Tuesday, April 12, 2016

j reacts to false accusations of sympathies with the tea party

fwiw, i am 100% supportive of fiat currency relations and i believe that a strong central bank is a necessity to prevent currency speculation by the wealthy. i would prefer to abolish currency and property altogether. but, so long as we are stuck with currency, i do believe that the fractional reserve banking is a superior system to any kind of fixed system of exchange, like the gold standard. i am a socialist. i understand that this is a socialist concept of currency. i support it because it is a socialist concept of currency.

i support a lender of last resort. i understand that the bailouts were loans. i believe that money can and should be printed at whatever volume is necessary to bring the economy to full employment. further, i realize that there is no such thing as debt.

so, i don't have any of these right-wing economic ideas. and, as such, i have little point of identification with the economic programme on the right.

i am a classical liberal on social issues, and i understand that i may be confusing to a lot of the modern left as a result of that. but, i am closer to a traditional concept of leftism than the modern left is. and, when i attack the left as authoritarian, i tend to do it from the left. that is, i tend to go after what passes as "liberalism" nowadays (from elizabeth warren through to the tumblr types) as a lot of confused conservatives. there's nothing liberal about the social justice warriors. it's just a post-modern spin on religion, and dangerous for all the same reasons.

we live in a reality where a defined left does not really exist. rather, we are presented with various strains of conservatism and told that they are liberalism and socialism, respectively. i reject all of this. so, you cannot place me on your spectrum, as you understand it.

but, i am clear where i stand in a broader spectrum. i am an anarchist/communist in the tradition of bakunin, kropotkin, wilde, malatesta and chomsky. i tend to lean marxist (mostly from engels, actually) on economic matters and liberal (mill, largely) on social matters. these are old fashioned perspectives that most people have jettisoned in favour of some concept of authoritarianism, to the point that i'm  broadly misunderstood most of the time.

but, i am a leftist - a very pure one that refuses to be corrupted by conservative concepts of human nature, even when it takes me out into left field. that's fine. i'll set up camp. you'll leave me there. that's ok. but, make no mistake of this - a leftist, i am.

...even if i ultimately defer to science, whenever i can.