Cyprus crisis: why do we need banks at all?

[Ozymandias]

I was quite surprised to read this article on the Guardian website today.Even though the writer is confused about "transitional" banking methods is this piece another small example of further proof that things are very slowly beginning to gel? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/27/cyprus-crisis-why-need-banks?commentpage=2

[twc]

Richard Seymour (Guardian) wrote:

To paraphrase Karl Marx on religion, the demand to abolish banking is a demand to abolish the state of affairs that needs banking.

   … is the demand to establish our Object.

[steve colborn]

Indeed. An end to the money system, that keeps workers in slavery, every bit as pernicious as classical slavery.Let us to this task. Steve.

[twc]

steve colborn wrote:

…  the money system … every bit as pernicious as classical slavery.

The slavemaster had responsibility for his slave. The capitalist class has none.The money system spreads its influence over the world and its people, wrecking both in the process of extracting surplus value from them — without concern for them, but only for perpetuating capital as capital.It is thus more pernicious than classical slavery for it is fiendishly difficult for people to see through it  — to see the money system as the necessary vehicle of capital expansion — to comprehend how it functions to rob and rule the vast majority of the world, whom it will necessarily crush if they can't assist it expand or if they [even unconsciously or innocently] stand in the way of capital expansion.The money system has its basis in class ownership and control of the means of social reproduction.We end it by implementing our Object.

[ALB]

Meanwhile in Tuesday's Morning Star:http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/131061

[twc]

ALB (Letter to Morning Star) wrote:

Leon Kuhn's cartoon (M Star March 23) has Marx writing: “Banks in capitalist society are institutions created for the systematic robbery of the people.”I have my doubts that Marx did actually say this.

Agreed.My assertion that the “the money system robs and rules the vast majority of the world” fully agrees with Adam’s and Bill’s critiques, despite its similar wording to the cartoon.I refer to the “money system” — the circulation of capital. The cartoonist refers to the banks — the lending of capital.Capital is created in the money system’s production and distribution phases, where concealed robbing and ruling prevail.Capital is realized in the exchange phase, where overt equality prevails. The banks are a necessary apparatus of the exchange phase.Banks merely facilitate the creation of capital. They do not create it. Their purpose is to make it possible to rob.Banks may, as now in Cyprus, rob the living daylights out of the working class as dire necessity within a money system in crisis.But, as Adam and Bill make clear, banks were not “created for the systematic robbery of the people” The money system does that for them. Banks only aid and abet it.

[steve colborn]

Well done Adam and Bill.Steve.

[Anonymous]

steve colborn wrote:

Well done Adam and Bill.Steve.

 Ditto great letters

[Author]

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