Communiqué from the National People’s Party in the U.K. to all Protesters, People’s Assemblies, Socialist, Communist and Conservative Revolutionary or Social Nationalist Parties in Greece, Spain and Europe.
Subject: On why cancelling all debts to the international banksters does not go far enough – on the fundamental importance of establishing new ‘National People’s Banks’ in place of private national and international ‘Central Banks’.
1. Recognising the global financialisation of capitalism
Greece was the first victim of the new ‘debtocracy’ being imposed on all European nations by the institutions of international finance capitalism – the IMF, the European Central Bank. These nations include not only Spain and other Southern European states such as Italy but also Ireland, the U.K. and France.
The Greek people’s struggle has therefore become a symbol of the truth that as a result of the financialisation of global capitalism, the class struggle has become a revolutionary national struggle against the entire international financial and monetary system.
This makes it all the more important that revolutionary socialist and communist parties, people’s assemblies and mass protest movements such as those in Greece, Spain and elsewhere in Europe recognise the completely changed nature of capitalism today – which has created a global system in which it is no longer the falling rate of profit that is the key issue – but instead the way in which the profits of productive industrial capitalism are syphoned off into what Marx called unproductive ‘money capitalism’ or ‘usury capitalism’, i.e. private investment banks who use them only to speculate and circulate unproductively in the ‘casino economy’ of the financial markets. In this way money capitalism has become totally parasitic on productive industrial capitalism – imposing massive debt and interest burdens on companies and even whole nations, and in this way putting upward pressure on prices and downward pressure on wages and public spending.
“Usury centralises money wealth,” Marx states. “It does not alter the mode of production, but attaches itself to it as a parasite and makes it miserable. It sucks its blood, kills its nerve, and compels reproduction to proceed under even more disheartening conditions. … usurer’s capital does not confront the labourer as industrial capital,” but “impoverishes this mode of production, paralyzes the productive forces instead of developing them.”
“Under the form of interest the whole of the surplus over the necessary means of subsistence (the amount of what becomes wages later on) of the producers may here be devoured by usury…”
2. How we got here
The financialisation of global capitalism has come about as a result of technological advances in the means of production of money itself – in particular the replacement of both gold, paper money and paper stocks and bonds through the electronic digitisation of money. Furthermore, since the abolition of the gold standard and the deregulation of banking, private banks are literally able to create ‘money out of nothing’. For they are now able to place loan deposits in borrowers’ accounts at the press of a few computer keys. In this way they can accumulate what Marx called “fictitious money” on a massive scale – for under the system of ‘Fractional Reserve Banking’ only a tiny fraction of what the banks lend out needs to be covered by their own monetary reserves. This is the real reason for the ‘credit booms’ and ‘credit bubbles’ we have seen in recent decades – together with the ‘credit crunch’ that results from competitive over-lending by banks.
Yet as a result of the long-standing privatisation of their own ‘central banks’ – such as the Bank of England or the U.S. Federal Reserve – governments have remained wholly dependent on borrowing from the financial markets and private banks to finance their own spending – on top of which they then have to ‘bail out’ those same banks at the people’s expense when their massive fictitious assets (and remember that for private banks the credits they loan out are accounted as assets and not liabilities) turn out to be based on over-lending and high-risk loans.
3. The Historical Precedents
The situation in Greece and elsewhere has historical precedent in the massive debt burden placed on Germany after the Versailles treaty. Indeed it goes back even further – to the time when Abraham Lincoln could not afford to finance his army by borrowing at interest from private bankers. The challenge was the same in both cases – to affirm the sovereign right of all nations to issue their own money and invest it in their own economies – but without having to borrow from private banks and thus build up unsustainable levels of debt to them. Lincoln did so by issuing his own independent currency in the form of ‘Greenbacks’. This was the principle reason for which King George was financed by the bankers to launch a war against the rebel American colonists. For the ‘War of Independence’ was essentially a war for financial independence from private bankers. When Hitler came to power in Germany he also issued his own currency in the form of ‘Labour Treasury Certificates’. As a result:
“Within two years, the unemployment problem had been solved and the country was back on its feet. It had a solid, stable currency, no debt, and no inflation, at a time when millions of people in the United States and other Western countries were still out of work and living on welfare. Germany even managed to restore foreign trade, although it was denied foreign credit and was faced with an economic boycott abroad. It did this by using a barter system: equipment and commodities were exchanged directly with other countries, circumventing the international banks. This system of direct exchange occurred without debt and without trade deficits. Although Hitler has rightfully gone down in infamy in the history books, he was quite popular with the German people, at least for a time. Stephen Zarlenga suggests in The Lost Science of Money that this was because he temporarily rescued Germany from English economic theory — the theory that money must be borrowed against the reserves of a private banking cartel rather than issued outright by the government.”
