"Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money" - Gottfried Feder (1919)
I am prompted to mention this booklet by, and perhaps as an adjunct to, the fascinating series by Tereza [Czarina] Coraggio on her caret-based monetary system in her articles titled Caretology and Dreaming and Scheming (no doubt to be continued).
Contents:
The Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money
a. What is Mammonism?
b. What is the cure for Mammonism?
c. The nine points of the Manifesto.
Implementation and Rationale
The Conversion of War-Bonds into Bank-Credit
Special Comments on the Demand for Laws in the Manifesto
The Objections and their Refutation
Further Program
I will just reproduce the first chapter and let you read and/or listen on
PDF link:
https://archive.org/details/manifesto-for-abolition-enslavement-interest-on-money-gottfried-feder
Audio link [2:40:16]:
Written in 1919, here are the first 10 pages (or 10 minutes of audio) (my bold highlights):
Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money
Mammonism is the heavy, all-encompassing and overwhelming sickness from which our contemporary cultural sphere, and indeed all mankind, suffers. It is like a devastating illness, like a devouring poison that has gripped the peoples of the world.
By Mammonism is to be understood:
on the one hand, the overwhelming international money-powers, the supragovernmental financial power enthroned above any right of self- determination of peoples, international big capital, the purely Gold International;
on the other hand, a mindset that has taken hold of the broadest circle of peoples; the insatiable lust for gain, the purely worldly-oriented conception of life that has already led to a frightening decline of all moral concepts and can only lead to more.
This mindset is embodied and reaches its acme in international plutocracy.
The chief source of power for Mammonism is the effortless and endless income that is produced through interest.
From the thoroughly immoral idea of interest on loans the Gold International was born. The mental and moral constitution grown from the lust for interest and profiteering of every kind has led to the frightening corruption of a part of the bourgeoisie.
The idea of interest on loans is the diabolical invention of big loan-capital; it alone makes possible the lazy drone's life of a minority of tycoons at the expense of the productive peoples and their work-potential; it has led to profound, irreconcilable differences, to class-hatred, from which war among citizens and brothers was born.
The only cure, the radical means to heal suffering humanity is
the abolition of enslavement to interest on money.
The abolition of enslavement to interest on money signifies the only possible and conclusive liberation of productive labor from the hidden coercive money-powers.
The abolition of enslavement to interest signifies the restoration of the free
personality, the redemption of man from slavery, from the curse whereby Mammonism has bound his soul. Whoever wishes to fight capitalism, must abolish enslavement to interest.
Where must the abolition of enslavement to interest begin? With loan-capital!
Why?
Because loan-capital, compared to all industrial big capital, is so overpowering that the great money-powers can only be fought effectively through the abolition of interest-slavery. 20:1 is the proportion of loan-capital to industrial big capital. The German people must annually raise more than 12 billion in interest for loan- capital in the form of direct and indirect taxes, rent, and the rising cost of living, while even in the boom-years of the war the sum-total of all dividends distributed by the German joint-stock companies amounted to only 1 billion.
The avalanche-like growth of loan-capital surpasses all human capacity for calculation, through eternal, endless, and effortless income from interest, and from interest on interest.
What blessing does the abolition of enslavement to interest bring for the laboring folk of Germany, for the proletarians of all countries of the Earth?
The abolition of enslavement to interest gives us the possibility of pursuing the repeal of all direct and indirect taxes. Hear this, you value-producing men of all lands, all states and continents: all state revenues flowing from direct and indirect sources pour constantly into the pockets of big loan-capital.
The profits of state-owned businesses, including the postal service, telegraph, telephone, railroad, mines, forests, and so on, suffice entirely for the funding of all essential state commitments for schools, universities, courts, administrative agencies, and social welfare.
Thus no true socialism will bring any blessing to humanity as long as the profits from public enterprises remain tributary to big loan-capital.
Therefore we demand as a fundamental law of the state, first for the German peoples, then as a fundamental law for all those kindred peoples that wish to enter with us into the cultural community of a league of nations, the following:
§ 1. War-bonds, along with all other debt-instruments of the German Reich, along with all other debt-instruments of the German federal states, especially railroad-bonds, as well as debenture-bonds of all local governments, are declared, under cancellation of the obligation for interest, to be legal tender for the face-value [or rather are to be converted into bank-credit].
§ 2. With all other fixed-interest papers, covered bonds, industrial bonds, mortgages, etc., the obligation for interest is replaced by the obligation to repay the principal; thus after 20 or 25 years, depending on the interest- rate, the lent capital is repaid and the debt retired.
§ 3. All real-estate debts, mortgages, etc., are to be paid off on installments of the same amount as the payments required hitherto, in keeping with the charges recorded in the land-register. The property in houses and land freed from debt in this manner becomes partly the property of the state or of the local government. [In this way the state becomes better situated to control and to lower rents.]
§ 4. The entire monetary system should be under the state's central bank. All private banks likewise; postal-check banks, savings banks, and credit unions, all become affiliated as branch-operations.
