The Banking Sector of the Economy
An Important Sector Over Which the Working People Must Exercise Control
- Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L) -
Why should banking be considered a private
matter to enrich those in control and concentrate
money and power in fewer hands? This is an
important question.
 A key issue is the
role of the state at all levels. Should the state
and its many institutions serve the people or a
tiny minority of rich oligarchs? With food
insecurity now a serious issue facing one in eight
people; unemployment, poverty and homelessness
constant threats; governments incapable of
mobilizing the people and science to bring the
pandemic under control; and racial and other forms
of inequality and injustice plaguing the society,
people are questioning the reactionary role of the state and its authority within the conditions
that have developed.
Does the state at all levels, as the most
important and powerful institution, not have a
social responsibility to ensure the well-being of
all? Would that not include the broad functioning
of the economy in a manner that serves the public
interest and not simply a select wealthy
privileged few?
The imperialist system in both the U.S. and
Canada gives state-sanctioned private banks the
social responsibility of creating new money and
moving it into the economy as credit. This broad
social responsibility to increase the money supply
and supply credit to meet the needs of the economy
and people comes into contradiction with the
narrow aim of private banks to make maximum profit
for their private owners.
This contradiction between a private aim and
social responsibility exists throughout the
imperialist economy. This unresolved contradiction
is a leading reason for the recurring economic
crises and the inability of the imperialist
economy to mobilize the tremendous productive
power of modern industrial mass production to meet
the needs of the people and guarantee their rights
and well-being.
State-Sanctioned Banking to Pay the
Rich
In assessing the role of the state
within the banking sector and the important role
of providing credit and creating new money the
reality is clear: the state has awarded
positions of power to private enterprises and
individuals that use their state-sanctioned
privilege for private gain. Those in control of
the banking sector act with impunity to serve
their narrow private interests and are not held
to account for their actions. They refuse to
uphold social responsibility as a matter of
course, as they consider banking a private
matter to enrich those in control and
concentrate money and power in fewer hands.
 The working people
take an opposing view and demand change. Banking
and the provision of credit and creation of the
money supply are a public matter and entail broad
social responsibility. Banking in a modern economy
is a necessary public infrastructure or utility
required for the proper functioning of the economy
in the production and distribution of the goods
and services the working class produces to meet
the needs of the people.
The banking sector controls the creation of a
national money supply at an appropriate level to
serve the extended reproduction of the economy in
conformity with the growth and development of the
productive forces and the actual and potential
amount of social product. Further, banks are meant
to provide a safe place for people and businesses
to keep their savings and for the use of those
savings for nation-building to serve the local and
national economy. These tasks cannot and should
not be considered private responsibilities with
the aim of enriching a privileged few.
Banking is a necessary infrastructure that
carries important social responsibilities for the
well-being of all and society. How to uphold
social responsibility on all fronts and in new
forms necessary to fulfil their roles are
important issues to be discussed for all the
different sectors of the economy and politics.
The old forms and aim that arose with the origin
of the country, constitution and economy are
obsolete. New political, economic, social and
constitutional forms, institutions and authority
are necessary that are in conformity with a modern
economy and country of industrial mass production
where the productive forces are completely
socialized and workers who sell their capacity to
work and produce the social product constitute the
vast majority of the people.
Within the modern world and conditions that have
developed, working people demand their rights, as
they must. They demand an authority in conformity
with the modern conditions; they require control
over the political and economic power so as to
deal effectively with those affairs that affect
their lives and in ways that favour the people.
Banking is an important sector over which the
working people must exercise control.
The people are determined to bring into being new
forms that conform to the socialized nature of the
basic economy, how they acquire their living, and
how they relate to one another and to nature.
Modern forms must serve the broad public interest,
uphold social responsibility, and have an aim to
guarantee the rights and well-being of the people.
 The banking and credit system is a sector that
needs immediate and radical reform. The old form
of state-sanctioned private banks holding the
savings of the people and businesses, providing
credit throughout the economy, and creating the
money supply, has degenerated into parasitism and
decay. Private banking has become a form of paying
the rich, which plays a negative destructive role
in the economy and the lives of the people.
Private banking and
its aim of maximum profit for the few have become
factors contributing to recurring economic crises
and the further concentration of wealth and power
in fewer hands. Private control of banking is part
of the overall pay-the-rich economy. The ruling
oligarchy uses its control of banking to block and
deprive the people of the power and control they
need to deal with the issues that affect their
lives and to take action to solve the mounting
economic, social and natural problems facing the
country and the world.
State-sanctioned private banking reflects the
contradiction between the conditions that have
changed and an authority that has not. The
resolution of this contradiction requires the
renewal of the democracy with equality for all
members of the polity at the core, the development
of friendly peaceful relations with all humanity,
and the humanization of the social and natural
environment. Fighting consciously on all fronts
for a new pro-social direction for the economy and
country brings to the fore the human factor and
democratic personality necessary to resolve the
contradiction.
The Banking and Credit System Must Become a
Public Utility in the Service of the People and
Under Their Control
The contradiction in the economy between the
state-sanctioned private aim for maximum profit
and the need for social responsibility to serve
the people and society is starkly evident in the
banking system. People are discussing and coming
to the realization that the banking system must be
torn from the clutches of the imperialist
oligarchs. How to deprive the rich of their power
over banking and to organize to make this reform
of the economy permanent are major concerns of the
movement for the New. Bringing into being a public
banking system that upholds its social
responsibilities to the economy, people and
society is an important part of the overall
struggle to build the New in opposition to
imperialism.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 36 - September 26, 2020
Article Link:
The Banking Sector of the Economy: An Important Sector Over Which the Working People Must Exercise Control - Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L)
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
