 Yn y dweud yw'r cyfrifannau, cyfrifannau yn ddigegliaeth cyfrifannau i ddweud a'r cyfrifannau o'r cyfrifannau cyfrifannau Ddweud y Ddweud yw'r cyfrifannau yn ddegwmau reoli ar y dweud yw ddweud o'r ffrifannauwc roedd ymgyrch Gwylraedd, Brasil, Sfain, Brytyn, ac y US Ar gyfer ydych chi'n gweld lle o'r cyfrifannau amserai a'r fforddau sydd, oedd y maen nhw ym bod yn ymddangos arall. Rwy'n cyfoedd dda chi'n gyfnod dddugwyn yn unrhyw ei gyfnod hwnnw gwaith yn ymlaenio ar gyfer eich cyflangod, yw Turkey, Y Hwng outer, ond y philipau, ac mae gennychol yn rhywun ar yr ysgol. Mae'r rai, mae'n fathorau ymlaen, oeddiad am y awdurdod ac mae'r awdurdod yn cyfrifiad o'r rhaid i'r Rhio. Yn ymddiffen nhw, mae'n dweud y Prifysgol, a'r Prifysgol yn gyflwyno'r prifysgol, a'r prifysgol iawn i'r U.S. Prifysgol iawn i'r prifysgol, i'r prifysgol iawn, yn ymgyrchau nesifatr yn Brytun, yn ymtydgol, oherwydd yn y Corbyn. Yn dweud ar ddweud o gweithio'r prifysgol a'r idea o gweld ar y sgall nawrau'r prifysgol, mae'n dweud hynny o'r digwydd o'r drefnol, I that the liberal market upon which capitalism rests. For the establishment, this is obviously a disaster. They wail about it all the time in the press. This quote on the screen, which I'll come to in a moment, is from a very, very long, far too long and extremely dry manifesto by The Economist magazine for, as it says at the bottom there, reinventing liberalism for the 21st century. They're endlessly, the financial times, the economist endlessly is churning out complaints ond y cychwyn i'r hynny'n dysgu rhywunol. Rydych chi'n gallu y bydd yw dweud dweud fe o dweud yno, dyda y bydd yna y Prifysgwr, a oedd ei wneud yn cael eu rhagliannol, mae y bydd yna dweud yn cael eu gwneud, arweud fe o ddechrau, cael eu gwneud ar gyfer yr ysgolwyddiad. A'r marxist oedd ymwyro i'r hynny o yrwyro. Roedd yng Nghymru wediol sydd eisegoguau yng Nghymru, Ond we're also opposed to those reactionary right wingers like Donald Trump, for example, who try and profit off this crisis of liberalism. Our task then is to understand what liberalism is, where it's come from, and through that understand why it is in crisis today. When we do understand this, we'll be able to bury it once and for all from a revolutionary socialist perspective instead of from the perspective of right-wing demagogie. A dim, dyna, dyna, gyda Lywbeth? Lywbeth ers eich bod ni wedi'u gofod yna yw cactus yma yn olwyg, ac mae'r Źnod drwy'r cymdeithas nhw, ond yw'r ystafell yn ddechrau. Mae yna yn ystafell yn ddechrau sy'n ei wneud i wych. Felly, mae'n grweithio. Felly, mae'n ffeydd o'i gwybod ei linguadur yng Nghymru, ond mae'n gweithio'n meddwl. Mae'n gweithio'n meddwl i'r burgu. Mae gyfnodiad o'r hollreddau cerddio. Ym wych yn oed, yn y rhaid o'r hollreddau yn mynd i. Roedd o'r hollreddau yn mynd i. Mae'r hollreddau gofynio'r hollreddau yn cael beth. Mae'r hollreddau flas yma. Mae'r hollreddau o'r ymwyblliannau o'r hollreddau. Mae'r hollreddau o'r herffer o'r hollreddau. Mae'r cyfle iawn i'r bod ni'n fflaen iawn. Yr hyn y cyffredig cyfwyr ymdau yw'r cyffredig cyflosio. Ychydigol yw'r cyffredig wedi'u'r hyn yn gwneud y gallwn iawn i'r blynyddol yn gweithio'r magasin i'r publio borgio. Felly mae'r cyffredigau ar gyfer y Gweithredu'r Gweithredu. Mae'r gwneud â'i gyfraithiaidig mewn gwneud. Mae'r cyffredig yn gweithio'r gweithredu, mae'r cyffredig cyflosio. ro Balletist Thank God it's empty, completely hollow. its mean also has changed the idea of liberalism its meaning has changed over time and from place to place obviously you had early without liberals like Jon Stuart Mill and people like Hayek obviously a far later also claimed the title of liberalism and the title liberal the name liberalism also would include for example someone like Kaines Jon Maynard Kaines Who had a radically different approach to Hayek hefyd yn eich bod yn cael masзаidd yma. Llywodraeth yma, ond os yn ddweud yn cerddol, is that Liberalism is a centrepiece, the championing of the individual, free markets, universal suffrage, the rule of law, constitutional governments, limited government, this kind of thing. Broadly speaking, what Liberalism is all about. Now it arose as I'm sure we realise and sure we know ydych chi'n ysgolio bod Yborjwyr Gweithfawr, sy'n cael eu gweldwn i'r ideoli, sy'n mae gyfoedd Yborjwyr Gweithfawr. Rydych chi'n cyflwyddo'r cyflwyddo', aion gallwn y hiwn, bob Yborjwyr Gweithfawr, yi cyflwyddo'r gyflwyddo'r cyflwyddog sy'n gyflwyddyddog, a venue ydw i'n cyfrifio syniadau. Yn rhai bod hynny, yn dyfodol ym Chwotysgu, roi'r Casg Gweithfawr. Fydden nhw'n amser iddoOL, ein echawwch, nid y bydd ychydig, nid y bydd y bydd, ond roedd yn sicr y casodd yw'r ystod fod y多fod o'r ffordd o'r fawróndau'r cyfnod ffordd yn ysgyfigurad pan cyfnod o'r ffordd. Felly, ystyried y dyfodol yma eich prydau pan ffawr hir o'n tym eich plwy o'r ffordd. fy weithgoedd. It was coming out of a situation- a world That would have time to develop this in enormous detail. There was a discussion yesterday on the birth of capitalism If there weren't comrades there you should have watched the video of because that will deal with this point in much more detail. It is coming out of a feudal world where we had surfs tied to the land it was a system, a system social a bwysig hwn y lleolol o'r trwydd tyfodol ffriddol yn d brosat ddybiol hwnna. Y cerddyn nhw'na ddig fel rydyn ni, y treffwyr ar y cerddwyr ystod, yn ystyried o bobl hanfod a'r gilydd hwnnw lleolol jyfrindwyr, y sgrifennu, ac y wneud gyda'r sgrifennu social adalah yn y dyfodol, mae'n ddigwydd o'r treffwyr yn ei ddylo'r gilyddol erogi'r gilydd. Mae'n bwysig hwnnw, maen nhw'n ddigwydd o'r ddy exposure. a'r ydych chi'n ymwneud yn ymddangos o'r ddiogelwyd. Byddwn y borgioed, y clywedau ychydig, ac ydych chi'n amser o'r ddiddorol i'ch gael y llwyth arall. Fyddech chi'n mynd yma, mae yw'r ddiddorol yn ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos, yn ysgrifennu. Mae'r ddiddorol o'r ddiddorol o'r ddiddorol, ac o'r ddiddorol o'r Gwytig, ac os yw'r fath o'r ymddiad rhagnyddiadau ond rhai wneud mewn amser. Dyna gennymu yma o'r ffordd�au amser. Rydym yn gallu tarifiau rhan. Fe dau i'r