 Well, I think, yes, I think it's already clear that we've entered the greatest crisis in capitalism's history. Like Alan mentioned last night, the IMF said that this would be the worst crisis since the Great Depression. And I think that really is very much an underestimation. The Bank of England are far less optimistic. You know, they say that this would be the worst crisis for at least 300 years. But I think in reality, none of them have any idea. There's no power really for the period that we've entered into. And Mark Twain said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. I think there's a truth to that. Because if you can draw out the processes taking place in society, you can understand them. It does help guide our perspectives for the future. And I think it's really worth discussing this period that of the 1930s in the Depression. Since really, I think most people's consciousness today has been really shaped by a long period of capitalist upswing. In particular, the post war boom, but even the kind of period after that, even if people didn't live through it themselves. Now, of course, there have been serious crises since the 30s. There was a world crisis in the 1970s. Obviously 2008 and since then, there have been numerous smaller recessions. But many people I think still believe that these are just kind of temporary blips and that conditions will return ultimately to those that we had in the 50s and the 60s. The conditions where there was full employment, strong welfare states. In other words, that we can return to capitalism that could be made to work in the interests of working class people. And I think that's false. But I think it's worth looking back to what actually happened before the post war boom with the conditions of the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression. It's really a reminder to us of what capitalism actually looks like when it's in a deep crisis. And I think although the current crisis will indeed look very different in many respects, I do think that the period we're entering into have much more in common with the conditions of the 30s than of the post war boom or more recently. And therefore, you know, the key things I really want to draw out from this talk is what effects did the crisis have on the consciousness of millions of workers. And importantly, what effect it had on the class struggle. And therefore kind of use as a guide to what changes we might expect to see over the coming period ahead. I'll start with a brief summary of what actually happened in October 1929 with the Wall Street crash itself. It's gone down in history as Sarah said this kind of legendary crisis of capitalism that everyone's kind of taught about, at least in a superficial way. And particularly in terms of the dramatic crash that took place on the stock exchange and also the depth of the depression that followed. Now the crash actually began. There was actually downward drift of share prices on the stock exchange during the preceding months of September and October. But the real slump actually began on Friday the 18th of October. It's worth pointing out that, you know, a crash is not just a one act drama doesn't just take place over a few hours or a day or two. It's actually unfolded over weeks. And the decline got worse on the Monday after that weekend. And it culminated in what was referred to as Black Thursday on the 24th of October, which was actually 91 years ago yesterday. That's when the real panic set in with, you know, these chaotic scenes of Wall Street, the huge crowds gathering outside on the streets, these wild rumors being circulated around. And there was the phenomenon where some shares on the market couldn't actually be sold at all for any price. You know, you had what was referred to as black holes appearing in the market. Now, in the afternoon of that Thursday, the things were actually step kind of temporarily stabilized. And that's because there was an emergency meeting of bankers, you know, all the kind of top Wall Street bankers came together. And there was a scratch in the head saying, well, we've got to do something. And they kind of made a public announcement saying they'll do whatever it takes to support the market. And it's, you know, they started buying up shares and so on. And this, this tended to calm things down. But that calm was only kind of a brief respite as the slump actually restarted next Monday on the 28th. As it became clear, became more and more public knowledge that actually the banks weren't actually supporting the market. And actually they were now secretly trying to frantically kind of save themselves and offload their positions. And this culminated the next day on the kind of legendary Black Tuesday, where the fall in one day, he could the gains of all the previous 12 months. And in just the first half hour of trading, 33 million shares were sold and prices fell by 13%. Now, like a typical days trading would see I think between three to four million shares sold. It was considered drastic at five million. The decline continued until the 13th of November, by which point the stock exchange index was 50% below its September high. Now the government of course did try to intervene. They did what they could by cutting taxes. They also cut the interest rate. And this apparently will appear to initially stem the tide. So that from the start of 1930 to April, the market did actually recover by