Ellen Brown – leading radical economist and proponent of ‘public banking’ in the United States.
The German Communists of course, would have gone even further than Hitler, promising in their political program that once in power:
“…we will ruthlessly put a stop to the machinations of the bank magnates who impose their will on our land today. We will implement the proletarian nationalisation of the banks and annul all debts to German and foreign capitalists.”
This is in accord with one of the central pillars of The Communist Manifesto – ‘Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.’ This, of course, would be a People’s State and not one run in the interests of the Big Banks and Corporations. And it was Lenin who recognised that since the era of Marx, when money was still backed by gold or existed only in paper form, international finance capitalism had since attained the upper hand over national industrial capitalism and created a new financial oligarchy.
4. What is to be done?
With this new Marxist understanding of the current global economic crisis in mind, it is absolutely vital to understand also that it is not enough for protesters and socialist political parties to demand that governments (a) reject further loans from international central banks and (b) cancel their current debts to them. This alone will not solve the problem. For the question will remain – what is to be done next? For it will not be enough just to demonstrate in ever greater numbers, to seize finance ministries, or even to storm parliament and seize power for the people – unless the people know the most important thing they must do with that power. Nor will it be enough to just tax big business – for they too are in the grip of global credit capitalism and its ‘debtocracy’.
Instead THE central and principal aim of all people’s assemblies and revolutionary parties in Greece, Spain and elsewhere must be to re-affirm and re-establish the sovereign right of their nation – and all nations to issue their own interest-free money.
Only in this way, and not through taxation alone, will they be able to restore and renew their economies after any cancellation of national debts to the international banking system.
Only in this way too, can countries such as Greece and Spain set an example for other nations – thus initiating a world revolution that can bring down the monetary power of international finance capitalism.
Initial and additional goals necessary to pursue the path towards a totally sovereign and autarchic national banking system for countries such as Greece, Spain and Portugal and well as the countries Eastern Europe currently in the Eurozone and part of NATO.
Clearly stating the need for a National People’s Bank.
Seizure of state power by a National People’s Committee.
Setting up a national planning committee for Marxist monetary and banking reform.
Disengagement from the E.U., cancellation of all international debts and the establishment of a truly ‘national’ central bank (a National People’s Bank and not anything like the so-called ‘National Bank of Greece’ – which actually won the prize for the best private bank in 2010!).
Using a national monetary committee to decide how much money the state will inject directly into the economy each year, avoiding both inflation and deflation.
Freezing of all private bank assets and the prevention of all capital flight from the country.
Preparing for the creation of a new currency to be issued by a new National People’s Bank.
Setting up an international trade committee to plan to prepare for possible economic or financial sanctions and trade boycotts – and to seek trading or barter partners in progressive countries such as Argentina.
Suspending membership of and all agreements with NATO
Background to this Communiqué
The aim of the National People’s Party in the U.K. is to offer all other socialist, nationalist, social-nationalist, communist, national bolshevik and conservative revolutionary parties in the U.K., Europe, Eurasia and worldwide a range of new and in-depth analyses and understandings of the nature of money and banking in the era of global credit capitalism.
Peter Wilberg (born 1952) is the founder of the National People’s Party in the U.K. He is an independent thinker and author on a wide variety of subjects, but with a special interest in the contemporary nature and importance of a Marxist Monetary Economics. He is available to offer talks on this subject to all interested groups and organisations.
