If compassion fatigue is the right way to describe the psychological effect of being constantly asked to contribute to an unending list of good causes, then how best to describe the impact on the collective consciousness of scandal after scandal in "the financial services sector of the economy"? Perhaps cynicism fatigue? Or maybe boiling blood fatigue?

The 2008 credit crunch was no surprise to Marxists. It was just the latest in a regular cycle of capitalism, making a mockery of they pretence that the old 18th century Tory free-market guru Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of the market would even out supply and demand economic pressures.

Thatcher took things still further. She revered Smith's disciple Milton Friedman and took her cue to unleash mass privatisation to further libertarian extreme right-wing policies.

This sparked criticism from her old mentor, former Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan, who was famously quoted as bemoaning the fact that Thatcher was "selling off the family silverware."

In his quaint old Etonian and landed gentry way, he was referring to what is now the accepted orthodoxy of privatising former state-run public services at below market value and then transferring debts such as workers' pensions to the Exchequer in order to guarantee another big pay day for the banks, accountants and lawyers profiteering from their advice.

This quickly led to a low-pay culture and almost monopoly control of the economy by spivs and other financial outfits who were guaranteed an extremely profitable future.

Capital and its stooge politicians have turned the British economy and many others in the so-called developed world into giant casinos where even the rules of free-market practice are rigged in a way that would probably have kept Smith spinning in his grave for a long time after his death.

Take the current discourse on energy companies - greedy rip-off merchants allowing frail pensioners to choose whether to heat or eat.

Less light is shone on the way the previously nationalised industries were sold off at rock-bottom prices in order to guarantee privateers big profits.

The Gas Act of 1986 and the Electricity Act 1989 in effect gave away viable businesses under state control to a motley band of profiteers who have since raked in billions which could have gone to the Exchequer to build schools and hospitals.

The loss of income is staggering and all the promises of regulation and price control have been broken while standards of service and reliability have fallen, thanks in part to the mass sackings of workers by their new bosses.

The free-market notion that competition results in low prices and high standards for customers is a myth.

The idea of shareholder democracy was another sham, just the same then as it is now with Royal Mail.

Remember the "Tell Sid" campaign to show how ordinary folk could buy shares and influence company policies?

Well if Sid hasn't frozen to death he is likely to wish nobody had told him, because as with Royal Mail, the majority of shares bought by "ordinary folk" were immediately cashed in and bought up by the spivs and hedge funds thus applying another layer of monopoly control by huge financial organisations over a monopoly of suppliers.

Power and wealth has been concentrated in fewer hands with consumers receiving a poorer service and having no control.

The news that the government advisers on the Royal Mail privatisation also bought massive amounts of shares and took a quick profit in addition to the millions the Con-Dem coalition paid them for the advice, is yet another open scandal.

Does the government really expect people to continue to tolerate this economic madness?

There are signs that this latest capitalist crisis, forcing countries such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal to declare themselves almost bankrupt, is creating the conditions whereby fascism becomes politically viable.

Racism, anti-semitism, Islamophobia and aggressive nationalism are on the increase across Europe as immigrants and Roma are scapegoated just as in the early 1930s in Germany.

The communist mission to challenge capitalism, expose its contradictions, and create a fairer, peaceful world has never been more needed.