the 44%. And it's worth pointing out that that's actually quite similar to the situation that we see today, where actually the stock exchanges of the world crashed dramatically in March of this year. And since then they've actually gone back to just above the previous peak after enormous government support, at least that's the case with the New York Stock Exchange. So leading economists and kind of catalysts at the time, they were kind of rushing to kind of reassure everything, everyone that everything was fine, that you know the clash was just a blip that actually the real economy was was was absolutely fine, not to panic and so on. And Andrew Mellon, who was the secretary of the US Treasury, he said at the time, the US economy is fundamentally sound. And I think it's worth bearing in mind that we've seen no shortage of politicians over the past few months saying effectively the same today that actually know that everything's just a kind of, once we've got a vaccine and once, you know this, and the COVID situations under control, everything will just go back to normal. The economy will be fundamentally sound. But actually what happened in June of 1930, the fall then resumed. And it did say to reach a new low in December, well below the peak of 1929. Now there are a few ups and downs, but the overall picture was a steady decline until the market reached rock bottom in July of 1932. By which point it settled at 89% down from the record high of September back in 29. Well, things stagnated until early 1933, after which point there was a kind of an uptick on the stock exchange, but it was extremely shallow, and it remained so until 1937. Again after which point again collapsed. And it's worth pointing out that the stock exchange, which is only really kind of not very good kind of reflection of the underlying strength of the economy. I would actually reclaim its 1929 highs until September of 1954, which I think shows two things. Firstly, how deep the rest of the depression actually was during the 30s. But also secondly, how overinflated the stock market was in September of 29. Now the question that's been asked many times is, why did the crash occur. There's been various explanations, I think ranging from the psychological in that there was just a mass panic that gripped the minds of investors to a combination of secondary factors. And in his famous book on the Wall Street crash, John Grau Bray highlights the following factors, he points to the dodgy corporate structures in the USA at the time, the use of what they called leveraged holding companies and investment trusts. In a nutshell these had the effect of multiplying gains when the market was rising, but that effect work both ways when the market crashed the losses were multiplied. There's the banking structure. There was two major New York banks, actually thousands of other smaller banks across the USA. There was no federal insurance and deposits. So you know, one bankruptcy could easily start at one on all the other banks. And that's one of the factors of what they called trading on the margin, which really meant buying shares and credit. So for example, you might bear it by shares price to 1000 pounds, but with only just 200 pounds of your own cash, you borrow the extra 800 pounds from a bank. Now that worked fine when the market was rising into sometimes you saw shares rising by kind of 1015 20% even in just one day, such as the kind of frenzy. But you know when falling, obviously the banks then called in the loans, many of these loans were then unpayable and that had had huge repercussions. There was also the unsound balance of foreign trade. So the USA become accredited nation following World War One. After the crash clearly that credit then dried up. So the bank is of course demanding payments from debtor countries in gold, of course these countries, these debts couldn't be paid. So the only option for these debtor countries to eliminate their own deficits was even exporting more of their own commodities to USA. And that was of course then blocked by tariffs, or by reducing their imports, which then cut the market for American goods. And then finally there's also the unequal distribution of the income. So I think in 1929 the richest 5% of the US population received 33% of the wealth. So most of the demand in the economy had to come from the rich, even if you kind of, you know, investment or kind of luxury spending. And when that dried up of course had a huge impact. Now, it's worth pointing out that these secondary factors certainly had an influence and why the crash was so deep and why it turned into a depression. I don't think really they explain why this took place in the first place. It's like when you hear the explanation of the so-called credit crunch of 2007 as being the cause for the 2008 crash. You know, really, the crash was a product of all the accumulated contradictions of the previous period, culminating in what we call as Marxist crisis of overproduction. You can see this. So from 1900 to 1929, there had in fact been a colossal development of the productive forces in the USA. The total wealth of the country increased from $86 billion to $361 billion. So that's over four times in just those three decades. From 1919 to 1929 the productivity of industry rose from between 40 to 50%. But at the same time wages and prices remain stable, which had the effect of rapidly rising profits for those at