Brown is travelling a lot lately, from Liverpool for the TUC conference, to Pittsburgh for the G20 summit, and then to Brighton for Labour's conference. What comes out of these trips, however, is more of the same hot air.

The G20 summit was yet another classic in this respect. Its main objective was to ensure that in all industrial countries, governments would keep public funds flowing into the coffers of big business to maintain capitalist profits at all costs. Never mind all the talk we have been fed recently about a recovery being round the corner!

More on the sharks' pay and bonuses

So, the capitalists will carry on sponging off public funds for the foreseeable future, and we will be expected to foot the additional bill in all sorts of different ways.

In return, however - at least, this is what politicians want us to believe - from now on, the pay and bonuses of business high-flyers will be contained within "reasonable" limits by all G20 countries. Brown has even promised legislation to that effect - not before next year, though, and probably... not before the next election!

Except that this is old news. How many times have we heard Brown and Darling thundering against bankers' enormous pay packets? But did they do anything to curb them? No, not even in the banks that the government owns, where some directors still earn 7-figure salaries, while throwing thousands of low-paid workers onto the dole!

Besides, what Brown forgets to advertise is his opposition to any idea of putting a "cap" on the highest salaries. Together with Obama, Brown is said to have argued that this would be impossible to enforce.

Really? But what about tax? If all 7-digit incomes and above, got taxed at, say, 80%, this would certainly cap the outrageous sums that these spongers manage to squeeze out of our labour! And besides, wouldn't that be only fair? After all, why should, we, workers, pay for their crisis and their greed, through higher taxes and reduced public services, while the profit-sharks are being indulged with the same public funds, and already making loads of money out of them?

But compulsion is the last thing that Brown has in mind. Just before the G20 summit, his City minister, Lord Myners, was begging financial institutions to be kind enough to disclose the details of the salary packages of their best-paid high-flyers! This, when the government's tax man is already supposed to have all these details!

So what is this? Is the tax man refusing to disclose data to other departments? Or is it that, as a matter of course, companies conceal the earnings of their top brass, under the benevolent eye of tax inspectors? In fact this is what Britain's tax havens are for - the ones which, despite Brown's pledge to dismantle them, are still hoarding, tax-free, hundreds of billions of private wealth. But the last thing politicians want to do is legislate effectively against the large scale tax-avoidance of these business crooks.

Taking our future into our own hands

So who can believe Brown's promises today? Words are so cheap, especially at a time when an election campaign is hotting up! The truth is that these politicians - neither Brown, nor the Tories and Lib Dems - would ever dream of denting the profits of the capitalist class, let alone really challenging their parasitism.

Yet challenging this parasitism and taking what is needed out of the accumulated profits of the capitalist class, in order to meet the needs of the working class majority in the present crisis, is a matter of urgency.

Because, while Darling promises that the crisis will be over by the end of the year, the IMF, (only the world's most respected financial institution!), predicts that as far as jobs are concerned, it will take until 2015 at least before the level of employment returns to its pre-crisis level. And that is based on an average. Our ageing industrial infrastructure places Britain below it!

That is, of course, assuming that the financial "market" does not trigger a second wave of crisis, like it did in the 1930s. And that is a big "if"!

The alternative, and there is one, is that the working class of this country takes its future into its own hands, and, without regard for which party is in government (they all have the same pro-business policies), starts to impose on these politicians the emergency measures which are required. We have collective strength to do it. The sooner we embark on it, the better!