The Money Power

How finance capitalists enslave the world
-- by: Frank Anstey, 1921, source: Australian Nationalist Archive
MHP hypertext version for non-profit educational use only

Introduction

Banking, currency and war profiteers

"The Oligarchy of Finance possesses more wealth, more power, more control over the destinies of the human race than any class or caste ever possessed."

-- T. Quelch.

In 1916, I wrote a series of articles on banking, currency, and "war loan" trickeries. Those articles were rigorously censored, many of the facts being either distorted or suppressed. In 1917, those emasculated articles were published in book form (entitled "The Kingdom of Shylock"), and at once (Sept., 1917) the [Australian] military censors organised raids and seizures and declared the book "absolutely prohibited in any form whatever."

A few days later (3rd Oct., 1917), George Pearce, Minister for Defence, added a new clause to regulation 28 of the "War Precautions." Any person who sold or gave or distributed or delivered, or carried on his person, or kept on his premises, "or received through the post or otherwise" any copy of a prohibited publication, was liable to six months imprisonment, or to a £100 fine, or both, or if prosecuted "upon indictment" then short of death itself there was no limit to the punishment that might be inflicted. All that was needed to put a man away was to send to him a prohibited publication, and then denounce him for having it in his possession. Under those circumstances few "Shylocks" went into circulation.

Yet "Shylock" did not deal with the merits of the war. It dealt with the economic causes of war, and the inevitable "aftermath." It dealt with modern wars and their distinctive financial characteristics, and it said nothing that was not permitted to be freely said in every country at war except Australia. As a matter of fact the book contained dozens of statements from financial and other journals in England. Statements freely, made in England without fear of suppression -- were here prohibited.

For the time being, the military censorship is in recess. The suppressed facts therefore see the light of day, and the material within the suppressed book is once more placed upon the market. Five more years of history have brought more facts necessitating much re-arrangement, especially in connection with recent economic events within Australia. Therefore, for the majority of readers this book will be as new in material and structure as it is in title.

"The War to End War" (ie, World War I) has finished these two years. The "New World After the War" and the "Green Fields of Perpetual Peace" are no longer unveiled to the gaze of admiring audiences. All the mirages have disappeared, and in their place come the pressure of governments squeezing from the masses the wherewith to meet the demands of the oligarchy of bondholders whom the "War for Democracy" has made more powerful than ever.

The burden of "Interest" is equivalent to an indemnity imposed by a foreign conqueror. It continues to increase, not merely from the process of fresh borrowings; but from the heavy blackmail imposed by the "High Financiers" at every renewal of the old mortgages.

This blackmail is not restricted to war loans. It is applied to all the pre-war debts of the States. Their renewed mortgages are only renewed at doubled or nearly doubled rates. Apart from wages and material, these increased interest charges upon the old obligations increase the maintenance costs of public utilities by millions of pounds per annum. These additional millions per year are paid away for, nothing in return -- no service, no product. Moreover, the more prices of products fall the more and more products must be sold to meet the demands of "Interest."

Financial Capitalism is determined that Interest shall be met by scraping down the wages of Labor. Thus, responsible statesmen declare that "wages would have to be reduced" -- but nothing is said about Interest. Thus the daily press carries on persistent propaganda in favor of lower wages; but declares that the high rates of interest are "sacred," therefore Labor must be broken on the wheel that these "sacred" obligations may be met. For these sacred purposes, we have the rapid co-ordination of the police and military forces; a unified command carried to the point in some States of placing both agencies, the bayonet and the baton, under one man, one ordre militaire.

In order that forty millions may be annually paid to the Bondholders at home and abroad, the standard of life for the workers is to be systematically reduced -- that's the situation.

In a foreword to "Shylock" I used these words:

"This movement of ours talks of the instruments of production, distribution and exchange. Of the first two we hear much and read much. Upon the last we are silent in speech and policy. Yet in the modern world the last is fundamental in industry, in statecraft and in war."

Thus Capitalism controlling the "instruments of Exchange" controls the Governments or diverts their philanthropic endeavours into channels harmless to the Capitalist system. Thus the Russian Communist Government as a first step took possession of the institutes and instruments of exchange and whatever else was left for future decision, these were not. It needs not belief in the Russian Government or in the principles for which it stands to see, as a fact apart, that the control of the instruments of exchange has been the basis of its statecraft, its propaganda, and of its titanic struggle against the world effort to destroy it.

All Governments, whether Liberal, Labor, Socialist, or Communist, all alike have got to face the problem of "financing" whatever they do -- whether they call it reform or revolution. No change in the mere machinery of Government; no change in the industrial ownership or workshop control will be of permanent value while an annual tribute of £40,000,000 continues to be torn from production to fatten foreign and local bondholders. While that exists even the Socialist State would be but a mere collecting agent for the holders of the £800,000,000 blister on Australian industry, and so long as Great Britain stands upon her legs and her navies float upon the seas, so long must Australia's obligations to British financiers be met, irrespective of the character of Australian Governments or the composition of her industries.

Repudiation [of the debt], so easy to say, would impose upon the country economic difficulties and boycotts as burdensome as the load of interest from which it was sought to escape. On the other hand, any policy, Labor or otherwise, which is based upon further indebtedness and further additions to the load of interest only pushes the country from bad to worse. And the futility of the effort is not neutralised by nicknaming it "progress" or "reform."

Yet the nation may do as did Lincoln: "Rose resolute; and like the sea-called stream, Tore new channels where he found no way."

It is in coping with the problems of Finance that the world has got to find its regeneration. All reorganisations of industry, all social projects, and all efforts to climb out of the pit of misery into which the burdens of war surely push the people are dependent upon the first. No mere policy of alleviation will meet the position. Revolution in method, not in words, is the sole alternative to a long period of grinding poverty for the mass.

This impulse, this essential action cannot come from one man, or a few. It will come from the miseries, the dissatisfactions, the passions of the masses. The duty of leaders is to be ready for it, and when it comes guide it along the right channels.

Note the helplessness of governments, their aimless drift on the stream of events, their frenzied efforts to meet the rising tide of their responsibilities by piling debts higher and higher, and making heavier and heavier the burdens on production. "After us the deluge" -- that is their unsaid prayer and their public policy -- so that Australia in the path of the world's cyclone drifts unruddered to the crisis.

Therefore, here is a bird's eye view of the world, a record of facts which capitalist journalism, as far as possible, excludes from public observation. Here is the mechanism of financial piracy seen in the past and present -- as it was, as it is -- as it operates in America, England, and Australia. Here is a record of barefaced buccaneering, piratical legislation, and Capitalist methods of waging war at a profit and of robbery in times of peace. Here are the facts which men who would act must know -- the situation as it is, and the methodical foundations upon which must rest all policies of effective reconstruction.

FRANK ANSTEY. March, 1921.