the top, and also an explosion of inequality. Now, the richest 0.1% of the population had the same income as the poorest 43%. So of course, what were they going to do with all that money? Well, of course, they're going to try and make more money, of course. There was this kind of orgy of speculation on the stock exchange. And by even 1926, it was clear that there was a feverish speculative element to the boom. Profits as well as the stock market were booming. Industrial profits rose 156% in just the five years before 29. But in that same period, industrial share prices trebled. And that was really indicative of this massive rise in fictitious capital that was taking place. As soon as it's becoming saturated worldwide, the ruling class could clearly get richer just through speculation on the stock exchange and through actually investing their wealth back into production. Now the system was already reaching its limits by late 1928 to early 1929. And again, this ties back to what I was saying about it being, you know, a classic case of overproduction, which really is inherent in the dynamics of capitalism, since production is only for profit. Now, as Mark explained, the working class produced all value in the form of commodities, but they only paid a portion of that value in the form of wages. But of course, for capitalists to realize a profit, they have to sell the commodities that are being produced by the workers in their factories and workplaces and so on. The problem is how can they do this if the working class as a whole only receives a fraction of the total value that they're producing. As economists put it, the problem is where will the effective demand in the economy come from, in order for all these goods to be sold. Now as Marxists, we understand that there's three main methods that the ruling class can use to overcome this contradiction. Otherwise, you could say, well, why isn't the system permanently in crisis. You can see how all of these were reaching their limits in the late 1920s. So firstly, you had the expansion of world trade. Now remember this was a time when most of the world was directly colonized by a few imperialist powers. The USA had actually expanded into areas of Latin America. And if not kind of directly colonizing these countries, they effectively were colonies, places like Cuba, Nicaragua, also the Philippines as well. Of course, there are limits to expansion when the kind of the whole world is already being carved up. And secondly, there's what Marxist term investment in department two goods, which means kind of more means of production, essentially, things that aren't going to be consumed by the working class, but things that kind of to be invested in by capitalists, things like more machinery, building these factories, actually more materials, infrastructure and so on. But actually investment was slowing down in the 1920s. It was becoming increasingly saturated. And therefore, you know, it wasn't even possible to use the existing industrial capacity and make a profit. There was I think, industrial capacity was only about 80% used at this time. So if you couldn't already use what you had invested, why would you invest in building more capacity. And then thirdly, there was the use of credit. So massive amounts were being lent to other countries so that they could buy American goods. There was expansion of credit domestically. So, you know, people could afford to buy cars or other big ticket items by paying for them on payment plans. There's also, as mentioned, this huge expansion of credit so that investors could buy shares on the stock exchange without putting up the full value. But all of these things have a limit, of course, and you could see the economy was starting to slow down by mid 1929. Industrial production in the USA actually fell from an index of 127 in June of 29 to 122 in September and 117 in October. And remember, this was at a time when leading economists and politicians were saying, actually, the economy is fine, you know, the crash was an accident. But really you can see from these figures that the decline had already set in. And I think what quite stark is the figures for car production, which declined from 660,000 units in March of 29 to 319,000 by October, so more than halved in just seven months. Now, after the crash took place in late October, those figures then collapsed even more dramatically. But it kind of shows how things were already going downwards. Now, there were various incidents cited as the cause of the bubble ultimately bursting. There was an unfavorable ruling against utility company in Massachusetts, and it was Boston Edison, which among other things said that the shares have been massively overvalued. There's also the collapse of the Clarence Hartley financial group in Britain, which came as a huge shock to investors really spooked a lot of people. But whatever it was, it was merely the accident that kind of allowed for this deep necessity of the bubble that had to burst to express itself. Now what happened then on the stock exchange, you know, was really a surface feature of a far deeper process of this crisis of overproduction. Some contradictions are built up to tipping point, whereby it took, you know, once no incident or incidents to really transform the whole quality of the situation from a beam into a slum. And it's similar to a forest fire, whereby it takes a long period for the forest