Contact peter_wilberg@tiscali.co.uk
Subject: On why cancelling all debts to the international banksters does not go far enough – on the fundamental importance of establishing new ‘National People’s Banks’ in place of private national and international ‘Central Banks’.
1. Recognising the global financialisation of capitalism
Greece was the first victim of the new ‘debtocracy’ being imposed on all European nations by the institutions of international finance capitalism – the IMF, the European Central Bank. These nations include not only Spain and other Southern European states such as Italy but also Ireland, the U.K. and France.
The Greek people’s struggle has therefore become a symbol of the truth that as a result of the financialisation of global capitalism, the class struggle has become a revolutionary national struggle against the entire international financial and monetary system.
This makes it all the more important that revolutionary socialist and communist parties, people’s assemblies and mass protest movements such as those in Greece, Spain and elsewhere in Europe recognise the completely changed nature of capitalism today – which has created a global system in which it is no longer the falling rate of profit that is the key issue – but instead the way in which the profits of productive industrial capitalism are syphoned off into what Marx called unproductive ‘money capitalism’ or ‘usury capitalism’, i.e. private investment banks who use them only to speculate and circulate unproductively in the ‘casino economy’ of the financial markets. In this way money capitalism has become totally parasitic on productive industrial capitalism – imposing massive debt and interest burdens on companies and even whole nations, and in this way putting upward pressure on prices and downward pressure on wages and public spending.
“Usury centralises money wealth,” Marx states. “It does not alter the mode of production, but attaches itself to it as a parasite and makes it miserable. It sucks its blood, kills its nerve, and compels reproduction to proceed under even more disheartening conditions. … usurer’s capital does not confront the labourer as industrial capital,” but “impoverishes this mode of production, paralyzes the productive forces instead of developing them.”
“Under the form of interest the whole of the surplus over the necessary means of subsistence (the amount of what becomes wages later on) of the producers may here be devoured by usury…”
2. How we got here
The financialisation of global capitalism has come about as a result of technological advances in the means of production of money itself – in particular the replacement of both gold, paper money and paper stocks and bonds through the electronic digitisation of money. Furthermore, since the abolition of the gold standard and the deregulation of banking, private banks are literally able to create ‘money out of nothing’. For they are now able to place loan deposits in borrowers’ accounts at the press of a few computer keys. In this way they can accumulate what Marx called “fictitious money” on a massive scale – for under the system of ‘Fractional Reserve Banking’ only a tiny fraction of what the banks lend out needs to be covered by their own monetary reserves. This is the real reason for the ‘credit booms’ and ‘credit bubbles’ we have seen in recent decades – together with the ‘credit crunch’ that results from competitive over-lending by banks.
Yet as a result of the long-standing privatisation of their own ‘central banks’ – such as the Bank of England or the U.S. Federal Reserve – governments have remained wholly dependent on borrowing from the financial markets and private banks to finance their own spending – on top of which they then have to ‘bail out’ those same banks at the people’s expense when their massive fictitious assets (and remember that for private banks the credits they loan out are accounted as assets and not liabilities) turn out to be based on over-lending and high-risk loans.
3. The Historical Precedents
The situation in Greece and elsewhere has historical precedent in the massive debt burden placed on Germany after the Versailles treaty. Indeed it goes back even further – to the time when Abraham Lincoln could not afford to finance his army by borrowing at interest from private bankers. The challenge was the same in both cases – to affirm the sovereign right of all nations to issue their own money and invest it in their own economies – but without having to borrow from private banks and thus build up unsustainable levels of debt to them. Lincoln did so by issuing his own independent currency in the form of ‘Greenbacks’. This was the principle reason for which King George was financed by the bankers to launch a war against the rebel American colonists. For the ‘War of Independence’ was essentially a war for financial independence from private bankers. When Hitler came to power in Germany he also issued his own currency in the form of ‘Labour Treasury Certificates’. As a result:
“Within two years, the unemployment problem had been solved and the country was back on its feet. It had a solid, stable currency, no debt, and no inflation, at a time when millions of people in the United States and other Western countries were still out of work and living on welfare. Germany even managed to restore foreign trade, although it was denied foreign credit and was faced with an economic boycott abroad. It did this by using a barter system: equipment and commodities were exchanged directly with other countries, circumventing the international banks. This system of direct exchange occurred without debt and without trade deficits. Although Hitler has rightfully gone down in infamy in the history books, he was quite popular with the German people, at least for a time. Stephen Zarlenga suggests in The Lost Science of Money that this was because he temporarily rescued Germany from English economic theory — the theory that money must be borrowed against the reserves of a private banking cartel rather than issued outright by the government.”
