by David Astle
But of themselves in their folly the men of the city are willing
Our great city to wreck, being won over by wealth.
False are the hearts of the people’s leaders.[251]
A further couplet indicates the meaning of “our great city to wreck.”
Great men ruin a city: for lack of understanding
Under a despot’s yoke lieth the people enslaved.[252]
These lines written after the seizure by Peisistratus of the Tyranny at Athens would indicate that the same Peisistratus had the assistance in his rise to power of those former great landowning families of Attica who had been drawn into the schemes of the foreign money masters to their undoing. These landowners had forgotten their duty towards their own people. Fascinated by strange luxuries and the stranger talk of the money men, the trapezitae, they had permitted themselves to be absorbed with visions of that new wealth measured by the numbers indicated by the precious metal symbols of these same trapezitae. They forgot that in the absolute analysis they themselves were but stewards of a higher power. Lacking understanding, above all, of the true nature of this money as being above all their own law towards the facilitation of the exchanges amongst themselves and their people, they had been lead astray from their duty. By conniving with the bankers and their protégées the new manufacturers, to drive their own people off the land into the cities, and into the industries rapidly speeding up from the new money economy, they forgot that in their capacity as rulers, the whole land was theirs in trust to their people, and that the people therefore were expectant of them to be their guides and shepherds.
These plausible aliens who set up the money economy via their so-called “banks,” owned nothing but unmitigated gall, a vast contempt for mankind, and such as they could double-talk the naïve peasant rulers into giving them.
The folly of these rulers in equating possession with the master moneyers trifling pieces of gold and silver dated back to those grim Kings of the Homeric Sagas or before, who, being lain in their graves at Mycenae with all their riches, thus set off on their eternal journey with that small store of gold that the crafty Babylonian money-men had trained them to regard as wealth, as opposed to the real wealth of an organized state whose money was the benevolent law of the ruler in relation to surpluses, and directed towards the good and continuing life of the people and no more.
Those who had power and made men to marvel at their riches.[253]
This line indicates that Solon, like so many equally worthy people of this day, knew that money was an evil without understanding what it was about money that made it so. Not the having of the precious metal pieces of the banker recording the number of units represented, for such metal money lying inert beneath the floors[254] has no meaning so far as the quickening or slowing of the pulse of life is concerned. It has no more meaning than have abstract units of exchange media that have not yet been recorded in the ledger on account of no suitable (to the banker!) demand for them. and, of course, they are without limit. Nor even the spending of it as the holder, according to law, might choose. The evil is in the forgetfulness of the ruler that money is no more than a recording of his law of exchange, its magnitude being governed by the number of units indicated. It can never be treasure which is merely items carrying with them a high valuation in relation to such units, relative to their desirability and portability. The evil about money derives in consequence from lack of understanding of its true nature, and particularly from the confusing of money and treasure. It is the persistent failure of mankind to realize that money is but the result of agreement being arrived at amongst a sovereign people through their ruler, to provide themselves with a system of numbers by which their exchanges might be facilitated, and so help them to live a better life. Treasure being but commodity by which the unit of value of whatever state may be, can best be stored; even though such state cease to exist; because of that ancient and international convention in respect to the valuation of such treasure such as has lasted from age to age; from the most ancient times, Palaeolithic or earlier, until today.
The evil lay and it may be said, lies, in the forgetfulness of the ruler to respect his duty to provide an adequate money supply for his people regulated by himself and free of obligation to external forces, in such manner as had existed in the Ancient Oriental civilizations in earlier times. It lay in the permitting to private and hence irresponsible persons the power to intervene in that which was the most sacred responsibility of the ruler through the priesthood, the creation and regulation of the medium of exchange: his people’s money.
Therefore the hidden force behind the setting up of a tyranny was the far reaching power of a conspiratorial secret society, international in scope, controlling money emission in all countries which it penetrated through its continuing control of the sources of supply of that silver treasure by weight such as constituted the base of the exchange systems long ago established by itself.
The tyrant, therefore, was clearly the front man for the local banker more than actually being the banker himself. He it was who gave legality to the banker and the activities of that coterie of merchants, traders, and captains who flourished on the banker’s financial organization, and, though this they did not understand, his connection with those international bullion brokers of the day. These worthy businessmen depended for tiding themselves over difficult periods on that which the banker loaned them as money: maybe an entry in a ledger transferable to the account of a fellow merchant, visiting captain, or trader in slaves, or other merchandise; they also depended on the banker to be safe custodian for such treasure as came their way. The tyrant was therefore, either naïve or corrupt, the instrument set up by the banker, firstly towards the legalization of his status, and secondly towards the removal of that class who might yet challenge his peculiar and secret power, the natural aristocracy of Hellas.
This natural aristocracy, in a growing system that clearly sought the alienation and subversion of its free dependents with the purpose of ultimately leading them into paid day labour or into slavery final and absolute, was uncertainly situated in states which now owed their existence to the bankers, and their coterie of entrepreneurs, and manufacturers, and merchants, as clearly did so many of the Greek states of the Greek industrial revolution.
