A pretty basic but good critique of “vulgar libertarianism.” No, the corporate class is not our friend.
Kevin Carson joins us to discuss the depths of capitalism and if the possibility for a post-capitalism world exists. Listen here.
Category Archives: Economics/Class Relations
Unraveling Political Theory – Money Reply
Tim Bryant and I discuss economics.
In episode 11 of Unraveling Political Theory, Tim and Keith will be discussing money. Coming to terms with different political movements and what they represent is at the core of what this podcast is all about. To understand the world of politics and change it for the better, it’s paramount that people begin to study political theory and the ways in which it has manifest throughout history up into the present day. By bringing light to the origins of political and philosophical thought, the present day becomes all the more explainable because one is now able to see the logical progression of such manifestations.
On anarchist economies Reply
By Iain McKay
Freedom News
Anarchism is generally not associated with economics — and Iain McKay argues that perhaps it’s time the field got more attention.
There is no “anarchist” school of economics as there are “Marxist,” “Keynesian” and so on. This does not mean there are no anarchist texts on economics. Proudhon springs to mind here, with his numerous works on the subject — the three Memoirs on property (most famous being the first, What is Property?) and the two volumes of System of Economic Contradictions (of which, only the first has been translated) — as does Kropotkin, with his Fields, Factories and Workshops. However, in spite of various (important) works there is no well-established body of work.
There are various reasons for this. Partly, it is due to the typical isolation of the English-speaking movement: many works which could be used to create an anarchist economics have never been translated into English. Partly, it is due to an undeserved sense of inferiority: too many anarchists have followed Marxists by taking Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy as an accurate account and honest critique of Proudhon’s ideas (it is neither, as I show in “The Poverty of (Marx’s) Philosophy,” Anarcho-Syndicalist Review 70).
What’s Going On With Venezuela? 5
A reader writes:
“I have a news item that might interest you. It is a 47 page report (with references) from the Human Rights Commission by one of their independent experts sent to investigate Venezuela. In the report he names the US, Canada, EU and Columbia and specifically Barack Obama and Donald Trump as needing to be charged with crimes against humanity. He documents how the media, IMF, World Bank, Standard&Poors, Moody and Fitch, as well as internal named opposition, NGO’s, international monetary exchange criminals colluded. He references work by Abby Martin and the Real News in some of his sources. Here is one of his recommendations:
The Independent Expert recommends that, until the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court address the lethal outcomes of economic wars and sanctions regimes, the Permanent Peoples Tribunal, the Russell Tribunal and the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission undertake the task so as to facilitate future judicial pronouncements.”
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/G1823931.pdf
The Economic War against Venezuela Reply
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report about Venezuela on August 30 explaining that the country’s situation is the result of an economic war, a financial blockade and a media attack that reinforces a supposed ‘humanitarian crisis’.
Universal Basic Income: For and Against Reply
Antony Sammeroff, co-host of the Scottish Liberty Podcast, argues that the idea of a Universal Basic Income is a very bad one, and for reasons you may not have thought of. Listen to Antony’s interview with Tom Woods here. Download the book here.
Elections, Power, and the DSA: The Failure of the Left in Power 1
A left-anarchist discusses the limitations of social democracy. Listen here.
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The discussion itself was very good, although I found the intro monologue to be something of a turn off in the sense that it sounded like a barrage of buzzwords and catchphrases (kind of like reciting the Apostles’ Creed in church). The point the guy being interviewed seemed to be making was “We should use grassroots direct action rather than electoral politics to A) get more free ice cream days and B ) oppose things leftists don’t like.” For instance, at one point he actually praises Nixon for creating the EPA and OSHA (“More centralized state bureaucracies! Yay! Vivia de Anarchia!”). He seems to be mostly regurgitating what David Graeber called “small ‘a’ anarchism” or “social movement anarchism.” In fact, he sounds a lot like what my anarchist friends and I would have been talking about 25-30 years ago.
I don’t think his point of view is “wrong” in the same sense that I don’t necessarily think Alexander Reid Ross’ “anarcho-MSNBC” perspective is “wrong” in the sense that it’s fine to have an anarchist tendency that’s merely about opposing Trump, the “far right” or official enemies of the US like Russia or Syria like Reid-Ross’ crowd, and it’s not “wrong” to have anarchist tendencies that are just about “social movement left-activism” like these “DSA anarchists” or whatever they are. But I view anarchist philosophy and politics as much bigger than all that.
