Conservatism is Not Enough: Geoffrey and Elizabeth Dobbs on Social Credit Futures By James Reed

I have an interesting little essay by the Dobbs, no printed date, but probably from the mid-1960s, dealing with some fundamental, what-is-to-be-done issues. The concern then was the social credit movement interacting with anti-communist groups such as the John Birch Society, and at the time eminent Professor Revilo P. Oliver, was a John Bircher (later to reject it) and was writing for The Social Crediter. The Dobbs expressed concern about this, first because of the confrontational tactics, and second because it would tar the social credit movement. But the main difference was that the Birchers were simply anti-communist, which is good, but not enough. Social credit was about offering an alternative philosophy and policy to communism, and for the nurturing and regeneration of society. As Major Douglas said in Programme for the Third World War (1943): “the Money power does not, and never did, wish to improve the money system –its consequences in war, sabotage and social friction are exactly what is desired. This, I think, exactly defines the task which society must face and solve, or perish. First, to attack and defeat the Money Power; then consider the re-organisation of the money system.”

The battle against the Money Power is a task to be undertaken by society, not just the social credit movement, which no doubt can, and will, act as a vanguard in education and the formulation of strategies. As Dobbs says: “before any society can defeat the Money Power it will have to be substantially united, permeated with social credit ideas (though not necessarily by that name), and possessed by implicit faith in reality rather than in money, a faith which at present is notably inadequate. This is no pessimistic conclusion. It is always more hopeful to face the realities of the situation. If there was ever a chance of a quick or early ‘victory for Social Credit’ on a national or a world scale. It is by now long past. But the credit of Society is not a Utopian dream for the future, it is a reality which exists now, and demonstrates its existence every time an inroad is made upon it.”

Hope exists, despite the tremendous difficulties, now many times worse than when Dobbs were writing, because a system like the present one, which is out of step with reality, beyond everything else has an intrinsic tendency to fall over itself and collapse, and that is what many of us see coming, and an opportunity for the future.