Margaret Thatcher was recently asked what she regarded as her legacy. She replied with a smile, “Tony Blair”.

As world capitalism lurches into a deepening economic crisis and world stock markets tumble, members of the Brown government, the continuers of Blairism and New Labour, are more eager than ever to extol the virtues of millionaire capitalism.

All talk of “socialism” has long gone out of the window. The New Labour hierarchy has embraced the market economy with the utmost relish. It has become a religious fixation. They all now worship at the shrine of Rent, Interest and Profit. Their new god is capitalism.

As part of their crusading mission, the government is to establish a new national academy to encourage budding teenage capitalists. This is part of New Labour’s commitment to the big business system. Its aim we are told is to “boost the business skills of young people.”

The academy is the brain-child of millionaire capitalist Peter Jones from the infamous television programme Dragon's Den, where desperate contestants prostrate themselves before a panel of capitalists. In these academies of capitalism, market values will be taught to students aged 16 to 19, with the expressed wish to turn them into successful capitalists.

According to Whitehall insiders, Peter Jones, who built a £160m telecommunications empire, has agreed to a multi-million pound sponsorship of the new academy. Apparently Jones suggested this idea to Gordon Brown, who fell over himself in praising the new initiative. As we know, ministers are keen to lick the shoes of millionaires. The launch of this capitalist initiative is going to attract such heavy-weights as the chancellor Alistair Darling, and John Hutton, business secretary, as well as of course, the prime minister.

John Hutton has set the tone for the initiative with a defence of “huge salaries” in corporate Britain. Of course, this is nothing new for New Labour ministers. It was enthusiastically promoted during the Blair years. That is why the gap between rich and poor has reached record levels. While eleven million people languish in poverty under a “Labour” government, the rich have never had it so good. According to the latest Sunday Times Rich List:

"Wealthy people in Britain have never had it so good... The combined wealth of the top 1,000 has soared by £59 billion in one year to just under £360 billion. This near 20% rise over 2006 is one of the highest annual increases in wealth we have recorded since our first list was published in 1989.

"The past decade of Labour government under Tony Blair has proven a golden age for the rich, rarely seen in modern British history. When the Blair administration came to power in 1997, the wealth of Britain's richest 1,000 stood at £98.99 billion. The £261 billion rise in the wealth of today's top 1,000 represents a 263% jump over the past 10 years."

In a speech to Progress, the Labour think-tank, the ex-socialist Hutton stated: “Rather than questioning whether huge salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously successful in this country.” What a grotesque spectacle of a so-called LABOUR minister praising the super-rich and their dog-eat-dog culture! It reflects the utter political and moral degeneration of these representatives of Labour, who have become in outlook little different from their Tory counterparts.

Hutton appeared on television unashamedly welcoming the creation of more millionaires as being “good for Britain”. The more millionaires the better for all of us! Maybe Hutton supports the “trickle-down” theory where the wealth at the top gradually trickles down to us all. Such economic bunkum has been refuted on numerous occasions. This idea represents a form of social Darwinism, where society is supposed to benefit from the ruthless pursuit of self-interest. This represents the morality of modern capitalism where success is measured by the accumulation of wealth at one end of the social scale, and failure by the accumulation of hardship and misery at the other.

According to the UNDP report: “A baby boy from a family in the top 5 per cent of US income distribution will enjoy a lifespan 25 per cent longer than a baby boy from the bottom 5 per cent.”

But for John Hutton, our business secretary, we must get away from our prejudice against social class and money-making. Given this pro-super rich message, instead of a shirt and tie, it would have been more appropriate for him to have worn a T-shirt “I love capitalism”, “Get Rich Quick” or “Rich bastards Rule”.

Hutton defended aspiration and ambition as “natural human emotions” to justify his pro-big business stance. However, millions of young people have natural ambitions and “emotions” to develop their talents, but are prevented by capitalism.

Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog society. It is a class-based society, where a tiny handful of multi-millionaires own and run society in their own interests. This capitalist class lives at the expense of the labour of ordinary working people. They squeeze surplus value from the unpaid labour of the working class in the form of rent, interest and profit. That is the way in which they can become rich – at our expense.

As the Financial Times, the organ of finance capital explained: “If profits are gaining their share of GDP, some other sector must be losing. And it is labour that has suffered.” The capitalists are able to do this by their ownership of (and monopoly over) the means of production, distribution and exchange. They own the industries, banks and finance houses that dominate our lives. Capitalism, as with all class systems of society, can only develop on the basis of the exploitation of the mass of the population. The morality of present-day society, through the education system, the mass media, the churches, etc., serves to justify this dog-eat-dog existence. Greed is an essential component of capitalist enterprise, which the government is endeavoring to promote.

Rather than satisfying the aspirations of young people, capitalism acts as a colossal barrier to the latent talents of youth and others. The capitalist market allocates resources not on the basis of human need, but on the basis of profit. As a result of this, the system generates inequalities and scarcities in areas of social need. The motto is: if it isn’t profitable, then forget it! If we can make money out of it, privatize it!

The schools minister, Jim Knight, said the investment in “enterprise” will "help young people to be creative and innovative, to take and manage risks and to do so with determination and drive".

The problem is only a tiny handful can become capitalists and live off the proceeds of unpaid labour. The majority of us have to work for a living. We have no choice.

The New Labour hierarchy has bought into this rotten market place ideology. It grovels before the representatives of capitalism. It fawns on the super-rich. It wants to be like them, to emulate them. This, at the very time, when privatization and capitalism have become deeply unpopular.

“Competition [namely capitalism] is changing business in ways that are straining public confidence … High profits and the extremes of wealth they usually imply can be extremely unpopular”, states the Financial Times. “The bogeyman that is the Ugly Capitalist, with his cigar, top hat and astrakhan collar, is reviving in popular perceptions, having slumbered peacefully since the fat cat pay row of the mid-1990s.”

“Hostility to business and profit is endemic in the English psyche,” says Ruth Lea of the Centre for Policy Studies.

At the same time as setting up Business Academies, the government has promised that it will invest an extra £30m into the expansion of its enterprise education programme, already running in secondary schools, into primary schools and further education colleges. Now they want to indoctrinate children as young as five to believe in so-called enterprise!

And why stop there? Another central theme of this latest government attempt to foster capitalism will be to counter the relatively low proportion of women-run firms. Initiatives to address this will include more funding for start-ups by women and an advertising campaign aimed at encouraging female capitalists! Part of this is the government’s championing of the idea of “women’s business centres”, akin to those in the United States, where Britain could achieve the same level of female entrepreneurship as exists in America.

Ironically, at the very time when the Brown government sets out the champion the cause of capitalism, the system is heading for its deepest slump since the 1970s. This year, bankruptcies and home repossessions will reach record levels, living standards will be pushed down, unemployment will rise and dissatisfaction with capitalism will reach new heights.

Even before the current crisis, the Financial Times noted that “it is easy to assume that the liberalizing processes of the past 20 years are irreversible. But such reforms have little bedrock support… the globalised economy that has helped companies increase their profits is a fragile structure.” This structure is now beginning to come apart at the seams.