to become dried out, but at a certain point all it takes is a small spark to set the whole thing ablaze. Now what were the consequences? In the USA, it gave rise to conditions known as the Great Depression, and the crisis on Wall Street then quickly rippled through to the rest of the economy. And as we say, like cause becomes effect, and effect becomes cause, the whole thing entered into a downward spiral, and all those secondary factors that I outlined earlier then came into play. And the collapse of share prices meant that loans taken out to buy shares on the margin were then quickly called in. And you can see how credit, which was used previously to expand the boom, and now turned into its opposite. And instead you had these unpayable debts which now had to be repaid, and a wave of defaults then led to a crisis of the whole banking system. And I said with no federal insurance and bank deposits, the collapse of one bank meant losing your entire savings. So hence runs on banks became very commonplace, so that between 1929 and 1933, over 9000 US banks collapsed. Now even before the crash, companies were cutting production, as I said the market was becoming saturated. But now as both demand and credit dried up, so did investment and production. Again, this is the thing of cause becoming an effect, an effect becoming cause. You enter this vicious downward spiral whereby millions of workers were being made unemployed, as they could no longer be profitably exploited by the ruling class. That then led to a vicious circle of a further collapse in demand, and a wave of corporate bankruptcies. Now you can see this in the figures, the Federal Reserve Board of Industrial Production, the index declined by almost 50%, between 1929 to 1932. Now the crisis of overproduction was really graphically illustrated by the figures for capacity utilization. In 1920 it was 94%. And then averaged about 84% over the decade of the 20s, the so-called Royal Ring 20s. But by 1930 it had fallen to 66%, and it reached a lower 42% in 1932. Now in July of that year, steel operations in the USA were only functioning at 12% of their capacity, which I think very graphically shows the depth of the crisis. And the only way for the ruling class to eliminate this so-called excess capacity was really to close down factories and massively lower prices. Now that of course introduced deflation into the economy, since the unemployed couldn't afford to spend. And those that could still afford to buy things were very reluctant to spend on the big ticker items today, knowing that prices would be cheaper in the future. And that deflation then also meant that servicing debts became relatively more expensive, and that further dragged down the economy. Now the effects of the crash, as with any crisis under capitalism, was of course the working class and the poorest who were made to fit the bill. And you saw a massive attack on the already low living standards of workers and poor farmers. And therefore the whole, the economic crisis was transferred into a huge social crisis. Unemployment of course skyrocketed. So in 1929 a significant 1.5 million people were already unemployed. That's about 3% of the work for us. But that then leapt to more than 12 million by 1932 and then estimated 13 to 15 million by March of 1933. That was about 25% of all workers, so 37% if you exclude farm workers. And overall it's thought that 34 million Americans belong to families with no regular full-time wage earner. And therefore with no federal system of social security, workers were forced to turn to what limited charitable relief existed or otherwise face starvation. So, you know, unable to pay the rent, millions of people ended up homeless or travelling the country in search of work. Hundreds of thousands ended up living in what became known as Hooverville's, which really were kind of shanty towns built on either derelict land or rubbish dumps and places like this. And in the context of those conditions, the bosses sought to restore profitability by driving down wages and increasing hours. So you had the phenomenon of sweatshops appearing everywhere. You had starvation wages were common, as was child labour, and many workers were forced to work 60 or 70 hours a week or more. Now with the shock of the crisis and with the threat of destitution and really the lack of leadership coming from the trade unions and the workers' parties, the bosses were largely successful in these attacks. Now just to speak a bit about the global consequences, obviously the crisis in the USA was very quickly to become a worldwide crisis. And that's because in 1929 there were just four countries in the world that contributed up to 70% of world GDP. That was the USA, Britain, Germany and France. And they also kind of a dramatic collapse in the production as the system was so interconnected. Now in June 1930 the US introduced the Smoot-Hawley-Tariff Act and that was to try and protect US agricultural capitalists in particular. And that had a devastating impact on the agricultural economies of central Europe as now the main market for their exports was now closed off. And places like this have borrowed heavily from French and British banks, as had a lot of German industry. And of course when those debts were then defaulted on, it drove Britain and France into financial crisis. And that then rippled over back into US banks, as I said, the whole system was