During the recent recession that hit capitalism on its Achilles heel, people are left stranded to face the atrocious, real and barbaric attributes of ‘rationalisation’. As they faced the state biding farewell to welfare, in horror they found the same organ providing absolute freedom to banks and monetary institutions to fleece the people and even nations with impunity and disdain. These parasitic institutions, which do not produce any value, manipulated the international currency market worth $ 5.3 trillion, created artificial bubbles, housing scams and other felonies that led to the total destruction of million of lives. Many countries were forced to declare bankruptcy; several are standing on the brink of it. Their economies are doomed, people are ruined and resources have been all but consumed. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is selling them another prescription based on further rationalisation. The wealthier segment is a holy cow not be disturbed by taxations or seeking privatisation. Pile up misery on the weaker component. The only problem associated with this prescription is that the patient (economy) refuses to respond. With every dose his condition deteriorates faster than before. In the end, the prognosis turns out to be the eloquent expression of Hemmingway, concluding in the excellent efficacy of this treatment in killing the patient. In Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland, and in several other places a big chunk of the population has interred into dismal poverty. The rest are no better off. The handful elite, for whom calamity becomes an invariable opportunity, is running amok with national pelf accumulated in their pockets and stored in off-shores safe havens. The British Tories are in the limelight for being the first to offer them investment opportunities overtly in the ‘land of the angels’; other human rights’ ‘defenders’ will certainly not lag far behind. Is it not yet more proof that it is money not the man that matters for this inhuman system, which has turned the human being into the appendage of a machine? The flabbergasting fact is that these banks, despite pleading guilty to the justice department of the US, are left scot-free. No arrests, no punishments, not even official censure or reprimand has been issued. The excuse is they are too big and too vital for the economy to be punished. Hence, to steal and go unpunished is a matter of quantum and size, and not the extent and degree of the crime. The message of ‘steal and get away’ is passed from one kind of expropriator to another kind. The class remains the same. All are equal in the eyes of the law but some are more equal than the rest. Constitutional equality, the highest tenet of capitalism, is too brazenly flouting itself that there hardly remain any means to resolve this contradiction. Probably no one is keen or in any haste to do so. People too are getting accustomed to this language of power and domination. They not only listen but understand the meanings as well. Life apparently goes on as normal, but not without leaving deep scars of tragedy and trauma on the human mind. “The process of adjustment has now become deliberate and therefore total. There is no longer any room to evade the system” (Horkheimer). The delinquency of this civilisation is far too deep and overwhelming for an individual to fathom. The new Boehme, the fresh beatniks, the modern hipsters and valiant peace-creeps are required to challenge this hegemony. The melodious voice of John Lennon, the lyrical cadences of Guthrie and Dylan and the tradition of Bruce Springsteen need to be revived. It is time to unite the young s to dance to the tunes of ‘Give peace a chance’, ‘This land is your land’ and ‘The grapes of wrath’. Only in art can capitalism permit its ideals to be revived. In 1970, some of these tunes rocked its boats. Half a century later it is far more vulnerable. Its boats can be sunk by the cadences of these songs and the colour of blood in which these will be drenched. The brazenness with which these financial institutions are plundering the people and pulverising the state can be no more apparent than Greek tragedy where the state was forced to succumb to these institution in utter humiliation. The statement of Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister who was the instrumental in these derogatory dialogues, succinctly analysed the power of these real rulers of the world. He states: “In the 1967 coup d’état, the choice of weapon used was tanks. Well, this time it was the banks.” The economists James Galbraith and Daniel Munevar, add: “The reality is that the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was bludgeoned into accepting the terms that follow in this long and depressing document, under threat that the banking system of his country, entirely controlled by the European Central Bank, would otherwise be demolished, and that he would be forced to manage a disorderly exit from the euro, for which his government did not feel — and for which in fact it was not — decently prepared.” In this chaos and anxiety, the hallmark of capitalistic civilisation were banks and the Greek shipping hierarchy; the latter was maintaining its share of plunder in off-shore banks, especially of Swiss origin, hence not liable to pay taxes imposed by the Greek state. The bell of austerity tolls for the ordinary beleaguered people of Greece who are too devastated to pay this price, which is both unjust and unacceptable. The modern welfare state in its essence is a warfare state. Time and again it has proved this lethal dimension and paradox inherent within it since the war it imposes on other nations guarantees its welfare. Productivity, profitability and profound destruction are its logos. If the citizens of this state are unaware of this destruction its victims are quite familiar to it. This is how capitalism in welfare-through-warfare states thrives. Without a day’s break one happens to see thousands of refugees under the inclement, imperial and imperious gaze of the west sneaking their way to impervious areas as vast as Turkey and Lebanon to the countries of Eastern Europe. These pictures are heinous, gory and scary as well. While the masters of this world are causing this human tragedy its poodle media is leaping on the camps, the corpses and the horrors of death only to make the world forget about the horror of the life that people live and suffer under capitalism. The dead child lying on a seashore, a stone faced raped woman, a father holding in his arms his petrified son, humanity dazed through suffering are scenes both sickening and revolting. (To be continued) The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com