switching to the natural economic order is the future of mankind

8/3/2019 Switching to the Natural Economic Order is the Future of Mankind

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Jnos Drbik

Switching to the Natural Economic Order is the Future of

MankindWhy is globalisation anti-human?

Ladies and Gentleman!

Let me mention the following at the outset: I am not value-free and what I have to say is

based on the value-basis acknowledging the universal ethics. Under universal ethics I mean

the recognition and protection of the fundamental needs, interests and values of all people

based on the equality of rights. Before we start to analyze the problems of globalization, we

have to touch upon the nature of the problems. In terms of their possible solutions, problems

are eitherconvergent ordivergent. Methods suitable to solve convergent problems cannot be

used to solve divergent problems. Abstract mathematical methods can be well used for the

convergent problems of the natural sciences and these problems in theory can be solved. On

the other hand, for solving problems in connection with people, the human society and its

activity (and so with economics), mathematical methods can be used only with limits, assubsidiary means.

In the case of divergent problems at least two valid answers can always be given. On the

other hand, in the case of convergent problems it is theoretically possible to give one sole

answer. The problems in connection with people are divergent because life and all human

activities are complex and dynamic and so they can be described only by the double demand

of the mutually complementary contrast pairs. All life phenomena in society are a state of

balance between the contrastive sides that perpetually get upset and are to be constantly

restored if we want to avoid the development of an extreme situation. I would like to support

these introductory remarks of mine only by a few examples. It is a good example of a

convergent problem when the task to create a two-wheel vehicle driven by human power gets

solved. After several draft solutions, the circle of the answers grows narrow and eventuallyonly one answer turns out to be long-lasting: this vehicle is the bicycle, which of course can

have several versions.

This version is long-lasting because it is suitable for the natural laws and the human needs.

The essence of convergent problems is that the more thorough we study them, the more the

answers come near to each other. So, theoretically, these scientific, technological-technical

problems can be solved permanently, because people are not present in these. Physics,

chemistry, astronomy and theoretical sciences as mathematics and geometry deal with

convergent problems.

In case of problems valid for people, social life and economics we experience that the more

we study them, the more conflicting answers we arrive at. The more logical and clearer these

answers are, the more they contradict each other. This is why we can call these problemsramifying, divergent problems. In the human community we call society the two requirements

that conflict each other most frequently are freedom and equality. The former favours the

strong, the latter favours the weaker. Equality sets limits to freedom, while the exaggerated

freedom, the over-equalization liquidates it. While dealing with the questions of people and

society, we find ourselves facing human life and the contrasting pair typical of it, i.e. birth and

growth, decline and death, and in connection with society: freedom and order.

Due to these inevitable contrasts, the balance of human life, and so that of society and

economic life cannot be created with abstract mathematical formulas either. But even if they

cannot be solved, they can be surpassed temporarily with a human-centred, complex

approach. For doing so, on the basis of mutual dependence and responsibility, we have to

keep the fundamental needs and interests of our fellow-beings in view, that is, according to

the Christian ethics, we indeed have to love our fellow as we do ourselves. The need for

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freedom and equality are opposite needs, however, they can form a mutually complementary

and sustainable unity with the help of brotherhood, solidarity and communal spirit. In this

case it is the human-historical experiences and the higher, divine abilities of men (or those

that can be traced back to natural laws) which are the standard, and not logic. In our approach

God means the absolute fairness and the unconditional universal ethics obligatory to everyone

to which each and every people can join via its transcendental dimension. This means that werise above ourselves.

To understand divergent problems better, we have to say that in a substantive-ethical

democracy functioning on the basis of direct participation, justice and mercy are

simultaneously necessary. Seemingly, one contradicts the other, but in fact the mutual

dependence between them makes the order of such substantial democracy lively and balanced,

which is fundamentally different from the present system of plutocratic dictatorship presented

as an alibi-democracy. However, mercy without disciplining force and order is chaos and

anarchy. Society simultaneously needs change and stability, the keeping of tradition and

renewal, the joint prevalence of the public and individual interest through the consensus

between them which has to be continuously renewed.

Demand pairs, double demands have to be met in the economic life too. The harmonious,stable and well-balanced economic life needs the strong frames of the markets operation and

the free movement of its participants, the prudent planning and the economic freedom of do

as you wish, the healthy growth and the natural decline simultaneously. The health of society

and the economic life within depends on the joint and continuous fulfilment of these

conflicting requirements. If only one of the requirements is fulfilled, it makes the society

merciless, it leads to imbalance and then disintegration. This is what happened to the Soviet-

type socialist system whose ruling layer seized the achievements of the citizens work and

obtained the absolute command of them, including the command of their lives too.

Property is power, and those who have an absolute right over property have an absolute

power over people as well. This system, as we know, has shamefully failed. The ultra-liberal

plutocratic world order stands before this very same opportunity as well, where the owners of

the global money monopoly monopolize the achievements of the work of the other people for

themselves by financial techniques, and with the help of the financial and real property, they

obtain the domination of the world for themselves, too. This system is also unbalanced and we

are witnesses of its disintegration.

The concept of globalisation began to be used at the end of the 1950s by American strategic

planners and the experts of the so-called think tanks. However, the concept of globalisation

can thank its real career to the reports published by the Roman Club in the 1970s. Since

globalisation is too a divergent circle of problems to face, as far as its judgement is

considered, there are people who accept the content of it and support it and there are others

who criticize and even attack it. Those who accept it describe the phenomena of globalisationas if they could be traced back to natural laws. They regard globalisation as the organic part of

the relationship between people and nature. Thus globalisation is not only inevitable but is

equal to development and progress. Previously, the expression modernisation was used for

the phenomena of globalisation but they took the interpretation of technical modernisation

from modernisation and abandoned the requirements in connection with the modernisation

of human society that had really been emphasized before. The modernisation of human

society means that society is made to be a fairer medium where the achievement of the work

remains at where it was created. Technical modernisation meant the development of the

technological revolution: the industry and transportation leaning on fossil energy sources, the

automobile, the aeroplane, and even the rocket, but telecommunications, the telephone, the

radio, the television, the internet and nanotechnology also have to be counted among these.

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According to the interpretation of globalisation as such technical modernisation, these

global processes, like natural laws, cannot be influenced. At the same time, their effect is

positive and therefore globalisation has to be welcomed as the natural and inevitable

accessory of the long-term development of humanity. Furthermore, they say that globalisation

is in fact value-free and in terms of politics and power it is a neutral phenomenon. They

think that globalisation as independent from human choice of value. This view questions theraison d'tre of the criticism of globalisation as it is not possible to make natural laws such as

gravitation a matter of criticism either.

Since, as I have already mentioned, we face a divergent problem, we think it is natural that

in the course of the last two decades a series of approaches has been developed criticizing

globalisation. Strong anti-global protests and mass demonstrations have also blossomed out

from these. One part of the anti-global criticisms focuses on the quantitative, while the other

part on the qualitative criticism of globalisation. The criticisms about the quantity or the

extent of globalisation on the one hand regard the process as inevitable but on the other hand

criticise the exaggerations and limitless shamelessness of it. Therefore they want to bring the

powers of globalisation under control in a certain form. We can mention among these Pope

Benedict XVIs now third encyclical which was timed for the meeting of the G8 leaders inItaly on 8 July, 2009. We will later return to the critical analysis of the encyclicals relevant

part.

