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Here (from the Marxists Internet Archive) is what we said of Friedman when he first appeared on the scene in 1970.

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I didn’t see much wrong with Dave Flynn’s personal comments on Occupy. It could just as easily have come from an SPGB member as from an ex-member.

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It provides an open door policy to the public, and a space where ideas can be discussed on an ad hoc basis or in more detail if you prefer. It provides educational facilities including the use of “expert” guest speakers (often mavericks from the banking/corporate world itself), and offers the maxim “anyone can teach, anyone can learn”. This is thoroughly inspiring stuff by any standards, but what of the content?Banks would have to be prevented from the corrupt practice of creating money and debt from nothing, so the idea of currency reform was an overriding concern. Contempt for modern banking seemed to go hand-in-hand with empathy for industrial capital which was characterised as being fleeced by the financiers. The overall impression seemed to be that we do not live in a globalised system of capitalism, but a form of banking landlordism, and insofar as we have capitalism at all it is not proper free market capitalism, but a form of crony capitalism. As one Speaker said “Not the capitalism that Adam Smith fought for”. It is worth pointing out that this particular gentleman had previously published for the Adam Smith Institute and also rather gingerly paid homage to Frederick Von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. There were a few communist interventions which were well received by some people but the prevailing viewpoints were as described above.The interesting thing about the relationship between the form and content is that even though many libertarian communist boxes are ticked, such people appear trapped in a petit bourgeois worldview reminiscent of nineteenth century Proudhonism, and it was precisely this which I found most frustrating.

I was with Dave at that meeting and was just as frustrated as him that Occupy had organised a meeting at which some (in fact most) of the speakers were openly pro-capitalist. What I don’t understand are those who imply that we should give such people a free run and not say what we think, on the grounds that this would be telling the movement what to do. Dave didn’t agree with this as he was one of the two “communist interventions” saying that it was the capitalist system, not the banks, that had caused the problem and that it was communism, not banking reform that was the solution.

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Even if we believe that “socialism” or “libertarian communism” is the answer, we are still no further forward. Aspiration alone will not be enough to advance the revolutionary process, no matter how much we talk about class struggle, workers councils or even the SPGB’s revolutionary use of parliament. If we are indeed in the early stages of a revolutionary period, it would be arrogant in the extreme to claim we know exactly how things should be played out. Existing political theories and practices may well preserve knowledge from the moments that have gone before, but it is reasonable to assume in our modern age that new forms and practices will come into play.

I imagine that this is the passage that Stuart likes but what is it actually saying beyond that we shouldn’t predict or dictate to the future? In any event, it is still thinking in terms of a revolution to end capitalism and replace it by socialism. Just like us. Or are we to assume that advocating socialism is also dictating the future?

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Someone has brought up Canadian currency crank Paul Grignon on another thread (the one about banking). As Francesco recommended his crap video Money as Debt at the Hammersmith meeting, I think it worth recording what Gringon thinks of a moneyfree society. Here’s what he wrote in an email to us dated 15 October 2009:

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In a socialist system in which there is no money how does one get what one needs or wants? Are we allowed to have “wants”? To me it seems that it must mean saying goodbye to the ultimate freedom that matters to people, the freedom to EARN what we desire. Am I correct? If there ‘s no money, there’s no measuring of energy exchanges. Therefore there’s no way to EARN more than your fellow by working harder or having more initiative than he does. If I am correct, then everything has to be assigned to us. How and by whom?This is the exact same question I ask the Zeitgeist Addendum/Venus Project followers who also insist that we need to do away with money completely. So in that respect you are on the same team with Zeitgeist against me.I think such ideas are escapist nonsense at best and a deliberate attack on real monetary reform at worst. Why? Because it will NEVER HAPPEN. So it is a completely safe “utopian” vision to sell people on and DISTRACT THEM away from understanding and demanding real substantive reform to the actual system we are currently enslaved to, the one that IS HAPPENING IN REAL LIFE.

So he sees a moneyless society as a distraction from monetary reform! Pity not all Zeitgeisters see that it’s the other way round.

