© QT Luong / Terra Galleria

Mountain Sentinel

The Federal Reserve Bank should be abolished. It is a private institution, not a branch of the federal government, given the right to print money and so control our economy. It was established in defiance of the constitution and the intentions of our founding fathers, who rebelled against the central bank of England as much as against King George. The Fed is responsible for our system of debt financing, which is nothing more than a legalized pyramid scheme.

Thomas Jefferson warned us explicitly against ever establishing a central bank: "The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."

It certainly appears that Jefferson knew what he was talking about.

However, if we are aiming to solve our socioeconomic and environmental problems, we cannot stop at dismantling the Fed. The Fed was, after all, only established as an instrument of powerful corporations and financiers. And the history of the United States in the decades prior to the establishment of the Fed is a story of oppression and class warfare. Working people were being starved and mistreated in this country long before the establishment of the Fed. The working class had to fight for everything from their right to vote to their right to earn a decent wage. Worker movements were violently suppressed by the federal government and private militias. The Great Upheaval of 1877 is the story of how worker unrest almost toppled the entire government, from the Atlantic the Mississippi.

No, our problems lie much deeper than the establishment of the Fed. At the heart of our problems is the nature of the business world. We live in a democracy, yet most of us spend our working days chained to the yoke of the most authoritarian form of dictatorship. Social democracy cannot succeed while the work world is a dictatorship. The powerful players of the business world will wind up corrupting the government until it listens only to them and is transformed into fascism.

Thomas Jefferson warned us against the powers of corporations as well: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Abolishing the Fed would do nothing to solve this deeper problem, which is more basic to social inequality and injustice. Some of the most notable advocates of abolishing the Fed say nothing about the dictatorship of the workplace or the power of corporations. Civil libertarians such as Ron Paul, who do campaign for the abolition of the Fed, also support trimming the government down to nothing and leaving all the power directly in the hands of the corporations. They never talk about the dictatorship of the workplace, opting instead to lavish praise on the free market.

Now, I am all for the abolition of the Fed and centralized government. Yet if we were to move to some laissez-faire socioeconomic system, then we will wind up in an even worse situation than in 1877, when the working class was so totally oppressed that they rose up all over the country. For the working class, the outcome of laissez-faire will be starvation wages, epidemic homelessness, 14 hour workdays for those who have a job, and child labor.

William Blum has done a very good job of pointing out errors of Libertarians. Scan down through his Anti-Empire Report for August 10th, 2007, until you reach the heading "Libertarians: an eccentric blend of anarchy and runaway capitalism." http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer48.htm

Mr. Blum explains what would happen if we did away with government and left corporations in charge of the system. But this is not to say that we need a powerful centralized government. There is another way.

By all means, let's abolish the Fed and dismantle the centralized federal government and replace it with localized federations where all decisions must be ratified by the local citizens. At the same time, let us not neglect corporate power. Let us replace workplace dictatorship with workplace democracy and return corporations back to the community-chartered endeavors that they once were. This is the way to maximize equality and freedom while ensuring a just socioeconomic system.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

© 2007 Dale Allen Pfeiffer

SOURCE: http://www.mountainsentinel.com/#abolishfed

Editors' Note: This article was kindly brought to out attention by Sara Meyer of INDEX RESEARCH.