For a full workers enquiry into the banks

With all the outrage on bankers, phone hacking and the deepening crisis in capitalism. We are still being told we are all in this together. Surely now this lie is being shown for what it is exactly that an attempt to mask the true face of the system the rich millionaires seek to defend. Whilst we pay our tax’s and are hounded if we do not for the smallest errors in our tax returns the very wealthiest in society cannot even pay the basic rate of tax let alone what they really should be a progressive high rate of tax.
An estimated 120 billion goes evaded every year. More than enough to cover the cuts.

Let’s also have no illusions in the labor party shall we. Labour including many who are still on their front bench Ed Balls for example was their City minister over seeing big city deals deregulation and being a “friend” to the city so Let’s not start thinking labour are genuine when they are calling for a public enquire. They are only asking for one as it would go on for months giving them time to prepare for the humiliation which would be sure to follow them too.

We as a result need our own party of workers not a capitalist labour party who pretend to stand for us but quite clearly do not hand have not for some time. We need our own party of ordinary working people socialists and trade unionists to fight for the alternative society we wish to see.

Workers should be able to see how much of the profit of the companies they work for, are being drained in similar expenses by their top bosses, and the various Board members of those companies too. And bourgeois democracy, is about more than just the people who are elected to Parliaments and Councils, it’s about the whole structure of the society we live in, including those who provide the information on which the politicians are judged. Its all well and good journalists shaming MP’s, but we should also have full disclosure of THEIR salaries and expenses too. Certainly, we should know how much these rags are being paid by the bosses in one form or another to run stories, and how much they are paying out to obtain stories.
If we are to have a truly independent Inquiry into the actions of the Banks, and all their dealings with Politicians, the Bank of England, Treasury Officials, the Media, the Judiciary and the Police, then we cannot leave it up to representatives of any of these organizations to conduct it impartially. We need a comprehensive Workers Inquiry into the Banks. It should be established by the TUC, and should utilize the resources of trusted Labour Movement lawyers to conduct the necessary forensic questioning. It should call on TU appointed specialists from Revenue & Customs, and from the Treasury, and wherever else to uncover and expose the actions of the Banks, and their dealings with other sections of the Establishment. The TUC should demand from Parliament that such an inquiry has all the force of law behind it, including the right to subpoena under oath witnesses.



It’s time for the British workers to clean out the stench of British Capitalism.

With extracts taken kindly from boffy over at boffy's blog
http://boffyblog.blogspot.co.uk/

The fantasy of a responsible capitalism

We have heard this term responsible capitalism a lot banded about recently like polititians know what they are talking about. I thought I’d look at if there is such a thing and could capitalism ever be made to be a fairer system for all ?

Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party is turning into an elaborate parody of the emptiness of reformism. With capitalism unable to afford any reforms, he is like the school pupil who works extremely hard to avoid working whilst giving the impression of being studious. He is trying very very hard, tossing and turning, to give the impression that reformism can work without any actual reforms. Unfortunately for Ed, in this case the illusion does not work.

He has recently announced that social democracy, or reformism, can (and will have to) provide the same quantity of ‘fairness’ and all-round " well-being" without actually spending any money, in fact whilst cutting enormously. Translated into English, this means that Miliband is offering no credible policies whatsoever to deal with the crisis and improve living standards. That is the only reason why Cameron outperforms him in polls and why, in some respects, the Tories, despite being so roundly hated, manage to be more trusted in economic matters. If people are only going to be offered cuts, it may as well be done by the guys who really know how to dig the knife in.

In the desperate search for a distinguishing policy Miliband has decided to cash in on the general hatred for bankers and the disgust at the gross inequality in British society. He is selling the idea that we can achieve the desired fairness and equality by reforming business practice, rather than through taxation and public spending or even (God forbid!) through nationalisation.

He says “Does anyone really believe that David Cameron came into politics to create a more responsible capitalism? The public are not going to buy it." The real question is, does anyone really think there can be such a thing as responsible capitalism? People do not take this seriously, and rightly so, for capitalism is inherently irresponsible and crisis ridden. To speak of conjuring up such a system whilst the world economy once again teeters on the brink of the abyss is utopian.

Accepting capitalism, as both reformism and Ed Miliband do, means adapting to its inner laws and implementing policies that are in the interests of capitalists and capitalism. Hence the fact that, in good New Labour tradition, Miliband is trying to sell this policy as not only fair and good for the poor, but also as in the interests of business, saying “There is nothing anti-business about cleansing cheats, asset-strippers and vultures from honest savings and good business enterprise.”

