If a handful of major capitalist banks have occupied centre stage in recent years, this must not hide the role of major private firms in industry and commerce, who use and abuse their close links with governmental structures just as deftly as the bankers. The maze of crossed interests amongst states, governments, banks, industrial and commercial firms, and major private communications groups is also one of the characteristics of capitalism, in its current phase as in earlier ones. Indeed, as soon as capitalism became the victorious mode of production and the dominant social formation, representatives of major private groups and their allies have exercised power. Looking back in history, the New Deal launched by President Roosevelt in 1933 and the thirty years following the 2nd World War seemed a parenthesis when the ruling class had to make certain limited but real concessions to the working class. Major capitalists had to play down their control over the state to some extent. With the neo-liberal turn begun from the end of the 1970s, they threw discretion to the winds. The 1980s put the spotlight on an utterly uninhibited ruling class, flaunting and cynically singing the praises of the profit motive and the all-out exploitation of peoples and of nature. The regrettably famous Margaret Thatcher saying, “There is No Alternative” still leaves its mark on the political, economic and social landscape, via violent attacks on rights and social victories. Mario Draghi, Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi (a leading Italian capitalist) and José Manuel Barroso have become emblematic figures of the continuation of Thatcher’s plan. The active complicity of socialist governments (from Schröder to Hollande, by way of Blair, Brown, Papandreou, Zapatero, Socrates, Letta, Di Rupo and several others) shows the extent to which they have become parties to the logic of the capitalist system, just like Barack Obama on the other side of the Atlantic. As US billionaire Warren Buffett stated: “It is a class war, and my class is winning”. The public debt system as it functions in capitalism is a permanent mechanism for the transfer of wealth produced by the people towards the capitalist class. The crisis beginning in 2007-2008 reinforced this mechanism because the losses and debts of major banks were transformed into public debts. On a very large scale, governments socialised bank losses so banks could continue to make profits, which they redistribute to their capitalist owners. Government leaders are the direct allies of the big banks and use their powers and public funds to serve the latter. There is a constant revolving door between major banks and governments. The number of Ministers of Finance and the Economy, or Prime Ministers, coming directly from major banks or going to them when they leave government has not stopped rising since 2008. The banking profession is too essential to the economy to be left in private sector hands. Banks must be socialised (this implies expropriating them) and put under citizen control (of bank workers, clients, associations and representatives of local public stakeholders), as it must be subject to public service guidelines |3| and the income its activity generates must be used for the common good. Public debt contracted to save banks is definitely illegitimate and must be renounced. A citizen audit must determine the other illegitimate and/or illegal debts and play a part in mobilisation so an anti-capitalist alternative can take shape. Bank socialisation and cancellation/repudiation of illegitimate debt must be part of a broader programme As was the case in the Venetian Republic, nowadays in the European Union and in the majority of the most industrialized countries on the planet, the State operates in osmosis with the major private bank and obediently repays the public debt. Non-repayment of illegitimate debt, socialization of banks and other vital measures will be the outcome of an upsurge of the people as protagonists of their own history. This entails establishing a government as faithful to the oppressed as the Merkel, Obama and Hollande governments are to major private businesses. Such a government of the people must make inroads into sacrosanct major private property to develop the common good while respecting nature’s limits. This government must also make a radical break with the capitalist State and do away with all forms of oppression. An authentic revolution is necessary.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 17:36:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015