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Forgot to add that all these articles will be on the Archives section of this website:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/archive

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Introduction    9Part I :     The February Revolution: A Bourgeois Revolution    151.    The Russian Upheaval(Socialist Standard, December 1905)    172.   The Russian Revolution(Socialist Standard, April 1917)    223.    The Russian Situation(Socialist Standard, June 1917)    234.    Russia and Ourselves(Socialist Standard, July 1917)    26Part II :    The October Revolution: The Bolshevik Coup    315.    The Russian Situation(Socialist Standard, January 1918)    336.    The Revolution in Russia: Where it Fails(Socialist Standard, August 1918)    357.    Parliament or Soviet? A Critical Examination(Socialist Standard, April 1920)    458.    The Russian Dictatorship(Socialist Standard, July 1920)    499.    A Socialist View of Bolshevist Policy(Socialist Standard, July 1920)    5810. The Super-Opportunists: A Criticism of Bolshevist Policy(Socialist Standard, August 1920)    6411.   Editorial: Famine in Russia(Socialist Standard, October 1921)    6812.    The Collapse of Capitalism(Socialist Standard, February 1921)    7113.    The Passing of Lenin(Socialise Standard, March 1924)    7514.    Socialism and 'The Third International'(Socialist Standard, March 1925)    86Part III:   Bolshevik Russia: The Class Struggle Continues    9115.    The Class Struggle in Soviet Russia(Socialist Standard, December 1927)    9316.    Should the Workers Fight for Russia?(Socialist Standard, April 1928)    9917.    Russia: Land of High Profits(Socialist Standard, September 1930)    10618.    What Stalin Forgot To Mention(Socialist Standard, May 1933)    11219.    Changing Russia(Socialist Standard, September 1934)    11420. What is Wrong with Russia? The Mystery of the Trials(Socialist Standard, March 1937)    11821. Life in Soviet Russia(Socialist Standard, June 1937)    12422.    Some aspects of Russia(SocialistStandard, December 1937)    12823.    Inequality in Russia(Socialist Standard, January 1943)    132Part IV:    State Capitalism: The Nightmare Continues  13724. The Struggle for Power in Russia(Socialist Standard, February 1953)    13925.    From Lenin to Stalin(Socialist Standard, April 1953)  14226.    Cracks in the Russian Dictatorship  (Socialist Standard, May 1953)    14827.    The Russian Revolution – Its Impact on the Socialist Movement (SocialistStandard, September 1954)    15228.    Stalin the God and Stalin the Gangster(Socialist Standard, April 1956)    15729.    Stalin – the God Who Fell  (Socialist Standard, December 1961)    16030.    Russia Puts the Clock Back(Socialist Standard, June 1962)    16231.    Russian State Capitalism: Tony Cliff, Russia: A MarxistAnalysis, (International Socialism)(Socialis Standard, September 1964)    15232. Lenin: Just a Russian Revolutionary(Socialist Standard, April 1970)    17133. State Capitalism for Russia(Socialist Standard, April 1970)    17434.    Russia: Leftists in Dispute(Socialist Standard, January 1976)   17635.    Russia's Tolpuddle Martyrs(Socialist Standard, May 1978)    17936.    The Working Class in Russia(Socialist Stan dard, June 1979)   18237- What's the Russian for "Blackleg"?(Socialist Standard, November 1985)    186Part V:     Back to the Future? The Collapse of the Soviet Union    19138.    Where is Russia Going?(Socialist Standard, September 1988)    19339.    Gorbachev and the End of Communism(Socialist Standard, October 1988)    20340.    Socialism Has Not Failed(Socialist Standard, January 1990)    20941.    From Cold War to Class War(Socialist Standard, February 1990)    21442.    Marxism Versus Leninism(Socialist Standard, March 1990)    219 

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Yes, if you define bank loans as money then in making a loan a bank is ceating money (by definition). If they extra loans over and above those being repaid then they expand the "money supply" (by definition). But the question remains: where does the money to make the loans, and the extra loans, come from? Is it simply conjured up out of thin air or is it money that the banks have borrowed from depositors, other banks and financial institutions, and/or the central bank? I don't think Zeitgeist is a reliable source of information on how banks work. Maybe they have learnt something in the meantime, but at the beginning they were out-and-out thin-airists. See:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2009/no-1253-january-2009/banks-money-and-thin-air

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The arguments between Keen, Krugman, Positive Money, etc are all about how to stop bank lending getting out of hand in a boom. Not an issue in which socialists need to take sides, especially as we think none of them are going to work as it's not something that governments can do much about. They might as well try to stop all capitalist firms making profits while the sun shines in a boom. Banking lending expands in a boom because capitalist businesses are prepared to borrow more to expand production.The boom is driven by profitable production (that will eventually lead to overproduction and economic downturn) not by bank lending. How could a government stop that without bursting the bubble prematurely?The issue is what is the nature of banking and banks, and can banks create credit or money out of thin air. The answer is that banks are financial intermediaries borrowing money at one rate of interest and lending it at a higher rate, the difference being their income out of which they must pay their workers and covers their expenses, what's left being their profits. They are not conjuring money out of thin air and  making a profit out of lending it. If they could, they be getting a higher rate of profit than the rest of capitalist business, but they don't. Ok, they are now linked together with the central bank in a single monetary system (Keen's point) but that doesn't make any essential difference to what commercial banks are and can (and cannot) do.