Trump’s Backdoor Power Play to Rein In the Fed 1
By Stefan Gleason, Money Metals Exchange
“Just run the presses – print money.”
That’s what President Donald Trump supposedly instructed his former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn to do in response to the budget deficit. The quote appears in Bob Woodward’s controversial book Fear: Trump in the White House.
Trump disputes many of the anecdotes Woodward assembled. But regardless of whether the President used those exact words, they do reflect an “easy money” philosophy that he has expressed many times before.
Trump Likes Low Rates, Loose Money
President Trump has described himself as a “low interest rate person.”
This past summer, Trump launched a very public attack on the Federal Reserve’s rate hiking campaign. He wants it to stop because it’s making the dollar “too strong” and threatening to undercut his tax cut fiscal stimulus.
There’s only so much dollar strength the U.S. economy and U.S. debt and equity markets can take. President Trump is keenly aware of the risks.
A Fed rate hike next week is a given at this point.
Congressmen Introduce Bill to End Taxation of Gold and Silver Reply
By J P Cortez
Washington, DC (September 7, 2018) – The battle to end taxation of constitutional money has reached the federal level as U.S. Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) today introduced sound money legislation to remove all federal income taxation from gold and silver coins and bullion.
The Monetary Metals Tax Neutrality Act – backed by the Sound Money Defense League, Money Metals Exchange, and free-market activists – would clarify that the sale or exchange of precious metals bullion and coins are not to be included in capital gains, losses, or any other type of federal income calculation.My view, which is backed up by language in the U.S. Constitution, is that gold and silver coins are money and…are legal tender,” Mooney said in a House Financial Services Committee hearing this week. “If they’re indeed U.S. money, it seems there should be no taxes on them at all. So, why are we taxing these coins as collectables?”
Acting unilaterally, the Internal Revenue Service has placed gold and silver in the same “collectibles” category as artwork, Beanie Babies, and baseball cards, a classification that subjects the monetary metals to a discriminatorily high long-term capital gains tax rate of 28%.
Sound money activists have long pointed out it is inappropriate to apply any federal income tax, regardless of the rate, against the only kind of money named in the U.S. Constitution. And the IRS has never defended how its position squares up with current law.
Furthermore, the U.S. Mint continuously mints coins of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium and gives each of these coins a legal tender value denominated in U.S. dollars. This formal status as U.S. money further underscores the inappropriate nature of IRS income tax treatment.
A tax neutral measure, the Monetary Metals Tax Neutrality Act states that “no gain or loss shall be recognized on the sale or exchange of (1) gold, silver, platinum, or palladium coins minted and issued by the Secretary at any time or (2), refined gold or silver bullion, coins, bars, rounds, or ingots which are valued primarily based on their metal content and not their form.”
Under current IRS policy, a taxpayer who sells his precious metals may end up with a capital “gain” in terms of Federal Reserve Notes and must pay federal income taxes on this “gain.”
But the capital “gain” is not necessarily a real gain. It is often a nominal gain that simply results from the inflation created by the Federal Reserve and the attendant decline in the Federal Reserve Note dollar’s purchasing power.
Under Rep. Mooney’s bill (which has already been cosponsored by two others), precious metals gains and losses would not be included in any calculations of a taxpayer’s federal taxable income.
“Inflation is a regressive tax that especially harms wage earners, savers, and retirees on a fixed income,” said Jp Cortez, policy director at the Sound Money Defense League. “We are encouraged that an increasing number of citizens, state legislators, and members of congress are taking action to address the evils of the Federal Reserve System.”
“The IRS does not let taxpayers deduct the staggering capital losses they suffer when holding Federal Reserve Notes over time,” said Stefan Gleason, president of a Money Metals Exchange, a precious metals dealer recently named “Best in the USA” by a global industry ratings group.
“So it’s grossly unfair for the IRS to assess a capital gains tax when citizens hold gold and silver to protect them from the Fed’s policy of currency devaluation.”
Rep. French Hill (R-AR) and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) joined today as original cosponsors. The text of the bill can be found here.
The Sound Money Defense League is a public policy group working nationally to bring back gold and silver as America’s constitutional money.
