The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Wall Street:
Traders and Billionaires

May 14, 2018

In 2017, the traders on the New York Stock Exchange got 31.4 billion dollars in bonuses, almost as much as the record in 2006, right before the banking crisis hit. There are 177,000 traders, so they got $185,000 in bonuses on average per person. But this includes those little workers who barely got a free lunch, along with the stars of Goldman Sachs, who got bonuses of more than 20 million.

These traders are the little hands of speculation, who help the big bourgeoisie to pocket hundreds of billions off the backs of the workers of the whole world. For the biggest of the big, 31.4 billion in bonuses is not a big thing, just a way to say: good work, boys, keep an eye on the money!