Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion: Protocol No. 19...
To-day we shall touch upon the financial programme, which I
put off to the end of my report as being the most difficult, the
crowning and the decisive point of our plans. Before entering
upon it I will remind you that I have already spoken before by
way of a hint when I said that the sum total of our actions is
settled by the question of figures.
When we come into our kingdom our autocratic government will
avoid, from a principle of self-preservation, sensibly burdening
the masses of the people with taxes, remembering that it plays
the part of father and protector. But as State organization costs
dear it is necessary nevertheless to obtain the funds required
for it. It will, therefore, elaborate with particular precaution
the question of equilibrium in this matter.
Our rule, in which the king will enjoy the legal fiction
that everything in his State belongs to him (which may easily be
translated into fact), will be enabled to resort to the lawful
confiscation of all sums of every kind for the regulation of
their circulation in the State. From this follows that taxation
will best be covered by a progressive tax on property. In this
manner the dues will be paid without straitening or ruining
anybody in the form of a percentage of the amount of property.
The rich must be aware that it is their duty to place a part of
their superfluities at the disposal of the State since the State
guarantees them security of possession of the rest of their
property and the right of honest gains, I say honest, for the
control over property will do away with robbery on a legal basis.
This social reform must come from above, for the time is
ripe for it -- it is indispensable as a pledge of peace.
The tax upon the poor man is a seed of revolution and works
to the detriment of the state which in hunting after the trifling
is missing the big. Quite apart from this, a tax on capitalists
diminishes the growth of wealth in private hands in which we have
in these days concentrated it as a counterpoise to the government
strength of the goyim -- their State finances.
A tax increasing in a percentage ratio to capital will give
a much larger venue than the present individual or property tax,
which is useful to us now for the sole reason that it excites
trouble and discontent among the goyim.
The force upon which our king will rest consist in the
equilibrium and the guarantee of peace, for the sake of which
things it is indispensable that the capitalists should yield up a
portion of their incomes for the sake of the secure working of
the machinery of the State. State needs must be paid by those who
will not feel the burden and have enough to take from.
Such a measure will destroy the hatred of the poor man for
the rich, in whom he will see a necessary financial support for
the State, will see in him the organizer of peace and well-being
since he will see that it is the rich man who is paying the
necessary means to attain these things.
In order that payers of the educated classes should not too
much distress themselves over the new payments they will have
full accounts given them of the destination of those payments,
with the exception of such sums as well be appropriated for the
needs of the throne and the administrative institutions.
He who reigns will not have any properties of his own once
all in the State represents his patrimony, or else the one would
be in contradiction to the other; the fact of holding private
means would destroy the right of property in the common
possessions of all.
Relatives of him who reigns, his heirs excepted, who will be
maintained by the resources of the State, must enter the ranks of
servants of the State or must work to obtain the right to
property; the privilege of royal blood must not serve for the
spoiling of the treasury.
Purchase, receipt of money or inheritance will be subject to
the payment of a stamp progressive tax. Any transfer of property,
whether money or other, without evidence of payment of this tax
which will be strictly registered by names, will render the
former holder liable to pay interest on the tax from the moment
of transfer of these sums up to the discovery of his evasion of
declaration of the transfer. Transfer documents must be presented
weekly at the local treasury office with notifications of the
name, surname and permanent place of residence of the former and
the new holder of the property. This transfer with register of
names must begin from a definite sum which exceeds the ordinary
expenses of buying and selling of necessaries, and these will be
subject to payment only by a stamp impost of a definite
percentage of the unit.
Just strike an estimate of how many times such taxes as
these will cover the revenue of the goyim States.
The State exchequer will have to maintain a definite
complement of reserve sums, and all that is collected above that
complement must be returned into circulation. On these sums will
be organized public works. The initiative in works of this kind,
proceeding from State sources, will bind the working class firmly
to the interests of the State and to those who reign. From these
same sums also a part will be set aside as rewards of
inventiveness and productiveness.
