ABSTRACT
In the decades following World War II Douglas has been dubbed a crank whose ‘funny money’ proposals were an attempt to solve depression in the inter-war years. The volume of material deemed necessary to refute an elementary error is inconsistent with this analysis. The Labour Party, Fabians, other socialists and academics, including Keynes, read and commented upon the texts, some at considerable length. In the following chapters reactions are categorised in order to summarise the debate. To some extent the categories overlap. For example, some members of the Labour Party committee of 1922 (Chapter 5) made individual contributions and hence appear in Chapter 6. The Douglas/New Age analysis and policy proposals formed a coherent alternative not only to orthodox economics but also to contemporary socialist economic policies, which were based upon acceptance of the essential tenets of orthodoxy. Under these circumstances their failure to influence practical policy formation is less remarkable than is the extent to which they engendered an extensive and often heated debate.