Unfortunately, there is something anti-business about that, since business, or capitalism, is the law of the jungle. Of necessity capitalism develops a culture of cheating and asset-stripping.

The concrete policies he has proposed are the following, “[We would] put an employee representative on every remuneration committee, make firms publish their pay ratios, empower pension companies and investors and have another year of the bank bonus tax to get some of our young people back to work.”

These policies are pretty thin for someone wanting to completely transform the way an entire economic system works and to restructure society. Investors are not interested in curbing executive pay, they are only interested in getting their dividends, and those who are charged with managing investment portfolios to achieve high returns are themselves extremely lavishly paid. Small shareholders are far too scattered and their assets too small to have a chance of dictating company policy, moreover they too are only concerned with getting their dividends in. The buying and selling of shares, and all other financial speculation, takes place internationally, in accordance with the laws of capitalism and determines the fate of the world economy. Empowering some of these investment companies engaged in this to become champions of fairness and equality is farcically ironic.

Putting employee representatives on company committee’s whilst, thanks to the global economic crisis, those companies will inevitably be making decisions to sack thousands of workers and attack terms and conditions, will either result in the buying off of the relevant worker, or in a breakdown of this class collaboration into open class struggle.

Indeed class struggle is on the order of the day for Britain and the world. 2011 showed that and 2012 will see even more. Capitalism inherently increases inequality and crisis ridden capitalism is the least able to overcome this tendency. If workers are to engage in holding their employers to account for obscene executive pay levels, it can only be through the workers having real, democratic control over those companies. But you cannot control what you do not own

So as Karl Marx described capitalism is a beast that cannot be tamed and will always come back for more if it gives you something with one hand it will take back with the other in another way without you knowing. The only way to make capitalism responsible and fairer is to make it responsible for the exploitation and destruction it has caused and end it for good. To be reaplaced with a socialist planned economy based on humans needs over a select group of very rich elites profits. FOr a fairer system which will meet everyones needs not just the 1% of society.

Is this the best capitalism can offer us ?

We are repeatably told there is no better system than capitalism and that all other systems have been found wanting. But today where we live in a ever declining level of living standards is what we have today the best capitalism can offer us all ?

A Mori poll out today shows 64% believed its unlikely that today's youth would have better life than their parents.

Against the background of the worst crisis "ever" (according to Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England) the claim that 'there is no alternative' is a difficult argument, to say the least, to sustain today. Yet all three main parties insist on it.

The real situation is revealed in the army of unemployed, the colossal wastage arising from the 'great recession', which threatens to topple into outright depression.

One million young people alongside one million women are part of what is likely to become a permanent 2.75 million minimum army of unemployed in Britain.

And this is just part of the legions of at least 200 million unemployed in the world who increasingly form a substratum of the poor, homeless and dispossessed.

Of this figure 81 million is composed of young people - who are condemned to a life of worklessness. There is almost a 50% rate of unemployed young people in Spain and 40% in Greece.

Added to this are the seven million in Britain and 1.6 billion worldwide in part-time 'precarious' jobs.

They are a 'precariat', a modern manifestation of the "reserve army of the unemployed", as written about by Karl Marx, who analysed capitalism.

This is a pool of cheap, sometimes almost slave labour - including young people working as 'interns' for nothing.

They may be drawn into work when needed and then conveniently tossed aside like an old boot when the economic cycle of capitalism deems they are 'surplus to requirements'.

Yet, argue the defenders of capitalism, this system is the best conceivable one for delivering goods and services to the peoples of Britain and the world.

It is true that capitalism, in its progressive phase, furnished the basis for the first time in history to abolish want and privation.

Now, however, it has turned into its opposite and become an absolute fetter to the further development of industry and society.

By its own admission, it is now a machine for destroying wealth and the lives of working people rather than creating it.

It is also destroying the environment. The majority of humankind will have to challenge this system and replace it with socialism in order to stop the decline of the planet.

A hallowed institution of capitalism, the International Monetary Fund admitted that $50 trillion, equal to the total production of the world in a year, was lost in 2008 alone because of the world crisis of capitalism.

In Britain, a minimum of £200 billion has been lost in GDP since the first quarter of 2008 due to the recession. This would be more than enough - two and half times - to cover the £81 billion cuts.

Moreover, economist Gavyn Davies in his blog for the Financial Times - house journal of the financial plutocrats who control the credit system, the nerve centre of capitalism - admits that growth remains far below the potential built up by the previous development of industry and will remain so for "several more years".

This means "there will be a massive further wastage of economic resources". Davies estimates that if the recession continues until 2016 - at least another five years of economic agony for working people - this will "amount to a loss of $5,900 billion, of which $2,200 billion is still to come in the next five years".

