The Economics of British Fascism

By Alexander Raven Thompson

We may date the first successful development of 
Fascism in this country for the failure, the hopeless 
and complete failure, of the World Economic 
Conference of last year. As it was evident that the 
causes of economic depression of 1929 onwards were 
worldwide, it was very natural for mankind, and 
especially for people in this country, to seek a 
remedy through international action. Mr. Ramsay 
MacDonald held hopefully to this course, although it 
only served to lead him helplessly form abortive 
conference to abortive conference all over the glove, 
until the people of this country grew tired of seeing 
only a fleeting glimpse of their Prime Minister 
passing on his way form one Continental watering 
place to another. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald then made his 
last effort; he called together all the economic 
experts of the world to London in one final gigantic 
international conference. It was the least they could 
do in sheer politeness to return his many visits to 
the east few years in one last im ense "At Home."

It was a sad and dispirited gathering that eventually 
collected in the appropriate surrounding of the 
Geological Museum at South Kensington; in fact, with 
the exception of some incongruous material from Italy 
and the new Germany, such a collection of antiquated 
and fossilated old financiers and economists of the 
Liberal-Democratic school as almost defies 
description. They, the very authors of the 
depression, seemed gathered in one large funeral 
assembly to celebrate the approaching demise of the 
international capitalist system. All they could do in 
face of imminent collapse was to pass pious 
resolutions calling for freer trade and the removal 
of exchange restriction; every delegate signing with 
his tongue in his cheek, expecting the other 
countries to carry out what his own country had no 
intention of fulfilling. After some weeks of such 
humbug, during which one of President Roosevelt's 
tame professors paid a flying visit and left 
hurriedly again in disgust the Conference broke up n 
ignominious failure.

The international method had been tried, and had 
proved entirely incapable of coping with an 
unprecedented situation. What remained for this 
country to do? Obviously the only alternative was 
economic nationalism; the drastic and fearless 
application of the policy of "Britain First." 
Thinking people, and then more and more of the 
general public, turned the political parties of the 
day leadership in this new direction of national 
recovery, and from that moment the Blackshirt 
Movement, which alone stood firmly for economic 
nationalism and patriotic self-help, began to grow 
and prosper, until by the Summer of the present year 
it has taken the form of a crusade, only comparable 
to the campaign of the Anti-Corn Laws League of a 
hundred years ago. For many months past Sir Oswald 
Mosley has filled the largest halls in the country, 
as not one of his political opponents could ever hope 
to fill them, which enthusiastic gatherings 
acclaiming the new creed of the modern era. The Bri 
ish people, always alive to their economic needs, are 
turning as emphatically to the policy of economic 
nationalism as a solution to their present ills, as 
they turned to Free Trade a hundred years ago.

What is this economic nationalism, this emphatic 
breach with Liberal-Free-Trade tradition? It is a 
complete reversal of our past trading policy, as it 
looks not out to world markets for trade revival, but 
inward to the home market. To-day every country in 
the world in endevouring to dump its surplus of 
production upon the markets of the world. The problem 
of scarcity, which the Free Trade system had been 
designed to combat, has been finally and completely 
solved: we are now faced with the new problem of 
abundance and must create a new system to solve this 
embarrassment of riches. A pleasant task, surely, but 
one fraught with surprising and unexpected 
difficulties.

To begin with, it is obvious that the first result of 
plenty must be to break down the whole theory upon 
which Liberal Free Trade was based. According to the 
theory of the Manchester school each country would 
produce or manufacture those goods which it was best 
fitted to produce at the cheapest rate; but as soon 
as plenty takes the place of scarcity the question of 
extreme cheapness becomes irrelevant and by the very 
nature of things each country endeavours to produce 
as many of its requirements as it can, irrespective 
of cost. Indeed, this tendency is intensified by the 
need of finding employment for workers who are 
displaced by the failure of society to adjust itself 
to the new economics of plenty. The very existence of 
unemployment is indicative of plenty, as no nation 
suffering form scarcity in a fertile country would 
keep its workers idle; but these unemployed can now 
be found work to make those goods formerly imported 
cheaply form abroad, even if the home-made article is 
dear r and requires more labour. Tariffs and quotas 
are set up and Free trade perishes.