According to the other big group of people opposing globalisation, the problem with

present globalisation is about its content and quality. The problem is not only that a

fundamentally value-free or even easily manageable process over-expands its possibilities and

therefore becomes unmanageable. The main problem is that globalisation is originally a

destructive, dangerous world-historical development which can be even regarded as fatal from

the point of view of humanity. They do not only claim that globalisation is not a natural law

and therefore it is avoidable, but they also emphasize that referring to political, power and

ideological neutrality is an attempt of the now concretely describable plutocratic structure to

present itself non-existing by the false interpretation it supports. And there is no sense in

criticising something which does not exist.

This question touches the inner problem of globalisation, because if this power structure,

which forces this system on the world and of which it is the beneficiary, does not exist, than

those controllers who keep this system in balance do not exist either. The basic theorem of the

system theory is that all systems collapse in time if there are no balancing counter-forces. A

driving force that exists in itself is not capable of self-organization and inevitably becomes

self-destructive. A part of the anti-global critics regard globalisation as a form of existence

which can turn out to be a fatal dead end for humanity.

The main problem with globalisation is that it is the private monopoly of money that has

become world-wide, functioned by the interest mechanism. This interest mechanism forcesthe world economy for a growth which uses up the unrecoverable fossil energy sources and

destroys the natural environment which is no longer capable of regeneration. On our finite

Earth no subsystem can grow (develop) infinitely. What we need is not a sustainable i.e.

infinite growth, but sustainable energy sources, the survival of humanity and its home, the

planet called Earth.

Interest and the money system controlled by it are of course capable of infinite growth, but

the real economy forced by the money system is not capable of such growth. The plutocratic

civilisation which now has been controlling our world for 250 years is an order of

unsustainability and even till now it could only be operated by a certain form of force. This is

why we regard globalisation as the power system of force (the permanent word-wide civil

war). Globalisation can be regarded as a new lifestyle whose aim is to create and operate anartificial reality that serves the strategic aims of the plutocratic interest groups. This system

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which serves the plutocratic elite expands through liberalisation, deregulation and

privatisation. The plutocratic world order has built a network which is capable of using

force, disciplining and interpreting in a way which is influencing and supervising human

consciousness. The first element of the plutocratic world order is the forcing power, that is,

the network of the multinational companies. The other institutional system of the plutocratic

world order consists of the trans-national financial structures. Here belong the BrettonWoods-twins, the World Bank and the IMF, the WTO (the World Trade Organization), the

investment funds, the institutions of credit analysis and the central banks.

The third institution of the plutocratic world order is the consciousness industry. It is the

telecommunicational, scientific and educational institutions of this industry that formulate and

spread the frame of interpretation which presents the world-dominating order of globalisation

as a natural law.

The competition between the producer economy and money economy

The above makes it evident that the plutocratic system that is now controlling the world is

not the same as entrepreneurial freedom based on equal chances and the market economy built upon it. This plutocratic system, the chrematistics differs significantly from the

economy, namely the real economic life that serves the satisfaction of human needs. Aristotle

already sharply distinguished the economy that serves to satisfy human needs from the money

economy that creates more money out of money, in which the emphasis is not on the traffic of

goods and on value-creating production. Economy deals with producing goods that are

necessary for life and are useful for the state. It produces use values. On the other hand,

money economy wants to make more money from money. In a production economy the main

aspect is to satisfy the needs. The creation of money happens through economic activity.

Money, which is the mediatory agent of the value-creating producer economy, is an agreed

sign which holds the trust of the economic actors. However, money in itself is valueless. What

do has a value is the thing that it represents. Therefore, in fact producing the sign should be

due to those who produce the value which this sign represents.

In this present plutocratic world order the creation of money has been completely

separated from producing the goods and services that hold value. Therefore, producing money

has become an industry itself where an enormous amount of money was attempted to be

produced by evading the real economy. The recent financial world crisis was also induced by

the fact that the money industry which had got separated from the producer economy was

producing uncovered money of the order of hundreds of trillions and was creating money

market products to them offering virtual securities, the so-called toxic assets, that is, toxic

financial means. The money bubble that came into existence this way from the uncovered

trillions of dollars was bound to burst.In this crisis it became clear that money is only secondary and the real value is produced

by the producer economy. The bank system producing and moving the mediatory signs in fact

is only dividing the results of other peoples work. One of the alternatives of todays global

chrematistic is the social market economy and the welfare state. Another way out can be the

protectionism that defends local economic interests and autonomy. The beneficiaries of the

plutocratic system have made a swear-word out of protectionism, although it does not mean

anything else only protecting the weaker economic actors from the economic predators with

superior force.

There have been some attempts to combine globality and locality harmoniously, mainly in

Japan, Taiwan, South-Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. The present plutocratic

system is talking about a market economy based on free enterprise, but in reality theeconomic management that has become ultra-liberal is operating a monopoly system, an

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economy of power. This economy of power is against the productive combination of

protectionism and welfare state. In the ultra-liberal plutocratic order the financial structures

dominating the world economy and the corporate empires do everything to annihilate local

ability to enforce interests i.e. protectionism and the welfare state. In this global plutocratic

system the economy becomes a production line whose function is to make the money capital

flow from bottom to top, to the owners of the financial sphere. The rearrangement of incomeis taking place from production work to the direction of money capital, by monetizing,

privatising and creating trans-national markets across borders.

From the above mentioned the most important is monetizing, in other words, that some

kind of price expressed in money is attached to all existing things and human activities. The

trick here is that those who do not have such mediatory agent do not have any chance to

survive in the plutocratic order. They do not have any other choice but to join those who are

sentenced to liquidation and annihilation.

If we are looking for the future ways of surpassing the present situation, then we have to

resort to scientific foresight. This among others mean that we attempt to take stock of the

possibilities, needs and probabilities and thus to find the way out. The alternative of the

plutocratic globalisation can be the global order based on the priority of producer property, inwhich the institutionalized form of economic-social irresponsibility and limitless selfishness,

the corporation bearing a legal personality gets to be liquidated. In a natural economic order

the property can exist only attached to a concrete, natural person and the amount of property

depends on the performance of its operator. The natural person-owner has a share in its profit

in proportion to his performance and he can freely possess this surplus.

This is not the failed system of extreme equality, the over-equalization. But it is not equal

to the system of the plutocratic world order that is based on financial diversification either, to

which a preference is shown to be called democratic capitalism. In the new property structure

only a natural person can be an owner and the extent of his property goes by the performance

of this natural person. The order of just inequality would replace todays order of extremely

unjust inequality.

In the system called socialism the interest groups that exercised power took away the

properties and work achievements from those creating value by the help of the means of

police force practiced by the party-state. The members of the nomenclature that directed the

party-state were in possession of the material conditions of freedom without personal

achievements. In the present plutocratic dictatorship the interest groups that monopolize the

monetary privileges for themselves monopolize the achievements of the work of others by the

help of the private monopoly of money. They take the task of producing the mediatory agent

of the economic life away from the states exercising public authority and forward it to the

bank system which is in their possession. The private monopoly of money makes it possible

to draw away the work of those creating value in the form of interest, which is the generaltheorem of getting someone into dept, and to drive the states, the economic actors and the

individuals into debt traps.

The dept spiral started out this way is constantly moving the created values to those who

possess the monopoly of creating the signs, namely the money. In both systems, in state

monopoly and money monopoly, unjust inequality prevails because in an unnatural way the

one who possesses the achievements of work is not the same person who created it with his

performance. It is this unnatural system that has to be replaced by the system of just inequality

suitable for the human nature. This is the natural economic order, in which two people are

different mainly on the basis of their performance.

