Brushing up on your Zeitgeist
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Click on the word, it’s a link.A comrade who was enthusiastic about TZM was enthusiastic about this to. It’s something they teach at publicity courses.
Like the SPGB, AIDA originates in the Edwardian Era, we need at least to look at techniques since Elizabeth II began her reign. AIDA does make a good point though about attracting people, which the SPGB sometimes excuses sloppy presentation as the ideas will attract an audience, a laughable attitude in the modern media age. Ironically, probably one of the best communication of the SPGB ideas is a non-SPGB platform Wikipedia.
Well, if you’ve got any new ideas or places to point people towards I’m sure we’ll be glad to hear them.
Full report of the public discussion with TZM here:-http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/world-socialist-movement/report-public-discussion-tzm
Photos of the public discussion with TZM here:-http://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/photos/9841972/
The debate yesterday was disappointing. Adam Buick and Dick Field for the Socialist Party were good and explained the socialist case well but Zeitgeist were disappointing. I agree that a Resource Based Economy which is the “common heritage of all the world’s peoples” and “a system of access rather than property and money” is akin to socialism. But there are fundamental things about Zeitgeist (TZM) that are just so wrong. They do not recognise economic class as an important factor, they say that “property is an outgrowth of scarcity”, they believe that “the root causes of all problems lie with the foundation of the monetary system itself”, there is no acknowledgment that it is capitalism, they say “communism in the forms in which it has ever existed had money, banks ..” – so where were these communist societies – I assume TZM are referring to the state capitalist USSR,, so they are already falling into the capitalist trap of anti-socialism. Francesco(TZM) at the debate described the New Economics Foundation booklet ‘Where Does Money Come From?’ as having the right anwsers to the problems of the monetary system. Has he not read Adam Buick’s article ‘Where Money Comes From – A reply to the NEF’ in the ‘Socialist Standard’ in February 2012 – basically – a lending organisation cannot lend more than it has saved with it, banks do not create “money” or “loans” out of thin air. This belief is widespread in so-called anti-capitalist circles – from Occupy, NEF, TZM, and PositiveMoney.org. There were positivemoney leaflets at the debate yesterday which were quoting that free market capitalist advocate Martyn Woolf of the FT: “the essence of the contemporary monetary system is the creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks…” Woolf is deluded as well and should read Buick’s reply to the NEF booklet. Positivemoney.org believe the root cause of our current problems is “the way we allow money to be created”, they say “money appears – doesn’t come from anywhere” !Zeitgeist is the offspring of a film by a former private equity trader on Wall street, said film featured ideas of resource based economy of a futurist in what is called The Venus Project. Is it me, am I the only one but I keep thinking of the sci-fi comedy film ‘Sleeper’ by Woody Allen where there is the Aires Project!Anyway comedy aside, there are the conspiracy theories associated with the Zeitgeist movement which give it a cranky American feel and I think of Jon Ronson’s explorations in ‘Them’ several years ago.
Hi Steve. Here’s a reply just received from Roader Haddock on the SPGB’s facebook page:-http://www.facebook.com/groups/worldsocialism/”Well, I think the fundamental problem is alot of people tend to parrot the Zeitgeist movies without any real independent thought or investigation into most the claims. I can speak for myself and say that I don’t take the Zeitgeist films as a holy bible, and regularly speak out against many of the conspiracy theories denoted in the first film. In fact out of all of them “Zeitgeist Moving Forward” is the only one I’d put my weight behind. Sadly, I am very much alone in this! I also know the difference between proper communism and state capitalism, and am aware that there never has been anything remotely like communism in existence, bar maybe the brief period of a moneyless system in Russia before “The New Economic Policy” was introduced that allowed some capitalism. If someone representing the movement fell into the “anti-socialist claptrap” then I apologize, but the problem is that socialism has many different variations. “Marxist-Leninist” “Trotskyism” etc.. etc… Once again, I even find alot of this quite confusing myself as I was under the impression that socialism was ACTUALLY a money-based system, but was a stepping stone towards communism which was the moneyless system. So when someone says that “the monetary system is the problem” I don’t think that should refer primarily to capitalism itself, as there are various other parties claiming to be socialist, who still use money. I also don’t really understand how people could disagree that “property is an outgrowth of scarcity” its clear that most early civilizations had no concept of property, or commerce, until the agricultural revolution. We have built an entire ethic around not having enough to go around since then. I don’t consider the Zeitgeist to be a “sci-fi fantasy”. Regardless of what people think about money creation and whatever else, the main focus should be on the resource based economic system Can you explain how Martin Wolf is deluded? He seems like the real deal and has been regarded as one of the most influential economic writers in the world. He may be an advocate of the free market, but I think its rather a rather flippant comment about the guy considering his prominence.”