pryd yw'r cyffredinol i renameu yma o'r cyfrwyr i'r ei ddunion gan ynddioru ar y rhan ac y dyma o'r rhagnyddiau wedi'i chynnwys ar y cyfrwyr yma. Ydw i'r bwysig o'r cyfrwyr i'r ddynion o'r cyfrwyr, ..a wneud eich bod yn gychwyn i'ch gyd. Byddwch i'r ffordd y Llywodraeth yn gwneud... ..y hynny'n gwneud y Fforddol. Mae'r cyfnoddau sydd, mae'r cyfnoddau sydd, yn gweithio. Mae'n gweithio eich bod nhw'n gweithio... ..y'r fforddol yn gwybod ni'n gweld yn ymdill. Mae'r gweithiau i gychwyn i gael eu gweithio. Mae'r gweithiau yn gweithio... ..y'r fforddol yn ysgrifennu cyffredinol... ..y'r fforddol yn gweithio... dyma hi fel ysgol o'r iawn, yn gyda'r Gaerwch, y byddor Rydym GŁig. Yn meddwl wnewch, byddwch fel'r GŁig, y byddwch, y byddwch fel yma'r gilyniad yn ôl sylwg Cysylltu, byddwch fel y mynd i'r Llywodraeth Ffaddigol. Mae'n r�ieau i dderin, mae'n gwybod, mae'r Greekoes Fygeau, mae cinniadau, mae ei bod o'r Gwysig yn hunain. Oed i'r Gymru Yma'r Gwysig, y Reiogol. That was the bourgeois class which led to those revolutions fundamentalists changed society in this way And they did so under the banner of liberalism which was this philosophical framework that incorporated all the different needs free markets, constitutional and limited government and all the rest of it It's an important point to understand that the Bourgeois class could not have carried that revolution through by itself wrth gwrs, gwrs eisiau e wedi ei ffordd gweithio rai ffyrdd i'r cyflwyno'r cyflwyno, fe bynnaglineu ondi'n gweithio'r cyflwyno ar gyfer yma. Mae gweithio'r cyflwyno ar gyfer y gwir, rydyn ni yna ar gyflwyno grwphewn, ac yn gwir yn meddiwedd yn llwyddiadau lleolr. A dwi'n bwysig iddo wedi'u gweithio'r cyflwyno gyflwyno, ac rydyn ni wedi gwir yn gweithio'r cyflwyno ar gyfer y gwir yn llwyddiadau ceilig yno yn y gweithio'r cyflwyno. Ydw i ddweud.سawer y borgioedd ei wneud y gweld. Mae ynghylch yn gweld i'r reverniadau dyma yn ac yn ei wneud y mhau rydw i. Ynbetweenau eich ll fragr ar gyfer y rhain eich rhan. Fe ddweud o'r ffioed minsydd yn yr un yn gwneud, mae eich rhan yn ei ddweud yr ystod. Перf patients i swyddiadau y byd yn rhan yn gweithio'r borgioedd, i'r borgioedd yn digwyddaf, Cw blessed that those who claim to represent all the rest of society was the general antagonism. Is it this circumstance that made it possible for the representatives of the bourgeoisie to put themselves forward as representing, not one special class, the whole of suffering humanity? In other words they built an alliance. The bourgeois led it but they didn't achieve that revolution entirely by themselves It was an alliance of the bourgeois with the rest of society in general with the masses Ac efallai y byddwch eu piliadau a'r byddwch ar hyn o'r hyn yn rhan. Ond wrth yma, mae Borgioar eich hyffordd yn cynnig o'r antithesus. Yn y cyfrifoedd, rydych chi'n credu y cael cael ei ddisgu sydd wedi'i gweld. Ysgolwch, ond, ar y pob y borgioar, yw'r sgrugel yng ngyfbrifysgwyd fe brydd i'r cyfrifysgwyd yn y cwrsiau a'r ymgylchedd ar y cyfrifysgwyd,odaeth, yn y maeddem braeddon yn bwysig i'w clyw arweithiwr bwysig, sy'n dod i'r ac yn canolod, cael ei fod yn gwneud a'r ty faithol. Mae heddiw hwnna i'r unig o ysgrifennu – mae'n falch â ddiweddoli ar â'r bwysig i'w bwysig. Yn yw'r hyn, yma'n mynd i fynd i'r bwysig mewn drir. Be fydd, a'r bwysig i'r bwysig rydw i hyn ar gyhoedd i'r rhenaf yn화ed, y cyfnodau arrygion y Llywodraeth, ac achos mae'r litau yn ffragadwyr bod'r litau â ystyried mor edrych yn symun gweld o arlu'r Llywodraeth a'i gynyddoeddân o'r Llywodraeth o'r Llywodraeth ym Mhwy oedd wrth gwrs mae'r leg o'r Llywodraeth a'u hynny'r llwyngau erbyn arall. Ym hynnyddoedd i ni'n meddwl i'r Llywodraeth ac yn hynny'n meddwl i ni môl i'r Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth. Alexis Hal surprisingly this different classes is very much Me pads while the abord in control of this this revolutionary movement. AndرضCrowd precisely for this reason the question arises then if you if you're part of the board wearing your in this situation where you need a revolution to fund mentally changed house society works question arises how do you get the masses on side? With what philosophy with what ideas do you get the people you are actually exploiting the working class and masses to side with you against these other group â'r llai ymuno mewn Ier, sy'n ei fod yn bryd ym mast, sy'n gweithio 2021 y nifer o'r unrhyw ar y llai ddau ar y dyni'r llai i'r celf. A rydyn ni'n cael ei ddweud rydych chi'n â cynnwys oedd cael eu cyfnoddau i'r oed o'r byd yw ymwygen yw ymwneud o'r ardalio'r cyfeirio. Fe ddau'r cyfeirio ymwneud yma ychydig. Fweithwch ar y cyfal hynny ymwynghweith. Rwy'n credu hynny yna. Lle guarantee, equality, fraternity – the slogan of the French revolution, who can disagree with that. Everybody can agree with that. Those things are empty phrases. They're hollow. They can be filled in fact with whatever content you like. They're so abstract as in fact to be almost meaningless, certainly when we think of them today. Filling these kind of slogans within the bourgeois revolution with their own content is, of course, exactly what happened. ac we had a discussion this morning on the English Revolution, Oliver Cromwell on the English Revolution. And that's what you saw with the levelers and with the diggers in particular. They took those words literally, liberty, equality, paternity, of course that was the French Revolution, not the English. That idea of equality between people for the bourgeois, they thought of that as meaning equality for us with the political rights for us, not just for the feudal aristocracy basically. The people with money also want the rights. But in order to get the masses on side with the bourgeois, they didn't say rights for the people with money, to get the masses on side, they said rights for everyone. Every man should have a right, every individual should have the freedom of the individual, liberty, equality, fraternity, to get everybody on side with that. But obviously the risk then, and this is exactly what happened, the risk is that the masses fill that with their own content. They say you talk