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

1.  The Rise of Capitalism

Building the empire of high finance and bondage

The Historic

For a thousand years England waged war at home and abroad -- by sea and land -- wars of aggression and defence -- wars on Spanish Main and coasts of Barbary -- wars against Armadas of old Madrid and fleets of the bold Van Tromp -- wars in Normandy and Flanders -- wars of Roses and Roundheads -- wars inside and outside, civil and foreign, somewhere, always -- and yet she emerged from that thousand years of bloody strife free of debt, no harpies within her borders to gather interest from the blood of sacrifice. Give your life or give your money -- that was patriotism in the days when patriotism meant "love of country," and not a blood-sucking money lender's parody.

But times changed. Dutch finance, a Germanised throne, and capitalised industry were the marks of the transformation and kings no longer went forth to battle, and money no longer freely served the nation that protected it. Money -- Finance -- began to look upon war as a rich gold mine yielding fat dividends for ever and ever without end.

The Jew Medina [as Solomon de Medina was known], came in the train of William the Dutchman. He gave Marlborough £6,000 a year for the first tips of victories in France or Flanders. All the tricks bound up in rising and falling prices, lying reports from the seat of war, the pretended arrival of couriers, the formation of financial cliques to work the market, cabals and connivings behind the scenes, the whole system of Mammon's Wheels -- Medina worked them to the full. His successors have amplified his methods.

After Medina came the Jew, Manessah Lopes. He amassed a fortune in the panic which followed the false news that Queen Anne was dead. He "bought on the slump and sold on the rise." Then came Sampson Gideon and the Goldsmids -- Abraham and Benjamin. These were succeeded by the Rothschilds.

The Napoleonic wars made the fortunes of the Rothschilds. They combined brokerage with banking. Behind the bulling and bearing and thimble rigging on the market there was all the resources of deposits entrusted to their care. "Loan floating" as distinct from lending became a new occupation. "Oh! all ye people; all ye who love your king and your country come into the good thing. Subscribe to the loan!" -- the deed was done. It was incidental that fortunes were skimmed off in all sorts of flotation charges and devices.

When the war was over the money market was "tightened," credit restricted, prices depressed. The public sold their bonds, the riggers bought, confidence was restored, the public bought once more. A perpetual game of inflation and restriction, colossal fortunes made not by honest trade but by financial trickery and market fakes, instruments of the spieler, tick-tacks of the racecourse, garbed in respectability, sheltered by the Law, and hosannahed by the Church.

The Empire of "High Finance" became more and more intricate and extensive. The dynasty of the Rothschilds became more and more powerful. Around its throne gathered satraps and satellites -- compatriots and puppets worked its will and shared the spoils. Its dominion was over nations. Its influence and its interests were as much in Berlin as in London. Its titles and distinctions were gathered from every flag. Thus, in 1914, Alfred Rothschild, director of the Bank of England, could wear the "Order of the Crown of Germany." the "Grand Cross of Austria," and be Austrian Consul-General in London. His son Alfred, born in Germany, was a member of the "Imperial Yacht Club of Germany" and attache of the German Embassy in London.

For such men as these there were neither internment camps nor deportations nor any exhibitions of anti-German hostility. They had behind them the approbations of the British press, the smiles of "British" royalty, the guns of British militarism. These Rothschilds and their clique of friends and satellites personified "Finance", "Loan Power, "Banking Power" -- they were safe.

Capitalism and War

The English financial newspaper, "The Economist," [E1] had an editor named Frank Hirst. He did not say the things the proprietors thought he ought to say, so he had to go. Then he wrote a book on the economics of war and in that he said:

"The magnitude and appalling character of the influence on the welfare of the whole nation exercised by the Stock Exchange, is entirely due to the fact that the securities dealt in on its floors represent in paper form the bulk of the business of the nation."

This "Paperisation" of industry is the feature which distinguishes "Capitalism" from all other economic systems. The existence of an enormously rich class, the employment of masses of men to maintain a few in idleness, the ownership of the country and of its industries by a few individuals do not constitute Capitalism, because rich men, slaves and serfs, and dominance of industrial resources by the few existed long prior to Capitalism. The fact that a man is rich, or employs labor, or owns an industry does not make him a Capitalist. To say it does is to say that Capitalism is older than the Pyramids.

