Chris Blackhurst, City Editor for the London Evening Standard, produced a pretty fair piece of journalism 20/1/11 when he called on the City of London to end its indifference to the plight of the poor. The only real flaw in the article, entitled, Why Goldman Must Repay Its Debt to Society was its timing. Had it appeared, some 150 years ago, along with similar well meaning pleadings by well meaning Victorian philanthropists like Charles Dickens, it might be regarded as a progressive and even radical piece of journalistic agitation. Instead, coming as it does at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it can only be described as a piece of fantasy fiction.

Blackhurst rightly exposes and condemns Goldman Sachs investment bank for its miserly contribution to the social pot while continuing to pay its top casino bankers millions in bonuses for what Lord Turner accurately described as socially useless activity. Blackhurst writes, Goldman Sachs revealed it was giving staff 9.6 billion in pay and bonuses and that this year, Some of the bank’s employees will very soon be awarded many millions of pounds. This, for the parasitic industry of currency and share speculation, all of which produces not a single item of worth to the economy, on the contrary, serving only to undermine and ultimately destroy entire national economies and millions of lives in the process. Blackhurst goes on to report:

But there was more information from the bank: after seeing a slight dip, five percent, in the remuneration pot, it is cutting its Goldman Sachs Gives charity programme by per cent. That’s right: five percent down for the bank staff; 36 percent less for worthy causes.

Blackhurst then both praises and sanctioned Goldman for its charitable giving ending with these exasperated lines:

It is hard to know what’s in their heads any more. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that they simply, really, do not get it.

No Mr Blackhurst, Goldman Sachs and the other would be masters of the universe get it exactly. It is you who do not get it. Despite your obvious cynicism towards the banking industry you still seem to dream of a reasonable and responsible banking sector, one that will self regulate itself and ensure that an appropriate amount of their booty is reinvested in good causes. Can you not see Mr Blachhurst that it is you that are still pining for a reasonable and regulated capitalism but it just doesn’t exist.

If there is one central truth that we can all agree on from classical Marxist economics, it is that capital always will move to the highest point of return. Capital has absolutely no moral compass other than the maximisation of profit. It cannot be otherwise. If these owners of capital are not utterly ruthless they will be consumed by their more ruthless rivals. It a case of kill or be killed. That is what has got us to this current juncture where giant corporations and banks have, via a century long process of monopolisation, become so big they are now too big to fail. End result; we the tax payer must forever subsidise and bail them out or watch helplessly as national economies collapse into a black hole. Greece, Ireland and Iceland are just the beginning. Portugal, Spain, Italy and Britain are not far behind.

Mr Blackhurst must finally admit to himself that you cannot run a modern social programme on this basis, whereby these giant corporations toss national governments a few scraps when it suits them, and a few less scraps when times are hard. Even attempting to regulate these banks, as the Will Huttons and Ed Millibands dream of, is unlikely to work. These self proclaimed, unelected, unaccountable masters of the universe will forever find loop holes in which to protect their socially parasitic wealth. Close one tax haven and another will open up. In one sense Ireland, with its pathetic attempt to lure multinational corporations to Ireland with minimal corporation tax, deserves everything that has happened to it, though tragically it will once again be the Irish working class families that will carry the real burden.

I do not mean to be overly harsh on Chris Blackhurst. He makes many poignant points in his article, especially when one considers that his employer is himself a billionaire oligarch whose wealth was directly expropriated from the Soviet state. Blackhurst has probably pushed the argument as far as he dare. Some credit is owed to him.

Nevertheless, there is a hard economic determinism at work across the planet and no amount of hand-wringing is going to change that. In the face of this renewed tide of globalised monopoly capitalism, blighting every part of the planet, will need to come an internationally constructed system of economic and political regulation so conscious and determined in its task that every tax avoidance scam is dealt with once and for all. Perhaps it is I that has created a fantasy land, but if so, it feels a better one than that constructed by Blackhurst, Milliband, Hutton and Co, where they preach regulation but are reduced to holding out the begging bowl for a few corporate scraps. I dream of more.