Hey r/canadapolitics . I've been reading some Canadian political history and I can't seem to understand the social credit movement. I'm not well versed in economics so wikipedia kind of went over my head.
Could someone give me a brief overview of what social credit ideology is? If a Socred party won in 2015, what kind of policies would we likely see?
Thanks!
Posted May 29, 2016, 6:16 PM UTC
MillennialsFault has the better answer when it comes to Canadian history, but the key to the ideology is this:
What is money?
Say you have a lemonade stand out in your front yard. You sell eight cups of lemonade. You then go to the corner store to buy more ingredients. You give him half of what you got from selling lemonade because you are going to sell a lot more of it later. Why is it fair for the corner store clerk to give you the ingredients?
A. Because you helped society by giving them lemonade, and they owe you according to the amount that you helped.
B. Because you parted with your property rights to the lemonade, and it is your right to exchange your lemonade for whatever society is willing to give you.
C. Because you worked hard to sell that lemonade, and deserve to be rewarded for your work
Social credit answers with option A. Money is supposed to represent an IOU from society to you according to the benefit that you provided society (hence the name, Social Credit). This has far-reaching implications, such as judging some forms of rent-seeking, some forms of interest, and predatory employment policies as ill-gotten gains.
This is in contrast to free-marketeers who are concerned with property rights and recognizing a right to free exchange (even if the agreement isn't an equal exchange) like option B. This causes some malicious behavior to be seen as not harmful (some forms of rent-seeking, some forms of interest, and predatory employment policies, for example). Social credit is in some ways a response to to the real-life difficulties of option B, but isn't the only response.
As an aside: Option C is a red herring, generally people who conceive of economic systems value the result of work and not work itself.
-- This may be going a bit fast for a proper ELI5, but this may be helpful nonetheless: --
On a more fundamental level, the nature of social credit is this:
In modern economies...wealth is produced by people working [together]. [A]n automobile worker does not produce any wealth (i.e., the automobile) by himself, but only in conjunction with other auto workers, the producers of roads, gasoline, insurance, etc. In this opinion, wealth is a pool upon which people can draw, and money becomes a [voucher] system...money should not be regarded as a commodity [in other words, something you own] but rather as a [voucher], a means of distribution of [things or services].
EDIT: ninja edit not quite fast enough to flesh out my explanation a little.
EDIT2: Since you mentioned wikipedia, I'm also going to extend my explanation a bit using it as a resource
In modern economies...wealth is produced by people working [together]. [A]n automobile worker does not produce any wealth (i.e., the automobile) by himself, but only in conjunction with other auto workers, the producers of roads, gasoline, insurance, etc. In this opinion, wealth is a pool upon which people can draw, and money becomes a [voucher] system...money should not be regarded as a commodity [in other words, something you own] but rather as a [voucher], a means of distribution of [things or services].
The most glaring omission in this "not alone" pool is that the auto worker does not produce any autos/wealth without a customer able to buy it. A social credit/dividend use of his taxes enhances his wealth (both what he creates and keeps).
Thank you!!! All of the explanations here are great but this one is the one that clicked.
It actually seems like a pretty reasonable economic ideology, any reason why social credit never really took off? (In Canada or anywhere else)
Social Credit was the government in Alberta from the '30s until 1971.
That's something.
They were in power from 52 to '91 in BC too (with a couple years off from 72 to 74). But by the VanderZalm years, the Socreds were a garden variety conservative party (maybe a little more socially conservative than the usual)
It actually seems like a pretty reasonable economic ideology, any reason why social credit never really took off? (In Canada or anywhere else)
Do you mean the economic theory or the Canadian political movement? If the latter, it really depends on the province and their implementation of the former.
I asked this a few months ago in ELI5. You can see the answer here: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yj1ni/eli5_the_envisioned_monetary_reforms_of_the/
It would be great if we had some sort of weekly political party history posts over the summer. I must admit that I know next to nothing about defunct parties.
I've always wished I knew more about the Progressive party that helped give the PCs their name. I'd be in favour of this.
They really had no clue what they were either, towards the end, they were just bible-thumping conservatives with a touch of anti-semitism. Truly a repulsive combination
Basic income or social dividends is a more modern version, with the same moral foundation, of the original social credit theory.
The original was based on a citizen's share of production. Partial ownership of everything. Social dividends is a citizen's share of tax/government revenues, and when social dividends are high enough to eliminate poverty, that is basic income.
There is no reason to ever prefer social credit over social dividends because the latter can do the former more efficiently, and there is no valid philosophical sectioning off of government revenue that does not have a citizen's claim to it.
Here's the like I'm five part: If conservatives and Liberals are right of centre, and the NDP are left of centre, the SoCreds were a little right of the NDP but not quite Lib or Con. You can look up Bill Vander Zalm in BC for policy examples. If they won today you would see a government exactly like we have now. The thing is, in Canada all our parties are centrist and so all appear similar. Harper was an anomaly.
The root of the Social Credit movement is an economic theory investigating the difference between the price of a product and the cost the firm paid to produce it. Like Marx, the SoCred founder guy struggled with the contradiction of a firm owner who paid his employees less than he charged for his products, such that his employees are unable to afford what the firm produces. He extended this to the economy as a whole, saying that charging more than cost for an item leads to unmet demand.
After that things get a bit crazy. He theorized that the difference between cost and expense was the impact of "traditional values and culture", and that it was the technology of society itself which earned that imbalance. Since culture is not under the firm's ownership, he decided that this excess profit is common property; thus, Social Credit in their initial days were directly focused on providing universal basic income. When they were first elected, the books didn't quite work out, but after a decade or so they started making some public payments.
After that things got wonky. After decades and decades in power, the party became the central host of social conservatism, and their economic policies became rather ignored by their own members. The bulk of the party eventually formed the Christian Heritage Party. Some joined whatever centrist party was in their province to fight the NDP by creating generic "liberal" parties (like in BC). To my knowledge, the current Social Credit party is some religious dude in his basement with the name rights.
Tl;dr: What social credit means is something that wasn't really followed, but social and fiscal conservatives rallied under its banner in BC because it ended up being the strongest anti-socialist party. When Socred got too Bible-thumping and had poor leadership in the 90s, the coalition jumped over to the seemingly more sane BC Liberals. Where the NDP is strong, there tends to be a two party system because of the rest of the province coalescing to fight what they see as the greater evil, so you see Federal Liberals from Vancouver joining with rural Conservatives.
Source: Dr. Richard Johnston's lectures at UBC
As an Ontarian with little to no knowledge of SoCred, I appreciate the explanations. The party has always seemed contradictory and confusing to me.
That's kinda ironic, because as someone who'd like to live under socialism, Social Credit sounds like the next best thing since it answers a lot of the same questions.