Bernie Sanders has been filibustering the tax cuts for a few hours supposedly. I just put it on, and he’s bashing the rich for some reason. I don’t understand why he wants to audit the Federal Reserve if he’s a socialist. Is a central bank pretty key to socialism/communism?
I don’t know how Ron Paul refers to him as a friend in End The Fed either.
Brian, with all the niceties intended, I am afraid to tell you you have deeply misunderstood socialism.
A central bank is not key to socialism or communism, ever. Socialism is defined properly as any organized society where allocation of resources is the responsibility of an organized group of people. And in its more elaborate and specific form, socialism is a propertyless, classless, stateless society, with main focus on industrial production, industrial goods, and power of industrial workers.
A central bank is always a private bank. The Federal Reserve is a private bank. The European Central Bank is a private bank. Bank of Canada and Australia are private banks. A central bank is always formed under a government charter given to a private bank to manage its treasuries. Thus, it fails the first criteria of socialism of a propertyless society, because a central bank is private property and formed under division of labour. Even democratic institutions can not interfere with a central bank, and the government is at the mercy of the central bank for its money and funding. Secondly, a central bank is always formed under a state-approved charter, and thus can not be compatible with a stateless society. Thirdly, a central bank may exist in agricultural nations like India or service sector nations like Luxembourg, while socialist societies are always industrial societies; hence it is not key to socialism. Fourthly, a central bank is run by capital and is in the business of allocating capital, and thus is a capitalist institution that still can not be socialist. Fifthly, a central bank can merely make limited attempts to alter interest rates and aim at price stability, but it is not involved in an organized attempt to allocate resources with the involvement of all industrial workers of society, and thus still can not be socialist.
State socialism is a contradiction in terms.
As it is, central banks have existed before socialist philosophy was common in universities, going back to medieval days.
Communists call everything they don’t like as “Liberal”, Conservatives call anything they don’t like as “Liberal”, and today’s libertarians call everything they don’t like as “Socialist”. In the end, it is all the same stupid lie. Differences in people’s views are more important than similarities.
dont think of socialists as stupid people. Sure they are misguided, but they are not dumb. Walter Block often refers back to the socialist economist Gunnar Myrdal when talking about rent control… he also refers to another socialist economist when he talks about labor unions, I cant remember the name, but just look up walter block lecturing on unions…
I think he’s one of the new socialists that just wants higher taxes on the rich and more benefits for the poor. They aren’t concerned with seizing the means of production because they don’t understand capital structures. Its all nominal to them.
For example, raising the minimum wage is necessary because supposedly there isn’t enough competition between employers. But if you raise the wages of all poor people, it increases the monopoly price that can be charged for consumer goods*, so corporations can just recapture the transfer.
(*they are charging the monopoly, or oligopoly price, because from hypothesis there isn’t “enough” competition between them)
^Never seen a leftist address this.
Bernie Sanders is an idiot. He thinks that the Fed is private, and that it’s profits go to private banks. The fact of the matter is that the Fed is only nominally quasi-private, that 95% of its profits go back to the federal government, and that the other 5% are usually used solely for operating costs.
Hell, I would much prefer a truly private, truly independent central bank or monetary authority. At least such an entity would have some incentive to keep inflation low and the economy running rather smoothly over the long run. A central bank controlled by the whims of our representative democracy is only interested in short-term economic growth, hence the political business cycle we’re forced to live through.
Well, it causes private banks to get more profit.
I didn’t misunderstand socialism/communism. I said that due to:
in The Communist Manifesto.