about equality, let's have real equality, let's not just have equality on paper, let's have actual economic equality, not just political equality for example. And that's why, I mean the quote from wherever it was, the bottom of this angle's quote here. That's why you see, as he says, in every great bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts of that class which was the forerunner more or less developed of the modern proletariat. So although in the bourgeois revolutions there was this unity between different layers of society, there was also that class tension that existed within that bourgeois, right from the very beginning, right from the English revolution and of course in the French revolution and later on. Now the reason for giving this explanation is because, as I said before, liberalism is very difficult to define. In fact it can only be understood, you can't really give some abstract definition of it, it can only be understood in its philosophy, in its historical context. You can only understand as it developed and why it developed in this particular way. The reason why liberalism is difficult to define is, well I'll come on to this, but it's deliberate, it's on purpose, it's deliberately hard to define because it's designed to be abstract, it's designed to unify different layers of society who have fundamentally different interests. We can say then that liberalism is the philosophy of the bourgeoisie and it was primarily used, well at first, primarily used as a weapon against the old feudal establishment. Now I've got an example of this, which is here, another bit by Engels. It's an introduction to a pamphlet by Marx on the question of free trade. Now a big part, obviously, of the struggle of the nascent bourgeois class was to put money above land if you like, put the interest of the bourgeois above the interest of the feudal aristocracy. A big part of that in England came a little bit much later in fact than the English Revolution. There was a struggle over the question of the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws were basically laws which, they were basically protectionist laws, they pushed up the price of corn in Britain, they promised a certain price for producers in Britain, which pushed up the price, obviously, of labour in Britain, meant that it was much more expensive for the manufacturers to employ people, and obviously a high price of corn benefited the landowners. So the Corn Laws benefited the landowners and disadvantaged the industrialists. And so there was this big movement against the Corn Laws, basically, which it deliberately was designed to rally the industrialists, the bourgeois class, and they got behind them the working class, the masses, and they said, look, these people are pushing the price of corn up. Do you want cheaper corn? In that case, you should join the anti-corn law movement. It was another example of this unity between classes that actually have different interests against the landowning class. And the slogan was free trade, free markets, liberalism, basically, freedom of the individual, to do whatever they like. That was the banner under which the anti-corn law movement was carried out. And the point of this quote is to show it was a weapon against the landed aristocracy, this is what Engels is saying, free trade, liberalism, it's a weapon against the old feudal class. Oh, and ever since then, that has remained the case, right? The ideas of liberalism have remained a weapon in the hands of the ruling class. Whatever the ruling class needs at any particular time, liberalism has been moulded, and that's what this next quote comes from. So again, from that same economist article, actually. And you can see here that it talks about how liberalism has changed over a period of time, depending on the needs and the interests of the ruling class at any particular time. Yes, it started off as this anti-big state, in favour of a centralized state, but in favour of limiting it, and in favour of freedom of the individual, in favour of free trade and all the rest of it. Obviously today it's considered quite different, universal suffrage and this sort of thing, but you can see that first paragraph. Mill and Badger, some of the earlier Liberals, they very much were not in favour of extending the franchise to the majority of people. They're in favour of property owners only having to vote, otherwise you just get chaos, you just get anarchy and so on. But of course they were opposed, obviously, to state education. They were opposed to relief efforts during the Irish famine. And yet liberalism has changed over a period of time. It says here, after the Depression, the Second World War, we, that is the Economist magazine, we hewed to Keynesian views. And then later we subsequently rebelled against those, to support deregulation and privatisation that Thatcher and Reagan brought in. Liberalism is malleable to the interests of the ruling class, that's the point. It's really a kind of overarching kind of written into the fabric of society or the universe or anything else. It's used to bolster the interests of the ruling class at any particular time. You saw that in its earliest days. It was used by the bourgeois against the feudal aristocracy, against feudalism. And you've seen it subsequently with them chopping and changing depending on what their interests are. But as well as being, that's kind of just one side of liberalism. It's expressing the needs of the ruling class at any particular time. It's just being the philosophy that the ruling class uses to justify capitalism, if you like. The other side of it is that it's a weapon against the masses, against the working class in particular. It's a weapon that deliberately is designed deliberately to obscure and confuse the programme of the bourgeois class. And to confuse the fact that it's the bourgeois class that led this revolution in the first place. These bourgeois revolutions. And it's designed to obscure the fact that they do use this philosophy for their own role. It basically is the philosophy that justifies capitalism. But the other side of it is that it obscures