Samson in the Treadmill, Giacomo Zampa

MICHAEL WATSON writes at the Clifford Hugh Douglas Institute, which is dedicated to the promotion of the economic theory known as Social Credit:

In our modern, fast-paced society that holds servile work and the fanatical pursuit of money to be the primary aim of our very existence, every adult man and woman must have a paid ‘job’ in order to survive and feel ‘dignified’ lest they suffer the curse of unemployment and the poverty and stigma associated with it, and this despite, or perhaps because of, the paltry and condescending ‘dole’ payments the state may hand out to them. We are not only expected to work, we are expected to compete and battle with one another to get that job or to obtain that promotion in order earn the money to pay those expensive bills and to purchase those precious goods that we need to survive and thrive. We must climb that corporate ladder or work that extra hour just to get those few extra dollars to pay off that mortgage or to make one’s marriage last just a little bit longer.

     Everything else apart from that is an irrelevance. Leisure, that is free time in which activities that do not involve working in some sort of servile occupation that serves some financial or materialistic end, is deemed ‘useless’, a sign of childishness, unimportant and is even open to outright scorn or viewed as devilish idolatry by our puritanical society, especially by those in charge of politics and high finance. Even in an age of plenty where there are sufficient goods for everyone thanks to industrial automation and mechanized production (which necessitates less and less human labour in production), we are still expected by our beloved politicians to work longer and longer hours. In families, both fathers and mothers are expected to work and the children are shuffled off to commercial daycare centers. The very notion of receiving anything freely, whether through inheritance, gifts, or familial or communal association, is considered scandalous, even in an age where, due to the increasing role of machines performing various tasks, a universal income as a representation of the unearned increment of association in production will need to be paid freely to the citizens as full employment will no longer be achievable. The German Thomistic philosopher, Joseph Pieper, firmly rejected this puritanical mentality in his well-known book Leisure: The Basis of Culture: “The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift.”

Of course, the policy of full employment is certainly no innocent economic or social error. It serves a vital political purpose for the powerful oligarchic elites who are in control of global finance and banking, and who operate the system in favour of their own interests and of no one else’s – unless it somehow benefits their own agenda. The policy is maintained in order to keep the people so busy and struggling to meet the cost of living and attaining or retaining employment that they are prevented from having sufficient leisure time and energy to reflect upon political, moral, and philosophical questions, and to make full use of their creative impulses. They are kept distracted by false flag terrorism, shallow celebrities, and delusional daydreams such as, for example, one of the most grandiose and fraudulent daydream of them all, i.e., the notion that because they live under a universal liberal ‘democracy’, they are thus definitely free from all tyranny. As Clifford Hugh Douglas, the 20th century British engineer who developed Social Credit theory as an alternative economic system, succinctly wrote in his publication Programme for the Third World War: “… if you can control economics, you can keep the business of getting a living the dominant factor of life, and so keep your control of politics – just that long, and no longer.”

     The reigning economic model hollows out culture, shatters family life and suppresses the creative impulse which is vital for the cultivation of the arts and philosophy. When people are threatened with the possibility or reality of economic insecurity and poverty, they are placed under tremendous physical and mental stress that can result in health problems, criminal behaviour, greed and unscrupulous competition. [Read more here.]

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