On no account should so much as a single unit above the
definite and freely estimated sums be retained in the State
treasuries, for money exists to be circulated and any kind of
stagnation of money acts ruinously on the running of the State
machinery, for which it is the lubricant; a stagnation of the
lubricant may stop the regular working of the mechanism.
The substitution of interest-bearing paper for a part of the
token of exchange has produced exactly this stagnation. The
consequences of this circumstance are already sufficiently
noticeable.
A court of account will also be instituted by us and in it
the ruler will find at any moment a full accounting for State
income and expenditure, with the exception of the current monthly
account, not yet made up, and that of the preceding month, which
will not yet have been delivered.
The one and only person who will have no interest in robbing
the State is its owner, the ruler. This is why his personal
control will remove the possibility of leakages of extravagances.
The representative function of the ruler at receptions for
the sake of etiquette, which absorbs so much invaluable time,
will be abolished in order that the ruler may have time for
control and consideration. His power will not then be split up
into fractional parts among time-serving favourites who surround
the throne for its pomp and splendour, and are interested only in
their own and not in the common interests of the State.
Economic crises have been produced by us from the goyim by
no other means than the withdrawal of money from circulation.
Huge capitals have stagnated, withdrawing money from States,
which were constantly obliged to apply to those same stagnant
capitals for loans. These loans burdened the finances of the
State with the payment of interest and made them the bond slaves
of these capitals... The concentration of industry in the hands
of capitalists out of the hands of small masters has drained away
all the juices of the peoples and with them also of the States.
The present issue of money in general does not correspond
with the requirements per head, and cannot therefore satisfy all
the needs of the workers. The issue of money ought to correspond
with the growth of population and thereby children also must
absolutely be reckoned as consumers of currency from the day of
their birth. The revision of issue is a material question for the
whole world.
You are aware that the gold standard has been the ruin of
the States which adopted it, for it has not been able to satisfy
the demands for money, the more so that we have removed gold from
circulation as far as possible.
With us the standard that must be introduced is the cost of
working-man power, whether it be reckoned in paper or in wood. We
shall make the issue of money in accordance with the normal
requirements of each subject, adding to the quantity with every
birth and subtracting with every death.
The accounts will be managed by each department (the French
administrative division), each circle.
In order that there may be no delays in paying out of money
for State needs the sums and terms of such payments will be fixed
by decree of the ruler; this will do away with the protection by
a ministry of one institution to the detriment of others.
The budgets of income and expenditure will be carried out
side by side that they may not be obscured by distance one to
another.
The reforms projected by us in the financial institutions
and principles of the goyim will be clothed by us in such forms
as will alarm nobody. We shall point out the necessity of reforms
in consequence of the disorderly darkness into which the goyim by
their irregularities have plunged the finances. The first
irregularity, as we shall point out, consists in their beginning
with drawing up a single budget which year after year grows owing
to the following cause: this budget is dragged out to half the
year, then they demand a budget to put things right, and this
they expend in three months, after which they ask for a
supplementary budget, and all this ends with a liquidation
budget. But, as the budget of the following year is drawn up in
accordance with the sum of the total addition, the annual
departure from the normal reaches as much as 50 percent in a
year, and so the annual budget is trebled in ten years. Thanks to
such methods, allowed by the carelessness of the goy States,
their treasuries are empty. The period of loans supervenes, and
that has swallowed up remainders and brought all the goy States
to bankruptcy.
You understand perfectly that economic arrangements of this
kind, which have been suggested to the goyim by us, cannot be
carried on by us.
Every kind of loan proves infirmity in the State and a want
of understanding of the rights of the State. Loans hang like a
sword of Damocles over the heads of rulers, who, instead of
taking from their subjects by a temporary tax, come begging with
oustretched palm of our bankers. Foreign loans are leeches which
there is no possibility of removing from the body of the State
until they fall off of themselves or the State flings them off.
