Bank for World Trade (1943)

From the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Discussions have recently been started on the future of banking currency and exchange after the war. Lord Keynes (British Treasury) has put forward one set of proposals for an International Clearing Union. Mr. Morgenthau, Treasurer of the United States Government, has made other proposals for an international currency, based on gold.

Various writers and journals have taken up these suggestions with the usual alacrity, hailing them as serious contributions to the solution of world problems.

Typical of such journals is the dear old New Statesman (April 10th, 1943) :

“Man’s failure to construct a sane system to regulate exchange between the nations is one of the reasons for the ghastly state of the world to-day. . . . The general standard of life which the world enjoys, and on which all hopes of social betterment hang—(our italics)—must depend on the way in which the nations succeed in organising exchange of … surplus goods.”

This is no new idea : it’s as old (almost) as the capitalist system itself. The same issue of the New Statesman carries one of those typical “Left” articles, which they have published for years, calling on somebody or other (in authority) to do something for somebody. This week it's Professor Laski urging President Roosevelt not to support Fascist elements in Tunis. This has something to do with the New Deal in America, although Laski admits “that the essence of the New Deal was not Socialism.” Nevertheless, “freedom from want and fear deliberately organised now can make the foundations of democracy secure in the post-war world.”

“Do you remember, Mr. President, those brave words you used in your inaugural address of March 4th, 1933?” asks the Professor.

“This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth. . . . Plenty is at our door but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed.”—Pres. Roosevelt, March, 1933.

Here, again, the same idea that faulty exchange is the cause of the trouble.

Taking our courage in both hands, we boldly challenge President Roostvelt, Professor Laski and Sir Kingsley Wood to prove this proposition. The crises of capitalism are not caused by faulty exchange.

Exchange itself is but an effect, not the cause. Exchange is the result of private property in the means cf production.

It is the economic relationship of private owners. 

That is why the S.P.G.B. for years, despite charges of pedantry, opposed the S.D.F. and I.L.P., who stated that they stood for the “socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.”

This is not Socialism. Socialism abolishes money, banks, cheques, and all the counters of various sizes and names which capitalists require to ensure their pound of flesh. Socialism is a system based on common ownership, which freely distributes to all whatever the community cam produce.

People starve in the sight of plenty because it is privately owned by capitalists.

A new system of international currency after the war may assist British or American capitalists—no amount of alteration of the tokens which circulate wealth will help property-less workers.

Horatio.