We hear a lot lately about corporations (e.g. banks) that are 'too big to fail', in other words, companies that have become so large that they are 'structurally important', they have become a part of the fabric of society to the extent that their failure might be, at least in the eyes of the powerful, catastrophic.

Let's pause to see what this really means: firstly it implies there are companies that are too small to matter, i.e. socially, ones that can be left 'out in the cold', secondly, it means that the structural importance of these large conglomerates must mean that they have, in effect, become an integral part of the (capitalist) State. This is presumably why, in situations of crisis, the State cannot allow them to fail.

This of course goes against, but also in some senses strangely agrees with, some rightist ideologies, which present the State as 'too big' and as (retrospectively now) the main cause of the problems (i.e. the big deficit). Obviously, in this ideology, what they really mean is only that welfare (or the welfare state) is 'too big' and not those 'too big' corporations. Welfare is clearly socially 'big', but obviously not in quite the same way as is meant. Welfare, for these right wing zealots, must even be made to fail, must be reduced, or even destroyed. For the rightist, welfare benefits and its 'scroungers' along with 'lazy workers' are the real cause of the crisis, a position it holds to noticeably despite the recent history of bank bail outs, in other words welfare for the banks, the credit crunch and the financial squeeze, which were very plainly not caused by those who were on the dole, Greek spinsters, pensioners, the ill and disabled, or ordinary workers.

The crisis argument has recently boiled down, rather crassly in much of the press, to those who blame the workers versus those who blame the bankers. It is a guilty coterie of those who have gained wealth in such manners as have helped cause the crisis that wish to shift the blame onto these groups, for reasons that need no explanation. These wealthy do not want their banks to suffer greater regulation and restriction, they would prefer it if it was the working class who were made to suffer instead, as is traditional. Exactly why this punishment (the proposed austerity measures) is being dished out to these groups seems, naturally, to be a grave social injustice.

But does any of this actually help to solve or at least ameliorate the crisis? It is not likely. The punishment is just that, simply a punitive measure, a kind of economic sleight of hand that shifts the blame for the crisis. It has no deep logic to it other than this: in a bad situation it makes things worse, it is the method of flogging the dead horse.

Yet the reverse policy, the idea of spending, leads also to nowhere but a higher deficit, and in this spiral this also fails to achieve anything positive in this context but greater debt. The cut/spend dilemma is an ideological false dialectic set up between the public versus the private. Spend on what? Cut what? The answers given to these questions are repeatedly the wrong ones, because they exclude the only real alternative. An economic policy that properly targeted social spending on infrastructural projects useful to a nation might help, but it would require strong State intervention of a kind associated with real socialism, which is, for the current politicians almost everywhere in the crisis hit capitalist nations, beyond comprehension, its neo-liberal politics make it 'unthinkable'. Yet, all the same, 'command economy' moves are allowed, but on the quiet, - the incessant complaint is that China 'artificially' controls the value of its currency, the recent US bill that was passed targets countries (the main target is assumed as being China) that hold down the value of their currencies; yet now so do many 'free market' economies intervene in their currency. The idea of 'artificial' in this sense always harks back to the idea of a truly free market that is somehow 'genuine' and unfettered (which has never existed), the very one that led us to this crisis.

Today there is an almighty failure of political will, even of expediency, e.g. in Ireland this has become perhaps the most pronounced at the moment. At the top, in its politics, the government is reduced (not from a very high position, it must be said) to just following the events of the market, a powerless power whose austerity measures have already failed to ease the crisis and have probably only made things worse. The typical response of the ratings agencies to this situation is to punish. It is not to try to help, they are obviously not there for any kind of social benevolence, there are no rewards for good behaviour, just the relative absence of punishments. As it is for an individual in debt to a bank, so it is for an entire nation. If you need a loan you are a risk, but banks need to lend, so they will only lend to those who apparently don't need to borrow and so, again apparently, represent little risk. But real borrowers who don't need to borrow represent a real risk, because they probably also don't feel much need to repay. So who does a bank lend to? It lends to the illusion of low risk, to the successful and traditional. The banking system is a bigoted snob on the one hand, on the other it simply doesn't care as long as times are good and money is to be made. Illusion is an absolute necessity for this system, and this goes for the ranking of entire nations too, who may suffer from being given insulting acronyms such as PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) if they don't live up to the correct image. How any small business with a genuine product rises up to compete with the big boys must be a miracle given this, and of course at the moment they are folding on a large scale, the fear is that probably also 'insignificant' sovereign nations will soon be doing exactly the same.

The response so far of the workers unions around the world seems a little bit disappointing. They (the unions) are so familiar with compromise that, by default, they compromise in every situation. But with what? With the crisis policies? What are these? To the worker they represent only the two false dialectically opposed ways of losing your rights and standards of living, such as they are. The promise of the union leaders is to oppose austerity and champion spending (Keynesian) by a different government, and that this will help defend the jobs that keep the unions with something to represent. All very well if it is true that an alternative government could represent these aspirations in a sensible way. But this is very lacking. Thus the unions seem only to be complaining ineffectually to politicians who are already seen to be ineffectual. The working class are therefore in a quandary, their complaints are a soliloquy, a speech only heard by themselves. But they alone can decide their destiny because they actually have the power, since they do the work, the material labour of productive activity, on which everything ultimately rests.