The Gift_ Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World - Lewis Hyde [155]
Both Pound and Gesell thought that stamp scrip would prevent hoarding and increase the velocity of the money in circulation. Nobody would want to hold on to it. I’m not sure that it does this any better than conventional interest—when all money bears interest, uninvested money shrinks, too. But there is one obvious difference between stamp scrip and conventional interest: the direction of the increase is reversed. A conventional interest payment goes to the owner of the money; with stamp scrip (as with gifts) the increase goes away from the owner of the wealth (it goes to the state, about which more later). Moreover, again as with a commerce of gifts, the increase of stamp scrip goes to the group as a whole, not to individuals. “Anyone who thinks to keep it put by in a stocking will find it slowly melting away. Anyone who needs it to live by, or who uses it to stimulate and increase the well-being of the nation, will profit by it.”
The imagery of Pound’s argument ties stamp scrip to the fertility of nature, just as he tied credit to “the growing grass.” Metallic money should not stand for perishable goods, he declares, because its durability “gives it certain advantages not possessed by potatoes or tomatoes.” Nor should it represent the value of goods that increase by nature (“Gold … does not reproduce itself …”). But with stamp scrip—as long as the state prints the money and also sells the stamps—a sort of natural cycle is established: money dies in the state and the state gives it life again. It perishes but, like “the clover enduring,” is reborn (increased if the group’s wealth has increased). With the state playing the part of the topsoil, as it were, stamp scrip imitates animal and vegetable goods that decay into a fertile compost.
The state plays such a central role in Pound’s economic theory that we can touch on almost all its remaining elements by simply listing the functions he assigns to government:
The state runs the bank.
The state issues and controls the currency (which will then be “state notes,” not “bank notes”). Rather than pay interest on a public debt borrowed from private financiers, the state should circulate a non-interest-bearing national debt as its currency.
The state distributes purchasing power. When someone needs a loan or a large project needs financing, the state is the creditor. Money itself—the unit of purchasing power—is issued on the basis of “work done for the state.” And when the national wealth increases, the state spreads the wealth by paying each citizen a national dividend.
The state sets prices—either by influencing the market with “state-controlled pools of raw products” or by regulating the value of labor.
The state obviously has a great deal of power, but Pound was not particularly worried about its abuse. He intended the state to be a servant, not a boss. The state is a republic, Pound was fond of saying, and “the res publica means, or ought to mean ‘the public convenience.’”
The point of Pound’s economics—we mentioned it long ago—is to “get the country’s food and goods justly distributed.” That, at any rate, is the point if we put it positively. But it often seems more accurate to state it as a negative: Pound wants to prevent unjust distribution—he wants, that is, to keep the swindlers from bleeding the public, to catch the crooks and wipe out trickery. No picture of Pound’s political economy would be complete without a description of the crimes it is intended to prevent. We have already seen the first example, the Bank of England creating money out of nothing. Three more specific cases will cover the field:
“Aristotle … relates how Thales …, forseeing a bumper crop of olives, hired by paying a small deposit, all the olive presses on the islands … When the abundant harvest arrived, everybody went to see Thales …The Exchange frauds are … [all] variants on this theme—artificial scarcity of grain and of merchandise, artificial scarcity of money …”
“The imperfections of the American electoral system were … demonstrated by the scandal of the