What Has (State) Government Done to Our Money? Reply
Is your state destroying your money?
Federal policy and the privately owned Federal Reserve System are the root causes of inflation, instability, and currency devaluation. However, states can take some steps to protect their citizens from the ill effects of America’s unbacked paper money system.
The 2018 Sound Money Index is the first index of its kind, ranking all 50 states using 9 different criteria to determine which states have implemented the most pro-sound money policies in the country.
The complete 2018 Sound Money Index is available here: https://www.moneymetals.com/guides/sound-money-index
Jp Cortez is a graduate of Auburn University and a resident of Charlotte, North Carolina. He is the Policy Director of the Sound Money Defense League, an organization working to bring back gold and silver as America’s constitutional money. Follow him on twitter, @JpCortez27
Dr. Engelhardt: Economy Beholden to Fed Interest Rate Policy; Here’s One Way Gold Could Reach $14,000+… Reply
Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome in Dr. Lucas Engelhardt associate professor of economics at Kent State University. Dr. Engelhardt is an Austrian economist who has been a guest lecturer at the Mises Institute and in his teaching specializes in macro-economics in the examination of the business cycle, and it’s certainly a real pleasure to have him on with us today. Lucas, thanks so much for taking the time and welcome.
Dr. Lucas Engelhardt: Well thank you for having me on.
Mike Gleason: Well, I’m excited to have you on today because there is a lot to discuss with you. For starters I think a good place to begin is the business cycle. Now, but before we get into the misunderstandings that the Keynesians seems to have about this, explain the business cycle if you would and why it’s important in order to have a proper understanding of monetary policy.
Money, Fake Money, and Sound Money Reply
By Jp Cortez, Sound Money Defense League
Americans no longer carry gold and silver money in our pockets and purses as our grandparents did. But we still carry the history, legacy, and spirit of those gold and silver coins in our language.
“Sound money” embodies a clear message recognized for centuries around the world. It describes the musical, metallic ring of a gold, silver, or copper coin dropped on any hard surface of glass, stone, wood, or metal.
Sound money literally refers to real wealth, with a natural, unmistakable signature of authenticity, as opposed to the paper, plastic, and electronic debt instruments used almost exclusively today.
Dr. Engelhardt: Economy Beholden to Fed Interest Rate Policy; Here’s One Way Gold Could Reach $14,000+… Reply
Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome in Dr. Lucas Engelhardt associate professor of economics at Kent State University. Dr. Engelhardt is an Austrian economist who has been a guest lecturer at the Mises Institute and in his teaching specializes in macro-economics in the examination of the business cycle, and it’s certainly a real pleasure to have him on with us today. Lucas, thanks so much for taking the time and welcome.
Dr. Lucas Engelhardt: Well thank you for having me on.
Mike Gleason: Well, I’m excited to have you on today because there is a lot to discuss with you. For starters I think a good place to begin is the business cycle. Now, but before we get into the misunderstandings that the Keynesians seems to have about this, explain the business cycle if you would and why it’s important in order to have a proper understanding of monetary policy.
Dr. Lucas Engelhardt: Sure. Now, as you mentioned, I come from the Austrian economic framework. And Austrian economics describes the business cycle as the consequence of manipulations happening in the money supply, specifically in credit markets. So, starting from that point, so how the business cycle happens is that we have somebody in the banking system. We know in modern America it would be the Federal Reserve is generally responsible for this. Decides to push down interest rates, normally to stimulate the economy.
On Tom Woods’s Interview of Joshua Smith Reply
Joe Kopsick comments on Tom Woods’s August 18th, 2018 interview of Joshua Smith, at large delegate of the Libertarian National Committee. I talk about the efforts of Smith and right-libertarians to attempt to silence the debate on libertarian socialism which is happening within the Libertarian Party.
The Present and Future of the LP (and the Problem of “Libertarian Socialism”) Reply
Tom Woods interviews Joshua Smith on the libertarian capitalist vs libertarian socialist conflict in the Libertarian Party. Listen here.
Joshua Smith, who secured a spot on the Libertarian National Committee at the party’s recent convention, joins me to discuss the party’s present and future, the controversy with “libertarian socialists,” and much more.