In the natural economic order based on the priority of production the role of money

decreases and the primary function of money will be to act as a go-between in economicprocesses. In this new system the possibility to make more money directly out of money (by

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omitting the production economy and personal performance) will be put an end to. The money

system operated by the private money monopoly and the mechanism of charging interest will

be replaced by the public money system. The credit money charging interest will be replaced

by the neutral global currency standing above all the national currencies, which can lead to

world trade relations really working based on free and equal chances.

The term natural economic order was first used by Silvio Gesell, a German-Argentinebusinessman. Gesell was known to be a socially committed thinker, and in 1919 he was

invited to be the finance minister of the Bavarian government of that time. Silvio Gesell

already died in 1930 and opposed both Marxism and national socialism. The American world-

famous economist-mathematician Irving Fisher called himself the modest follower of the

Argentine businessman Silvio Gesell. And John Maynard Keynes said that the world will

learn more from him than from Marx and that the 21st century will be his.

Gesell deduces the concept of natural economic order from the natural state of men. If we

do not originate money from a somewhat irrational superhuman power dominating human

society, than the harmony of economy and society comes into existence from the free game of

powers and reason. Gesell emphasized that an economic order can only be qualified natural if

there are no privileges, that is, monopolies in it, and the layer of money capital that possessesthe mediatory agent of economy does not dominate it. Such natural economic order does not

come into existence by itself. It can be created by ceasing all privileges, the private money

monopoly in the first place, because this is the only way real equality of chance belonging to

everyone can be provided.

Gesell is being silenced and disliked by the ruling layer of the present plutocratic world

order although Gesell has sharply distanced himself from racist and anti-Semite ideology.

Darwins theory based on the fight for existence had a great effect on him, but Gesell refused

to use this automatically for the society and the economy. He regarded the communal spirit of

a nation as natural and healthy, and therefore he accepted moderate nationalism as a healthy

attribute. However, he opposed extreme nationalism, chauvinism. He thought that the

expansion of the nation states should be replaced by the cooperation of the European states

based on equality. He was convinced that the condition for peace is the success of justice,

both in financial-economic and social-political affairs, including international relations as

well. Therefore, it is justice based on the universal ethics that has to be realized in the first

place, and it is only after this that we can talk about long-lasting peace.

My personal opinion is that there is no good capitalism, there is no good plutocratic system,

but it is possible to create a more or less just market economy free of monopolies, operating

on the basis of equal chances. Capitalism is not the same as market economy, not to mention

social market economy. Real market economy is a system related to natural persons and their

performance, and it provides the freedom of equal chances for all economic actors. The

operation of the present plutocratic world order is facilitated by the fact that it has the mostimportant universal monopoly, the private money system operated by the interest mechanism.

Gesell did not formulate it this way, but he multiply came out in support of the open world

market free of any kind of monopoly.

He supported the ceasing of custom borders and narrow-minded national trade

protectionism too. He did not live through World War II, therefore he did not have to face that

the monetary system that came to existence after the war and its organizations of universal

authority, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been all enforcing the

interests of the trans-national money cartel. Gesell wanted an international currency

federation which would circulate a neutral global currency that would stand above all the

national currencies. Neutral money is tame money not suitable for exercising power. Such

a neutral global currency would be able to operate the world trade in a way that could lead tojust exchange ratios.

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The plutocratic power-economy is unfit for operating an economy suitable for the needs

and interests of each and every people. The money system pressed to expand by the interest

mechanism forces an economic growth that destroys the natural environment and energy

sources necessary for maintaining life. Socialism and capitalism which work as the systems of

unjust inequality are not the alternatives of each other, they are both the opposites of the just

inequality dependent on personal achievement.There are several reasons for the failure of the market economys opposites, namely the

state-monopoly and money-monopoly economic system. The most important reason can be

found in the errors of the money system. The first such error is that the interest mechanism

operating in the money system can only secure the circulation of money in the middle term,

but never in the long-term. The long-lasting charging of interest is a mathematical-logical

impossibility, and therefore it is only suitable for maintaining the circulation of money for a

limited time.

Many of our contemporaries still believe that we only pay interest if we raise a loan. This is

a mistake, because every price contains an interest which the producer and the servicer raising

the loan pay to the bank system in order to obtain means of production. Thanks to the

brainwashing activity of the mass media we also believe that paying the interests is a justservice. The interest system only redistributes the produced income, and it does it so by

constantly pumping the money from those that live from their work to those who can

accumulate and lend their money. It is also a misconception about the interest mechanism that

we have to pay interest because of inflation. Inflation is the concomitant of the loan system,

and the interest is needed to secure the circulation of money. Interest makes it possible to have

income without achievement, and, as we have mentioned before, it presses the economy to a

forced, unnatural growth and increases the inequality between incomes.

Gesell would restore the public money system in the natural economic suggested by him

This would mean that instead of charging interest, the mediatory means of economic life i.e.

the money would get under the control of the society. And the circulation of money would not

be secured by the interest mechanism but by the duty of money usage and money retaining.

This would not favour those who have a large amount of money surplus but the whole society

and the state or region representing it, those issuing and using the money. This way, the role

of money would be limited to its original function, that is, it would be a mediatory means of

exchange again.

The financial world system and the economic world crisis put the leading groups of the

present plutocratic world order at a crossroads. They are aware of the fact that it is not only

the financial and economic system that has got into a crisis, but the ecologic balance of our

planet has also got upset. Therefore it is no longer possible to keep postponing the

replacement of the present system which is based on the private money monopoly and is

operated by the interest mechanism. We have mentioned already that the present plutocraticworld order is an empire with a private nature which does not set out from the fundamental

interests of the whole humanity but of the selfish interests of the privileged interest groups of

this world order.

As the institutional establishment of the New World Order has got on the agenda, it has

become necessary to remove the trillions of dollars that had been produced by the methods of

big industries and to convert the existing money into covered money, above all by making the

states run into debt on a scale which had no precedent in world history before. The elite of the

world is also considering escaping to an armed conflict. Plans have been made to issue a kind

ofGlobal Single Currency, a world currency covered by precious metal, and to establish a

Central Bank of global authority which is necessary for operating this system. But even that

question has not been decided yet whether it should be the Bank of International Settlement in

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Basel, the International Monetary Fund which is also invested with the authority of a central

bank, or some third organization.

The global elite of the plutocratic world order does not want to hear about the free

economic model of Silvio Gesell. In spite of this, the ideas of Gesell about free money have

been spreading. Irving Fisher, the advisor of president Roosevelt said about the free money

suggested by Gesell that it would be able to properly control the circulation of money. In thepresent monetary system operated by interest mechanism it is the interest mechanism that

most upsets the stability of the price level. Fisher was of the opinion that using free money

would in a few weeks help America come out of the crisis it got into between 1929 and 1930.

Let us summarize: why has the plutocratic world order got into a crisis? First of all, because

the money economy has not only separated from the producer economy but it has also

suppressed it. This monetary system is a parasite construction operated by the bubble money

issued by the banks and the speculations with capital transfer made by the investors. By the

separation of the money economy from the producer economy, an unbalanced system has

come to existence. The public welfare serving the needs of all people has become

subordinated to the one-dimensional selfish profit interests of the wealthy interest groups. The

sign mediating the processes of real economy, namely the money has also been transformed.Debt has replaced the role of money. Debt money differs from normal money in that it

comes to existence debited with interest from the first. This necessarily leads to the economic

actors running into debt and becoming dependent.