It is the cutting up of industry and countries into stocks and bonds and scrip that make the Capitalist System relatively modern and definitely distinctive. When an industry is floated into so many shares of one pound or ten pounds, that business is "capitalised," and it commences to run its course in a capitalist manner. That is to say; quick riches comes no more entirely from the profits of industry, but from the market manipulation of shares. The actual business is henceforth only a thing to monkey with, and 'boom' or stiffen to the spielers' needs. Shares must be bulled or beared, let out or pulled in, and every time they come in they must come loaded with the spoils of speculation. Between the rise and the fall, the inflation and depression, the price at which the victims buy and the price at which they are squeezed out dry, the riggers of the market draw to themselves the savings of the trustful.

Profits are piled up in bank credits, re-invested and re-invested until the field of industrial activity is exploited to its limit. Money, in the language of the market, becomes "plentiful" and "cheap." In other words, the industrial outlets are diminishing, and the rate of interest, the "reward of Capital," is falling. It will fall to zero. Something must be done -- it is done. International hatreds are stimulated. People prepare for peace by grinding the axe of bloody slaughter. Armaments are demanded, loans are raised, and the right to levy perpetual tribute on the nation is given in return. Even this is insufficient to mop up profits as rapidly as their accumulation.

So war comes; any pretext suffices. War must come. It is the product of the predacious instinct in every age and clime. But there is a difference. Under every other economic system, war placed the yoke of slavery on the conquered foreigner. Under capitalism, war is made the instrument of the enslavement of men of kindred race and blood.

War borrows millions of the piled profits -- interest rises. More millions of loans -- higher and yet higher interest. Much rubbing of hands on the Stock Exchanges -- 3.5 per cent yesterday, 4.5 to-day, and 5.5 or 7 per cent tomorrow. Men may rot on battlefields, but Money gathers an ever-increasing harvest of rich, ripe fruit, and when existing credits are exhausted, fictitious credits are created and new methods of barefaced loot are perpetrated, and when the war is over Money flows back into industry at the higher rates of interest created by the war.

Thus, because the interests of rival robbers are at the base of war, human rights, social rights, the political and industrial rights of the masses are never written in the Peace terms of warring capitalist States. They are always written in terms of coal, iron, oil, steel rails, locomotives and timber concessions. Give us, sell us, or buy from us, always in terms of property and profit.

It is not necessary for revolutionaries to affirm these facts. They are admitted by the candid of every faction. In the introduction to his book on the "Franco-Prussian War," Count Von Moltke -- Junker, Imperialist, and Warrior -- said:

"The great conflicts of modern times break out contrary to the will and wish of nominal rulers. The Stock Exchange has acquired an influence so great that it is able to call armed nations into the field to fight in its interests. Blood flows in order that the demands of High Finance may be liquidated."

To the capitalisation or paperisation of industry is added the capitalisation of the living masses. War stimulates the process. The nation sinks further and further into debt. It is mortgaged. It is cut up into stocks, bonds, and debentures at so much per cent. It is sold in pieces upon the market-places of the world, and the right to bleed is sold to the highest bidder...

To carry out these vast flotations and speculations in war or in peace, it is necessary to control vast credits. To control credits it is necessary to control the banks. Whosoever controls the banks controls industry. This control is exercised in every country by a small group -- the inner circle of great Capitalists.

This group is designated "The Money Power." It is the latest product of Capitalism. It is its offspring, and yet its master. Industrial capitalism is observable and understandable. Financial capitalism lurks in vaults and banking chambers, masquerading its operations in language that mystifies or dazzles, and this power that holds the "monopoly of the instruments of exchange," is the overlord of every other monopoly.

The key to the power of this group is combination and concentration. It controls banks, trust companies, insurances -- the main depositories of the peoples' savings or the reservoir to which they flow. It controls all credit. It advances or withholds credits, builds up or destroys. It controls the daily press; finances the dope propaganda; wields an unseen sceptre over thrones; cabinets and populations; and is the dominant "behind the curtain" power in the governments of modern States.

Such is the modern "Money Power."