“common heritage of all the world’s peoples” and “a system of access rather than property and money”. “communism in the forms in which it has ever existed had money, banks ..”The above are from TZM/Venus Project literature handed out at the debate on sunday.Martin Wolf is an apologist for free market capitalism, trickle down theory of wealth. Positivemoney.org are using his quotes according to literature handed out by TZM on sunday.
Re Martin Wolf, he did (I think rather thoughtlessly and without re-reading what he had written) write in the Financial Times (9 November 2010):
Quote:The essence of the contemporary monetary system is creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks’ often foolish lending.Naturally this was seized upon by currency cranks and it is now almost obligatory for them to quote it in any argument.I emailed him to ask what he meant and he replied (23 June 2011):
Quote:In the contemporary monetary system, money consists of the liabilities of the central bank plus the liabilities of commercial banks that enjoy the ability to borrow freely from the central bank. These institutions can create money at will, and they do. (my emphasis)This is not the same thing as saying that commercial banks can create money on their own out of nothing (the standard currency crank argument). What it is saying that some of them can get some of the money to lend by borrowing it from the central bank and that the central bank can create money at will. But nobody has denied that a government-controlled central bank can do this. The argument is over whether commercial banks can do it, whether they can lend what they haven’t got (or can’t get). Clearly they can’t. In fact, Wolf’s argument assumes that they can’t (borrowing is involved even if from the Bank of England).Wolf’s argument here is not the same as that put forward in the New Economics Foundation booklet Where Does Money Come From? that Francesco held up at the meeting. This argues that not only banks that can borrow from the Bank of England can create money out of nothing (the furthest Wolf can be regarded as going, though in fact it is the Bank of England that does the “creation”), but that all banks can do this, and not only all banks but building societies and even credit unions too.Martin Wolf was a member of the Independent Commission on Banking, chaired by Sir John Vickers, whose final report was published in September last year. This report takes it for granted that banks are “financial intermediaries” between “savers and borrowers”, describing the “the core function of banks” as “taking deposits and making loans”.
Quote:The financial system has three broad functions: to facilitate payments; to intermediate funds between savers and borrowers; and to help manage financial risks.[para A3.7,page 270]Quote:The challenge for policy is to strengthen the resilience of the banking system without obstructing the efficient performance of the core functions of the financial system to which banks are central – facilitating payments, intermediating funds between savers and borrowers, and helping to manage financial risks.[para A3.109, page 308]No mention of banks being able to provide funds to borrowers out of nothing. And no dissenting report from Martin Wolf saying this. Clearly, he doesn’t really believe that banks can create money out of nothing, except perhaps in rushing off a sloppy article for the FT.
Out of interest, how do the Zeitgeisters and New Economics people explain how or why banks go bankrupt, or why the phenomenon of a run on the bank should be a problem for them?
Well, Stuart, to the best of my recollection the two Zeitgeisters present last Sunday who were particularly hung-up on this notion (Francesco [one of the speakers] and Robert van Dinteren [from the Dutch Chapter in Nijmegen) did not really attempt to give any explanation but repetitively referred to books they had read and a video they had seen which argue that banks could indeed create money (or credit) at a push of a button.Quite an interesting parallel discussion taking place over on Facebook.http://www.facebook.com/groups/worldsocialism/
Thanks Gnome. Not on Facebook anymore, so can’t see the debate. Googling, and after very cursory reads of some blogs, it seems the debate is over whether private banks “create money” by extending credit, which the central bank is then forced to deal with by creating money. Hence the debate is at least partly over what is meant by “money”, which I seem to remember took up most of the exchange between Adam and Martin Wolf of the FT. Found this useful and interesting:http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/05/16/an-attack-on-paul-krugman/
Thanks Stuart. I’ve shared your link on Facebook.
The Krugman/Keen debate was touched upon here if any missed it. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/100-reserve-banking?page=3 i think I like DarrenP’s tack which seems to be the more appropriate one …Do banks create ACTUAL wealth? and keeps our eye on the ball – the Labour Theory of Value – which may be our best approach rather than get tied up with economists arguing about M0 M1 M2 M3 or whatever. I found Keracher’s pamphlets on economics surprisingly easy to follow about the nature of money and gold and recommend them. Our own John Bisset uploaded the text tohttp://www.marxists.org/archive/keracher/1935/producers-parasites.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/keracher/1935/economics-for-beginners.htm There was talk of up-dating and re-printing Economics for Beginners, but perhaps also combining both into a single edition would also be worthwhile project.
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