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Here is Steve Keen's reply:

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Very quickly Adam, because I don’t have time for individual email queries (1) the intermediaries story is used by mainstream economists (Bernanke, Krugman etc) to argue that credit (change in bank debt/year) can be macroeconomically ignored: this is overwhelmingly contradicted by the data, which you’ll see if you read my book of the same name; (2) the essence of the intermediary story is that lending shuffles bank liabilities around but doesn’t create new assets and liabilities: that is also categorically false.Cheers, SteveProfessor Steve Keen

Clearly, he is sticking to his guns and is not prepared to be contradicted. He does admit, though, that there are others who don't accept his theory. But, then, he prides himself on being "unorthodox".It is rather his assertion that banks "create new assets and liabilities" that is categorically false (except in the trite double-entry bookkeeping sense). In fact he virtually admits this in the interview Alan drew our attention to when he says:

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central banks are the only banks that can legally run negative net asset balances, i.e. whose liabilities are allowed to exceed their assets.

In other words, only central banks can create money for which there is no corresponding outside liability.Which is precisely what the ECB stated ("outside" money is money created by the central bank):

ECB wrote:

Commercial banks can also create so-called “inside” money, i.e. bank deposits – this happens every time they issue a new loan. The difference between outside and inside money is that the former is an asset for the economy as a whole, but it is nobody’s liability. Inside money, on the other hand, is named this way because it is backed by private credit.

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Just followed up Steve Keen's reference to what the German central bank has to say about the modern monetary system. Here's what the Deutsche Bundesbank says about what it calls "book money" (the ECB's "inside money"):

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The banks create new book money when they grant loans. For example, Mr Müller needs a loan to buy a car. He negotiates this with the bank's loan officer. The bank grants a loan to Mr Müller. The loan amount is credited to his account and his credit balance increases. The bank has created new book money. It did this without needing to raise any savings deposits first.

But (and it's at this point that Keen — and currency cranks — stop reading) it has to raise the money somehow in the end:

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But how much book money can banks create?As described earlier, book money is largely created by granting loans. However, a business will only take out a loan if it has investment projects planned and if the expected returns are high enough to generate the required interest on the loan. The banks in turn check whether the borrower will be able to pay the interest and pay off the loan. Because if the borrower cannot pay the interest and repay the loan, the bank will incur a loss.The banks also keep a constant eye on the costs that may incur by granting loans and creat-ing book money. For example, if the customer uses the new credit balance to transfer money to an account at another bank, from the bank's point of view money will be flowing out. The bank then often has to recover this money, for example by taking out a loan from another bank, or by "refinancing" itself with a loan from the central bank. Alternatively, it can persuade savers to invest cash or credit balances at the bank in the form of savings or fixed-term deposits.As a rule, the bank has to pay interest on these refinancing measures. The banks' willingness to create book money therefore depends on how high the cost of interest is for the bank itself.

This is in effect accepting that banks are financial intermediaries, borrowing money at one rate of interest and re-lending it at a higher rate. It's just describing it in rather a roundabout way, by saying that they lend money at one rate of interest and then have to find the money to fund this at a lower rate.

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It is a question of definition in the end. No serious person thinks banks can create money out of thin air, certainly not bankers themselves. If you define a bank loan as money, then of course banks "create money" but not out of thin air. It's, as the ECB says, out of "private credit".The other confusing definition is that of a "bank deposit". Originally, this meant money deposited in a bank from outside. Now it is also used for the bank deposit a bank creates for someone they make a loan to and into which they put the money that is being loaned. So the two are confused although they are quite different, leading to double counting since some of the money banks lend will come from what has been deposited with them.Also of course, banks don't just lend what has been deposited with them from outside, but also from what they themselves borrow from the money market. Both are "private credit" and in fact a distinction between them is made in the official literature, the former being called "retail funding" for the bank's lending activities and the latter "wholesale funding". High Street banks and Building Societies are typically funded more by customer deposits than wholesale funding. In fact it was over-doing the more risky (because the interest rate can suddenly increase) wholesale funding that did for Northern Rock and HBOS.In making a loan banks are using existing money to extend credit not "creating [new] money". If someone wants to call this "creating money" they shouldn't imagine that this is the same as when the State "creates" fiat money. If we are going to have to live with this definition I like the ECB distinction between "outside" and "inside" money.