Alt-Right Showdown: We can do better than this… Hard times in USA 4
It’s interesting to see people from the Communist Left like Caleb Maupin and Jason Unruhe saying the things that I have been saying for 20 years, e.g. that progressive liberalism is simply the self-legitimating ideology of imperialism, that “social justice” activists are just middle class and college student hobbyists, that the “Left” in its present incarnation views the traditional working class as its primary enemy, that the “far right” comes closer to being an actual opposition force, that the working class is being reproletarianized, that the “anti-fascist” left has become the new McCarthyites, that the antifa and anarcho-leftoids are the shock troops of the liberal establishment, etc etc.
Neocons and Liberals Join Forces to Fight Populism Reply
The liberal ruling classes circle the wages against revolts by the reactionary peasantry. Shades of the 19th century.
By Paul Gottfried
The American Conservative
For several months, an alliance has been forming between the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the neoliberal Center for American Progress (CAP). It’s the sort of kumbaya not witnessed since wartime Washington a decade ago.
A press release from CAP on May 10 blares: “CAP and AEI Team up to Defend Democracy and Transatlantic Partnership.” The same joyous tidings accompanied a public statement issued by AEI on July 31, which stressed that the alliance was meant to resist “the populist assault on the transatlantic community” for the purpose of “defending democracy.”
Although, according to Vikram Singh, a senior fellow at CAP, the two partners “often disagree on important policy questions,” they have been driven together “at a time when the character of our societies is at stake.” This burgeoning cooperation underscores that “our commitment to democracy and core democratic principles is stronger than ever.” Since both documents fling around the terms “democracy” and “liberal democracy” to justify a meddlesome foreign policy, we may safely assume that the neocons are behind this project. Neocons for some time now have prefixed their intended aggressions with “democracy” and “liberal democracy” the way the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs during the 16th and 17th centuries stuck the word “holy” into the names of their wartime alliances. Closer to our time, communist governments favored the use of “people’s democracy” to indicate that they were the good guys. Presumably the neocons have now picked up this habit of nomenclature.
On the new undesirables of the West Reply
An excellent piece of class/caste analysis from a Marxist/Maoist perspective. This is more or less what I have been saying for decades. Genuine Communists are always so refreshing when compared with the usual SJW/Antifa/IDPol/weenie Leftist types.
Maoist Rebel News
Editor: The following is a post that was written by someone I know who wishes to remain anonymous. We will call him “Comrade M”. It seeks to ask questions regarding NEETS, incels, “forever alones” and the like. Can we consider them a new group of undesirables? What is their relationship to the class structure of the first world?
Jason Unruhe
In the 1800’s, Karl Marx’s ideas were groundbreaking. Even more so than laying the foundations for scientific socialism, Karl Marx described the inner machinations of the capitalist system on both the sociological and economic level better than any previous economist, philosopher or social-scientist.
Even though Marx’s ideas were correct for his day, he lived in a rapidly changing global society. By the time of the Bolshevik revolution, the world had already changed in many ways. So Lenin and the Bolsheviks came along, and devised Marxism-Leninism. They “updated” Marxism, both to be current with the times, and also to encompass the collective experiences of the international communist movement since Marx and Engels passed away. At the time, the majority of the Communist movement belonged to a revisionist grouping called the “2nd international”, which upheld a generally revisionist, chauvinist line. The 2nd Internationale advocated for both social-imperialism and “evolutionary” socialism, or “social-democracy” which would become another stagnant neo-liberal trend in the modern day. At their worst, the 2nd international went as far as to defend the atrocity of Colonialism, eg, in the case of the old Workers Party of Belgium, which proposed the nationalization of land, resources, and people of the Congo for the benefit of the European Proletariat.
China is Treating Africa The Same Way European Colonists Did Reply
By
Forbes
The reason China is in Africa is simple; to exploit the people and take their resources. It’s the same thing European colonists did during mercantile times, except worse. The corporations owned by the Chinese state are trying to turn Africa into another Chinese continent. They are squeezing Africa for everything it is worth.
This is the view several African politicians have. The Zambian politician Michael Sata was one of them. At least he was before being elected President of Zambia in 2011. He wrote a paper presented to Harvard University in 2007 that said “European colonial exploitation in comparison to Chinese exploitation appears benign, because even though the commercial exploitation was just as bad, the colonial agents also invested in social and economic infrastructure services Chinese investment, on the other hand, is focused on taking out of Africa as much as can be taken out, without any regard to the welfare of the local people.”