The biggest error of the present plutocratic economy is that it necessarily creates

indebtedness. This plutocratic economy, when it had became global, did not allow the states

to use their individually issued national currencies any more. It forbade the states to issue

money individually and to control their credit system with issuing real money covered by the

work of that certain national economy and the economic actors functioning in it.

About the strategy of the leading groups of the plutocratic world order, it is worth quoting the

concise definition of university professorCarroll Quigley, mentor of Bill Clinton, from his

book Tragedy and Hope, page 324. According to this, the aim of the international network of

the money asset owners is nothing less than to create a world system of financial control

in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy

of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the

central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent

meetings and conferences.

The central bank of the United States, the FED was established in 1913 and is a private

financial institution in the hands of private banks. Since it is one of the important institutions

of the plutocratic world order, its activity has an effect on the whole world. Due to the activity

of the FED there is never enough money to satisfy the needs of the producer real economy.

This makes it possible for the private banks owned by the international money cartel to offerto help the actors of the real economy and to supply the missing amount of money in return

for a proper interest. They have become the institutionalized means of the central banks and

the producer economy to make the actors of the economic life indebted. They force them to

raise loans from them in exchange for a high interest defined by them by artificially

decreasing the amount of money in circulation.

Those disposing over the monopoly of the credit system are interested in making this

system general and to help it obtain a leading role in the whole world. In order to make more

people raise loans and run into debts they supported unlimited consuming, lavish spending,

the desire for obtaining, all of which destroys saving and consumption that adjusts to income.

Due to the vacillation of the present plutocratic world order and its central currency, the FED-

dollar, the problem of money and interest has become a stressed matter in international

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politics again today. The financial crisis caused not only an economic, but also a social,

societal and even a political crisis, too.

It is worth referring to how the international money cartel has been looting Hungary in the

last one and a half year. Hungarys running into debt began when it raised a credit of one

billion dollars between 1973 and 1989, this was the amount that actually flowed into the

country. During the same period it paid 11 billion dollars worth of interest and a 22 billiondollars worth of unpaid debt still remained. In 1990 the now democratically elected

government decided that it would privatize one part of the national wealth in operation and

from the incoming money it would pay the debt of the country. The working national wealth

was estimated by the International Monetary Fund to be 130-140 billion dollars.

90 % of this was sold, but altogether a value of 20 billion dollars flowed into the country

during the last 19 years. The central bank, which is exclusively under the control of the

foreign financial structures, kept these 20 billion dollars on its own foreign exchange account

and it gave the Hungarian state forint issued on its own. This forint, after circulating in the

national economy, became a profit in forint for the companies owned by foreigners, an

interest in forint in the banks and a capital endowment in forint for the capital investors. These

foreign asset owners changed the forint for foreign exchange in the foreign exchange accountset up in the National Bank and brought it out from the country. This way, the forint got back

to its issuer, and the National Bank annulled it with different methods and withdrew it from

circulation. It inflated most of it or it withdrew it from money circulation with other, so-called

sterilising techniques and sent it back to where it produced it, that is, into the air. The

Hungarian people therefore basically got inflation in exchange for its national wealth.

In the last one and a half year, the trans-national financial structures carried out the drain of

the income of the Hungarian national economy by basically flooding the country with

speculative hot capital. While the fivefold of the gross domestic product (25 thousand billion

forints) appeared on our bank accounts in 1995, in 2008 it is 43 times bigger than the now 28

thousand billion forint worth GDP. This huge amount of foreign exchange (mainly euro and

dollar) arrived in the country to make an interest of 12-14% instead of the 2-3%, denominated

to forint. When it sucked itself with the huge margin of real interest, it wanted to leave freely.

In order to do that, it was and is necessary to have a large sum of reserves on the foreign

exchange account of the Central Bank. The 18.5 billion euro in 2008 were not enough, this is

why the international money cartel forced a further 25 billion dollar and 20 billion euro on

Hungary via the International Monetary Fund and the EU, so that it can completely bring out

the huge interest difference drained from the Hungarian national economy without being

disturbed. The residents were told that the state budget has got into a situation near

bankruptcy and that it is for avoiding state bankruptcy and preserving workplaces in the real

economy why its necessary to accept the 25 billion dollarstand-by credit, to which a 5%

interest have to be paid in advance even if this interest is not called.Up to this day, about 80% of this enormous sum have been called, but nor the Monetary

Fund, nor the Central Bank, nor the state is willing to tell that exactly how much credit was

obtained by whom and when from this stand-by credit. The deficit of the Hungarian budget is

today in the middle of the average of the European Union countries. This is what we can say

about the foreign debts of the Hungarian state too. The Hungarian budget and the foreign

debts of the Hungarian state therefore did not make it necessary to raise this enormous credit.

Since the actors of the producer economy the small and medium businesses in the first place

did not obtain credits later either, the money was not spent on what it was drummed into the

residents by the mass media, that is, to save the workplaces. It is still unknown today exactly

who got the money, since on 27th July, 2009, no one else than Pter Felcsuti, the managing

director of the Raiffeisen Bank and the president of the Hungarian Bank Association told thatthe banks got nothing from this money. So if the state did not get any, the producer economy

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did not get any and the financial institutions belonging to the bank association did not get any,

then where did the 80% of this enormous sum get to?

The answer can only be the following: they filled the foreign exchange account of the

Central Bank with this, so that the stunningly high speculative hot capital arriving in Hungary

could undisturbedly take out the interest difference it made from to the fact that the foreign

financial structures could achieve that the Hungarian National Bank raise the normativeinterest rate high. While in the other countries of Europe and the world the interest rates began

to be decreased due to the effect of the financial crisis, in Hungary in the course of a few

months it was raised by more than its half, to 11.5%. Even at present - after several decreases

the interest rate in Hungary is quite high: 8.5%.

It is not only the emerging countries like Hungary that got into a difficult situation due to

the still ongoing financial world crisis, but the most well-developed industrial countries are

also being choked by the debt-service burdens. The monetary conflicts (for example that the

countries of the European Union had to take a debt of 3000 billion euro upon themselves from

public money to help out the banks that ravaged irresponsibly in the monetary system they

transformed into a global financial casino) affects the present plutocratic world order and the

stability of the world economy fundamentally. This ultra-liberal plutocratic order turned out tobe unnatural and therefore it does not have reason for existence in the long run. In this system

the freedom of the wealthy elite was deformed into the limitless freedom of abusing the

freedom of others.

Therefore the system is fundamentally unnatural. Something can be called natural if it

adjusts to the basic outer and inner living conditions of people. The most suitable order for the

human nature is the one in which each and every man can expand the most and where its

optimal development is secured. This can be measured as well. If we look at how much

energy and human energy source is needed for one square kilometre to produce a product of a

bigger quantity and better quality, then the economic and social order where people can

expand the most can be regarded the most natural one. It has to be kept in view that the output

of the economy and the economic performance is for the people and it is not the people who

are for the profit and the interest.

Gesell considered healthy competition to be very important, because this is the only thing

that can make it possible for the one performing the best to develop and the unsuitable one to

be eliminated. However, the competition equal to the natural laws can be possible only if the

privileges are completely ignored. Equality of chance can only be secured if it is the personal

attributes and performance of each and every person that decide the outcome of the

competition. This is how the best features can be selected and be passed on to the next

generations.