Added to this is the huge wastage on 'defence' spending and arms production, a total of $1.7 trillion a year.

Then there is the obscene $3 trillion already spent on the failed wars of Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is also the scandalous example of the 3,000 BAE workers thrown out of their jobs because of 'defence cuts'. How easy it would be to plan, for instance, to switch them with their accumulated technical expertise, into green technology and other necessary useful products?

But mention of the 'planning' of industry and society is anathema to the capitalists and their representatives.


However, the speed and depth of the present crisis of capitalism and its devastating effect on the lives of millions of workers in Britain and worldwide, poses sharply the issue not just of immediate measures that offer some relief for working people, but of more profound solutions, of 'system change'. This means outlining and fighting for a democratic socialist alternative.

The powerful and inspirational mass movements of the Greek workers have heroically battered away at the foundations of rotten Greek capitalism.

Their counterparts in Spain, Portugal, Italy and here in Britain, in this decisive movement of 30 November, seek to emulate them.

why socialists support the robin hood tax, but know it does not go far enough

We hear all the time from reformists of the capitalist system that a few more tax'es her eand there will sort things out. Especially from new labour who claim a bankers bonus's tax will save us from everything. They seem to support this idea of a robin hood tax which yes as socialists we support too but recognise the fact it does not go far enough in our view.

In a nutshell, the big idea behind the Robin Hood Tax is to generate billions of pounds – hopefully even hundreds of billions of pounds. That money will fight poverty in the UK and overseas. It will tackle climate change. And it will come from fairer taxation of the financial sector.

A tiny tax on the financial sector can generate £20 billion annually in the UK alone. That's enough to protect schools and hospitals. Enough to stop massive cuts across the public sector. Enough to build new lives around the world – and to deal with the new climate challenges our world is facing.

As a result of the financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has calculated UK government debt will be 40% higher. That 40% equates to £737 billion pounds, or £28,000 pounds for every taxpayer in the country. Having to pay back that debt means cuts in vital services on which millions of people around the country rely.

Total cost to the UK of financial crisis in terms of lost output according to the IMF was 27% of 2008 GDP.


Capitalism is a social system based upon production for profit not social need. A 'rational' organisation of production is impossible because it is also a blind system. Workers will be thrown out of jobs when there is no 'demand' for their products.

In reality there is always a need for their products - but social need is subordinate to whether or not it is profitable for the capitalists.

Then when production increases in another field after a period of unemployment, some may be integrated back into industry.

Contrast this to the way production would be organised under socialism, especially through democratic workers' control and management.

If there was a surplus of workers and capital in one field and a deficiency in another, a democratic planned organisation of industry would just involve a voluntary transfer of goods and labour from one sector of the economy to another.

Karl Marx showed that this is what happens already, within a single factory or today even with multinational and transnational companies: "...That same [capitalist] mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to socially control and regulate the process of production, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual capitalist.

"It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against a general organisation of the labour of society, than that it would turn all society into one immense factory." [Karl Marx, Capital, vol 1, chapter XIV, section 4.]

Economic and political power must be taken out of the hands of the destroyers of wealth, the handful of capitalists who control industry and society.

In Britain, this would involve the taking over of a handful of monopoly firms that control 80-85% of the economy.

Compensation would be given to the ex-owners and particularly to the small shareholders on the basis of proven need.

Imagine what would then be possible by utilising the full potential of production! The famous capitalist economist John Maynard Keynes estimated in the 1930s that by the beginning of this century, by utilising the full potential that remained unused under capitalism, the average worker would work no more than 15 hours a week and therefore gain "freedom from economic cares"!

Such a prospect only appears 'utopian' because of the character of modern capitalism with its philosophy of a dog-eat-dog society combined with a programme of 'work til you drop' without respite or enjoyment, repression of wages and ever increasing poverty and unemployment.

Searing inequality - which has deepened and extended during this crisis - has fuelled the revolt of the working class, which in turn has sparked the worldwide 'Occupy' movement.

Its ringing denunciations of the 1% of the population that controls an unprecedented hoard of wealth to the detriment of the 99% majority have found a wide echo.

But the laudable attempts to close and eliminate the 'wealth gap' are likely to be stillborn under capitalism.

We support a 'Robin Hood tax' on the transactions of big business. But history shows that the capitalists always find a thousand and one ways to circumvent any law which seeks to claw back some of the wealth and eats into their profits.

When the Labour government of Harold Wilson attempted to do something similar through a corporation tax in the 1970s, such was the opposition of big business it was completely watered down and rendered largely ineffective.

