[Marxism] SACP analysis of Zimbabwe

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Brown [mailto:cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 5:59 PM
To: 'cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: SACP analysis of Zimbabwe

 


Louis Proyect 
Zimbabwe: 'A bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie'?

Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

On 21 March South Africa celebrates Human Rights Day. The SACP will be
joining millions of other South Africans in commemorating this day. In
addition we are going to be using March, the human rights month, and April
2007, the Chris Hani month to take forward our struggle for the
transformation of the financial sector. We will embark on mass
demonstrations reiterating our demand for a total once-off amnesty for all
of the estimated 5.5 million people blacklisted by the faceless credit
bureuax, a demand for a new model to finance low cost housing, and a
complete rejection of above average interest rates on bonds for low cost
housing.

^^^^^^^
CB: Interesting that they have a specific focus on struggle directly with
the financial sector. Just what I've been groping for myself. 

Anybody know anything about the below ? Not LaRouchite, is it ?

^^^^^^






Presenting The American Monetary Act
and the Monetary Transparency Act
September 21, 2006; C 2006.
American Monetary Institute, P.O. Box 601, Valatie, NY 12184 Stephen
Zarlenga, Director.  ami@xxxxxxxxxxx  518-392-5387

Introduction
Dear Friends,
The American Monetary Act (the "Act") is a comprehensive reform of the
present United States monetary system. "Reform" is not in its title, because
the AMI considers our monetary system to never have been adequately defined
in law, but rather to have been put together piecemeal under pressure from
particular interests, mainly banking, in pursuit of their own private
advantage, with little regard to our nation's needs. That is the harsh
judgment of history as made clear in The Lost Science of Money, by Stephen
Zarlenga (abbreviated LSM).*
 
That book presents the research results of The American Monetary Institute
to date and this Act puts the reform process described in Chapter 24 into
legislative language. Chapters 1 thru 23 present the historical background
and case studies on which Chapter 24 is based. We recommend serious students
of our money system read the book now, and suggest that those who've read
it, read it again.

This Act - a work in progress - has been in preparation since December 2004
and was placed on our web site for public criticism in February 2006,
concurrently released in Philadelphia at the Eastern Economic Association
Conference, for general comment. It draws substantially from a previous
proposal known as "The Chicago Plan," which was advanced by Professors Henry
Simons, Irving Fisher and other leading economists in the 1930s in response
to the wreckage of the Great Depression which resulted from our poorly
conceived banking system. The Act also draws on some infrastructure concepts
advanced in the Sovereignty Proposal of Mr. Kenneth Bohnsack, supported by
3391 local governmental bodies from school boards to states.

While The American Monetary Institute is responsible for its present form,
the Act is based on Aristotelian monetary concepts in existence since at
least the 4th century BC and employed successfully in a variety of monetary
systems since then, ranging from democratic Athens to republican Rome. It is
not merely a theoretically based concept but has a long history of
successful implementation in major societies around the world, including the
American Colonies and the United States. These concepts enabled us first to
establish the U.S. and then to maintain it as one nation.

The current text of the Act is presented on the right side of each page. On
the left appears an explanation of the terminology and why it's necessary. A
background explanation is presented after each Title of the act. Then the
next Title is considered.

This brief form of the Act is a structural summary, which will be detailed
and fleshed out as the legislation develops for introduction into Congress
as a bill. The following brief summary: The Need for Monetary Reform serves
as a preface to the American Monetary Act.

You are invited to join in this adventure for monetary reform!
Sincerely,


Stephen Zarlenga
Director, AMI

* Please see The Lost Science of Money book for the case histories that
demonstrate in detail, with historical examples, the points of this
pamphlet.
The Need for Monetary Reform*

Monetary reform is the critical missing element needed to move humanity back
from the brink of nuclear disaster, away from a future dominated by fraud
and warfare, toward a world of justice and beauty.

The power to create money is an awesome power - at times stronger than the
Executive, Legislative or Judicial powers combined. It's like having a
"magic checkbook," where checks can't bounce. When controlled privately it
can be used to gain riches, but more importantly it determines the direction
of our society by deciding where the money goes - what gets funded and what
does not. Will it be used to build and repair vital infrastructure such as
the New Orleans Levees to protect major cities? Or will it go into warfare
or real estate loans, creating asset price inflation - the real estate
bubble.

Thus the money issuing power should never be alienated from democratically
elected government and placed ambiguously into private hands as it is in
America in the Federal Reserve System today. Indeed, most people would be
surprised to learn that the bulk of our money supply is not created by our
government, but by private banks when they make loans. Through the Feds
fractional reserve process the system creates purchasing media when banks
make loans into checking accounts, so most of our money is issued as
interest-bearing debt.

We are borrowing this money system from private banks when instead we should
own the system, not rent it. Under the Constitution, Article I, Sec. 8, our
government has the sovereign power to issue money and spend it into
circulation to promote the general welfare through the creation and repair
of infrastructure, including human infrastructure - health and education -
rather than misusing the money system for speculation as banking has
historically done. Our lawmakers must now reclaim that power!

Money has value because of skilled people, resources, and infrastructure,
working together in a supportive social and legal framework. Money is the
indispensable lubricant that lets them "run." It is not tangible wealth in
itself, but a power to obtain wealth. Money is an abstract social power
based in law; and whatever government accepts in payment of taxes will be
money. Money's value is not created by the private corporations that now
control it.

