Social Comptabilism: The Cheque and Clearing Service in the Austrian Postal Savings Bank. Proposed Law laid before the Chamber of Representatives of BelgiumSolvay, Ernest
General
Social Comptabilism: The Cheque and Clearing Service in the Austrian Postal Savings Bank. Proposed Law laid before the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium
Solvay, Ernest
Postal savings banks; Postal savings banks -- Austria
Each time that a cheque is paid by an affiliated person, the Central
Office at Vienna is advised by post and returns immediately, also by
post, an extract of their account to the two persons concerned. Each
affiliated person's account is thus kept to date, and this as much for
the Central Bank as for the person affiliated.
Here then are thirty thousand persons who could at a stretch do
entirely without money--if their mutual relations were sufficient to
permit them to do so for all the necessaries of life, and this result
is obtained merely by the fact that an official establishment is
willing to undertake to keep the banking account. But it is seen that
these thirty thousand persons are but a select few in the mass of the
population, since the Savings Bank admits them to carry on transactions
merely upon the deposit of 100 florins, thus almost always at the risk
and peril of the transactors, as has always been the case so far in
regard to cheques. And it is evident that if it were desired to make
the system general, it would be necessary to adopt the principle of
comptabilism which would mean that the transactions were guaranteed by
the property of the persons affiliated.
Here then, as I said, has the Savings Bank of Vienna become up to
a certain point a comptabilistic establishment. I may add that the
dangers that might threaten this institution, as far as it actually
works, spring from its being not entirely comptabilistic, in so far as
it still retains the metallic basis.
The deposits received are not left unproductive, they are placed in
funds, public or otherwise.
Let a political crisis occur which should cause a rush of withdrawals
of these deposits from the Bank and it would be exposed to the greatest
dangers. Solely because the institution is based upon current ideas and
not upon the comptabilistic system.
In effect, in this latter system, the individual who is affiliated does
not make a deposit of monetary unities having a value in themselves,
he gives as a pledge a commodity, and according to the value of this
commodity he is permitted to make use of more or less unities.
Here then is the ground on which the institution ought to be based.
Under these conditions deposits are not necessary. The affiliated
person will give a pledge in exchange for his cheque book. The
registers of the Central Savings Bank will declare that he is permitted
to carry on transactions with _x_ unities, and his cheques will be
accepted, as long as he does not go beyond this figure.
In place of a deposit having a value of its own, there is the simply
writing down, the entry of a right, and the dangers of the present
system would be avoided.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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