The only way to prevent this is through the nationalisation of the banks and finance houses.

Similarly, the 'dictatorship of the market', which is holding the whole of Europe to ransom, should be met with the cancellation of the debt to the bond parasites.

This in turn could only succeed if nationalisation was carried through not just in one country but on a continental and world basis.

Inequality is intrinsic to capitalism. The exploitation of the working class - the capitalists garner what Marx called 'unpaid labour' in the form of profits - is the very foundation of the system.

From this flow all the inequalities and the class antagonisms which shape this society.

The system can go ahead for a while as long as the surplus is invested in productive industry to create more factories and thereby the production of more goods and services.

But it stagnates and falls back when the restricted incomes of the working class - particularly marked in the last few decades - mean they cannot buy back fully the goods and services they produce.

This results in 'overproduction', a glut of unsold goods and redundant workers and capital. This, in turn, can produce a 'death spiral' reflected in the paralysis of production evident throughout the world today.


Combine all this clear evidence of the wasteful character of the system with the extraordinary mass movements - Greece, Italy, Spain, Britain on 30 November, etc - and it is clear that capitalism faces one of its greatest threats in its long history.

In fact, a new social system is knocking at the door of history. This is the idea of a socialist democratically planned and organised economy and society. To usher it in requires a movement and the urgent building of a mass workers' party.

Ironically, this current threat to capitalism arises from its very triumph following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the downfall of Stalinism.

The consequent dismantling of the planned, nationalised economies and their replacement by 'wild capitalism' represented a big ideological victory for capitalism.

This in turn moved the leaders of parties such as the old Labour Party, at its base a 'workers' party', and the trade unions to the right, leading to the transformation of these parties largely into pro-capitalist formations.

This meant that the capitalists no longer needed to look over their shoulders at a threat posed by the working class. There is no check on their actions as there had been previously.

Capitalism was therefore unrestrained in pursuing the policies of financialisation which were already underway in the late 1970s and 1980s.

In this sense, it became its own gravedigger, manifested in the economic madness of debt-driven capitalism; financial bubbles on top of financial bubbles, which collapsed like a house of cards in 2007-2008.

The consequences of this are evident in the idle factories, workplaces and the tragedy of the millions of 'idle hands' which presently litter the economic landscape of world capitalism.

"Hang on a moment! This idea of socialism is nothing new. It has been tried before and failed miserably in Russia, and elsewhere," argue the representatives of capitalism.

Winston Churchill, Tory prime minister in the Second World War and the 1950s, got it right, they say, when he asserted: "Capitalism has many faults but it is better than the other alternatives on offer." This threadbare argument is all that the capitalists can now fall back on.

Firstly, the Russia they refer to was a Stalinist regime not a genuinely socialist workers' democracy.

It was totalitarian in character and dominated by a bureaucratic elite, although resting ultimately on a nationalised planned economy.

Where the first attempts were made to lay the foundations of socialism, for instance in Russia between 1917 and 1923 this did not 'fail', as our critics argue.

On the contrary, the establishment of a nationalised planned economy with democratic control exercised by the working class and the poor peasant masses through 'soviets' - workers' councils - gave us a glimpse of what was possible on the basis of socialism.

Russia, a poor, culturally backward society, did not have the material base in terms of industry to immediately establish socialism alone.

However, the 'chain' of capitalism broke at its weakest link, and this inspired a worldwide workers' revolutionary wave.

Through the immediate shortening of the working day, working people will be allowed to participate in managing and controlling nationalised industry through a plan. Now, the working day is being extended under capitalism.

The Russian revolution and its aftermath indicated the direction in which society could develop, particularly if socialism was rooted in the advanced industrialised countries.

Great efforts were made to establish a collective, solidarity type of consciousness. Industry and society were under the control of the workers and poor farmers.

This allowed the setting up of communal laundries and eating places in the first period after the revolution.

However, it is unlikely that the organisation of a new social society in today's conditions will be like this.

Given the widespread use of technology today - domestic washing machines - communal laundries are probably not necessary.

On the other hand, such is the intensity of the working day - for instance in America - that a form of 'communal' eating already exists in the form of 'diners'.

These tend to be widely used by working people during the working week, with families eating at home at the weekends.

It is impossible to prescribe exactly how a plan of production, with all the details and priorities to be worked out, will be implemented in today's society.

This will be best left to the initiative and intelligence of the working class organised through their own collective power.

But the present horrors of capitalism will continue to exist, indeed, will be perpetuated, if this system is not replaced by socialism.



So we do support such a tax but stress this is not it and will not solve all our concerns as working people. only the end of this rotten capitalist system will do for us.