Obviously this county must suffer most severely for 
the new economics of plenty, for our whole prosperity 
under the Liberal era had been built up upon the 
assumption that we were the "workshop of the world" 
and would remain the premier manufacturing country, 
as our coal and iron deposits made it possible for us 
to manufacture more cheaply and efficiently. Now that 
the question of cheapness is of relatively minor 
importance, every country in the world is setting up 
its own little workshop and manufacturing goods which 
we used to regard as our own monopoly. Thus, even if 
the present severity of the world-depression may be 
mitigated in occurs of time, this county is bound to 
emerge with that gathering burden of un-employment 
and stagnation of trade which has been our lot ever 
since the War. At the height of the American boom of 
1929 our unemployed numbered 1,000,000; when the long 
delayed revival of world trade takes place have we 
any hope that eh number will fall below 1,50 ,000?

We have in Britain a very special and much aggravated 
problem of our own, and should therefore turn with a 
greater enthusiasm to the modern solution. At present 
the nations of the world are still looking to 
mythical "world-markets" for the disposal of their 
surplus goods. Indeed, in their endevour to compete 
with other nations on these markets they are all 
trying frantically to "cut costs" at home, thus 
inevitably putting down the home market in an 
endeavour to capture world markets. As these mythical 
"world markets" are no more than the sum and total of 
all the home markets we have the miserable sight of 
the glorious capitalist system endeavouring in its 
last death throes to survive by eating its own tail!

The inevitable result of this cut-throat 
international competition is a wholesale reduction of 
the standard of life of the people, and this means 
the criminal folly of the destruction of wealth or 
the restriction of its production. Added to this we 
have the still more ominous tendency of international 
finance in its last desperate search for dividends to 
exploit the backward Oriental nations at the expense 
of the European standard of life, as witness, for 
example, the present flood of cheap Japanese goods on 
the markets of the world.

A halt must be called to this vicious circle of 
economic insanity, if the Capitalist system, and 
private enterprise itself, are not to be overwhelmed 
in a general uprising of the outraged working classes 
upon whom the brunt of the present dislocation falls. 
Freedom of individual enterprise must give place to a 
planned and ordered system; man must become once more 
the arbiter of his own economic destiny, and no 
longer leave his vital economic affairs to the 
working of so-called "economic laws" of demand and 
supply, which have long ceased to operate to the 
benefit of mankind. Fascism intends to restore the 
prosperity of Britain by raising the purchasing power 
of the people recompensing British industries for the 
loss of foreign markets by finding them new and 
better markets nearer home which can be effectively 
protected against foreign competition.

The method of protecting the standard of life of the 
British people will be by means of a deliberate 
corporate organization of the whole industrial life 
of the nation. Profits, wages and prices will all be 
brought under constructive review by Corporations 
controlling all the great industries and groups of 
smaller allied industries in the country. These 
Corporations will consist of representatives of 
employers, workers and consumers, each protecting 
their own fundamental interest in the industry in 
question. There will also be a National Council of 
Corporations comprising representatives of all the 
various industrial Corporations, to arbitrate and 
decide according to the national welfare, where 
conflicts arise between the interests of one 
Corporation and those of another.

The object of this Corporate organization of the 
industrial life of the nation is to eliminate the 
present internal competition of individual employer 
against individual employer, and blackleg worker 
against Union worker, which tends to lower the whole 
standard of life of the nation, even behind adequate 
tariff walls. The Corporation would arrange for 
national wage agreement, with binding legal force, as 
between employers and worker, and also fair terms of 
competition with minimum prices as between employers 
and consumers in every industry. In this manner a 
whole new economic system will be built up, which is 
under definite human control at all points by those 
best fitted to exercise that control.