the fact that it's the philosophy to justify capitalism. It doesn't say that openly. It doesn't say liberalism is all about defending capitalism. It actually hides that fact and it's designed in fact to hide that fact. And that's how it consolidates the ruling class, the bourgeois class, in power. And this is particularly clear when it comes to questions of constitutionalism under the state, for example. So it dresses the state up in independence, basically. Dresses it up in wigs and gowns for the judiciary, for example, in pomp and ceremony with the opening of parliament and this kind of stuff. And it's made to seem independent, which is entirely a fiction, as we know. A fiction intended to deceive the masses as to the real role of the state. And it's the ideas of liberalism that encapsulate this whole veil, this whole obscurity around this question. In fact, of course, it's very clear to see that state functionaries themselves, the state bureaucrats, are tied. In some cases, literally tied, they are literally, for example, it's been revealed recently in the press, how many MPs are also landowners, also landlords and stuff. They are literally part of the same class as the ruling class in society. And other cases just through generally similar class outlooks, they go to the same schools, they go to the same universities, they move in the same circles. They have a generally similar outlook. In that sense, the state is very much still today, it always has been tied entirely to the interests of that class. And in reality then, like for all this talk of universal suffrage, the rule of law, democracy, liberal democracy is what is always referred to. There's nothing in fact democratic about the modern state, about the bourgeois state at all. All kinds of barriers stand in the way of genuine democratic participation by ordinary people in the state, in the running of society. I mean, just for example, questions of time. In order to genuinely participate in politics, you have to have some idea of what's going on. That requires time to read the news, to think about it, to discuss it with other people. But working class people don't have that kind of time. They have it less and less, of course, as the crisis gets worse. But in general, people don't have that kind of time. They don't have the money necessarily to spend on books or magazine subscriptions or newspaper subscriptions to find out what's going on. And of course, even if they did, the press is owned by the ruling class. It's owned by the bourgeois class. So even if you did read the press, you wouldn't actually get the real news. You wouldn't actually get real analysis of society. All these things prevent genuine democratic control of the state by working class people, by ordinary people. Bourgeois liberal democracy is formal and abstract, just like liberty, equality, fraternity. It's there in name, but it's abstract. It's abstract from the real lives of real people. And all comrades, if you haven't already, and even if you have another look at it, should study Lenin State and Revolution, because there is loads of good stuff that explains exactly this. And it's just the same 100 years ago. It's just the same today as it was 100 years ago. And I've got some of the best quotes here, which I can go through quickly because I've just explained exactly what they say. Here he's talking about capitalist democracy being inevitably narrow and stealthily pushing aside the poor and being hypocritical and false through and through. But again, it's this formal, abstract nature. It talks about democracy. It talks about everybody having all sorts of rights and all the rest of it. And in reality, it uses various methods to push those rights to one side. And again, this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation. Consequently, always remains in effect a democracy for the minority, only for the property classes, only for the rich. So in that sense, nothing fundamental changes obviously between feudalism and capitalism. It's still an exploiting class. It's still a ruling class that governs things. It's just they've managed to dress this up in, as I say, in wigs and gowns, in the language of liberalism, basically. This is what liberalism is. And yet in reality, nothing much has changed at all. What have we got here? Here's another good example. Here he's talking specifically about the kind of things that I just spoke about, freedom of the press and the time that people have. And this kind of stuff here, he's talking about that. And he says in their sum total, these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics from active participation in democracy. And this is where he's talking about the corruption of officials, right? He's talking about how, through direct or indirect corruption of officials, direct corruption in the sense that the long paragraph underneath explains that when, and this happens all the time, when civil servants leave whatever job they're doing or when ministers leave whatever job they're doing, they immediately offer the job in the private sector. Often in cases like civil servants, often in the sector that they have previously been regulating as part of the government, is this revolving door between the private sector and the public sector? Is that not direct corruption? Is that not actual bribery of the, you know, do a good job while you're a politician? Do a good job while you're a state functionary? And if you do that good job, we'll give you a well-paying six-figure salary once you finish the kind of thing. That is the direct corruption of officials. And then there's the indirect corruption of officials. Obviously states take on a lot of debt and therefore the health of a particular state is governed by the stock exchange. It's governed by financiers. And if you don't do what the markets want basically, you won't be able to borrow any more money. The debts will be called in. The state will be bankrupted. It won't be able to operate. You ain't to look at Venezuela for examples of this. Is that not the indirect corruption? Do as we say or we're going to ruin you basically. Is that not the