At the beginning of the 1990s the Soviet Union and the East Bloc fell, and succumbed to the authority of the International Monetary Fund. The capitalist ("to-get-rich-is-glorious") roaders had been entrenched in Peking from the beginning of the 1980s. It became evident, even to thinking Marxists, that in practice, Marxist-Leninism and Maoism had not been able to hold their own in competition with the sophisticated apparatus and methodology of the financial institutions of the advanced capitalist sector. In the West, we were left with the established orthodox schools of economics, Keynesianism, and Monetarism. Both in turn dictated the functioning of two of the key institutions at the center of the "New World Order": the World Bank/IMF, being Keynesian, while the Bank for International Settlements (the B.I.S., the Central Bank of the central banks of the Group of Seven) is Monetarist. These two schools, taken together, still comprise the controlled dialectic of the sum total of economic discussion within Capitalism triumphant. Within the departments of economics in the academic world in the West, no other schools of economics are even taught. It is my contention that other systems exist, and that other models for a mixed economy than the failed East Bloc models could be devised that are far better and more humane than capitalism as it stands. Alternative economic models, at once both democratic and constitutional, have been conceived and published and have had, in their day, many adherents, only to be buried and censured by the academic world. They are no longer part of the dialectic - the controlling dialectic.
It is time to dig up what has been buried. If we do the necessary homework, we shall be amazed at what we shall find in the Congressional Record, in the years between 1910 and 1917 - words that were spoken on the Floor of the House.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Sr., contemporary of Robert LaFollette and Eugene Debs, was born of Swedish immigrant parents in 1859, the year before Lenin was born, and died in 1924, the year Lenin died, three years before his son made the first solo flight across the Atlantic to Paris. Although the elder Lindbergh was famous long ago, celebrated and vilified for his active role on the floor of Congress in opposing the formation of the Federal Reserve Bank and in opposing U.S. entry into World War I, a pall of obscurity hangs over his memory. Outside the halls of academe - or inside, for that matter - few people now know that the father of the aviator was a great man in his own time, perhaps the most radical congressman ever to hold a seat in the U.S. Congress, a creative, original thinker, a frontier lawyer, a grassroots economist, the author of several radical books and numerous tracts and speeches, who articulately developed and brought to fullness the economic ideals of Jefferson and Lincoln. In his life, he was a peer of Eugene Debs, and an ally and friend of Robert LaFollette, Sr. Excommunicated from the Republican Party in 1918, because of his courageous stand against the War, Lindbergh, Sr. became a founding member, and a candidate of the nascent Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota, a party that was radical to the point that twice in its history, in 1923-24, and again in 1936-39, it [foolishly] formed United Fronts with the Communist Party. In death, he was soon eclipsed by the fame of his son - the aviator - whom everybody now remembers. In a calculated and "deliberate campaign of suppression", the elder Lindbergh was, to a great extent, edited out of history. [1] More recently, in a truly Orwellian twist, his name has become subliminally associated with Nazism in leftist consciousness, because of the younger Lindbergh's participation with the America First group at the beginning of World War II. But back in 1918, the year the New York Times branded him a "Bolshevik," the plates of his books were destroyed by Agents of the Department of Justice, under orders from Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. [2] This was a full year before the Red Scare of 1919. In the 1920s, the books of the elder Lindbergh, Banking and Currency and the Money Trust, Why Is Your Country At War?, and The Economic Pinch, were destroyed, systematically burned, and quietly removed from practically every library in the entire country. [3] One book by Lindbergh, The House of Morgan, has disappeared without a trace, even out of the Library of Congress. It has gone into the Orwellian memory-hole, and become a non-book, as if it never existed. Richard Neuberger, in a March 1937 article in Esquire Magazine, wrote of the elder Lindbergh:
"Private banking was Lindbergh's bete Noir. His attacks on the banks took him into the deepest waters of radicalism yet ventured [as of 1937] in Congress; he even went beyond the depths braved by LaFollette and Norris. On one occasion Lindbergh actually turned his back on Capitalism and endorsed the principles of Debs:
"Not many of those who criticize socialists know the first principles of Socialism. Socialism and socialists are libeled and slandered by the false and by the ignorant only, for no one who has studied socialism can for a single moment question that it has a program whereby, if it could be followed out and put into execution, this world would be cleared of much of its misery and degradation.""
