PROTOCOL NO. 20
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 organisation 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 revenue 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 consists 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 who he will see a necessary financial support for the
State, will see in him the organiser 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 will 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 of 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 pat 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 notification 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 organised
public works. The initiative of works of this kind, proceeding
from State sources, will bind the working class family 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 timeserving 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 for 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 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 must also 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 SATIFSY 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 workingman
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 the 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 expenditures 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 closed by us in such forms 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 per cent. 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 outstretched
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 the loans were internal the goyim only shuffled their
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 the 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 at 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 for 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 representative 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...