indirect corruption of officials? Excuse me. In a thousand and one ways, the state is tied to the ruling class. And this fiction, this veil of liberalism, of democracy is just that entirely a fiction. And it's also a particularly important feature. And this is where the liberal democracy is different to feudalism. And this is an important feature to understand in my opinion. But no longer does the state power under liberal democracy, under capitalism, no longer does state power rest with one individual or one family. Instead rests with a system is constructed, a state is constructed, within which individuals and parties and all sorts can just cycle through. You can elect who you like, but they can cycle in and out. You can have a scandal. You can have one particular individual, one particular party fall from power. It makes no fundamental difference to the state structure itself and certainly not the underlying system that exists. And that's a real conquest of liberalism. That's a real conquest of the bourgeois revolutions. It makes the state a lot healthier, basically, as a shell within which capitalism can operate. That's exactly what Lenin says in the state revolution. He explains it much better than I could. And he says, a democratic republic is the best possible shell for capitalism. Because it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois democratic republic can shake it. You establish a system where people feel like they have a vote. They feel like they have a choice. They feel like they're influencing things. It's not like feudalism where you just did as you were told. You've got your opportunity to express yourself. We've got a free press and all the rest of it. But it doesn't matter. You can have whatever newspapers you like. The political parties can rise and fall. Fundamentally, the system remains intact, precisely because of what I just explained about the state being tied by a thousand threads to the interests of the ruling class. Now, at the time of the French and English revolutions, the earlier bourgeois revolutions, the working class existed to a certain extent. It was less clearly defined than it is certainly today. And then even that it was even 100 years after that or 50 years even after that. And it certainly was less conscious of its position. It was less class conscious, if you like. It was less conscious of its position within society. And so liberalism to a certain extent, this fiction that it created, as the fiction that the bourgeois created with the ideas of liberalism as a means of unifying the classes, was effective at blunting the class struggle to a certain extent. Obviously there were the levelers and the diggers and this kind of thing. People did start to see through that fiction. But to a certain extent earlier on, when the working class was less firmly developed, less class conscious, it was more or less effective at blunting the class struggle. Already by 1848, when the bourgeois revolutions were still required to resolve contradictions that existed in a number of countries, 1848 was a period when revolution was sweeping Europe. Already by then the working class was beginning to see, it was a bit more fully formed, a bit more class conscious, it was beginning to see through this fiction that was being created, this fiction of liberalism. This attempt to obscure the different class interests to the bourgeoisie and the working class. And Engels wrote a series of articles called Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, all about the 1848 revolution in Germany. And this is what he says, it's the fate of all revolutions that this union of different classes, which in some degree is always the necessary condition of any revolution, cannot subsist long. And the quote goes on to explain that at a certain point, once certain basic achievements have been realised, that's when the classes turn their weapons on each other and this union begins to break down. Of course, that can only happen. That happened in 1848 in Germany to a greater extent than it happened in France or England because the working class was a little bit more developed at that time. This gives us the clue, this gives us the beginnings of the explanation for why liberalism is in crisis today. Now, that liberalism is in crisis isn't really up for dispute. I didn't intend and clearly I'm not going to just explain in what ways it is in crisis in every country around the world because I imagine you're all fairly aware of that. But it's worth pointing out that this is not a usual crisis what we're seeing around the world. What we're seeing is the political crisis is not just the usual scandals or whatever or mistakes of particular individuals or particular parties because as I've explained liberalism is structured to be able to deal with that sort of thing. When it messes up, you remove that you put someone else in doesn't make a fundamental difference. Now, the political crises we see today are constitutional crises much more fundamental, not about this or that individual but they threaten the very fabric of the nation states that were established by the bourgeois revolutions in the first place like the question of independence in Scotland, like the question of Catalonia for example. The question of Brexit obviously has a big impact on the Irish question which is also a constitutional question. And then you also see other countries where the crisis again is more fundamental than a normal political crisis. Take Brazil or the US or Poland where the judiciary has become a political battleground in one way or another. Now that's not supposed to happen. The state as I've explained is tied by a thousandth of register but you've got the front-facing bit, the pretty face of the state which is you vote once every five years and that's some sort of democracy, some sort of choice that people have. But there's a vast apparatus behind those people, the civil servants, the judges, the army. None of that is elected obviously, the prison system. None of that's elected. That all just continues to function as normal. And the whole point is that happens in the shadows, that