Just consider: Lindbergh said that on the Floor of Congress. Lindbergh, Sr., forgotten by all but a few scholars, archivists, and Old Left historians, was later co-opted as a silent icon by the John Birch Society, which, however, censored & bowdlerized the Socialist aspects of his doctrine [4] What is worse, he was co-opted by the crypto-Nazi Liberty Lobby who republished his book The Economic Pinch (out of print since the 1920s) as Lindbergh on the Federal Reserve.
It is fair to say that a campaign of suppression, distortion, and misrepresentation concerning the elder Lindbergh has been waged for several generations. I do not seek to raise an idol in his Person. There is nothing more useless than the cult of personality. I merely suggest that contemporary Progressive scholars explore the significance of this particular case of suppression & co-optation - for it is truly monumental. It is the System of economics and the substance of the writings and speeches of the elder Lindbergh that should be rediscovered and put into effect. Rather than the shopworn, recycled, Marxist Cant of the Old/New Left, Lindbergh's thought contains the seeds of a truly liberating Idea: the Science of Economic, and Industrial Democracy. He did the work. We must struggle to study and comprehend it. One may search in vain through the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin for the sustained analysis of Money that is found throughout the writings and Speeches of the elder Lindbergh. It is fair to say that Marx's primary concern was about the machinations of the Industrial Capitalist, and how workers are shortchanged through "surplus value" added to the cost of goods that workers produce in factories owned by Industrial Capitalists. Lindbergh wrote:
"The greatest of all the present social burdens is the excessive interest, dividends, and rent charges levied on us by those who control centralized capital... the great combinations of wealth, commonly known as trusts, are the logical effects of the geometrical progression of interest, dividends and rents... the fruits resulting from the people's toil... and accumulated by the wealth absorbers who, by the rules of government, possess the privilege of taxing all the people. "It is virtually the same system that prevails in England. In 1822, the land in England was owned by 165,000 people. One-half of the land in the whole kingdom is now owned by less than fifteen persons.[!] Less than a dozen persons in our own country dominate its finances."(Banking and Currency, and the Money Trust).The core Idea of Lindbergh's economic analysis is, in some ways, more radical than Marx. The proof is in its suppression. Ironically, his premise is found in that classical document of conservatism, the U.S. Constitution - Specifically, Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, which reads: "Congress shall have the power to coin money, and to regulate the value thereof, and also, of foreign coin." - the theoretical power and right of the people, through a government Of the People, to create the Credit (the circulating medium of exchange) of the nation, themselves collectively, out of nothing, instead of having to borrow it at interest, from a banking oligarchy. This vital clause of the Constitution was never fully secured, or put into continual, institutional effect. Jefferson wrote - late in life - that his great regret about the Constitution was that it did not include a clause stating specifically that Congress had the specific power to monetize paper. That is, to create Fiat, non-interest-bearing U.S. notes from paper, without having to issue interest-bearing bonds in order to borrow gold or redeemable bank notes from banks. Lindbergh wrote:
"The only excuse for government is the facility it affords the citizen for securing advantages that operate for the common welfare, which could not be obtained... through individual action. In no case has government so signally neglected its function, as in its failure to issue money and control the charges made for its use... Banks and individuals have been permitted to set up a system for financial action which is supported by credits and the products of the people's industries. Through its use they are enabled to collect exorbitant dividends, interest and profits on what they do not produce."Benjamin Franklin wrote that the Revolution was fought because the Crown suspended the rights of the colonies to print their own money - Colonial script. From the beginning of the American Revolution, there has been a conflict between those who would win for us the substance of economic democracy, and those who would allow only the pseudo-republican form. The American Revolution was a mixed event. Revolutionary pamphleteers like Tom Paine and genuine leaders of the people like Patrick Henry mingled with the more self-serving elements like Washington, Hamilton, and Morris. Between both camps were mediators and room-monitors like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. No sooner had the Revolution been won than the counter-revolution, also, went into effect. The counter-Revolutionaries were a faction among the leaders of the Revolution.