For the competition going on based on the equality of chance it is necessary to freely say

the truth and the justice that respects the dignity of all people. This openness is also afundamental factor of competition. In an era when secrets are predominating, let us think of

state secrets, official secrets, business secrets, bank secrets, national security secrets, these

many secrets all advance that the dishonest and deceitful people can also be successful and

obtain bigger profit by keeping their fraudulent methods secret. A man can suit his own nature

if he can follow his rightful and just self-interest, the self-supporting instinct that is in his

genes as a natural law. It has been proven that among the circumstances of the equality of

chance that is due to everyone, people can perform optimally both individually and together

with others. And if this is the case, then the tree which bears good fruit cannot be bad. We

have to strive for a social freedom which includes the entrepreneurial freedom based on the

economic equality of chance as well.

Following the self-interest is not the same as selfishness. In order to make a just systemwork, it has to be made possible that everyone enforces their self-interest in the right

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proportion. And this is only possible if each and every person himself has disposal over the

result of his work. This is the material basis for enforcing his self-interest, for his self-

determination and personal freedom. The result of work therefore can only belong to the one

who did that work. If we do not build economy upon this self-interest, if not everyone can

have fair profit and the result of his work based on his free decision, then the natural

economic order is unable to function.Therefore the natural economic order replacing the plutocratic system of globalisation can

be based only on a private property that is linked to a person, reflects its performance and is

burdened with responsibility towards the other people. However, private property can, as the

association of free individuals, function in communal versions of different stages and co-

operative forms as well. Neither the state-monopoly power nor the private-monopoly

plutocracy can take away from a value-creating person the individual freedom, independence,

personal responsibility and the right to dispose over the result of his work. The basis of the

individual and social freedom is the private property linked to the achievements of the

individual and the self-determination based on this.

Pope Benedict XVIs encyclical about globalism

Pope Benedict XVI published his now third encyclical, papal pastoral letter, circular, with

the title Caritas in Veritate (Love in the Truth) at the time of the summit meeting beginning

on 8th July, 2009 in the earthquake-stricken LAquila in Italy. In this pastoral letter which

consists of 54 pages in German, Benedict XVI deals with the world-wide financial and

economic crisis, globalisation, development, solidarity and the fight against poverty. The

encyclical aspires to make the world more just and to enforce Christian solidarity. He draws

the conclusion from the developed financial and economic crisis that the entire world system

needs a fundamental structural change.

Benedict XVI warns that if the profit interest suppresses the ambition for the common good

and the pursuit of profit becomes an aim itself, then it brings the danger that the economy is

destroyed and poverty becomes world-wide. The pope expresses his doubts about the

functioning of the completely uncontrolled free market. The encyclical draws attention to the

fact that the actors of the financial system and economic life of the world have been abusing

their uncontrolled financial and economic power more and more, and they have pulled out the

financial and economic processes from the authority of the morals. The encyclical says the

following about this: In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and

political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to

deliver the justice that they promise.

According to the pope, the profit is only useful if it serves the interest of the wholehumanity. In economy moral norms and business ethics are also necessary to make it function

properly in the interest of the public welfare. Ethics itself has to be human-centred and not

profit-oriented. Point n. 67 of the encyclical makes suggestions about the structural reform of

the financial, economic and political system that has got into a crisis.

(67. Gegenber der unaufhaltsamen Zunahme weltweiter gegenseitiger Abhngigkeit wird

gerade auch bei einer ebenso weltweit anzutreffenden Rezession stark die Dringlichkeit einer

Reform sowohl der Organisation der Vereinten Nationen als auch der internationalen

Wirtschafts- und Finanzgestaltung empfunden, damit dem Konzept einer Familie der

Nationen reale und konkrete Form gegeben werden kann. Desgleichen wird als dinglich

gesehen, innovative Formen zu finden, um das Prinzip der

Schutzverantwortung[146] anzuwenden und um auch den rmeren Nationen eine wirksameStimme in den gemeinschaftlichen Entscheidungen zuzuerkennen. Dies scheint gerade im

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Hinblick auf eine politische, rechtliche und wirtschaftliche Ordnung notwendig, die die

internationale Zusammenarbeit auf die solidarische Entwicklung aller Vlker hin frdert und

ausrichtet. Um die Weltwirtschaft zu steuern, die von der Krise betroffenen Wirtschaften zu

sanieren, einer Verschlimmerung der Krise und sich daraus ergebenden Ungleichgewichten

vorzubeugen, um eine geeignete vollstndige Abrstung zu verwirklichen, die Sicherheit und

den Frieden zu nhren, den Umweltschutz zu gewhrleisten und die Migrationsstrme zuregulieren, ist das Vorhandensein einer echten politischen Weltautoritt, wie sie schon von

meinem Vorgnger, dem seligen PapstJohannes XXIII., angesprochen wurde, dringend ntig.

Eine solche Autoritt mu sich dem Recht unterordnen, sich auf konsequente Weise an die

Prinzipien der Subsidiaritt und Solidaritt halten, auf die Verwirklichung des Gemeinwohls

hingeordnet sein,[147] sich fr die Verwirklichung einer echten ganzheitlichen menschlichen

Entwicklung einsetzen, die sich von den Werten der Liebe in der Wahrheit inspirieren lt.

Darber hinaus mu diese Autoritt von allen anerkannt sein, ber wirksame Macht verfgen,

um fr jeden Sicherheit, Wahrung der Gerechtigkeit und Achtung der Rechte zu

gewhrleisten.[148] Offensichtlich mu sie die Befugnis besitzen, gegenber den Parteien den

eigenen Entscheidungen wie auch den in den verschiedenen internationalen Foren getroffenen

abgestimmten Manahmen Beachtung zu verschaffen. In Ermangelung dessen wrde nmlichdas internationale Recht trotz der groen Fortschritte, die auf den verschiedenen Gebieten

erzielt worden sind, Gefahr laufen, vom Krftegleichgewicht der Strkeren bestimmt zu

werden. Die ganzheitliche Entwicklung der Vlker und die internationale Zusammenarbeit

erfordern, da eine bergeordnete Stufe internationaler Ordnung von subsidirer Art fr die

Steuerung der Globalisierung errichtet wird[149] und da eine der moralischen Ordnung

entsprechende Sozialordnung sowie jene Verbindung zwischen moralischem und sozialem

Bereich, zwischen Politik und wirtschaftlichem und zivilem Bereich, die schon in den

Statuten der Vereinten Nationen dargelegt wurde, endlich verwirklicht werden. )

According to the German text we can see (in a non-word for word translation) that Benedict

XVI thinks that In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a

strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations

Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the

concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. () One also senses the urgent need to

find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect and of

giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. ()

To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any

deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about

integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the

environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world

political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. ()

Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international lawwould risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The

integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a

greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of

globalization. ()

They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral

order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between

politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United

Nations.

It turns out from the quoted text that Benedict XVI actually suggests a New World Order, a

kind of world government. These expressions sound frightening to those who analyse the

questions of the present plutocratic world order more deeply. We have already quoted theuniversity professor Caroll Quigley about what the global strategy of the super-wealthy

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investor is. A common religion that would be a syncretic religion mixing the world religions

is necessary for the success of this strategy. (Syncretism as a religious term means the

superficial coordination, mix of the different religious, philosophical trends and the hybrid

spiritual system that is created this way.)

