Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

POLITICAL INITIATIVES 105

economic and cultural needs.”® From this it followed that it was necessary not only to severely limit the powers of the central political authorities, but to devolve such powers to other central and local bodies. “It demands,” it was argued, “a technique of representation sufficiently complex to correspond to the versatility of man’s nature. A democratic society will therefore be one in which there are several coordinating representative bodies.”

Amongst such bodies, it was suggested, there should be local and central Economic Councils which would coordinate the activities of the organisations of producers that would have control of the economic sphere of life.

A true politics will not attempt to organise production. It will only see that men are, as producers, properly related to each other in order to organise their productive work themselves. This will involve the control of each industry and profession by its own organisation of workers, subject to their mutual adaptation in general councils, and right relations with the whole community of consumers.!°

Likewise, the institution of Cultural Councils was called for:

a conclave of the higher interests of the nation, consisting of the men of known achievement in all science, learning and art, legislating for education, assisting the coordination of the sciences and improving facilities for culture and leisure."

However, for the authors, the reconstruction of the state entailed by the establishment of such councils presupposed the overhaul of the existing financial system. The control of credit and the supply of money, it was argued, lay in the hands of the private banks and financial institutions beyond the control of the state or the community. Such institutions, through the issuing of credit and the creation of debt, preserved their control over a wide range of human activities. Thus, it was posited, unemployment was largely due to a chronic lack of purchasing power, caused by the “inadequacy of the financial mechanism in each country to effect the sale of the increased quantities of goods which is made possible by industrial and scientific progress.”!2 Following the theories developed by Douglas in The New Age, the contributors seemed to believe that a technical change in the accounting system would facilitate the necessary transformation of the financial system so as to allow “money to be administered solely in the interests of the community’s powers of production and needs of consumption.”

All these ideas and proposals were reflected in less developed form in the publications issued by the Eleventh Hour Group and the Flying Clubs. Similarly, their injunction that people should set about forming their own