GOP Congressman Investigates Undisclosed Gold Market Intervention by China and the Exchange Stabilization Fund Reply
Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) Calls Out Fed & Treasury for Dodging Questions on Gold Activities
Washington, DC (July 31, 2018) – A member of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee is calling out the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury for dodging questions about their activities involving America’s gold reserves.
In a letter dated July 27, Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) wrote to Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, after receiving perfunctory responses to his April 24th letter, noting “a few questions were either not addressed at all or not fully addressed.”
In particular, the Fed and Treasury would not articulate any U.S. policy toward gold and refused to comment on historical U.S. State Department documents pointing to a U.S. policy of “driving gold out of the world financial system in favor of the Federal Reserve Note or Special Drawing Rights issued by the International Monetary Fund.”
In his follow-up letter, Rep. Mooney provided evidence of involvement by the Exchange Stabilization Fund in the gold market and called attention to “the recent correlation of the gold price with the price of the Chinese yuan and the valuation of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights.”
“Do these correlations reflect surreptitious intervention in the U.S. currency markets by China and currency manipulation by China?” Mooney asked.
Mooney also provided a 2009 letter from then Fed Governor Kevin M. Warsh acknowledging the existence of Fed documents on gold swaps (while simultaneously refusing to provide them in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee).
Mooney asked Chairman Powell to reconcile the Marsh acknowledgement with his July 12, 2018, letter, including Powell’s assertion that “The Fed does not engage, nor has it ever engaged, in gold swaps.”
Rep. Mooney noted the Treasury did not appropriately answer his question regarding prior audits of America’s gold reserves. In his July 11, 2018 response, Acting Assistant Treasury Secretary Brad Bailey merely discussed audits of gold compartment seals, and Mooney responded that a cursory examination of seals is “neither an inventory nor an audit of our nation’s gold.”
The Latin Americanization of the United States 2
By Keith Preston
Everyone knows that one of the principal grievances of the right-wing involves the substantial amount of immigration from Latin America to the United States that has taken place in recent decades. The commonly voiced concern is that the traditional “white” (Northern European) majority will lose its majority status, and that persons of Latin American ancestry (combined with people of color generally) will become the demographic majority. Whether this is good or bad is an individual value judgment, but the criticisms often obscure other, perhaps more substantive ways in which the United States is coming to resemble Latin America.
The traditional class system of Latin America is one where the very rich plutocratic elites live in opulence and luxury, and rule over an impoverished working class, an extraordinarily large underclass of the extreme poor and permanently unemployed, and a small middle class of professionals and technocrats. This is precisely the same kind of class system that the United States is developing, particularly in California which is widely considered to be the bellwether of the nation.
In traditional Latin American societies, the elite rule for the sake of pursing their own class interests, without any pretense of interest in the needs of the masses. To the degree that elections are held at all, the candidates are merely functionaries of the plutocracy. US politics is rapidly coming to resemble this model.
The police and the army are the traditionally dominant force in Latin American societies, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the military industrial complex and police state have assumed a comparable role in the United States.
The one noticeable difference is that in many traditional Latin American societies, the Catholic Church hierarchy provided the ruling class with its self-legitimating ideology. In the United States, organized religion is becoming an increasingly marginal force with the new self-legitimating ideology of the state being the totalitarian humanist ideology of the new clerisy.
Interestingly, Latin America has experienced a great deal of liberalization and progress in the past few decades, while the United States has increasingly gone backward. Perhaps Americans need to start emigrating to Latin America.
An Anarchist Survey of Amazon: Crashing the Party and Amazon Go Reply
It’s Going Down
Since the conclusion of our previous survey, two interesting events occurred in various Amazon facilities. In one instance, a fulfillment center was torched in the British Midlands. In another instance, coordinated strikes hit Amazon in Germany and Northern Italy. All of this preceded the holiday sales blitz and threw Amazon into internal chaos. At the end of the holiday season, all Amazon could tout was its toxic accomplishment of shipping one billion commodities and selling “tens of millions” of talking Alexa units. When the shopping extravaganza was over, the corporate employees of Amazon were rewarded with a lavish spectacle to sooth their overworked souls.
