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ABOLITIONIST PARTY OF CANADA
 


Leader: John C. Turmel (turmel@ncf.ca or johnturmel@yahoo.com)

Web Site: http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/abprogs.htm

Platform: Party Programs

Candidates: None listed as of April 25, 2004. Party founder John C. Turmel holds the Guinness Book of Records record for having contested the greatest number of elections. The party web site does not indicate whether Turmel will run in 2004, or whether the party will be running any other candidates. It would appear doubtful, however: the party has all the look and feel of a party of one: John Turmel.

Political Mission: According to the party web site, John Turmel seeks to abolish the charging of interest on loans, and to replace the current monetary system with a Local Employment Trading System ("LETS") system. In recent years, he has also opposed marijuana prohibition, though the party was founded primarily upon goals of monetary and banking reform.

Arguably anti-bank, the party leader is designated to be John C. Turmel, who calls himself "the engineer" (thus his trademark "the engineer" helmet, in which he is depicted above). For over a decade, John Turmel has used USENET and other means to distribute his "engineer's" analysis of the money supply. His conclusion, in effect, is that, by charging interest on the credit that they loan to people, Canada's chartered banks intentionally create a shortage of dollars. In essence, he argues that the number of dollars in circulation at any point in time is insufficient to pay back both the outstanding principle plus the interest owing upon that principle. The supposed motive of the banks: to create a situation in which borrowers default on their loans and thereby lose their collateral (property) to the banks...thus the anti-bank sentiment generated by Turmel's analysis.

It is true that, at a fixed point in time, there is more money owing than exists. This is not a revelation by Turmel, but a universally appreciated fact among economists. The principal oversights in Turmel's analysis, are that it essentially assumes (a) that banks continually decrease the supply of dollars, and/or that (b) banks are not a part of the economy. Assumption (b) suggests that it is as if banks come from another planet to lend money to people, and return at a later date demanding that all of it be paid back to them simultaneously, causing the elimination of the money supply, defaults on loans, and the seizure of assets. However, the supply of credit has tended to increase, not decrease, over time: though credit is destroyed by the repayment of principal, banks tend to create and lend out at least as much new credit as is repaid and destroyed. Moreover banks are very much a part of the economy: they spend the interest payments they receive back into the economy rather than somehow making it disappear into a black hole. That money continues to flow in and out of banks, such that even a single dollar can be used to pay an infinite amount of interest, over time. Thus, the idea that the charging of interest causes a shortage of dollars - the very assumption that underlies the Abolitionist Party's reason for being - is entirely false.

That said, Turmel's anti-interest message has attracted the interest of some who oppose the charging of interest for reasons other than Turmel's analysis. Some have been attracted to Turmel's message because they object to the charging of interest for other reasons, including religious ones, but feel the need for a secular argument to further a religiously-motivated political agenda. Specifically, some believe that the charging of interest is evil. Indeed, the Christian bible speaks out against "usury" and, equating the charging of interest with "usury", the Abolitionist Party itself refers to the practice of charging interest as "usury" (for a time, at least, the party's phone number was "1-800-NO-USURY"). Again, banks and bankers end up on the defensive, effectively being accused of being in an evil business. For those who feel their religious objections will not resonate with a majority of the public, Turmel's analysis provides another, secular, reason to fight for the abolition of interest.

Arguably in an attempt to win political support, in recent years, Turmel has sought to build an alliance with the very religious, but aging, "White Beret" Social Credit movement in Quebec. Founded by Louis Even in the 1930s, the White Berets are a Christian anti-interest movement founded upon the "Social Credit" monetary and banking ideas of British Major Clifford Hugh Douglas (the full text of Douglas' book, "Social Credit", is available for free, online, here at Mondo Politico: click here to start reading it). Turmel has argued that the LETS system he advocates is an anti-usury form of the Social Credit system, and that it follows from the ideas of Louis Even. Even published a "comic book" called "The Money Myth Exploded", which - by means of fictional story set on "Salvation Island" - sets out his ideas concerning money, banking and the charging of interest. Turmel's implicit assumptions - that the money supply is decreased over time by bankers and/or that bankers will require all outstanding debt and interest to be repaid simultaneously - can be found to have originated in Even's booklet. Turmel has indirectly acknowledged this by his praise of Louis Even and the White Berets in Quebec (praise which it appears, on the basis of e-mails reproduced by Turmel on the world wide web, is not reciprocated by the White Berets):

"Louis Even's Salvation Island comic book was about castaways who allowed a banker to start a bank whose interest charges eventually got them all into impossible debt. Then one day, a Social Credit manual washes ashore and they realize that he hadn't printed the interest and there was no way they could repay it. Look for the page where one of them is explaining on the blackboard how they all owed 108 but they were all given only 100. My grandfather, Socred Adelard Turmel, was quite convinced that Louis Even was right that interest was theft because "money has no babies." This is a major tenet of Quebec Social Credit. I realize that Quebec Social Credit as taught by the Michael Fighting White Berets from Rougemont Quebec has always provided a superior grasp of the problem that most other Social Crediters who think that interest is okay may never get..."

- John Turmel, quoting himself from 1992,
at
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/ryan1.htm.

 

Page Last updated: Thursday, May 27, 2004  



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