interconnected. Now eventually Britain was forced off the gold standard and was forced to devalue its currency, but soon every country had to follow suit. All the ruling classes were trying to maintain the share of a declining world market through competitive devaluations with the imposition of tariffs and quotas, in other words through a trade war. And therefore US imports and exports declined by 70% between 29 to 32. And actually world trade in 1933 was less than a third of its 29 level. Now it's worth pointing out that I think the collapse of world trade was inevitable due to this unavoidable slump in production and investment. But the policies of protectionism and devaluation, therefore kind of inevitably followed, but they had the effect of exacerbating the slump. They helped turn it from a recession into a deep depression. And I think, you know, whilst today a lot of the kind of capitalist strategists are warning against a return to protectionism. Really, I think they can warn all they like, but it's really built into the logic of competition between a scramble for a share of a declining world market. Each national ruling class is going to try and pass the burden of the crisis on to others. Now I want to talk a bit about the new deal in the United States is by 1933, you know the world was clearly in the midst of a very severe depression. And from the standpoint of the ruling class conditions in the USA were actually getting critical. Now, Herbert Hoover, who was the president at the time of the crash, he generally followed this kind of laissez-faire approach to handling the crisis. He said the state really shouldn't intervene. And therefore, although taxes and interest rates were lowered to try and encourage investments, since avenues for profitable investment were so small and actually in decline, these measures ended up having little effect. Now, Herbert Hoover's commitment to balanced budgets meant that government expenditure during this period was actually cut back. And since tax receipts so collapsed, the government spending therefore also had to be cut. And unlike today, the banks were actually allowed to collapse, wiping out deposited savings in the process. And with no welfare, the ground was being prepared for social explosion. Now for millions of people, the irrationality of the system was very clear to see. On the one hand, millions of tons of food around, but it wasn't profitable to transport it or to sell it. And therefore it was left to rot in the fields. You had warehouses literally full of clothing, but people couldn't afford it. So, you know, they're walking around barefoot wearing rags and so on. There was lots of empty houses, but you know, had people living on the streets or in these Hooverville shanty towns. And therefore, you know, people began more and more to get organized. You had unemployed councils established all over the country, typically led by communists. And they organized people to resist evictions as well as to pressure the relief commission to try and ensure families obtained aid. More alarmingly for the ruling class with a number of clashes with the police by the poor taking matters into their own hands. So actually from 1931 onwards, you know, the phenomenon of hundreds or sometimes even thousands of unemployed workers with storm factories demanding work from the bosses or storming government buildings to demand food and shelter. You also had farmers were being thrown off the land in their thousands as the banks before closing the mortgages that led to widespread violence and rebellion in the countryside. And then the communities more and more began to organize to fight off the bailiffs and the police when they were trying to carry out evictions. I remember that this was a population that was largely armed. All you had that they were blockading rows to try and stop cheap produce from elsewhere from reaching the towns and undercutting the local farmers. So in January of 1933, he had as Edward O'Neill, who was the head of the Farm Bureau Federation. He warned a Senate committee. He said that unless something is done for the American farmer will have a revolution in the countryside within less than 12 months. You also had increasingly workers began to organize self help groups to try and bypass the restrictions of the market. And one very notable example is in the coal region of Pennsylvania, where tens of thousands of unemployed miners began digging small pits on company property. They were trucking bootleg coal into the cities and selling it below market price. Now when the police tried to prosecute workers involved in this, actually no jury would convict them and it showed this kind of basic class solidarity. And this was very dangerous from the point of view of the ruling class, you know, the fact of workers beginning to organize production and distribution themselves and kind of bypassing the capitalist market and overriding capitalist private property. Now at the same time the ruling class were increasingly losing confidence in their own ability to rule. And there was one Rexwood Tugwell, who was one of the architects of the New Deal, he summed up the situation. And he said, I do not think it is too much to say that on March the fourth, which was the day of the general election, we were confronted with a choice between an orderly revolution, a peaceful and rapid departure from past concepts, and a violent and disorderly