Unhappily, mankind's experience with private money creation has undeniably
been a long history of fraud, mismanagement and even villainy. Banking
abuses are pervasive and self-evident. Major banks and companies focus on
misusing the money system instead of production. For example, in June 2005,
Citibank and Merrill Lynch paid over $1.2 Billion to Enron pensioners to
settle fraud charges. 

Private money creation through fractional reserve banking fosters an
unprecedented concentration of wealth which destroys the democratic process
and ultimately promotes military imperialism. Less than 1% of the population
claims ownership of almost 50% of the wealth, but vital infrastructure is
ignored. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives a D grade to our
infrastructure and estimates that $1.6 trillion is needed to bring it to
acceptable levels.

That fact alone shows the world's dominant money system to be a major
failure crying for reform.

Infrastructure repair would provide quality employment throughout the
nation. There is a pretense that government must either borrow or tax to get
the money for such projects. But it is well known that the government can
directly create the money needed and spend it into circulation for such
projects, without inflationary results.

Monetary reform is achieved in three parts which must be enacted together
for it to work. Any one or any two of them alone won't do it, but could
actually further harm the monetary system.

First, incorporate the Federal Reserve System into the U.S. Treasury where
all new money could be created by government as money, not interest-bearing
debt, and spent into circulation to promote the general welfare. The
monetary system would be monitored to be neither inflationary nor
deflationary.

Second, halt the bank's privilege to create money by ending the fractional
reserve system in a gentle and elegant way. All the past monetized private
credit would be converted into U.S. government money. Banks would then act
as intermediaries accepting savings deposits and loaning them out to
borrowers. They would do  what people think they do now.

Third, spend new money into circulation on infrastructure, including the
education and healthcare needed for a growing society, starting with the
$1.6 trillion that the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates is
needed for infrastructure repair. This would create good jobs across our
nation, re-invigorating local economies and re-funding government at all
levels.

The false specter of inflation is usually raised against such suggestions
that our government fulfill its responsibility to furnish the nation's money
supply. But that is a knee jerk reaction - the result of decades, even
centuries, of propaganda against government. When one actually examines the
monetary record, it becomes clear that government has a better record
issuing and controlling money than the private issuers have.* Inflation is
avoided because real material wealth has been created in the process.

This press release from the 2005 AMI Monetary Reform Conference in Chicago,
highlights the beneficial effects of the plan both in terms of savings on
interest and in avoiding such disasters in the first place:
- - - - - - - - - -
Money Reform Plan Would Save Taxpayers $ Billions Per Year in Katrina
Cleanup "An alteration in the way money is introduced into our economy would
save at least $10 billion dollars per year in the cleanup and rebuilding
aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. If the clean-up loans last the
normal 30 years, the savings will be over $250 billion," says Stephen
Zarlenga, Director of the Institute. The plan, known as The American
Monetary Act was discussed at the American Monetary Institute 2005 Monetary
Reform Conference..
The proposed three part reform of our currency system would have the U.S.
Government directly spend the money into circulation rather than the present
method of allowing the banking system to create the money and then the
government borrowing the money. Funding such infrastructure expenses through
bonds generally doubles to triples their final cost. 

The reform avoids this expense by removing the fractional reserve provision
of the present system, which in effect allows the banking system to create
the much needed new money that must be continually introduced into the
economy as population and economic activity expands; or when emergencies
such as Katrina, or warfare require great expenditures. Under the reform
only the U.S. government, not the private banking system, would be allowed
to create money. 

"What we're proposing is very similar to the 'Chicago Plan' which came out
of University of Chicago economists in the 1930s and was widely supported
nationwide by the economics profession back then," said Zarlenga. 

Under the plan the government spends the new money into circulation on
necessary infrastructure, including education. A presentation at the
conference by the American Society of Civil Engineers pointed out the
deteriorating condition of American infrastructure, which currently receives
an overall grade of D, and is predicted to reach D- soon. 
Most of Katrina's Damage on New Orleans Was Avoidable "This method of
introducing new money through infrastructure creation and repair would
actually have stopped most of the damage and loss of life in New Orleans,
because the money would have been available to repair the levees, and they
would have probably held" said Zarlenga. 
"Under the present private control, money goes largely into speculative
bubbles, including Wall Street games and real estate" he said, "Under
societal control it would go much more to promoting the general welfare.
Inflation is avoided because real material wealth has been created in the
process, and catastrophic loss including loss of life is prevented." - End
of press release.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Lawmakers have often believed they could ignore the big questions on how our
money system is structured. Right from the Constitutional Convention
delegates ignored society's monetary power and the excellent record of
government issued money in building colonial infrastructure and giving us a
nation. They left the money power up for grabs instead of properly placing
it in a fourth, monetary branch of government. History shows that the money
power will be a fourth branch whether we recognize it as such or not. It's
not safe to leave so much power and privilege in private hands! It's counter
to our system of checks and balances. The developing financial crisis
requires us to re-evaluate and focus on it now. Lets fulfill our
responsibility to get a real understanding of this problem and the solution.

As the late Congressman Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Committee on
Banking and Currency for over 16 years, said, "I have never yet had anyone
who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal
Government borrowing the use of its own money....I believe the time will
come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will
come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone
else connected with the Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an
idiotic system to continue."
THE AMERICAN MONETARY ACT




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