free. Liberty and responsibility that implicates
a wise usage of freedom empowers the dignity of the
human person. This dignity should not be tarnished by
“socialization,” or the increase in social relationships.
The person should be served by the group, not be immersed
or atrophied into the group. The person should
stay master of himself and his decisions.
What about Social Credit?
What about Social Credit? How does it figure in what
Mater et Magistra says of “socialization,” in the sense of
the multiplication of the social relations of the person?
For a reply to this question, we should start by
ceasing to think of Social Credit exclusively in terms of
money or financial credit. Money or financial credit is
only an instrument to utilize; a means to realize an end.
The end, the objective of the propositions of Social
Credit, is the establishment of a socio-economic order
in which the person could blossom and attain his ultimate
destiny. In order to serve the end, being born
into life in society, the power to realize through association
what the individual cannot or only imperfectly
attain alone.
There can only be Social Credit though association.
It is the strength of association that constitutes a real
credit, a social credit, because its origin is in the life of
society. In regards to the association of persons, if the
life in society does not bring a supplementary improvement
for the people who are associated with it, it is not
social credit.
When there are two or more people who associate
together, they mutually help each other to better obtain
a commonly desired result, there is in this association
an added strength that would not be there if each person
had acted separately. The strength of this association
is a social credit, in the measure of the association.
We see here what Mater et Magistra calls the socialum
rationum incrementa, the increase in social relationships,
which is effective in view of the advantages that
it should normally procure. The founder of the Social
Credit school, economist-engineer Clifford Hugh Douglas
calls this advantage the increment of association.
And Douglas notes that this “enrichment born of association,”
this strength of realization that is superior to
the total of all the individual strength of the associates, is
not the result of a surplus of effort by one or the other of
the associates involved. It is a strength that is due to the
simple fact of association. This is called an “unearned”
improvement: an unearned increment of association.
The deduction is that this improvement is not earned
by one or the other of the associates but is born from
the simple fact of association and it should be shared
between all the associates. They could receive an unequal
recompense in return of that which supplied the
irregular individual efforts or competence; but thanks to
the association, the effort or competence multiples and
belongs to each person equally.
This is in regards with each well-constituted association.
It should be this way also with the great association
that we call “the society.” Life in society certainly
permits a total production of goods and services that is
quite considerable.
Pope John XXIII signing his encyclical in 1961
It is on this fact that the social credit doctrine is
based, the right of each citizen to have a social dividend,
a part in the improvement of life in society.
In Mater et Magistra, the Pope underlined successively
the advantages and dangers of “socialization.”
“Socialization” stops being a good when the sacrifices
that are given the person are not compensated by the
advantages that can be attained by the said association.
There is then frustration instead of improvement. It
is what we ask for our society today; especially when we
see how the national economy is making a small handful
of people become rich at the expense of the great number
of unsatisfied people.
This danger threatens the entire organized group.
The group can not dominate the people. It is the group
that exists for each person and not the person for the
group.
In their Message for the Celebration of Labour Day
1962 on “socialization,” the Bishops of Canada wrote:
“The organization is made to serve man, and not man
to serve the organization.”
Douglas expressed this same principle multiple
times. In the first chapter of his first work Economic Democracy,
he wrote: “Systems were made for men, and
not men for systems, and the interest of man which is
self-development, is above all systems.”
Like Mater et Magistra
It was 44 years before the encyclical Mater et Magistra
written by John XXIII that Douglas conceived and
presented the concrete propositions (in 1917) for which,
at the level of the nation, the person should be enriched
by association instead of being suffocated by it.
Mater et Magistra wishes the quick development of
economic structures to contribute, not to concentrate
the riches and the property in the hands of a few, (even
less in the hands of a totalitarian State) but to diffuse as
much as possible the idea of private property: “Durable
consumer goods,” wrote the Pope, “houses, land, tools
and equipment (in the case of craftsmen and owners
of family farms), and shares in medium and large business
concerns.” (n. 115)
Since the year 1917, Douglas offered a genial formula
that would give to each person the recognition due
to him; a part of a real national credit. Each citizen would
receive at his birth a social share, inalienable, non-transferable
and capable of providing at least the essential
necessities of life. And as the flow of production results
in a larger part from progress and less from the effort
from the producer, the distribution of purchasing power
is being done more through dividends and less through
salaries.
A capitalism thus corrected, causing revenue linked
to the person to grow, that is not connected to his work,
will leave no one in poverty or in the humiliation of being
helped by the State or at the expense of others.
Production will be motivated by the efficient demand
of consumers provided with purchasing power. With
the rapid disappearance of the waste of natural resources,
time and human activities — waste that is due to
crazy regulations that forces employment in indifferent
production in order to have a right to an income, a production
that can often be useless or harmful.
You have to have really badly understood the encyclical
Mater et Magistra written by John XXIII to see
even a small approbation of socialism. It is more likely
the Social Credit school that will be comfortable, even
very comfortable, reading what John XXIII wrote about
“socialization,” about private property, the function of
the State, the rights of the person and the conditions
needed to establish and protect the liberty and dignity
of man.
Louis Even
Benedict XVI and Mater et Magistra
(Vatican Information Service) — On May 16,
2011, Benedict XVI received the participants in the
World Conference promoted by the Pontifical Council
“Justice and Peace” on the 50th anniversary of
Blessed John XXIII’s Encyclical Mater et Magistra.
In his discourse, the Pope stressed that “truth,
love, justice, indicated by Mater et Magistra, along
with the principal of the universal destination of
goods, as fundamental criteria for overcoming social
and cultural imbalances, remain the pillars for
interpreting and resolving the imbalances caused
by today’s globalisation. In the face of such imbalances
there is a need to re-establish a ‘whole reason’
able to give rise to a rebirth of thought and
ethics. ... It is necessary to
develop ‘humanistic cultural
syntheses’ open to transcendence
through a ‘new
evangelisation.’”
“The various examples
of imbalance worldwide,
characteristic of this age,
feed other ills such as disparity,
differences in wealth, inequality,
which create problems
in terms of justice and
the equitable distribution of
resources and opportunities,
especially in relation to the
world’s poorest.”
The Pope remarked that “no less worrying
are the phenomena linked to the financial system
which, after the most acute phase of the recent
crisis, has returned to the frenzied issue of credit
contracts which frequently give rise to limitless
speculation... similarly, the increase in price of
primary energy resources... have negative consequences
on the environment as well as on humans.”
“The current social question,” he added, “is
without doubt that of world social justice... the
equitable distribution of material and non-material
resources, and the globalisation of substantial, social
and participatory democracy.” This justice, he
continued, “cannot be achieved solely on the basis
of mere social consensus, without recognising that
this, in order to be long-lasting, must be rooted in
universal human good.”
Referring to the diffusion of the Social Doctrine
of the Church, the Pope concluded by recalling that
“there exist important institutions at the service of
the new evangelisation, such as voluntary associations,
Christian or Christian-inspired non-governmental
organisations, the Commission Justice and
Peace, the offices for social and work problems and
the Centres and Institutes for Social Doctrine.”
4 MICHAEL August/September 2011 www.michaeljournal.org www.michaeljournal.org
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