overthrow of the whole capitalist structure. But that really was kind of behind the election of Roosevelt in 1933. When he came to power he had really no alternative but to act. And therefore he reorganized the banking system which by that point had almost completely collapsed. But he also introduced the New Deal. This is because there's a lot of myths about the New Deal. And you often hear today, you know, calls for a new New Deal, typically a green New Deal, but the reality of it was that it was really a program of reform legislation. There was an attempt to rescue capitalism from itself. And they said that work fair schemes in employing millions of workers on construction and conservation projects, although not on full wages. They provided billions of dollars to fund over hundreds of thousands of construction projects. It's thought that about 80% of all public construction in the USA from 33 to 37 was funded by the government. They also passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, which really was to try and prevent a race to the bottom by the capitalist. And this was because by this point wages had really been driven down to starvation levels. And of course it was rational for each bus to do this in order to try and increase their own profits. Of course, you know, they have to cut cut their own costs. But the overall effects of that was to reduce the overall effect of demand in the economy, as you know who is then going to be able to buy what is actually being produced. So the government had to kind of step in to effectively suspend anti trust laws, and actually brought leading capitalists of each industry together to draft what they call a code of fair competition. The idea was to try and regulate their sector, and they would set minimum wages, hours, prices, they put quotas and output and so on. And it was effectively giving monopoly powers over whole industries to a layer of capitalists in order to try and boost profitability. And really it was a tacit admission that the market had ultimately failed, and that they needed the element of planning to get the economy going again. But no, it was not planning in a socialist way, by the working class in order to meet the needs of society, but planning by the bosses in order to boost their own profitability. Now, Roosevelt also dealt with overproduction by of course destroying the productive forces and therefore he gave subsidies to farmers to not produce. And that's because farm prices had collapsed by over 50% between 29 and 32. And in a show, despite people starving, there was still massive overproduction from the standpoint of what could be sold profitably on the market. But that destruction of, you know, the productive forces, of course wasn't going to be done by farmers to themselves, you know, they weren't going to close their own farms down. So in spring of 1933, the government set up the agricultural adjustment agency to try and administer subsidies. And one was, though, that millions of acres of crops had already been planted, and millions of animals had already been born. And therefore farmers were then paid to destroy 10 million acres of cotton, which was a quarter of that year's crop, and slaughter 6 million piglets. Now this in particular cause enormous uproar. So you had Henry Wallace, who was the Secretary for Agriculture at the time. He was publicly trying to reassure people. He explained, you know, don't worry, this is just simply the logic of capitalism. So there's no need to panic. There's no, no one should be angry about this. And he argued falsely that nobody had been morally indignant when American industry had reduced its output by about $20 billion worth of goods over the previous years. But in doing so, really, he just kind of shot a light onto the real workings of capitalism. And it was clear that the whole irrationality of the system was very evident for everyone. Now, over the course of the New Deal, various other reforms were carried out in order to try and stabilize the system. These on banks were put to an end through a federal insurance scheme and deposits. Debt relief was provided to mortgage holders by means of government payments to the banks. And not only did this prevent thousands of foreclosures, but it also helped prop up the failing banks, which were otherwise riddled with bad debts. I think you can see today, you know why banks are so keen to give mortgage holidays, because the banks are on the one hand making a killing on the extra interest that they receive from this. But otherwise, they were to face an enormous mountain of bad debt from the thousands of people who just simply weren't able to keep up their payments. And for the first time in US history, there was a nationwide system of unemployment benefits and old age pensions were introduced. Now, all of that in total meant a sharp break of these previous policies of laissez faire capitalism, whereby the state mustn't intervene. And it was really a tacit acknowledgement that if left to the mercy of the market, the resulting destitution would ultimately threaten the very viability of the capitalist rule. And therefore what the capitalist could not do as individuals due to competition and the anarchy of the market, the state would step in to try and do for them. And this was really summed up by Roosevelt himself in 1936. He said, nobody in the United States believes more firmly than I do in the system of