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Paul Grignon is a classic Currency Crank who spouts utter nonsense. For instance, in the “analysis” he invites us to refer to here, under section 8 he seems to think that all deposits with banks originally come from money banks have lent! There is an exchange with him in the December 2008 and October 2009 Socialist Standards:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/dec08/page16.htmlhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/oct09/page19.htmlWe also had an email exchange with him. Here’s it what he says about socialism (email of 15 October 2009):

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In a socialist system in which there is no money how does one get what one needs or wants? Are we allowed to have “wants”? To me it seems that it must mean saying goodbye to the ultimate freedom that matters to people, the freedom to EARN what we desire. Am I correct? If there ‘s no money, there’s no measuring of energy exchanges. Therefore there’s no way to EARN more than your fellow by working harder or having more initiative than he does. If I am correct, then everything has to be assigned to us. How and by whom?This is the exact same question I ask the Zeitgeist Addendum/Venus Project followers who also insist that we need to do away with money completely. So in that respect you are on the same team with Zeitgeist against me.I think such ideas are escapist nonsense at best and a deliberate attack on real monetary reform at worst. Why? Because it will NEVER HAPPEN. So it is a completely safe “utopian” vision to sell people on and DISTRACT THEM away from understanding and demanding real substantive reform to the actual system we are currently enslaved to, the one that IS HAPPENING IN REAL LIFE.

Ironic, then, that Zeitgeist should be recommending his videos (as they did at the Hammersmith meeting on 22 July).His “solution” is to keep capitalism (and the “freedom” to work for wages) but introduce some sort of electronic money which would not allow interest (as if you could have capitalism just with profit but not interest). People would have to keep their savings under their bed and interest would only be able to paid in kind (so if you borrowed 6 apples giving back 7 in return would be allowed). And he thinks that he is living in the real world! 

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I only said that if you didn’t watch it you wouldn’t be able to discuss it with fellow-workers at work or in the pub or the supermarket queue (or even the golf club or the dinner party):http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spopen/message/15074

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gnome wrote:

the party should be closing it down and concentrating its efforts on this forum.

Be careful what you wish for. One of the two main wreckers of the WSM Forum has just migrated to this one. If it was closed down I’m sure the other one would too. Fortunately this forum has a Rubbish Bin facility where posts from them can be automatically directed.

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stevead1966 wrote:

“So as the openning ceremony celebrates miners strikes, the Jarrow March, the suffragettes, and Liberty’s Sami Chakrabarti carries the flag,…”

I know members don’t watch this sort of thing, but I did on the recommendation of a comrade who said we should if only to be part of the real world. Party members were right: this was a festival of British nationalism, but not quite what you might have expected. In fact the queen looked pretty pissed off with it and one stupid Tory MP (the one who went to a stag party where the piss-heads gave Nazi salutes) has criticised it as more leftwing than the Beijing opening ceremony.You can see why. Not only were there references to miners strikes, the Jarrow March, etc but there were scenes of smug top-hatted capitalists smoking cigars while the workers toiled in dark satanic mills, the rehabilitation of the Sex Pistols and the queen openly becoming part of a fantasy world by talking to James Bond.I know that the leftwing slant that Danny Boyle (he must be a leftie surely?) gave to British nationalism is probably all the more insidious for that, but it wasn’t the spectacle that members who boycotted it might have expected. Not at all King and Country, Land of Dopes and Tories stuff.

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For the record as the programme will disappear after 3 weeks, what Bill, who was our candidate in Merton & Wandsworth for the London elections in May, is shown as saying at a hustings meeting in Putney is:

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We are talking about creating a community of goods and abolishing the wages system and having common and democratic ownership and control of the means for producing and distributing wealth.

Not very often that we hear about abolishing the wages system on the radio or TV.

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As to whether or not Zeitgeist is “reformist”, I think they are in a similar position to the pre-WWI Social Democratic movement with its supporters agreed on the aim (a world-wide moneyfree resource-based economy) but not in agreement on to how to get there; in fact accommodating people who have differing views on this (gradualism, community action, lifestyle change, etc).Zeitgeist doesn’t rule out reforms (but, then, neither do we; we just don’t advocate them). However, in their mission statement they do give a special place to Monetary Reform:

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The range of The Movement’s Activism & Awareness Campaigns extend from short to long term, with the model based explicitly on Non-Violent methods of communication. The long term view, which is the transition into a Resource-Based Economic Model, is a constant pursuit and expression, as stated before. However, in the path to get there, The Movement also recognizes the need for transitional Reform techniques, along with direct Community Support. For instance, while “Monetary Reform” itself is not an end solution proposed by The Movement, the merit of such legislative approaches are still considered valid in the context of transition and temporal integrity.