[5] The first Bank of the United States, established by Hamilton in 1791 as a joint-stock company on the model of the Bank of England, was the institution that served the usurious financial interests of the nascent counter- revolutionary elite. It is this struggle - between the sovereign right of the people, collectively, to create and control their own credit, versus the paid political hirelings who have always served the vested interests of the bankers and the plutocracy - that is the real dialectic in American history. The fight over the charters of the First and Second (privately owned, joint-stock) Banks of the United States (1791-1811 and 1816-1836, respectively); Lincoln's brief foray into printing Greenback dollars during 1862-63; the National Bank Act of 1863, that terminated his attempt of achieving polity for the people; the "Crime of '73," ending the free coinage of silver; the Resumption of Specie Act of 1879, the groundswell in the Midwest in the 1870s of the Greenback Party; the bi-metalists and the Populists of the 1890s, all were milestones along the path of this same basic struggle, the struggle that the elder Lindbergh would have us take on today, one that would re-order the world's financial institutions, beginning with the Nationalization of the central banks within the G-7, the neo-colonial heart of the Beast. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, Eugene Debs on the industrial front and Robert LaFollette and Charles Augustus Lindbergh the elder on the front of economy and monetary reform, were among the foremost advocates for the rights of the people, striving to achieve economic democracy, the only true democracy. At a time when the progressive, pro-democratic, egalitarian, and economic leveling forces had the ruling class and the beneficiaries of vested privilege in America very nervous, financial elements in Europe and America coordinated the sponsorship of Lenin and Trotsky in toppling the fragile provisional government of Alexander Kerensky in Russia, causing a massive spectacle and diversion. [6] Eugene Debs and the elder Lindbergh were both taken in by the spell of the October Revolution. Subsequently, the spectacle of revolutionary, Bolshevik Russia would distract and mislead American radicals for three generations. A false dialectic was engineered and maintained, until the fall of the Soviet Union - the struggle between "Kapitalism & Kommunism." In America, this false dialectic supplanted the real dialectic and eclipsed the potential of the indigenous American progressive forces working for economic democracy to achieve the critical mass of popular unity necessary to achieve the revolutionary reforms they originally sought. These reforms have been largely forgotten, the reformers having all died. Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., the exponent of monetary reform on the Constitutional model, in the tradition of Lincoln, was eclipsed by the Revolutionary star of Lenin. The cult of Lenin and the myth of the "revolutionary vanguard" was, from the outset, a diversion, as well as being a fundamentally undemocratic and elitist model. That may be part of the reason why the Communist Party, U.S.A., was subsidized by the crowd at Guaranty Trust. [7] It was also untenable and unworkable for the American situation. We have never possessed either the geography, or the historical circumstances for a repeat of the Bolshevik Revolution in the United States. Let us consider the implications of these assembled facts: Charles A. Lindbergh, progressive Congressman from Minnesota publishes a book in the spring of 1913, entitled Banking and Currency, and The Money Trust, about the legislation that is soon to crystallize into the institution known as the Federal Reserve Bank. Three years later, in 1916, in exile in Switzerland, Lenin writes a book entitled Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. The books have deep similarities, yet they differ profoundly. Lindbergh, a Jeffersonian Deist, and a Constitutionalist, is a non-violent, not a violent revolutionary. His books, nevertheless, are suppressed and the plates to them destroyed under orders from Attorney General Mitchell Palmer in the spring of 1918 - a full year before the infamous "Palmer Raids" of the "Red Scare" in 1919. Lenin, who is a revolutionary, negotiates with the Imperial German Government, through his sometime rival, Parvus, and manages to make it to the Finland Station, heavily subsidized by German gold. [8] His Menshevik cohort, Leon Trotsky, manages to leave New York, and also surfaces in Petrograd, heavily subsidized with American (Rockefeller, Morgan, & Kuhn Loeb) money. [9] Together, they make a successful revolution. Later, in America, Lenin's books, as the Little Lenin Library, are published, and republished into the hundreds of thousands from the 192Os on, by International Publishers, Inc., located on Park Avenue, in New York City, a firm with murky ties to the Lamont family of Wall Street & the House of Morgan. [10] Meanwhile, Lindbergh's book, Banking and Currency and the Money Trust, remains suppressed, and is quietly removed from practically every library in the country. Lindbergh's book, The House of Morgan disappears without a trace. Curious? - Both Lenin and Lindbergh castigated Rockefeller and Morgan as capitalists and exploiters of the masses. The books of both men are still highly relevant today and should be read and compared. For some reason, however, the Wall Street elite saw fit to canonize and multiply the thoughts of Lenin, and to strangle the thoughts of the elder Lindbergh. Can it be that a Constitutionalist, Populist-Socialist analysis was more dangerous to the powers-that-be in America, than a "revolutionary," Marxist-Leninist one?