Ellen Brown – leading radical economist and proponent of ‘public banking’ in the United States.
The German Communists of course, would have gone even further than Hitler, promising in their political program that once in power:
“…we will ruthlessly put a stop to the machinations of the bank magnates who impose their will on our land today. We will implement the proletarian nationalisation of the banks and annul all debts to German and foreign capitalists.”
This is in accord with one of the central pillars of The Communist Manifesto – ‘Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.’ This, of course, would be a People’s State and not one run in the interests of the Big Banks and Corporations. And it was Lenin who recognised that since the era of Marx, when money was still backed by gold or existed only in paper form, international finance capitalism had since attained the upper hand over national industrial capitalism and created a new financial oligarchy.
4. What is to be done?
With this new Marxist understanding of the current global economic crisis in mind, it is absolutely vital to understand also that it is not enough for protesters and socialist political parties to demand that governments (a) reject further loans from international central banks and (b) cancel their current debts to them. This alone will not solve the problem. For the question will remain – what is to be done next? For it will not be enough just to demonstrate in ever greater numbers, to seize finance ministries, or even to storm parliament and seize power for the people – unless the people know the most important thing they must do with that power. Nor will it be enough to just tax big business – for they too are in the grip of global credit capitalism and its ‘debtocracy’.
Instead THE central and principal aim of all people’s assemblies and revolutionary parties in Greece, Spain and elsewhere must be to re-affirm and re-establish the sovereign right of their nation – and all nations to issue their own interest-free money.
Only in this way, and not through taxation alone, will they be able to restore and renew their economies after any cancellation of national debts to the international banking system.
Only in this way too, can countries such as Greece and Spain set an example for other nations – thus initiating a world revolution that can bring down the monetary power of international finance capitalism.
Initial and additional goals necessary to pursue the path towards a totally sovereign and autarchic national banking system for countries such as Greece, Spain and Portugal and well as the countries Eastern Europe currently in the Eurozone and part of NATO.
Clearly stating the need for a National People’s Bank.
Seizure of state power by a National People’s Committee.
Setting up a national planning committee for Marxist monetary and banking reform.
Disengagement from the E.U., cancellation of all international debts and the establishment of a truly ‘national’ central bank (a National People’s Bank and not anything like the so-called ‘National Bank of Greece’ – which actually won the prize for the best private bank in 2010!).
Using a national monetary committee to decide how much money the state will inject directly into the economy each year, avoiding both inflation and deflation.
Freezing of all private bank assets and the prevention of all capital flight from the country.
Preparing for the creation of a new currency to be issued by a new National People’s Bank.
Setting up an international trade committee to plan to prepare for possible economic or financial sanctions and trade boycotts – and to seek trading or barter partners in progressive countries such as Argentina.
Suspending membership of and all agreements with NATO
Background to this Communiqué
The aim of the National People’s Party in the U.K. is to offer all other socialist, nationalist, social-nationalist, communist, national bolshevik and conservative revolutionary parties in the U.K., Europe, Eurasia and worldwide a range of new and in-depth analyses and understandings of the nature of money and banking in the era of global credit capitalism.
Peter Wilberg (born 1952) is the founder of the National People’s Party in the U.K. He is an independent thinker and author on a wide variety of subjects, but with a special interest in the contemporary nature and importance of a Marxist Monetary Economics. He is available to offer talks on this subject to all interested groups and organisations.
Contact peter_wilberg@tiscali.co.uk