§ 5. All credit for real estate is awarded only through the state's bank. Personal credit and commercial credit are mandated to private bankers under a concession from the state. This concession is granted based on consideration of need, with a ban on the establishment of branches for certain districts. The scale of charges is fixed by the state.
§ 6. Equity-securities are paid off in the same manner as fixed-interest papers at the annual rate of 5%. Excess profits are paid out in part to the stockholders as compensation for “risked” capital (in contrast to fixed- interest and coin-backed papers), while the remaining surplus, by the sovereign right of labor, is either socially distributed or applied for the reduction of the prices of products.
§ 7. For all persons who for physical reasons (advanced age, illness, physical or mental work-disability, extreme youth) are not in a position to earn their livelihood, the interest-incomes from present capital assets continue to be paid as a pension at the same, and eventually even increased levels, in return for delivery of securities.
§ 8. In the interest of a reduction of the current inflation of paper money, a universal, strongly graduated tax on war-bond certificates and other debt-instruments of the Reich and of states is enacted. These papers are to be pulped.
§ 9. Through intensive enlightenment of the people, it is to be made clear to the people that money is and should be nothing other than a voucher for completed labor; that while every highly developed economy of course has need of money as a medium of exchange, the function of money also ends with that, and in no case should money be lent a supramundane power to grow of itself by means of interest, at the expense of productive labor.
Why have we not already done all this, which is so self-evident, which must be regarded as the Egg of Columbus for the social question?
Because in our Mammonistic blindness we have unlearned how to see clearly that the doctrine of the sanctity of interest is a monstrous self-deception, that the gospel of the loan-interest that alone makes one blessed has entangled our entire thinking in the golden web of international plutocracy. Because we have forgotten and are deliberately kept in confusion by the omnipotent money-powers about the fact that -- except in the case of a few rich people -- the interest that seems so lovely, and is so beloved of the thoughtless, is completely offset by taxes. All of our tax-legislation is and remains, so long as we do not have liberation from enslavement to interest, only a tribute-obligation to big capital, and not, as we would imagine, a voluntary sacrifice for the accomplishment of labor for the community.
Therefore liberation from enslavement to interest on money is the clear motto for the global revolution, for the liberation of productive labor from the chains of the supragovernmental money-powers.
"The requisite impulse now came from one of the men who delivered lectures in the course I have already mentioned. This was Gottfried Feder.
For the first time in my life I heard a discussion which dealt with the principles of stock−exchange capital and capital which was used for loan activities. After hearing the first lecture delivered by Feder, the idea immediately came into my head that I had now found a way to one of the most essential pre−requisites for the founding of a new party.
To my mind, Feder’s merit consisted in the ruthless and trenchant way in which he described the double character of the capital engaged in stock−exchange and loan transaction, laying bare the fact that this capital is ever and always dependent on the payment of interest. In fundamental questions his statements were so full of common sense that those who criticized him did not deny that au fond his ideas were sound but they doubted whether it be possible to put these ideas into practice. To me this seemed the strongest point in Feder’s teaching, though others considered it a weak point.
[...]
When I heard Gottfried Feder’s first lecture on ‘The Abolition of the Interest−Servitude’, I understood immediately that here was a truth of transcendental importance for the future of the German people. The absolute separation of stock−exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in German business without at the same time attacking capital as such, for to do this would jeopardize the foundations of our national independence. I clearly saw what was developing in Germany and I realized then that the stiffest fight we would have to wage would not be against the enemy nations but against international capital. In Feder’s speech I found an effective rallying−cry for our coming struggle.
Here, again, later events proved how correct was the impression we then had. The fools among our bourgeois politicians do not mock at us on this point any more; for even those politicians now see – if they would speak the truth – that international stock−exchange capital was not only the chief instigating factor in bringing on the War [WWI] but that now when the War is over it turns the peace into a hell.
The struggle against international finance capital and loan−capital has become one of the most important points in the programme on which the German nation has based its fight for economic freedom and independence.
[...]
Thus the judgment arrived at by Gottfried Feder determined me to make a fundamental study of a question with which I had hitherto not been very familiar.
I began to study again and thus it was that I first came to understand perfectly what was the substance and purpose of the life−work of the Jew, Karl Marx. His Capital became intelligible to me now for the first time.
And in the light of it I now exactly understood the fight of the Social−Democrats against national economics, a fight which was to prepare the ground for the hegemony of a real international and stock−exchange capital."
• Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf - CHAPTER VIII - THE BEGINNING OF MY POLITICAL ACTIVITIES
• Feder’s Genius
https://federsgenius.wordpress.com/
Articles:
• Background to the NSDAP’s Struggle Against International Finance Capital
• The Two Main Points of the Programme
• The Thralldom of Interest
• Exposing the “Sacred Cow” of Interest
• The Ivory Tower of Interest
• Thinking Outside The Box: How A Bankrupt Germany Solved Its Infrastructure Problems
• The Rescue Plan
• Empire By Finance
• Private Property and Land Ownership in the National Socialist Economy
• Understanding the Problem – Debt-Based Fiat Currency
• The Solution – Labour-based Currency