happens in the background. The politicians pretend like they're going to make a difference and in reality they don't make any kind of difference at all. But the fact that in these countries in the US and Brazil and Poland the judiciary is being dragged, kicking and screaming into the spotlight is a political issue, is a much more fundamental crisis for the bourgeois liberal democratic state. And then another aspect showing that this crisis that we see today is that it's not just a political crisis, it is a crisis of liberalism. Is that we've got a situation in a number of places where the political representatives of the ruling class no longer actually reflect that class' interests properly. And Brexit is the most obvious example of that where the ruling class in Britain don't want Brexit. The big bourgeois in Britain don't want Brexit and yet it's the Tory party, their representatives who have created the Brexit crisis. Obviously in the US, the big bourgeois wanted Clinton to win the election and yet Donald Trump as a Republican, someone who is part of the bourgeois party, just like Clinton is, but he's supposed to represent their interests as well. And yet they're very worried about his behaviour. You see it on an international level as well. Trade wars are not in the interest of the international ruling class. And yet they're happening anyway, thanks to their own representatives. The point is that this isn't a normal crisis. The bourgeois doesn't really have much of an idea about its future. It's reached a real dead end in terms of the further development of society. It's not a normal crisis, it's very much a crisis of the ideology to which it gave birth that is very much the crisis of liberalism. And this is because liberalism as a philosophy, as a way of structuring society of course, as I explained earlier, it bases itself on individualism, talks about the individual all the time, and yet that is in direct contradiction to the economic system which gave birth to it. Because the capitalist system doesn't function in an individualistic way for the vast majority of people. In fact, the capitalist system relies on two, as it's put in the Communist Manifesto, relies on two giant camps that exist in society, two great camps, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat classes. It relies on a contradiction between classes, not individuals, but two big groups of people within society. And for one of those classes of course on top of that, for the vast majority of people under capitalism, the conditions of existence are not individualistic, they're socialistic. Production is socialised. That's how capitalism develops the economy. It socialises production. It's entirely in contradiction to the ideas to which it gave birth in the form of liberalism. It's entirely in contradiction to individualism. At different points in time and space, the class contradictions upon which capitalism is based obviously become sharper and less clear depending on the urban flow of the class struggle. Sometimes it's very clear to people that there's class contradictions in society, sometimes it's not so much. It's in a period of crisis. Like the period we're in now, that the class contradictions come into very sharp relief. These class contradictions really come to the surface. When that happens, it becomes very clear immediately that individual freedom is entirely subordinate, subordinate to and dictated by your position in relation to the means of production, to your class in other words. Not in its detail obviously, but in the broad outlines that's what a crisis brings to the surface basically. That your individual freedom is not really your own. It's dictated by your class position society. That's what people begin to realise. Basically under those circumstances, that's when the fundamental ideas that underpin liberalism begin to crumble. It becomes obvious that the rich aren't just rich because they work harder, but because of their class position. It becomes clear that universal suffrage doesn't really make any difference at all because the people who really control things, you vote in whatever government you like, you're still going to get austerity. Universal suffrage actually makes no difference. That becomes clear in a period of crisis. The rule of law and laws and the legal system in general become seen not as something to protect people, to defend their rights and so on, but as something that only protects the rights of the ruling class. You see it looking around London today, there's no human right to a house clearly because there's so many homeless people on private property and this kind of thing. That becomes very clear in a period of crisis. When class contradictions in society rise to the surface, when the class struggle starts to heat up, the hollowness of liberalism becomes clear for everybody to see. Liberalism cannot survive a crisis of that kind. It cannot survive the polarisation of society basically. That is why it's in crisis today. There's all sorts of historical examples of that exact same thing happening. I've got a great... You should all read Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. It's very long, but I dug out this particular quote. It's about the constituent assembly. In other words, a kind of bourgeois democratic demand. A liberal demand. He's explaining that almost unnoticably, in the course of the events of the revolution, this chief democratic slogan which had for a decade and a half with its colour, the heroic struggle of the masses, had grown pale and faded out, had somehow been ground between millstones, had become an empty shell, a form naked of content, a tradition, and not a prospect. That's what happens to liberalism in a period where class struggle rises to the surface. The two great classes, the two great camps that exist in society, like two millstones grind to dust, the hollow empty nothingness of these liberal slogans which have existed up until that point. Of course, this isn't a conscious process. The fundamental contradictions in society cause a lot of people to question things, but they don't immediately realise