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Political Prairie Fire
North Dakota, portrayed as a loyal "red, white, and blue" woman, places its trust in the North Dakota Farmer, a pilgrim whose musket represents the political power won by the Nonpartisan League.
How cool is this: The ongoing success of the country's only socialist bank, born of the 1915 radical workers' and farmers' insurgency known as the Nonpartisan League, may serve as a model for states struggling with the economic crisis. The state-owned Bank of North Dakota, along with state-owned grain operations, was the brainchild of a failed flax farmer and Socialist organizer who wanted to wrest control from big out-of-state corporate interests. Today's bank serves as a sort of "mini-Federal Reserve" offering cheap loans to farmers, students and businesses. And it's doing just fine, thanks.
"In my experience, you make a contact with the (Bank of North Dakota), and their question is, 'How do we get this done? They're not looking at ways to knock it down." - Gary Petersen, president of the Lakeside State Bank of New Town, a community on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
8 Comments so far
Show AllThis was one of the major reasons the Corporate State in both the USA and Canada decided it had to rid their country of the small farmer.
These Farmers tended to be Socialists.
Ellen Brown on www.counterpunch.org has been writing about the Bank of North Dakota for quite a number of months -- and has outlined how to implement banks like this one across the country.
But, banks like The Bank of North Dakota would NOT serve corporate interests -- as stated by GwNorth.
Are the bank's officers and board elected by the people of the state, Abby? If not, it's not socialist no matter what anyone says. "State socialism" would be just as accurately described as "state capitalism", aka fascism.
I have the feeling that we might be going to see a little more about the benefits of "state-socialist" operations now that people are Really Angry at straight Capitalism. "State socialism" makes a very nice "change of clothes" for Capitalism, since they're the same thing at bottom -fascism and feudalism- but not obviously so.
Good point.
There's still some difference if the money it gleans from clients goes to public welfare instead of private largess, though how much difference would depend on how representative the government is otherwise.
Agreed. I think that's probably why Britain's state-socialism was regarded as real socialism for so long: it was "friendly" toward the people and did actual good. That the people had very little say in how things are run (more than we in the US do, but still not much) was masked by classism. It's only since Thatcher and Reagan that the fascist fists in both countries have been completely visible.
I like this outfit called the Non Partisan League, but the pilgrims weren't good guys at all. They carried out the brutal and grisly massacre of Indians in the Plymouth colony. They were more the persecutors than the persecuted they claimed to be. They even got bankrolled to set up that colony. When they were in Holland, they liked the fact that the government there was tolerant of them, but didn't like the fact it was tolerant of others with different life styles from theirs and a less uptight puritan attitude. For this reason, the pilgrims took the money they get from some in England to set up that Plymouth colony.
But public ownership of major means of production is definitely a step in the right direction, and the fact that North Dakota took back in 1915 makes the rest of the country look backward as hell.
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I like this outfit called the Non Partisan League, but the pilgrims weren't good guys at all. They carried out the brutal and grisly massacre of Indians in the Plymouth colony. They were more the persecutors than the persecuted they claimed to be. They even got bankrolled to set up that colony. When they were in Holland, they liked the fact that the government there was tolerant of them, but didn't like the fact it was tolerant of others with different life styles from theirs and a less uptight puritan attitude. For this reason, the pilgrims took the money they get from some in England to set up that Plymouth colony.
But public ownership of major means of production is definitely a step in the right direction, and the fact that North Dakota took back in 1915 makes the rest of the country look backward as hell.
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anything real will take over the whole county, desperate for anything authentic
edweg