The Pandora Papers

I think when it comes to undeveloped and developing countries with weak governance and low tax revenues to pay for vital social services.

The pillaging and plunder of their national treasuries does affect working people more than in the wealthy nations where is is as you say, more a case of the rich stealing from the rich by avoiding taxes and imposing the taxation burden more heavily upon other capitalists unable to avoid taxes by dodging them.

As you say, all wealth under capitalist mode of production is derived from the extraction of surplus value at the point of production and it is then shared among the various sections of the capitalist class via profit, rent and interest being the big ones but also taxation and many other parasitic yet necessary sectors of the capitalist system such as lawyers and advertising.

The tax havens themselves survive due to the fees and auxiliary financial spin-offs, passing business-friendly legislation to encourage corporate location. Can we say it is the surplus value of the British Virgin Islander that brings a return to the tax dodger and also fills the coffers of the BVI treasury?

Some economies such as in Africa do very little manufacturing but are mostly extractive industries of ores and raw materials.

And there are others described as rentier economies using intellectual ownership laws to impose monopolistic practices – hi-tech IT media businesses are accused of this.

The Marxist case is that we are exploited at the point of production and that is where the class struggle is centred. But I don’t think we deny that we can be robbed and cheated and swindled by those who have political clout to do so. History showed working people demanded the end of unhealthy adulterated food, unsafe working practices, pollutants in the environment. It may well on the long term benefit the employers to have fit and well beasts of burden but foremost it is important for ourselves to have a vigourous strong body so that we can fight back against the bosses.

Capitalism for its own good passed various reforms. But for many workers in various lands, that political will has been absent either because of domestic corruption of the indigenous ruling class or the complicity of international banking regulation in the mobility of capital in its crudest form – money laundering and false accountancy.

The current fuss over tax cheats is simply the latest (remember the Panama Papers) and little effective has ever been done about it. Even when banks commit criminal acts such as acting for the cartels, they pay a fine but no jail-time.

Do we ignore the way the rich avoid their responsibilities to maintain its workers? Do we neglect the struggle to improve our physical conditions?

We draw attention to the hypocrisy and double-standards of our supposed social betters, condemning those who claim a little bit more by massaging the truth when they apply for benefits (alms) and themselves who pay lawyers to bend the law and transform loop-holes into gaping chasms for them to make use of.

For the poor it is often an emotive issue where they suffer pain and sacrifice and see the rich escape the consequences of its greed and usury.

Part of the case for socialism will always be the heart and we should make sure we make use of it.