[lbo-talk] European cities...

[James Heartfield]

'Most Americans are in the pockets of banks and corporations - one paycheck away from homelessness. So instead of risking their jobs and their way of life by barking at banks and corporations, they bark at safe targets - the government and the immigrants. It is relatively safe. And if some of them get really angry, they go postal.'

Maybe I read it wrong, but anti-banker sentiment is quite strong, no?

It is in the UK, and listening to Brian Lenihan in Ireland, and to looking at the French protestors, there, too.

I see that there might be pitfalls in restricting the anger to banks not 'the capitalist system as a whole' - but I don't see how raging at the bank bailouts is like attacking immigrants, or indeed how railing at the government is like railing at immigrants.

The government is the representative of the capitalist class as a whole, Engels said. It ought to be despised - it ought to be overthrown.

The banks are not the totality of capitalism, but they are a part of capitalism, not equal to benighted and persecuted immigrants workers at all.

Isn't the conceputal slippage that makes banks equivalent to government and it in turn equivalent to immigrants a peculiar aspect of the discourse here?

Shouldn't we say Abolish the government, close the banks, free movement for all migrants.