The banker, lurking in the shade apart from men, knew that these proud noblemen, formerly lords of this lovely land which was Greece, had forgotten the meaning of their own existence, and its relation to the total ordering of their society, and he despised them as well he might, for permitting him to undermine the true order of life and cause these simple folk, their peasantry, to be driven off the land one way or another, to the wage slavery of the potteries at Corinth, or Athens, or wherever it might be or whatever it might be.
In the same way, the Lords of the Manors of England and Scotland had driven the peasantry off the common lands some 2400 years later; land now representing that magic of money of which previously they had seen little. The same peasantry drifting into the new manufacturing and mining towns, dazed and leaderless, then formed a plentiful labour supply for that similar putrescent wickedness which was the industrial revolution in England’s green and pleasant land. If they were lucky they were able to emigrate.
In the lines of Theognis whose political aim was to prevent a recurrence of the Tyranny in Megara which was a centre for the manufacture of textiles:
Tradesmen reign supreme: the bad lord it over their betters.
This is the lesson that all must thoroughly master:
How that in the world wealth has the might and the power.
Many a bad man is rich and many a good man is needy.
Not without cause, Oh Wealth, do men honour thee above all things. Must men reckon the only virtue the making of money?
Everyone honours those that are rich and despises the needy.[255]
The banker, trained from the money shops of Babylonia, knew that for him the only desirable political situation was where the lowly and vul
gar[256] held the appearance of power and wealth and “money,” for such would not question too intently the source from whence they derived that “money,” nor the nature of that “money” such as had paved their way to so-called power, for fear its so necessary supply might be cut off. In the words of Aristophanes:
Often has it crossed my fancy that the cities apt to deal
With the very best and noblest of the Commonweal
Just as with our ancient coinage, and the fine new minted gold
These, sir, our sterling pieces, all of pure Athenian mould,
All of perfect die and metal, all the fairest of the fair,
All of workmanship unequalled, proved and valued everywhere,
These we use not. But the worthless pinchbeck coins of yesterday,
Vilest die and basest metal, now we always use instead.
Even so our sterling townsmen, nobly born and nobly bred,
Men of worth and rank and mettle, men of honourable fame,
Trained in every liberal science, choral dance and manly game,
These we treat with scorn and insult. But the strangers newliest come,
Worthless sons of worthless fathers, pinchbeck townsmen, coppery scum
(Whom in earlier days the city hardly would have stooped to use
Even for her scapegoat victims) these for every task we choose.[257]
Where, as in a city such as Megara, one banking house might control all credit or money creation, to question and seek to know how this was done would also mean search for knowledge of the banker’s secrets and this, our tyrant instinctively knew, was dangerous for his continued success.
What are the gains that lead up to a tyranny? Is it not more probable that they are some form of payment received by the commons (those that are bad) from the would-be tyrant?
Not at all. Merely the word was passed by that banking institution to which the majority of tradesmen or manufacturers in that particular city were indebted, that the banker, giver of all, (and taker of all!), favoured this move. Ah! and indeed it would be good for all, and to please the common people there would be plenty of work! It may safely be considered that the first legislation passed by our new tyrant would legalize the position of his backers, which previously, as likely as not, had been illegal!
The tyrant at this stage of history, was a necessity to Money Power, and while possibly having the appearance of being wealthy, he depended for his real finances on that backer whose interests he promoted. Those two officers of Alexander for example, who accepted the tyranny of Asiatic cities could in no way have understood the reality of finance, international or otherwise, except perhaps if they had been clerks in the paymaster corps of officer status. If they had so understood such finance, it is doubtful that they would have been promoted as they were.
The tyrant was one who the banker could rely on to put through his “Levelling” programme, or in the double talk of today, could be relied on to “Press ahead with Democratization,” and to work against the class from which he was supposed to have come.[258] He was one who could be relied on to put through programmes of public works, maintain military expenditures etc.; for all such activities strengthened the banker’s position as creator and regulator of the exchange unit, and therefore, from those exclusive courtyards wherein he schemed, designer of the life of the city. The banker could not maintain his hold over the city, except his product, ledger credit page entry money, however created, was in constant demand, and the local government deeply embroiled in his schemes. The tyrant had to be one completely in accord with that so-called “democratic” political attitude, which the banker always seemed to espouse. His ostensible purpose had to be to “Level”; such levelling meaning of course, tearing down everything above themselves, (and above the banker too!)