why this has taken place. Most people don't think, necessarily, immediately in the clear class terms that Marxists think in. That questioning that obviously comes about because of the conditions of crisis becomes a lashing out. That isn't necessarily, as I say, on the basis of a class understanding of society. It's precisely because this process is unconscious that the right wing is able to hijack it. It's able to tap into a kind of collective identity but divert it away from class struggle. It's able to talk about nationalism and racism and this kind of stuff. Divert it away from class struggle. They're able to blame one part of society and mobilise everyone against it just exactly what Donald Trump is doing. That pits them, of course, against the liberal establishment. The liberal establishment want to retain that best political shell for capitalism. They realise the value of liberal democracy from the point of view of preserving capitalism, so they try and preserve it. But these right wingers, these demagogues, tap into the crisis, basically, the fact that people are beginning to see through this best political shell, they're beginning to draw potentially more radical conclusions. They tap into that and divert it off in an opposite direction and talk about other groups within society other than class. The result is you get illiberal governments and this kind of stuff. In a certain sense, then, these right wingers, these reactionaries, like Trump, are a more accurate reflection in some ways. There's certainly a less varnished reflection of the bourgeois class in the crisis of capitalism. As I said earlier, liberalism cannot survive this kind of polarisation of society. These people, the Donald Trumps of the world, they're not a kind of aberration. They are the genuine reflection, the unvarnished reflection of what the ruling class needs to do in a situation like this. It's too far to say to describe Donald Trump as far-sighted, he's clearly not, particularly. But he has better opportunities, he's realised the mood that exists inside, he's realised what we realise, which is that liberalism is in crisis and he has tapped into that mood that exists. In a certain sense, these right wing representatives of the capitalist system, like Trump, they show themselves more prepared to do what is required to preserve the capitalist system in a period of crisis. That's exactly what's happened in the past as well. Again, this is from Engels on the 1848 revolutions in Germany. He talks about restrictions of suffrage, the liberty to press, the right to sit on juries, restricting all these democratic rights as soon as, he says, against the victorious working man, although he'd not yet uttered any specific demands, the friends on the foes of many years united on the alliance between the bourgeoisie and the supporters of the overturn system was concluded upon the very barricades of Berlin. When threatened with class struggle, serious class struggle, serious revolution, the bourgeois, the serious representatives of the bourgeois won't hesitate to just jettison all this liberal nonsense. The veil will be completely lifted, they'll leave all of that to one side and they will go back to restrictions on suffrage, the liberty to press and everything else. That's what's required basically to keep capitalism in power under circumstances of crisis. Again, liberalism cannot survive the polarisation in society created by the crisis of capitalism. Against that, against the slightly more far side, the more realistic, the people who represent to the ruling class who are prepared to do what's required, you get people like the Economist magazine, the liberal democrats who just throw tantrums basically and complain about liberalism not still being accepted by everyone. These people are the backward looking at the less developed elements of the ruling class, the ones less able to see how society is the perspectives of the development of the crisis. They appear very pathetic and very impotent. I've got a couple of quotes from the Financial Times, two different authors, both of which say a lot of very sensible things most of the time. You can see this from Martin Wolff, who is very good on economics, but this is just ridiculous. It's completely impotent. He says, and the whole article is dreadful, by the way, I couldn't put the whole thing in. But the whole article is just, maybe we need a little bit of this and a little bit of that and maybe just a tweak here and a tweak there and maybe we just need to go a little bit more back to Keynesianism and a little, which of course Keynesianism being a complete aberration, liberalism in general is in favour of a smaller state because it's in favour of freer markets and capital moving and all the rest of it. But this whole thing reflects that general, maybe a little bit of this and a little bit of that. That's as much as he proposed, and then he says, is that even conceivable? Can we even conceive of a tiny little tweak here and there? That's the best that these people can come up with. It's completely impotent. And the next one is a much better article, actually, from Wolfgang Manchell on the same question on the Christ of Liberalism. He points out, he says, if you really care about this stuff, he says it's not, the whole article, he says elsewhere in the article, he says, look, Brexit and Trump, it's not the Russians fault. It's not the Russians who have done this to us. We've done this to ourselves. This is our fault. And you can see, our problem is not the other team, but our team. He actually, he's one of the few in the Economist and the Financial Times who recognises we are messing this up. It's the defenders of the existence. That's the last paragraph of the article. He doesn't have an answer to it. At this stage, all he can do is argue against people like Martin Wolf. We are the problem. They're still arguing over who's fault it is, basically, over what the problem actually is and where it comes from. But it shows you the impotence, basically, of the modern defenders of Liberalism. They don't really have a solution. They don't have a way forward. It shows