Bankers bonus's a symptom not the cause

The recent 'Hesteria' has been revealing. The Tories, majority funded by the City, went on about 'fairness' and bankers' bonuses but failed to challenge RBS boss Stephen Hester's £1 million bung.
The huge anger about Hester's bonus was reflected in the over 80,000 signatures collected in 48 hours demanding its non-payment. In the end Hester rescued a flailing Cameron by saying he wouldn't take the cash. Undoubtedly, securing his less well-advertised £3.3 million payment figured in his calculations.


The anger out there towards bankers is certainly growing I’d say but many including the labour party feel that just challenging bankers bonus’s this will create a more responsible capitalism and we can all go back to before the crash of 2008. Wrong very wrong the bonus system is a symptom of the system of capitalism and finance capitalism in particular. Labour seem to forget they allowed all these bonus’s to go on during their watch, now they are railing against it all. Hypocrisy much ?


The reality is that Hester is not unique in being offered a multi-million bonus. Barclay's Bob 'no more remorse' Diamond is in line for £10 million! And obscene pay does not just exist in banking - average FTSE executive pay is £4.2 million.
Would-be pension thief and Unilever chief exec Paul Polman receives £3.5 million a year, including £300,000 into his own pension. Last year, the man who earns 285 times more than his workers, said: "What I want is a sustainable and equitable capitalism."
"Pious baloney!" Although this is reactionary US Republican Newt Gingrich's phrase, it does sums up the politicians' current fashion for fulminating on inequality while, in reality, carrying through the impoverishment of millions.
Why this fixation? While planning no deviation from staggeringly savage austerity, the bosses and politicians fear our rage. The tip of the enormous iceberg of this rage made itself known in 2011 in the ever-expanding Occupy movement but especially in massive general strikes.
They fear these movements will pose a threat to their profit system and hope that showing some concern will stave off the oncoming challenges. But they're wrong.
Labour leader Ed Miliband's talk of 'good' and 'bad' capitalism is baloney - capitalism is a system based on exploitation and profiteering. The TUC has revealed that workers have lost an unbelievable £1.3 trillion in wages over the last 30 years as the bosses grab an ever greater share of the wealth in profits.
We need to build a mass movement to fight for genuine socialist nationalisation of the entire banking system and the big corporations, putting the levers of the economy in our hands - not those of the super-rich.

That has to be part of a democratic plan, coordinated with workers internationally.

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.