This time last week Fortis was to be part-nationalised by the governments of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Less than a week later, this drastic measure costing billions of euros was already ruled to be insufficient and now Fortis is to be broken up, with the Dutch part nationalised and the Belgian and Luxembourg parts sold to a French bank. Instead of the four billion euros that were to be paid last week for 49 percent of Fortis, the government will now pay some 17 billion euros for the entire kit and kaboodle. No longer will it be dependent on the vageries of the stock market but instead the rot is stopped and it’s safe under state control. A thriumph for socialism?
Hardly.
There’s a big difference between a proper nationalisation done by the workers for the workers and a nationalisation of last resort as been done here. Yes, the recieved economic wisdom of the past three decades has been that state owned companies are evil, inefficient and that everything should be left to the free market, but in reality capitalism has always been happy to let government clean up its messes. In this case, the government has made clear this is a temporary measure, with Fortis to be privatised again once it has stablised, the company will be run according to normal capitalist rules rather than for the common good and the day to day running of Fortis will remain in the hands of the same people who run it now. In other words, nothing will change and the only positive thing the government has done is rewarding the same people who almost ran Fortis in the ground with their slice of the seventeen billion euros…
What’s more, that seventeen billion had to be borrowed on the financial markets, so interests will need to be paid over it. Sure, the profits Fortis will make might cover these costs, but in the short term and the current climate this is unlikely. Which means there will be more budgetcuts next year, less to spend on social welfare, especially as we’re still comitted to fighting an expensive (and of course, immoral) war in Afghanistan which also doesn’t come cheap. This at a time when the need for social welfare will surely grow, considering the collapse of the world financial system going on around us and the effects on the real economy this
already has.
No, this isn’t socialism, this is just socialism of risks and privatisation of profits: same as it ever was.