The Global Currency Plot
Introduction
Every action is right which in itself, or in the maxim on which it proceeds, is such that it can coexist along with the freedom of the will of each and all in action, according to a universal law.1
— IMMANUEL KANT
On June 18, 2019, Facebook, the US social media giant, announced that it intended to issue a global currency in mid-2020. It was to be called Libra. Large US companies were said to be behind the project, such as Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, Stripe, eBay, Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, and Uber. Is a global money revolution in the offing? Will there soon be a global currency offered by private companies? On August 23, 2019, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, declared that financial markets and economies must reduce their dependence on the US dollar. He suggested that the central banks issue a common digital world currency (the “synthetic hegemonic currency”).
These ventures pave the way for this book. For they indicate how relevant the thoughts presented in it are to current affairs. They are based on a central insight: if there were a global system of free markets in which everyone could freely buy what they wanted to buy, and in which producers could freely produce what consumers wanted, then there would also be a free market for money, and—through a voluntary agreement of all parties—a single world currency would emerge.
This is because that would be economically optimal. If everyone in the world uses the same money, the productive effect of money is exploited to the full: the economic calculation carried out with money—calculating with money prices—is thus optimized for everyone. By having a voluntarily chosen world currency the global division of labor, the productivity of production, and world trade would be supported in the best possible way and, as a result, people nationally and internationally would cooperate peacefully and productively.
Our current worldwide system, however, is not one of free markets, but rather an inhibited, restricted economic and social system. Everything is decisively co-determined and co-controlled by governments, be it upbringing, education, transport, health, law, security, old-age provision, environmental protection, or, above all, money and credit. Nothing happens without the governments’ consent, requirements, and orders—whether in the United States, Japan, Europe, or Latin America. This is no coincidence: democratic socialism unites them all. In recent decades this ideology has risen to become the world’s most powerful in political terms.
Democratic socialism encourages all those who follow it to gradually abolish the system of free markets and replace it with a state-run economy of control and command, a planned economy. Many special interests have gathered behind democratic socialism, some of which seem to pursue very different goals: proponents of the welfare state, social market economists, interventionists, anticapitalists, Christian socialists, state socialists, syndicalists, cultural Marxists, environmental activists, ecologists, political globalists, Keynesians, and whatever else they’re all called. What unites them is the willingness or explicit goal to smash the system of free markets—or what is left of them—to pieces.
The program of democratic socialism is not limited to the national or regional level. By its very nature it claims worldwide validity, aims at world domination, a world government, a world state, and, in the language of the philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), the “peace of a despotism.”2 The world state that is the subject of this book is essentially what Jaspers calls the world empire:
It is world peace through a single force that conquers all from one place on earth. It holds itself up by force. It forms the leveled masses through total planning and terror. A unified worldview is forced upon everyone in simple outlines by propaganda. Censorship and control of mental activities forces them into the respective plan, which can be modified at any time.3
The insight that emerges from the explanations in the following chapters is that the advocates of democratic socialism are working—some consciously, many presumably unconsciously—toward the creation of a world government, a world state. But this can only be achieved if a single world currency, controlled by the states, is launched beforehand. The prospect that this project could succeed must worry anyone who desires freedom and prosperity for himself and his fellow human beings. A world state, built on the principles of democratic socialism, is a dystopia; it would mean political tyranny and economic impoverishment, probably even starvation for countless people in the world.
This is basically nothing more than the attempt to create a unified civilization; the biblical image of the Tower of Babel immediately comes to mind (Gen. 11: 1–9). People have tried before to create one world through the power of their own ability. By constructing a tower which was to reach into heaven, they wanted to take hold of the control points of power and advance to the divine. But God prevented this because he saw that, due to their hubris, people were on the verge of losing their essence and their own selves. He recognized that their moral ability did not keep pace with their technical ability, that moral power had not grown with the ability of people to make and destroy. God intervened against this kind of union and created a different world: not one of uniformity, but a world of diversity in which people in their individuality can join together to create unity.
The thoughts which lead to this assessment and which are explained in this book claim to be strictly logical or a priori. What is meant by the term a priori theory? The term a priori means that something is evident, that it can be regarded as true and universal, independent of experience, such as the statement “If a is greater than b, and b is greater than c, then a is also greater than c.” The term theory refers to a system of scientifically based statements that depicts excerpts from reality and explains and conclusively connects the underlying laws.
The a priori theory helps uncover the expansion dynamics of democratic socialism, which for decades has worked its way up to becoming the world’s dominant ideology: it can clarify how democratic socialism shapes the state; why the state claims the monopoly of money and how it obtains it; how the state influences economic and social life with sovereignty over money; and what will happen if the path taken for decades
continues unswervingly. From this point of view, the thoughts expressed in this book claim to provide a reliable conditional sketch of the future.
The a priori theory can also serve to outline the possible alternative to democratic socialism: the private law society. This is the logical solution and the way to put an end to the destructive work of democratic socialism.
Democratic socialism’s claim to world domination does not mean that it is necessarily put into practice or can be realized. There is no compelling reason to be pessimistic. At the same time, people’s thinking and actions must essentially change so that democratic socialism does not ultimately win the day and achieve world domination.
Ultimately, it is ideas (or theories) that guide people’s actions. Ideas determine what is considered good and evil, just and unjust, feasible and impossible. However, human action will only be successful if the ideas that guide it are compatible with the laws that undoubtedly exist in the field of human action. It is therefore crucial to change the ideas prevailing today, if the dystopia of a political world currency and a world state is to be prevented. This requires putting the dominant ideas to the test in a rigorous intellectual discourse and, if they do not withstand critical examination, debunking them and rejecting them as false.
“There is no global anthem, no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship.” These words were spoken in Ohio on December 1, 2016, by US president Donald J. Trump (b. 1946), who had promised his voters to “Make America Great Again.” He was effectively elected to break the “elite,” “the establishment,” to deconstruct the administrative state (“deep state”), to reject “political globalism,” and to embrace nationalism. At the United Nations gathering on September 24, 2019, he noted: “The free world must embrace its national foundations. It must not attempt to erase them or replace them.” In the coronavirus crisis, however, even the Trump administration opted to fight the consequences of the politically dictated “lockdown” with a gigantic bailout package—out of fear that otherwise the financial and economic system would have collapsed, fully aware that this policy effectively empowers rather than deconstructs the “deep state” and the establishment. This episode is indicative of how tremendously difficult it has already become to escape from the economic and political trajectory that the ideology of democratic socialism has put into place.
In this book, the logic of human action serves as an impartial judge to grasp and assess the consequences, the dynamics of the development of democratic socialism, taking into account the concrete circumstances that democratic socialism happens upon and itself brings about.
This book is primarily intended for non-economists and any other interested parties. But perhaps it will also appeal to experts with strong opinions who want to open themselves to the arguments expanded upon here and then carry them further. In any case, I hope that reading this book will be of benefit to all who are interested—that it will be illuminating and inspire them to critically challenge and rethink preconceived ideas.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank many people without whose influence, criticism, advice, encouragement, and challenges this book would probably not have been possible. There are too many names for me to list and honor properly. However, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Ruth Polleit-Riechert for her support, understanding, and unwavering love.
Thorsten Polleit
Königstein im Taunus,
October 2019