Further there is need for a common currency, the abolishment of the nation states and the

national self-identity, the personal control including everyone, the state-control of thepopulation growth, and in political life for the roughly controlled society, propagandistic

literature, privileged political and economic leading layer, centrally supervised information,

education and public health. We could continue the list further. If a system like this became

global and humanity was controlled from one power centre, it could be nothing else but

dictatorship.

Due to the fact that the money monopoly has become global, in the 20th century and in

these days the political, economic and opinion power have also become highly concentrated.

It has become more and more evident that the plutocratic world-elite follows a strategy whose

aim is to create a world order controlled from one centre, to create a kind of central world

governing. The anti-globalist thinkers and movements that criticise the strategy of the

plutocratic world order oppose the creation of a world order controlled from one centre andthey wish to secure the free development of humanity by the help of the nations and religions

preserved in their natural state. After this it is not easy to answer the question: What made

pope Benedict XVI suggest the transferring of control of the whole mankind and the

international life to a power centre having a global authority?

Up to now, the Vatican City has not signed the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

and the European Convention of Human Rights. It was unwilling to do so because neither of

them referred to God as the source of human rights and political rights. Benedict XVI is

therefore aware of the deficiencies of the UN, namely that this world organization is not

inclined to acknowledge the creating God as the authority that can act as the base of the

individual and collective ethics. It is also a well-known fact that the reference to Christianity

as one of the founders of the European culture did not get into the draft constitution of the

European Union either. The Vatican City acknowledges the human and political rights, but it

establishes them in a way fundamentally different from the classical liberal view system.

Liberalism advocates that the human and political rights cannot be controlled by the state in

the name of any kind of sacral-ethical order. The liberal belief does not acknowledge the

existence of such order. On the other hand, the Catholic view recognizes the human and

political rights inside the frame of a Christian-ethical frame. The question arises: does

Benedict XVI give up the standpoint of the Vatican City in point n. 67 of his encyclical?

When he writes about the reform of the UN, what kind of changes does he think about

actually? The word reformation cannot mean to make this institution accept the

sacralisation serving as the basis for the individual and collective ethics, as the UN has beenone of the important institutions of the liberal world domination efforts since its existence.

The present liberalism, which has lead to the interest groups with the money monopoly

becoming extremely rich and therefore obtaining too much power, deformed freedom into the

freedom of absolutely abusing the freedom of others.

Property is power. Those who obtain an extremely big property obtain extremely much

power. And the freedom of the extremely powerful man means the concentration of the

freedom taken away from others. Therefore liberalism that eliminated freedom in fact has

never built anything, but demolished the obstacles in the way of the absolute power of the

plutocratic world-elite in the first place. It was demolishing anything that stood in its way.

Liberalism means the absolute power of the money monopoly that got out of all the control of

the public, which at the same time secures the absolute possibility of abusing this power too.The world domination of the private money monopoly makes it possible that the producer

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property get centralized and concentrated under the hegemony of a small interest group too.

This neo-liberalism or ultra-liberalism has pushed out the social market economy from the

economic life and replaced it with the plutocratic system that uses the alibi-democracys

empty forms.

A social market economy can only come to existence if its mediatory agent is the society

and the interest-free public money that is under the exclusive control of the state. Moreover,the property system has to be reformed so that the property is linked to that natural person

who can behave ethically on his own. The legal abstraction that bears the name legal

person is not capable of this. The economy which is based on the legal person is the

preserver of the unethical business behaviour and it is never capable of behaving in any other

way than it was put by Milton Friedman: The business of the business is the business,

that is, the business (activity) of those doing business (the businessmen) is to make business,

that is, to make profit for themselves. This means the disregard of all ethical rules.

Benedict XVI should have returned to the re-regulation of the role of money according to

the Christian principles. Money is a valueless but necessary mediatory sign, the mediatory

agent of economic life, and as such, the right to issue it is due to those who produce the

product and service, which is the real value represented with this sign. Money therefore is dueto everyone who creates value. The most important feature of money is that it carries trust. Its

content is information based on trust. Without the present bank system the financial system

and the economy could be operated in a much fairer way by the commercial and clearing

houses. These could give an account of the services of the actors participating in the producer

economy with signs carrying different trust.

The biggest problem with the institutional system of the present financial world order is

that there is no need for it. The Bible forbids charging interest in many places. It is common

knowledge that the Islam regards charging interest unethical even today. If someone wants to

invest his money, he can do it by giving it to a money institution which invests it in the

producer economy and if there is profit to it, it is divided by the two investors, the owner of

the money and the institution taking on the managing of money, based on principles

previously fixed. If the business is a loss-maker, they bear the loss together in the same

proportion. However, the present money monopoly operated by the interest mechanism insists

on charging interests after the signs (that were by the way created from the air) even if the

money given by it as a credit does not mean any kind of economic profit for the borrower. In

other words, the present wealthy layer is not wiling to bear a proportionate risk and

responsibility with the raiser of the credit that works in the producer economy and creates

value.

Therefore, the Vatican City first of all should examine whether it is possible to return to the

interest-free money system that the Bible and the Catholic Church had regarded as its own

until Martin Luther. It is a well-known fact that Christianity gave up the prohibition of interestfinally only following the teachings of Calvin. John Calvins ascetic ethical view encouraged

tireless work and cutting down on consumption. Overall, it helped the expansion and

accumulation of capital. In the question of capital expansion, Calvin set out from Martin

Luthers views and made a difference between legitimate profit and dishonest wealth. He

regarded legitimate profit as the necessary consequence of certain professions. By dishonest

wealth he meant the growth of wealth at the expense of others.

Calvin believed that God permits the legitimate profit if it is the concomitant of certain

professions. At the same time God, as the owner of the earthly goods, gives the goods only as

a possession (as a loan) to the people on the condition that they manage it for the benefit of

their fellow-creatures. Calvin did not consider wealth condemnable, in fact, he thought that

wealth can mean an opportunity to donate. He condemned wealth only if it violated theinterests of others and turned man away from God. So in his teaching the accumulation of

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capital in private hand and the redistribution of the capital for charitable aims can also be

found.

Calvin had new thoughts about the functioning of money as capital, too. At the time of

Calvin, according to the official standpoint of the Catholic Church, charging interest was

prohibited. The prohibition of charging interests had been stated by the second council of

Nicaea (787). This standpoint of the Catholic Church indeed appears in its certain decisions.The third council of the Lateran brought in a law against usurers and punished them with

excommunication and denying them church funeral. Pope Gregory XX actually ordered the

Christians to chase out the merchants and money loaners who broke the interest prohibition.

Pope Clement V condemned the principals who permitted the paying of loans given at

interest. They explained the interest prohibition by referring partly to the Bible and partly to

Christian theologians and the teachings of Aristotle.

The great Greek philosopher, Aristotle also disclaimed the productivity of money.

However, the regulations of the Church were evaded. Interest was usually presented as

default interest. The Church also raised a loan at interest, so the Church itself also got into a

contradictory situation. Calvins economic policy removed the conflict between theory and

practice that had been going on for hundreds of years. Calvin first explained his interesttheory in his letterDe usuris in 1545, then in his commentary written to the books of Moses

published nine years later. In his writing De usuris Calvin lifts the interest prohibition. He

writes the following:

Because if we completely forbid interest, we restrict the conscience more than God does.

He acknowledges the right for charging interest and he permits it with certain conditions.

Martin Luther strictly forbade charging interest in theory and he only permitted it with

exceptions. On the other hand, Calvin permits it in theory and forbids it only exceptionally.

