League Against Usury Liga contra Cametei Liga împotriva Cametei | |
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| President | Eftimie Antonescu (1929–1932) Collective leadership (1932) |
| Founded | August 17, 1929 |
| Dissolved | December 1932 |
| Merged into | Agrarian Union Party |
| Succeeded by | Guard for the Defense of Private Property |
| Headquarters | Bucharest 1931: Batiștei Street 17 1932: Aleea Alexandru 18 1932: Edgar Quinet Street 9 |
| Newspaper | Jos Camăta Desrobirea |
| Ideology | Single-issue (Debt relief) Big tent Agrarianism Producerism Economic antisemitism Fascism (minority) |
| Political position | Center-left to far-right |
| National affiliation | Front for Urban Debt-clearance (1932) |
| Slogan | Dobânda este un furt ce nu trebuie plătit ("Interest is theft that we should not cover") |
The League Against Usury (Romanian: Liga contra Cametei, LCC, or Liga împotriva Cametei, sometimes shortened to Liga Cametei, "Usury League") was a single-issue, mainly agrarian, political party in Romania. Formed in late 1929 as a political answer to the Great Depression, it involved itself in the fight against "usury" (or predatory lending), bringing together politicians on all sides of the political spectrum. Its prominent backers and activists included leftists such as Nicolae L. Lupu and Ion D. Isac, independents such as Pantelimon Erhan, Stefan Frecôt, Dumitru Pavelescu-Dimo, George Tutoveanu and Eraclie Sterian, and some affiliates of the interwar far-right. It also formed a unified cacus with Jean Th. Florescu's Omul Liber faction and with Simion Mândrescu's National-Radicals. The LCC channeled protest votes, and seemed to have gained sweeping popular support during the first year of its existence. It competed in this with fascist movements such as the Iron Guard, ambiguously supporting economic antisemitism—while being generally welcoming of ethnic minorities other than Jewish.
Although perceived as an upsetting contender, the LCC effectively seconded two small agrarian groups, the Peasants' Party–Lupu and the Democratic Peasants' Party–Stere. Under their auspices, it managed to obtain one seat in the Assembly in the election of June 1931. It originally formed part of the opposition to the government formed by Nicolae Iorga, and was treated with noted harshness by Constantin Argetoianu of Internal Affairs. The authorities viewed it as a front for the illegal Romanian Communist Party; communists rejected that claim in the 1930s, but some later came to agree with it. One of the LCC arrested for sedition, Aristică Magherescu, left the group to establish his own Ploughmen's Party of Greater Romania, alongside fellow defector Constantin Iarca.
The League's fiscal proposals were slowly embraced by Iorga and Argetoianu, who also drew former LCC cadres into their government team. While other LCC activists left the League to openly embrace fascism, Antonescu was unofficially backed by Iorga in their shared cause against the Iron Guard. Though involved in supporting continued debt relief policies, the League took no seat in the elections of July 1932, by which time it had split into three rival wings, respectively led by Antonescu, Isac, and Iarca. All groups found themselves opposed to the more orthodox economic policies advanced by Iorga's replacement, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, and some engaged in street battles with the Romanian Police. In late 1932, shortly after attempting to form a larger Front for Urban Debt-clearance, the LCC finally dissolved itself, with the mainstream joining Argetoianu's own Agrarian Union Party. Other groups still reclaimed the title into the mid 1930s, by which time Antonescu was returning to politics with another protest movement, called Guard for the Defense of Private Property. Magherescu sought to revive the LCC one final time in 1944, before allowing it to be absorbed by the far-leftist Ploughmen's Front.