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a currency crank wrote:

data shows that most MPs do not know how money is created. Responding to a survey commissioned by Positive Money just before the June election, 85% were unaware that new money was created every time a commercial bank extended a loan, while 70% thought that only the government had the power to create new money. ..How is money created? ..All money comes from a magic tree, in the sense that money is spirited from thin air.

It is sort of re-assuring that only 15% of MPs think that "money is spirited from thin air". Let's hope that they represent the views of their constituents on this. In which case, currency crank ideas are not all that widespread, though they still need refuting.

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Someone should indeed tell the ECB !

European Central Bank wrote:

Commercial banks can also create so-called “inside” money, i.e. bank deposits – this happens every time they issue a new loan. (….). Inside money (….) is named this way because it is backed by private credit.https://www.ecb.europa.eu/explainers/tell-me-more/html/what_is_money.en.html

The whole ECB document is a good description how the modern monetary system works. In fact it is something we can, and should, quote (and quote again) against the "thin air" school of banking. "Private credit" of course includes outside deposits (i.e not those opened by a bank for those it makes a loan to, but people and organisations depositing their own money there) and what banks themselves borrow.I think I'll put it to Steve Keen since he claims the backing of German banks for his description of how the monetary system works (and since he teaches just down the road from me at Kingston University). Not that he's a "thin-airist". It''s just that his description is an open invitation for them to misinterpret him..

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Earlier this month French television broadcast a documentary on Russia in 1917 . According to veteran Council Communist Henri Simon on a discussion forum, this showed well that "il ne s'agit pas d'une conquête des masses mais d'un coup d'état minutieusement préparé par une minorité politique très réduite" or, roughly translated:

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that it was not a question of a conquest by the masses but a carefully prepared coup d'état by a very small political minority.

Nice to find someone else from our milieu taking this view.

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Steve Keen wrote:

Banks don't on-lend deposits they take in from depositors. Banks create money — and debt  — whenever they extend credit to a client, whether it's by means of credit cards, mortgages, or business loans.

How many times do we have to repeat that banks don't lend only from what has been deposited with them but also from what they themselves borrow from the money market? The Bank of England papers state this clearly enough. Of course if you define a bank loan as money then by definition banks "create money" when they make a loan, but this leaves open the question of where they get the funds to make loans. Keen knows perfectly well that they don't simply conjure them up out of thin air. So do all practical bankers.

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You are right. The MIA version doesn't omit point 3 but there is still something wrong with it as it only has 9 points whereas the one in our pamphlet has 10 (as do other versions on the internet as here: http://home.wlu.edu/~patchw/His_213/spd_program.htm ). The whole text is there  but points 5 and 6 have become a single point, changing the numbers of what follows to 6, 7, 8, 9 (instead of 7,8, 9, 10). Someone should tell them.

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The only one that could bear this interpretation is point 10 of the general reform demands that calls for a reform of the tax system:

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Progressive income and property taxes to meet all public expenditure, so far as these are to be covered by taxation. Duty of making one’s own return of income and property. Succession duty to be graduated according to amount and relationship. Abolition of all indirect taxes, customs, and other financial measures which sacrifice the collective interest to the interests of a privileged minority.

In the online version of the Party's pamphlet there is a misprint as in the last part the words "interest to the" after the word "collective" do not appear, rendering the sentence meaningless. No doubt this can be corrected. (Incidentally, the version on the Marxists Internet Archive omits point 3 in ours about universal military training and a people's army to replace a standing army (as in Switzerland). I am not sure why.)Apart from that point, all the other reform demands are either to extend political democracy or intended to protect the industrial working class. The Party's first three pamphlets in fact were Kautsky's first three sections of the theoretical introduction he wrote to the Erfurt Programme (translation with his permission and approval: see http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/handicraft-capitalism-karl-kautsky-1906). In 1899 Kautsky wrote a book on The Agrarian Question.In the first decade of the 20th century there was a controversy within the SPD over whether and to what extend to appeal to small peasants with the Revisionists around Bernstein advocating this and the party moving in this direction.

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The latest, revised proposals put Head Office on the boundary (literally) of two proposed new constituencies: one called "Brixton & Vauxhall", the other "Battersea & Clapham". Clapham High Street is the border and Head Office will be on the side in Battersea & Clapham:https://www.bce2018.org.uk/node/6485?postcode=SW47UNAnticipating something like this was why we decided to contest Battersea rather than Vauxhall in the general election.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

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French Group (“Civilisation without money”)The Party has been contacted by this group seeking collaboration.Agreed that cde Buick responds inviting further contacts.

Is there any further background to this group available?

Here is their website (in French):https://www.civilisation-sans-argent.org/They seem to be an offshoot of the general Zeitgeist/Venus project movement. They stood a candidate in the elections in France in June this year. He got 40 votes:http://www.voter-a-m.fr/2017/

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