Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, MIMechE, MIEE (20 January 1879 – 29 September 1952),[1] was a British engineer, economist and pioneer of the social credit economic reform movement.

While he was reorganising the work of the Royal Aircraft Establishment during World War I, Douglas noticed that the weekly total costs of goods produced was greater than the sums paid to workers for wages, salaries and dividends.

Troubled by the seeming difference between the way money flowed and the objectives of industry ("delivery of goods and services", in his view), Douglas set out to apply engineering methods to the economic system.

Douglas collected data from more than 100 large British businesses and found that all except those becoming bankrupt, spent less in salaries, wages and dividends than the value of goods and services produced each week: the workers were not paid enough to buy back what they had made.

He published his observations and conclusions in an article in the magazine English Review where he suggested: "That we are living under a system of accountancy which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to itself a technical impossibility.

His 1933 edition of Social Credit made a reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which, while noting its dubious authenticity, wrote that what "is interesting about it, is the fidelity with which the methods by which such enslavement might be brought about can be seen reflected in the facts of everyday experience.