Fascism in Britain is, of course, aware that a higher 
standard of life in this country can only be effected 
by a complete revision of our present financial 
system and Sir Oswald Mosley himself, with 
characteristic consistency, has been an opponent of 
the Gold Standard throughout his political career. On 
the other hand, Fascism does not believe that such a 
revision in itself would be sufficient to effect a 
complete solution of our present grave problems 
without a planned control over our entire economic 
affairs; nor does it believe that the financiers who 
are the real rulers of this country, will be prepared 
to abdicate their dictatorial powers except at the 
behest of a highly authoritative Government armed by 
the British people with complete power of action.

Fascism certainly recognizes the inadequacy of 
present currency and credit in circulation to 
facilitate the distribution of production from 
producer to consumer, and is prepared to establish a 
managed currency based not upon gold, but upon 
productive capacity. As the volume of currency 
required will obviously vastly exceed that at present 
available, the problem arises as to how this new 
currency and credit are to be put into circulation. 
Douglas says this must be by means of the "National 
Dividend" – a free distribution to every man, woman 
and child in the land. This is, however, an entirely 
democratic, if not Marxist method, more political 
than economic, and entirely contrary to Fascist 
principles of "payment for service." Fascist 
Government would issue the new currency and credit 
direct without charge of usury, in the form of an 
advance upon the existing wages and salaries (which 
does not enter into employers' costs), thus retaining 
the element of service, an at the same time giving an 
effective stimulus to consumption without raising 
prices.

As the volume of currency and credit in circulation 
must be limited to a definite working relationship to 
productive capacity, free distribution of new 
currency must eventually cease, or at least be 
contracted to a proportion of the gradual advance of 
production effected by scientific invention and 
technical improvement. When the point is approached 
where further creation of currency and credit on the 
same scale would cause inflation, the advantages of a 
Fascist method become obvious, as it will then be 
possible to unload the higher wage standard by 
degrees upon the employer, who will be enabled to pay 
the higher rate with no undue advance in prices owing 
to the greater demand for goods and the general 
improvement of trade. By this means a permanent 
higher standard of life will be established upon the 
present wages basis of payment for service, and 
stabilized by the effective control of the Corporate 
system over all economic factors.

(The question of leisure has not been ignored by 
Fascist economists, but is considered best to meet 
this by reduction of hours of work, advancing the 
school-leaving age and giving pensions at an earlier 
age, as proposed in the Mosley Memorandum of 1930, 
without abandoning the essential principle of payment 
for service.)

The result of the increased purchasing power of all 
wage-earners will be to improve the home market, and 
thus take a definite constructive step towards the 
solution of the world-wide problem of 
underconsumption. We can only hope that other nations 
will follow suit, but even if they do not, Fascist 
Britain is not afraid to show the way.

Conservative critics will complain that we shall lose 
our export markets, as our costs will be higher than 
those of our competitors. That need not, however, 
cause them concern, as is our deliberate intention to 
replace foreign by home and dominion markets, and we 
shall only go to the foreigner for those essential 
raw products and foodstuffs which we cannot obtain at 
home or form Imperial sources. This is one of the 
reasons shy Fascists are enthusiastic Imperialists, 
because they realize the paramount necessity of the 
Empire to the successful accomplishment of the 
Fascist scheme of planned economic self-sufficiency 
on a higher scale of civilization than the world has 
yet known.

In any case the world trade of the future will not be 
based upon maximum exports of manufactured goods, but 
upon minimal imports of essential raw materials. It 
will be a much more manageable commerce, easily 
coming within the control of diplomatic agreement and 
much less likely to lead to war than the present 
desperate struggle for contracting world markets. The 
Blackshirt Movement in Britain is leading the way to 
the realization of such a stable world economic 
system based upon the co-operation of planned 
national corporate states, as the only safe refuge 
form the present chaos of world competition, 
aggravated by the machinations of international 
finance. Italy and Germany, even Russia and the 
U.S.A. are moving in that direction of ordered 
economy. It is high time that Britain, as the premier 
commercial nation of the world, joined in the only 
practicable means of permanent economic 
reconstruction.
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