Calvin denies that charging interest is unknown to the spirit of the Bible. There are no proofs

whatsoever in the Bible saying that all interests should be completely condemnable.

Although he quotes and explains the same places in the Bible as his predecessor, he arrives

at a different result. Calvin identifies two interests. One of them is the consumer loan and the

other one is the productive loan. The consumer one does not represent a producing power for

the debtor and therefore no recognition or reward is due for it. This kind of loan serves the

living and helping, in other words it is an interest-free loan of a charitable nature.

In the case of the productive loan, which can create a new value together with the work of

the one raising the loan, the reward, namely the interest can be justified. The productive loan

is a loan given for a kind of business by which the debtor is able to gain profit. So it can be

regarded as a loan that carries interest. Calvin believes that the Bible only talks about the first

kind of loan, since the second kind of interest only developed during the decades that

followed. The frequently quoted words of Jesus Christ in the Gospel according to Luke are

the following: Lend, expecting nothing in return.Calvin interprets this as we have to help the poor sooner than the rich. Therefore, the

sentence of Jesus Christ quoted most frequently by those opposing interests is not about the

complete prohibition of interest but it rather encourages supporting the poor.

The Christian theologians other main argument against interest is based on the Old

Testament of the Bible. This strictly forbade the Jews to charge interest in trade among them.

John Calvin believed that the Christian community of his age could not be considered the

same as the Jewish communities of the biblical ancient times. This is because trade had

undergone serious changes until the 16th century and therefore rationally thinking, it is

unconceivable to forbid interest among Christians. In the next part of De usuris Calvin tries

to prove the productivity of money and on the basis of this the legitimacy of charging interest.

Calvin abandons the view concerning the nature of money. He tries to refute the idea which

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refers to Aristotle saying that money, as opposed to agricultural land, does not have a yield

capability.

He refused the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas stating the unproductiveness of money.

Calvin did not consider money from the consumers point of view any more, but from the

merchants and the bankers point of view. He pointed out that besides the value of the metal

in it, money can have yield if it is invested, circulated, used. The profit does not come fromthe money itself, but from its income. Finally he summarizes his basic theory in De usuris as

follows: We do not have to give our judgement of interest to God, on the basis of a certain

decision and his order, but only according to the rule of fairness.

The protestant preacher of Geneva also compared the accepted institution of mortgage

with the prohibited interest-charging. He drew the conclusion that neither of them is fairer

than the other. He thought that there is no significant difference between mortgage and

interest, there is only difference in name. It is not their name that decides whether a thing is

fair or sinful. Therefore, similarly to the institution of mortgage, Calvin lifted the prohibition

of interest, too. At the same time, however, Calvin set limits to the freedom of charging

interest. The first limit orders the interest-freeness and priority of the loan given for

consuming. The second limit: do not charge interest from the poor, and he who gives loansshall not be so yearning for profit that he is negligent in fulfilling his obligation and shall not

suppress the poor brothers. In the third exception he formulates the principle of equity:

nothing shall occur not in line with natural equity. Christ orders the following in verse 31 of

chapter 6 of the Gospel according to Luke: And as ye would that men should do to you, do

ye also to them likewise.

The fourth exception defines a practical rule referring to equity: if someone raises a loan,

he shall win as much money or even more with it as the sum of the borrowed money was. In

case of the fifth exception the Geneva preacher draws attention to the responsibility towards

God, which has to be kept in view in the economic life too: it is not the ordinary and generally

accepted custom according to which we should decide what is allowed to us, but we shall

rather adhere to the rule based on the speech of God.

Calvin did a lot in the interest of the general welfare by initiating different social measures.

The priority of the public interest is reflected in the sixth exception as well: we shall not

consider only the private good of those with whom we do business but shall also consider

what is good for the public. Calvin finally mentions the measure of the interest too, and he

subordinates the measure of the interest to the laws of the country: When charging the

interest, the measure which is permitted by the laws of the country or region in question shall

not be exceeded.

During his analysis of the parts of the Old Testament in the Bible, Calvin emphasized that

in the case of the earthly goods the idea of solidarity has to prevail in connection with the

interest, too. In Christian interpretation, social justice feeds from love, mercy and compassion.He considered the exemplary manifestation of Christian love when someone selflessly lends.

He draws the conclusion that nowadays interest prohibition does not function as a cohesive

power of community, as it did in the times of Moses. Calvin refrained from using the words

usury and usurer. In his opinion it is the Christian fairness that makes it possible to

differentiate between the unacceptable form of interest and the accepted interest. He regarded

interest as justified in two cases: if the debtor does not pay off due to bad intention and if the

loan is productive, in other words, if it took part in creating a certain value. Calvin at the same

time knew that if we bear certain forms of interest-charging, we can open a way to abuses too.

The complete prohibition of interest entails that the honest and the dishonest are given the

same punishment.

He also writes down: it is indeed a rare thing to see someone who is an honest man andat the same time is a usurer. Calvins instruction that work cannot suffer a loss because of

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the capital and money is very timely. According to Calvin the respect and wage of the creditor

cannot be as high as that of the worker who created the value. Crediting does not involve any

kind of effort and even the interest is created by the work of the person who does the

producing work. It is also an important instruction of Calvin that money cannot be the basis of

profit if its yield, the interest entails the poor getting in a more disadvantageous situation.

The great figure of the Reformation therefore lifted the interest prohibition and announcedthe freedom of interest-charging by taking the laws of fairness and love into account. Instead

of a word for word analysis of the Bible, he gave the theoretical-religious establishment of the

answers that had already developed in practice to the questions that emerged in the economic

life. He advanced the development of market economy not only theoretically but also by his

practical measures. Geneva, the Protestant Rome, became a flourishing city-state, to which

the fact also contributed that it made the operation of the banks and the various financial

institutions possible. He himself also established a Christian bank, but at the same time he

always kept social justice in view. As a Christian he tried to harmonize fraternal love,

brotherly sympathy and economic growth. In this way he could keep the frail balance between

economic welfare and social justice.

Thus Calvin and Protestantism wanted to operate the financial system carrying interestbased on a kind of gentleman agreement. However, the banks and financial institutions are

far from behaving like gentlemen, therefore they have to be persuaded to observe the financial

and business ethics in another way. We can completely agree with the aim Benedict XVI

suggests in Caritas in Veritate (Love in Justice, Die Liebe in der Wahrheit), namely,

that it is social justice which ought to be globalised instead of the world system of looting

with interests and making people indebted. We can less agree with the fact that to a certain

degree he distances himself from the so-called Dependency theory and he warns against

the return of protectionism.

According to the representatives of the dependency theory, the so-called Third world

countries could not modernize themselves and catch up with the advanced industrial countries

because by losing their independence they got into a dependent situation on the developed

world. According to the representatives of the Dependence theory it is in the interest of the

West to maintain this financial, economic and technical dependency. The dependency theory

has several trends, but it is common in them that they attribute the third worlds stagnancy and

their falling behind in development to the fact that the values created by them were taken

away from them by the advanced industrial countries with financial and economic methods,

first of all by indebting and trans-national corporations.

Benedict XVI wishes to form the extremely imbalanced system of the present plutocratic

world order into a fairer world order following the norms of the universal ethics by reforming

the United Nations Organization. Montesquieu already stepped up against the absolutist,

extremely centralized power concentration. He wished to achieve the mutual control andsupervision of power by dividing the branches of state power (separating the legislative, the

executive and the judicial branch). At present the world is centralized too much. If we set out

from saying that property is power and power is property, then we have to see that during the

history of the world the property of humanity has never been centralized before to such extent

under the control of a relatively small interest group.