Those fragments of verse as quoted here, reputed to be by Solon, leave little doubt of the sincerity of Solon, at least superficially. The fact remains that as a merchant, whether of necessity or otherwise, he must have been marked with some of the outlook of that class. His famous laws, amongst which was that law releasing the peasantry from the debt slavery into which their natural rulers had permitted them to be drawn, and that was eating into the very vitals of Attica, in view of the fact that he offered citizenship to any family moving to Athens with the intention of taking up some manual trade, might very well have been promoted by his backers. The city was clearly very short of suitable free labour. It very well might be that his backers were those money lenders and bankers that controlled the growing manufacturies of Athens, and who saw that there was more profit and work for that which they loaned as money, in bringing the peasantry to Athens as free men (if a wage slave is really any more free than a slave owned outright!)[259] and in having thus a plentiful supply of labour, than in tying such peasantry to the soil by debt slavery, and in the case of distraint, their sale on to a surfeited market abroad. While there was still a healthy population of small holders as well as the great landlords, there was always possibility of recovery by the enslaved state, and themselves, the enslavers, as happened at Sparta in the time of Lycurgus, driven out of the land for hundreds of years. With a massive proletariat beholden to the men of the city for their freedom (as day labourers!), the former aristocracy even if they should ever awaken to their duty, would have no chance. Nor did they. All those “liberalizing” laws promulgated by Solon and his successors, steadily deprived the ancient families of Attica of their former power and prerogative. The shadow of power was put into the hands of ignoble persons, as indeed would have been so many of the “Demagogues,” and other “Democratic” officials, who, too often would have been no more than blind creatures lifted up from the mob to the service of money power. By the devices existing as part of what is known as “democracy,” such as Ostrakism through rumour put into circulation by the secret societies in the city, controlled, as in today, by the bankers without a doubt, “Leaders” no longer “suitable” could be removed.
“The tyrants themselves are repeatedly found making it part of their policy to keep their subjects employed on big industrial concerns. In more than one case we shall see their power collapsing just when this policy becomes financially impossible.”[260]
In other words if that tyrant proved unsatisfactory to his masters, money that source of strength in political life, was cut off just at the time it would be most needed, such as when he had become involved in heavy spending. Herein is further proof of the tyrant being not money power itself, but front man for money power.
“This part of the tyrant’s policy is noticed by Aristotle who quotes the dedications (buildings and works of art) of the Cypselids at Corinth, the buildings of Olymphian Zeus at Athens by the Peisistratids, and the works of Polycrates around Samos. To these names we add Theagenes of Megara, Phalaris of Agrigentum, Aristodemus of Cumae and the Tarquins of Rome, all of whom are associated with works of this kind.”[261]
It is pointed out by Professor Ure that it can scarcely be an accident that the Tyranny of Athens ended almost immediately after the removal of one of its two roots; the mines of the country of the Thracians and Paionians.[262] Which is to say that if the source of bullion on which the money power of a so-called banker was founded, petered out, or was lost to enemy action, the tyrant he had promoted could be discarded as having no further purpose.
Such activities being ordered by a class of persons who had achieved despotic power in the same period of history, roughly the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries B.C., the period which saw extensive development of mining in all of Europe including Lydia, Cyprus, Spain,[263] Carpathia, Epirus, Illyria, Thrace and Greece itself, without mentioning the flow of precious metal plunder deriving from the depredations of the Assyrian, can only have been the result of a policy deep laid, and far reaching in its consequences. This policy can only have been created in some central point from which flowed the springs of world power such as would have designed, wittingly, or unwittingly, so much of the ancient world.
&nb
sp; The same period also coincided with the development of mining tools of hardened iron, highly efficient methods of reduction of silver bearing ores,[264] and the growth of an adequate supply of slave labour from various sources and due to the above mentioned depredations of the Assyrian etc.; all of which was so necessary towards profitable mining operations at that time. It may not unreasonably be supposed that this central point was still in the cities of lower Mesopotamia, such as Babylon, Ur, Lagash, Uruk etc. From this area the merchant houses would have continued to have spread their operations around the world[265] in the same way, as, it is recorded, had been done from Ur as much as fifteen hundred years before during the so-called IIIrd Dynasty;[266] or for that matter during the period of seeming glory and empire that so often follows the accession to power of private money creative force in any organized and potentially vigorous state. A most outstanding instance of the latter in modern times exists in the period of empire that came to Britain following the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 A.D.[267]
The silver which the international bankers drew from Greece etc. at a ratio of 10:1 or more, would have been used in settlement of trade balances with India, Bactria, or China, at a ratio of 6:1 or less, as to gold. According to Alexander del Mar, this movement of silver to the Orient from Athens, was arranged by the Athenian Government;[268] but except this early Athenian Government was fronting for the bankers, this could not have been so. International trade balances have always been settled from the world’s banking capital or headquarters of the international bankers or bullion brokers, such as was London during the last three centuries until very recently. In the days of which we write, this world banking capital was still located in Babylon city, it may reasonably be assumed.
The money of the cities of lower Mesopotamia and the whole Near East for that matter, had been based for a long time on the international valuation of silver by weight, and therefore these cities had long ago sought to obtain control of all sources of supply of such silver. As far back as 2470 B.C., King Manishtusu of Akkad invaded Southern Persia with no purpose other than gaining control of its silver mines.[269] When the rapid expansion of mining, as mentioned above, brought on to the markets of the world a relative deluge of silver and gold, the latter taking no mean second place, those groups controlling International finance from Babylonia, and possibly from Nineveh, decided no doubt to seek for further worlds to conquer, as it were.