The case of the ‘Rogue’ French Bank trader, Jerome Kerviel, underscores many observations about capitalism made by socialists.

Most importantly, it shows how “social” capitalism has become. The more capitalism grows, the more connected we are to the actions of everyone else. If the accusations are true, one minor 31 year old French bank trader can cause the potential impoverishment of many. We are all tied together, and capitalist rugged individualism is an illusion. the scary fact is that while capitalism has bound us to each other, it is anti-social in it’s structure.

This case also shows how capitalism’s operates as a big crap game. The trader purportedly lost 4.9 Billion Euros in unauthorized gambles on future stock and bond prices. Evidently he lost badly. But again, as stated above., capitalism is social even if it is structured anti-socially. So while this ‘rogue’ trader does his job by placing society’s wealth on the gambling table. Since it’s anti-social certain folks - workers - loose every time, win or lose. As the hobo folksinger Utah Phillips said in his lament on the gentrification of Denver’s skid road:

My bookie joint closed when your cops pulled a raid,
But you built a new hall for the stock market trade.

Finally, we’ll observe the role of “justice” in capitalism. Scapegoat or no, the young French trader who lost Billions in wealth will likely face 3 to 5 years in prison. This sentence is similar to those in the US. But compare it to the black man in California who received a life sentence for stealing a slice of pizza. Or the case of the Native American elder who served 18 months of a 5 year prison term for selling 300 salmon. He was sentenced the same month as American ‘junk bond’ trader Michael Milliken who served 22 months on a 10 year term for 1 Billion Dollars in fraud.

Utah Phillips again sums up the issue:

Millions of human beings around the world are forcibly detained, their liberties removed by governmental authorities. Anyone who takes seriously the immediate potential for replacing capitalism with a world of real abundance and freedom knows already that the great majority of crimes are either crimes against property or involve the illegal trafficking of property - or are the likely direct result of living the -restricted and stressful life of a wage-slave.

While there are those who justify the existence of laws on moral and ideological grounds, the defenders of the status quo must always argue their case referring to a swashbuckler’s haven of spurious doctrines, some of them philosophical (”free will”), theological (”good and evil”), psychological (”mental illness”) or political (”justice”). And yet the wasting away of countless millions of human lives remains a potent critique of a society of private property, as much as the maltreatment and exploitation of animals or children in our society. The sheer hypocrisy and failure of the law is inevitably the feature subject of this issue.

So Scott Peterson will be executed for the murder of his wife and unborn child.

Another family (Scott’s) will be victims of an another untimely death- this time done in your and my name. Just because he is a murderer doesn’t mean he is not a son, brother, friend and human. Another mother will have to do the unthinkable and bury her own child.

Woohoo, the world’s a better place now isn’t it? Surely our streets will be safer because Scott Peterson will no longer be around. And our lives more full and rich.

Few institutions illustrate the oppression of people in capitalism better than prisons. Millions of people, almost completely members of the working class, in the United States and around the world, are presently wasting away for violations of the laws of private property or for crimes that stem from residing in a society based on want for some and privilege for others.

There is no question that the vast majority of crimes today for which individuals are incarcerated are crimes of property. The Crime Index for 2001 makes it clear that somewhere in the region of 84 to 90 percent of crimes are entirely property-related. Surveying the statistics from several states, we find that 173,000 out of 192,000 crimes were property-related in Alabama (90 percent). In California, 1.13 million people were arrested for property crimes out of a total of 1.34 million arrests (84 percent). In Florida, there were 782,000 property crimes out of 913,000 crimes (85 percent). In Kentucky, there were 109,000 property crimes out of 119,000 crimes (91 percent). All states fell roughly in this range, with 84 percent being the lowest. Violent crimes represented the next largest group, standing at about 10-18 percent of all crimes. Murders fell into the smallest group, representing roughly 0.1 to 0.2 percent of all crimes.

(The Western Socialist, No.1 - 1967) The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 1965, editorially chided President Johnson for “permitting his enthusiasm to run away with his judgment (in his pledge) not only to reduce crime but to banish It.” We must have a “new approach to crime,” wrote the editor. And he quite properly pointed out that: “Crime is not committed in a vacuum. It is only a product of the environment which this generation and its predecessors have created.. .The crime commissions are likely, therefore, to find themselves wrestling (our emphasis) with the basic social problems of the age.”

One would assume, then, that “the new approach to crime” would wrestle with “the basic social problems of the age.” Modern society Is a class society where the ownership of the wealth produced by the vast portion of the population (the working class) belongs to (is the property of) the relatively few owners of the means of wealth production (the capitalist class). We live in a property society whether it be privately or state owned. The sanctity of property rights is the holy of holies. Basically, crime consists in violations of these property relationships in their many and various aspects. (An exception can be made for the relatively few pathological “crimes.”)