According to the data of the UN Research Institute in Tokyo from 2000, if we reduce the

number of the people in the world to 10 and all of the financial and produced wealth of the

world to 100 dollar, then one person owns 99 dollars and the other nine own 1. Such a big

difference in wealth creates a huge inequality in power. If we do not resort to the

decentralization of the wealth circumstances and do not decentralize the financial, economic

and political world power that has become too much centralized, then it is impossible tocreate a fairer world order that better meets the universal ethics and social justice. Extreme

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predomination in wealth leads to extreme predomination in power, and this makes possible to

abuse power on a global scale as well.

It is in fact necessary to decentralize this over-centralized and over-concentrated financial,

economic and political power, and to create a division of power where the functionally and

regionally divided power branches and regional power centres mutually balance and control

each other. Namely, the Checks and Balances known form the American constitution, i.e.the means and institutions securing the balance among the certain power branches have to be

made global by creating the system of power branches and regional power centres that are

capable of mutual checking and balancing.

In my opinion it is not further centralization, the establishment of a world system and a

kind of global union controlled from a single centre which is needed, but the separation of the

financial power from the producer economy, and that of the financial power from the political

and armed power. The financial power also has to be decentralized, namely in a way that the

owning of the property has to be linked to a natural person, and its measure has to be linked to

the performance of this natural person. This new kind of property system would impede the

excessive enrichment and the entailing development of a power-predominance in the hands

of a small super-rich layer. At the same time it would prevent excessive impoverishment andthe majority of people getting into a deprived and dependent situation because of not having

the result of their own work. Those who do not possess the result of their work lose their self-

determination and personal freedom and they are restrained from living according to the

norms of universal ethics.

If the Checks and Balances system, i.e. the system of mutual checking and balancing was

made to a global scale, it would make it possible that the owners of the private money

monopoly could not abuse their financial overpower, could not be the owners of a

predominant part of the producer wealth of mankind and therefore could not control the

political power and the life of mankind necessarily. We cannot regard what Benedict XVI

suggests, namely the reformation and strengthening of the UN, as a solution.

We emphasize: The over-centralized and over-concentrated world power has to be

decentralized to the highest degree both horizontally (according to geographical and

geopolitical regions) and vertically (by separating the financial, producer-economical,

political and armed power branches) and has to be made capable of creating a balance of

power by placing it under the mutual control of each other. What is needed now is not that the

little efficient United Nations Organization gets transformed into a Global Union with an

effective government. It is a decentralized world order controlled from below, organically

built and capable of enforcing the universal ethics that has to be created by strengthening the

natural human communities (the family, the nation, the primary religious-cultural

communities) and strictly enforcing the principle of subsidiarity. A system like this could

represent the culture of life and survival instead of the present system of looting byinterests and indebting, which represents the culture of shameless selfishness and death

and which necessarily leads to the destruction of humanity and its habitat, the Earth.

Love your fellow as yourself!

Man is inclined to good and bad, selfishness and unselfishness at the same time. Getting

overly rich makes it possible for a small interest group to unlimitedly enfroce its own

selfishness. This selfishness can only be limited if the other group of people also has an

amount of wealth and interest-enforcement power based on the wealth that it can step up

against the selfishness of the other group with its own selfishness. The selfishness of equalfinancial, economic and political powers tightening against each other can force the control of

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the opposing selfishnesses and the following of an ethical behaviour respecting the needs,

interests and values of the other. (Mathematics expresses this by saying that if we multiply a

minus with a minus, we get a plus, but it is more graphic if we think of the vectors of opposite

directions, of which the resultant in case of equal powers is a null vector. The latter

expression here illustrates the ethical that is unselfish behaviour.)

How can we protect ourselves from the global power predominance that has grown into alimitless freedom of abuse? First of all we have to rethink the problem of interest, namely on

the basis of the ideas ofSilvio Gesell that have proven to be durable. If someone states that

the circulation of money cannot be secured without the interest mechanism, he has to know

that a negative interest also exists and the circulation of the signs playing the mediatory

agent of the economic life i.e. money can be secured by this as well. The present system of

positive interest rewards the one who holds back this mediatory agent. Negative interest on

the other hand punishes the one who holds it back from fulfilling its function in the operation

of the producer economy. Therefore the most important task is to liquidate the private money

monopoly and to give back the signs of mediating in the economic life to the public authority

supervised from below.

The present financial and credit system under private supervision has to be transformed intoa public money system and public credit. This would make it possible to liquidate the power

of the trans-national money cartel made up of the superrich bankers (the present owners of the

private money monopoly). If this extremely powerful group that forces everything under its

hegemony and places its selfishness above all public interest is disconnected, then the reform

of the circumstances of producer economy can begin with the introduction of the new

property system. The essence of this new property system is that it is actors of equal

economic power that stand in front of each other and the possibility of economic choice

equality is secured to everyone. In a system like this the interest enforcement of the economic

actors of equal power is also equalized. This would make it possible to enfroce the norms of

the economic-business ethics. The legal persons unable to behave ethically would not

have a decisive role in a system like this. The existence of the legal person is the denial of the

ethics in the economic-financial life. A legal person and ethics are incompatible with each

other. Therefore, property has to be linked to a natural person, and the measure of the

property, as we have already mentioned it several times, has to be linked to the achievement

of this natural person.

If all these are carried out in the financial and economic sector, then it can make it possible

to replace the present alibi-democracy with the actual-ethical democracy securing the direct

participation of each and every person. An ethical democracy like this is suitable for enforcing

social justice. I am of the opinion that the Church, to whom it is an order to follow the will of

God, the absolute truth and the universal ethics that Jesus formulated as Ego sum via, veritas

et vita (I am the road, the truth and the life), should put forward completely differentsuggestions from what we could read in the recently published encyclical of Benedict XVI.

Now what can be done?

Silvio Gesell expounded in his workThe Natural Economic Order Through Free Land

and Free Money published in 1913 how the financial system with a new principle suggested

by him would work. He leaned on the work of the English Henry George, according to

whom the agricultural land belongs to God and the entire humanity, and each and every

person gets it only to use it when he is cultivating it. The private property of land was

unconceivable until capitalism. It is an indisputable truth today as well: only that can be acommodity which one has created with his own achievement. The land, the water and the air

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cannot be a commodity, because these were given to the people by God and the nature, the

universe. So Gesell also advocated that we have to return to the public owning of the land. By

this, one form of exploitation disappears: the land rent. This income comes from the fact that

the productivity and usability of the lands are different, for example because they are a

different distance away from the markets. The landowners usually monopolize the profit for

themselves. This land rent is an income without achievement and is the consequence of themonopolized property. If we cease the private property of land, mankind get rid of an

unethical and harmful financial burden.

Silvio Gesell, such as the French Proudhon, found out that the goods and money are

different from each other in quality. The goods deteriorate, money doesnt. Proudhon wanted

to eliminate this difference by bringing the goods to the level of money. He organized barter

houses to do away with money, but his attempt failed. Proudhon was wrong when he thought

that the goods bent to deterioration is a natural feature and cannot be changed. Whereas

Silvio Gesell stated that goods dont have to be lifted to the same level as that of money, but

money has to be made bent to deterioration like goods,

switching to the natural economic order is the future of mankind

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