the dead end that the ruling class is facing. And you see that again. I don't have, I'm running a bit short on time. But these two quotes 13 and 14 show the same thing, this 13 one. Engels is talking about the indecision weakness and cowardice of the democratic leaders. Again, he's describing their complete useless and the complete impotence, their inability in the face of a revolution, a situation of revolution and counter-revolution in Germany. The democratic leaders, the Liberals, they have nothing to offer, they have nothing to contribute. And again, 14, this is from Lenin. This is particularly good. Look at the second bit that I've underlined. When a Liberalist abuse, he says, thank God they didn't beat me. When he's beaten, he says thank God they didn't kill me. Oh, to kill him. When he's killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from his mortal clay. In other words, they have literally nothing to say. When it's all kicking off around them, all they can say is, oh, well, it could be worse, which is obviously no, that's no programme, that's no perspective for the future. And yet that's the best that they can offer. Now the point, especially that Lenin's talking here about the Russian Revolution, Engels in the previous one was talking about revolution and counter-revolution in Germany in 1848. Point of these historical examples that we should derive from this is also, it's not just bad decisions that have led Liberalism to where it is today, which is how the Economist tries to paint it. It's not just that the Liberal leaders have made a few mistakes and all that's required is some sensible Liberal leaders to get things back on track. It's part of the historical process. It's part of the process of crisis and the rise of class troubles. So what should we do with all of this? Well, these quotes, certainly 13 and 14, demonstrate that we absolutely mustn't ally ourselves with the Liberals. The whole point is they are being ground between two millstones. That's the perspective for the future. We just had in this room a discussion on economics, on the economic. That crisis isn't going away, it's only going to get worse. Liberalism is going to be ground between two millstones. We want nothing to do with it. We don't ally ourselves with it. We certainly don't do any kind of lesser evilism. Clinton's a bit better than Trump. The Liberals are a bit better than the Conservatives. None of that. Basically, just as Liberalism expressed very well the conditions of life of the bourgeoisie because they were a revolutionary class, they were the ones who were capable of developing society and the economy further, our political ideas and philosophy must express our conditions of life very well because it's our class, the working class, that's capable of developing the economy further in the form of a socialised economy, just like our socialised conditions of existence at the moment. It's just at the moment there's a big barrier in the way which is the private appropriation of things that we produce in a social manner. Our philosophy and our ideas have to be the history and the theory of the struggle of the working class and that, of course, is Marxism. Going back to that Chotsky quite earlier, the correct political ideas today, that really express progressive tendencies of development are Marxist ideas and only Marxist ideas. Now, we obviously have that understanding and we have to take that understanding to make conscious what is kind of semi-conscious or unconscious in the minds of other people. People are beginning to see this. Liberalism exposes itself, just like capitalism takes itself into crisis. We have to illuminate that process of questioning, that process of lashing out against Liberalism so that instead of being this kind of unconscious, blind lashing out, lashing on to anyone who promises any kind of solution based on an anti-liberal approach and therefore can easily divert these things, we have to make it conscious and directed, of course, against the real enemy in society. And we have to use, and actually Lenin talks about this in this quote, use the fact, just like the levelers and the diggers did, use the fact that they talk about democracy or we say, well, let's have actual real democracy, use their own words against them, fill their empty abstractions with our content as the stepping stone towards proving to people that it's revolutionary socialist ideas that are the way forward instead of liberal ones. Our job primarily is to bring this question, the class struggle out consciously into the open. That is what is creating the crisis of Liberalism, it's the clash of classes caused by the crisis of capitalism and we have to make that clear. We have to make that conscious in people's minds. In one of the most, I'm sure you've all read it, one of the most basic texts, a classic by Lenin, three sources and component parts, this is what he says. People have always been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. That's our job, bring out the class content. It's not the immigrant's fault, it's not the Muslim's fault but things are going badly wrong. We bring out the class content in things and directs the anger that exists against Liberalism into the correct channels. Now, basically, I'll just finish with this. Liberalism is in crisis and to that I say good. It's lifting the veil. It's showing the naked class struggle more and more to ordinary people. It certainly has the potential to do that. We have the potential to do that. What it really means is that the gloves are coming off. There's no frills, no bells and whistles any more in society. The gloves are coming off and we're preparing, it's in preparation for a bare-knuckle fight between the working class and the ruling class and we're ready for that fight. We've got the ideas, we understand, we can see that that is coming and our job is to get that understanding, get our ideas, revolutionary ideas, Marxist ideas to our class by intervening in the class struggle as it exists at the moment so that we can deliver a knockout blow to capitalism and deliver a victory for the socialist revolution.