But the goy States do not tear them off; they go on in persisting
in putting more on to themselves so that they must inevitably
perish, drained by voluntary blood-letting.
What also indeed is, in substance, a loan, especially a
foreign loan? A loan is -- an issue of government bills of
exchange containing a percentage obligation commensurate to the
sum of the loan capital. If the loan bears a charge of 5 per
cent, then in twenty years the State vainly pays away in interest
a sum equal to the loan borrowed, in forty years it is paying a
double sum, in sixty -- treble, and all the while the debt
remains an unpaid debt.
From this calculation it is obvious that with any form of
taxation per head the State is baling out the last coppers of the
poor taxpayers in order to settle accounts with wealthy
foreigners, from whom it has borrowed money instead of collecting
these coppers for its own needs without the additional interest.
So long as loans were internal the goyim only shuffled money
from the pockets of the poor to those of the rich, but when we
bought up the necessary person in order to transfer loans into
the external sphere all the wealth of States flowed into our
cash-boxes and all the goyim began to pay us the tribute of
subjects.
If the superficiality of goy kings on their thrones in
regard to State affairs and the venality of ministers or the want
of understanding of financial matters on the part of other ruling
persons have made their countries debtors to our treasuries to
amounts quite impossible to pay it has not been accomplished
without on our part heavy expenditure of trouble and money.
Stagnation of money will not be allowed by us and therefore
there will be no State-interest bearing paper, except a one-per-
cent series, so that there will be no payment of interest to
leeches that suck all the strength out of the State. The right to
issue interest-bearing paper will be given exclusively to
industrial companies who will find no difficulty in paying
interest out of profits, whereas the State does not make interest
on borrowed money like these companies, for the State borrows to
spend and not to use in operations.
Industrial papers will be bought also by the government
which from being as now a payer of tribute by loan operations
will be transformed into a lender of money at a profit. This
measure will stop the stagnation of money, parasitic profits and
idleness, all of which were useful for us among the goyim so long
as they were independent but are not desirable under our rule.
How clear is the undeveloped power of thought of the purely
brute brains of the goyim, as expressed in the fact that they
have been borrowing from us with payment of interest without ever
thinking that all the same these very moneys plus an addition for
payment of interest must be got by them from their own State
pockets in order to settle up with us. What could have been
simpler than to take the money they wanted from their own people?
But it is a proof of the genius of our chosen mind that we
have contrived to present the matter of loans to them in such a
light that they have even seen in them an advantage for
themselves.
Our accounts, which we shall present when the time comes, in
the light of centuries of experience gained by experiments made
by us on the goy States, will be distinguished by clearness and
definiteness and will show at a glance to all men the advantage
of our innovations. They will put an end to those abuses to which
we owe our mastery over the goyim, but which cannot be allowed in
our kingdom.
We shall so hedge about our system of accounting that
neither the ruler nor the most insignificant public servant will
be in a position to divert even the smallest sum from its
destination without detection or to direct it in another
direction except that which will be once fixed in a definite plan
of action.
And without a definite plan it is impossible to rule.
Marching along an undetermined road and with undetermined
resources brings to ruin by the way heroes and demi-gods.
The goy rulers, whom we once upon a time advised should be
distracted from State occupations by representatives receptions,
observances of etiquette, entertainments, were only screens for
our rule. The accounts of favourite courtiers who replaced them
in the sphere of affairs were drawn up for them by our agents,
and every time gave satisfaction to short-sighted minds by
promises that in the future economies and improvements were
foreseen... Economies from what? From new taxes? -- were
questions that might have been but were not asked by those who
read our accounts and projects...
You know to what they have been brought by this
carelessness, to what a pitch of financial disorder they have
arrived, notwithstanding the astonishing industry of their
peoples...
...Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion: Protocol No. 21.
And please, keep in mind... this is a hoax.