The trouble is they don’t seem to agree on which particular monetary reform would be “valid” (and what is “temporal integrity”?).To return to the comparison with the pre-WWI Social Democratic movement, what would be good would be an  “impossiblist revolt” within Zeitgeist insisting that they only pursue their stated goal and nothing else. They dropped the circular city in the Amazon jungle stuff when they broke with Jacque Fresco. The next thing for them to drop is monetary reform.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Has Cockburn been a bit too premature with his obituary?

Didn’t he just die himself?

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It seems that ex-comrade Crowe has risen up the hierarchy and is now a canon. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up a bishop. We’ve had ex-members who’ve become MPs, Tory councillors, trade union leaders, ministers and members of the House of Lords but this would be a novelty. Could be a first for the anarchists too.Pity nobody has a photo of him throwing the bible into a dustbin which was one of things he used to do when speaking for us at Hyde Park in the 1990s.Maybe he’ll have a reconversion and do what Bishop William Montgomery Brown did and publish a book with the subtitle “Banish Gods from Skies and Capitalists from Earth”.

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stuartw2112 wrote:

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”.Found this useful and interesting:http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/05/16/an-attack-on-paul-krugman/

As you say, this debate seems to be about the extent to which, if at all, a central bank can control the amount of banking lending that goes on in the economy, which has taken on the form of a debate about whether banks can create money (as both sides include bank loans in the definition of money).

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Krugman represents the mainstream of neoclassical economics, which believes that a combination of central bank monetary policy and government fiscal policy can moderate the business cycle.

Well, he’s obviously wrong there.

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Keen thinks central bank controls are not as effective as Krugman believes, because private banks can create money in the form of debt through a process that is beyond the central bank’s control.

Yes, banks can make loans (so-called “create money”) which the central bank can’t control, as long as there is (as there generally is when the economy is expanding) both a demand for loans and a supply of deposits or other sources of funding.

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Because of that, the economy will regularly experience “financial instability,” as advocated by Keynes’s disciple Hyman Minsky.

If this is suggesting that crises are purely financial then those on this side of the debate are wrong too. Although finance can make things worse, crises originate in the real economy.

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the core of the debate is whether or not private banks can create money “out of thin air” to their heart’s content, by extending credit – leaving the central bank with no choice but to sanction this money creation.

As just stated, banks can make loans which the central bank can’t control. But not “to their heart’s content” and not “out of thin air”. This depends on both the demand for loans and the supply of funding for them. But it is misleading (and silly) to describe this as the banks creating money out of thin air. What they lend is “created” out of the funds they obtain from sources other than the central bank,e.g. from depositors or from borrowing elsewhere.

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those, like Keen, who say banks can create money out of thin air also say that the central bank must condone, willy-nilly, this so-called “endogenous” money creation.

A clumsy, but not so misleading way of putting it. I don’t think we’d feel the need to take to task those who talk of banks having the ability to make loans “endogenously”.

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Do banks take in deposits and then lend, or do they loan first, then use the proceeds of the loan to create deposits?

I would have thought that the answer was obvious. 

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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):

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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):

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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”.

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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]

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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.

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Here’s an interview with another Party Hyde Park speaker (and much more), Les Cox:http://vimeo.com/44421054

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stevead1966 wrote:

I  have not read Thompson’s Morris biography but if he was following some CPGB diktat to identify domestic currents of Marxism as opposed to ‘foreign’ influences ie. Moscow, then it could be suspect.

There are two editions of his biography of Morris. The first came out in 1955 when he was still in the CP and does put the “Party line”. In the second edition, in 1977, Thompson cut out much of this and added a 50-page postscript. This is the one to read, even though he does criticise Morris for what we like in him, what Thompson called his “purism”. It is probably the best biography of Morris, certainly better than the more recent one by Fiona McCarthy which tries to make him out to be some sort of  Green rather than a class-struggle Socialist.

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