In order to get back on track, the Progressive Movement would have to do a lot of homework. Frankly, it might not even be possible. Starting from square one, Progressives would have to redefine and re-conceptualize what Wealth is, in the world-after-Oil. Committees would have to work on the systemic blueprints for an egalitarian economic system. And then everyone would have to pull together, and work as hard as they could, collectively, to dismantle those institutions that perpetuate the feudal privileges of the super-rich. I for one, would like to see a genuine grass-roots movement at least give the Plutes a run for their money...
References:
1, Walter Liggett, "The Lindbergh Who Was Almost Lynched," Common Sense, March 30, 1933 2, Preface by Walter Quigley, in theee limited second edition of Why Is Your Country at War, Dorance, Philadelphia, 1934. 3, op sit 4, "Two Generations of Heroism, Lindbergh," by William P.Hoar, The Review of The News. May 1977). 5, See, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, by Charles Beard, 1913, as well as The New Nation, by Merrill Jenson, for this analysis. 6, Lenin, the Compulsive Revolutionary, by Stephen Possony, Regnery. 1964, (a right-wing, but factual account), and, The Sealed Train, by Michael Pearson, Putnam, 1975. 7, Wall Street and The Bolshevik Revolution, Antony C. Sutton, 1975.
and,
Tragedy and Hope, by Carroll Quigley, Macmillan, 1966. 8, The Sealed Train, by Michael Pearson, Putnam, 1975. 9, Wall Street and The Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony C. Sutton, 1975
[A Necessary FOOT NOTE : Antony C. Sutton, a controversial character, was a senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The Hoover published a trilogy of books by him, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, volumes 1-3, in the 1960s. They were published in limited editions, and were meant for the cognoscenti only - the readers of arcane manuscripts in think tanks... Sutton, having earned a certain degree of tenure at the Hoover, then went on a sabbatical, of sorts - only he stayed around, and used the incredible library enclosed in the dark tower at Stanford to do a little moonlighting, on his own. When colleagues would ask him what was doing, he'd just say - 'Oh, I'm just doing some research...' He went on to produce what is called "The Wall Street Trilogy" - Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, Wall Street and F.D.R., and Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. These books made big waves on the paleo-conservative Right in the 1970s. They have entered into the domain of "Cult Classics." They are also very rare. After these books were published, by conservative publishing houses like Arlington, and '76 Press, in the 1970s, Antony C. Sutton was shown the door at the Hoover, because he had said too much... I cite Antony Sutton because he is credible. All of his facts are footnoted thoroughly, with citations from the State Department decimal files, which were accessible to him at the Hoover. I have five or six of his books. While I do not agree with his Von Misian economics, I must say that I respect him as a diligent researcher. His facts are unassailable, though his spin is debatable. Sutton is not a "conspiracy theorist," as the shorthand, street-wise gibberish that passes for thought in some quarters of the "Left" today would pigeonhole him. The Hoover Institution does not indulge in "conspiracy-theories." They are very much into Realpolitik. If my citations of Carroll Quigley, Clinton's mentor at Georgetown, and Antony C. Sutton brand me as a 'revisionist,' in some circles, then so be it. Neither one of them are "conspiracy theorists," as a host of self- appointed left gate-keepers would have us believe ]. Check it out.
10, Same references as #7.
Suggested Reading:
LINDBERGH, Sr., Charles A.:
Banking and Currency, and The Money Trust, Washington, D.C., National City Press, 1913,
The Economic Pinch, Philadelphia, Dorrance, 1923
Why Is Your Country At War? Washington, D.C., National City Press, 1917 Speeches of the Elder Lindbergh, in the Congressional Record, 1910 through 1917...
ADAMS, Silas Walter,
The Legalized Crime of Banking - And a Constitutional Remedy, Boston, Meador, 1958
POPP, Dr. Edward,
The Great Cookie Jar: Taking the Mystery Out of the Money System, Wisconsin Education Fund, P.O. Box 321. Port Washington, Wisconsin, 53074.
SODDY, Frederick, M.A., F.R.S., Nobel Lauriate in Chemistry, 1921,
Wealth, Virtual Wealth, And Debt, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co, 1933
