I AM QUOTING AGAIN from Oliver Heydorn’s excellent analysis of modern democracies as seen through the works of the British thinker Clifford Hugh Douglas:

    Let us take as an axiom that whenever and insofar as policy is being imposed on people, whether it be through naked force or deception, we cannot speak of democracy in any meaningful sense. Insofar as the populations living under conventional ‘democracies’ have been subjected to anti-social political polices sponsored by the credit monopoly, it must be admitted that conventional ‘democracies’ are actually, to a greater or lesser extent, de facto if not de jure financial dictatorships, i.e., plutocratic tyrannies. On this view, conventional ‘democracy’ is a not merely faulty, it is also a swindle; the regimes under which we live in the West are best described as financially based plutocracies camouflaged as liberal democracies, or ‘pluto-democracies’:

    “… the aims of national Governments are by no means the same things as the aims of the majority of individuals in the countries they are supposed to represent. … these Governments are far more responsive to influence from financial sources than they are to popular influence. We might even go so far as to say that modern Government is quite insensible to popular influence, and that no serious change in policy is effected by a change from one party to another. This is certainly true where the subject in which such influence might desire to be exercised conflicts with the interests of Finance. …      It therefore becomes a matter of the first importance to find out what would be the interests of Finance in relation to the apparently conflicting interests of various national Governments, because if we can get any clear idea in regard to this, and we admit (as I have suggested we are obliged to admit) that Finance can make itself effective through any Government, and is common to all Governments, then we should be able to obtain some insight into the probable trends of international politics.”[7]

    “At the present time we live in a false and completely ineffective so-called democracy, really an oligarchy of the worst possible kind. Not only is an open and genuine dictatorship preferable to an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy, but it is a sure and certain outcome of it. I do not believe that the people of these islands will tolerate an open dictatorship, but, unless you take action, an open dictatorship will be tried.”[8]

    While ‘an open and genuine dictatorship [is] preferable to an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy’, Douglas is not arguing in this excerpt that dictatorship would automatically solve the problem. Any kind of conventional political system which is forced to operate under the aegis of a credit monopoly will be co-opted to a greater or lesser degree by the financial powers: “… all visible Governments are mere executives of a dictated policy …”[9]

     We must also be careful not to allow the failure of conventional ‘democracies’ under present circumstances to discredit the ideal of political democracy:

    “It can be demonstrated that real democracy is possible; but it must be conceded that a visible dictatorship is preferable to an anonymous tyranny or a manipulated electorate.”[10]

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