private business, private property, and private property and private profit. It was this administration which saved the system of private profit and free enterprise after it had been dragged to the brink of ruin. And I think that would do very well for the left reformist today, who celebrate Roosevelt and celebrate the New Deal as a model to try and remember that. Now, of course, these policies did have an effect in alleviating some of the worst effects of the depression. So after reaching rock bottom, American GDP did then rise by 34% between 1933 and 37. But however, for a majority of the working class and the poor in the USA conditions only really went from very bad to just bad. So even at its peak, the public works program only employed a quarter of the total unemployed and unemployment in the 30s never actually fell below 8 million people. The minimum wages during this period are only just enough to cover the bare necessities and those who are on relief, either on work programs or through social security, that even worse. When the economy seemingly back on track by 1937, Roosevelt came under enormous pressure from the capitalist class to return to a policy of ballots budgets. And therefore, when he won the presidential election in 36, he then succumbed to this pressure. And in 1937 he scrapped the relief programs, and he again raised taxes. He succeeded in reducing the federal budget deficit by 1938. But by switching up the life support to the economy, it resulted in a dramatic fall in economic activity. And that's because really the key question of a lack of profitable markets remain. So production did not reach the levels of 29 until 1941 when unemployment was still at 10%. But really it was only the impact of the Second World War that really revived the economy. And that canes himself would later acknowledge, and it was really only through the military kind of mopping up unemployment, most a massive expenditure on military production and so on. But ultimately this, this crisis would be ended. Now, as I said at the start, the important thing for us to understand is the effect on the class struggle. As you know we always say it's great events that transform consciousness on a mass scale. And as this crisis and the collapsing living standards was certainly a huge shock to millions of people, and it would lead to a profound questioning of the system. You didn't immediately see an impact in terms of industrial militancy. That she took a few years for the initial shock and despair of the crisis to wear off, especially when there's such high unemployment and destitution, and most workers probably didn't want to rock the boat. But of course there was a lot of anger building up, but a lot of people felt powerless to do anything. They didn't think to lack of leadership coming from the workers organizations. But when the economy turned up a little from the depths of 1933. A lot of workers then saw their chance to try and fight back. So in 1933 three many three times as many workers went on strike as in the previous year, but the real turning point was in 1934, which was an explosion of industrial militancy. And just to then, most struggles involved mainly the organized workers are striking to improve or rather even defend their wages and hours. But now from 34 it was the right to organize and union recognition that were the main focus of strikes. Now the confidence of workers to organize was in part boosted by the provision for section seven a of this recently passed National Industrial Recovery Act. And this gave at least on papers, workers are quite the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing. But despite that right existing on paper, it was routinely ignored by the bosses. And actually there was one capitalist who described this as the most vicious piece of legislation ever enacted. So of course the capitalist and this is the support of the police, the courts and gangs of higher thugs to viciously smash strikes during this period. Remember strikes then they weren't like some of the strikes that we've seen recently and that maybe some comrades here have participated in. Now these were extremely militant battles. And often the police would turn up to open fire at pickets, they launched tear gas those sent in fascist gangs. But nevertheless a series of large strikes developed in the spring of 1934. In Minneapolis, which was a key distribution city truck drivers organize a solid strike to demand recognition of the team says union. Now after four months and several violent clashes, and I really do mean violent. There was one incident the police shot 67 strikers and killed two of them. The employers finally conceded. In San Francisco there was a strike of the longshore men, which is dockers, the union recognition, ultimately turned into a general strike in July of 1934, and the employers ended up giving into the union's demands. Elsewhere there was a strike of 325,000 textile workers in the American south that very quickly spread nationwide. So by mid September 421,000 textile workers had joined the strike. Now, many of those strikes in 34, and particularly those in mass production industries did actually end in failure. But most of that was, was due to the conservatism of the leadership of the American Federation of Labor, the AFL, and its policy of organizing workers and craft lines. So for example, when rubber workers in Acron, Ohio, set up a union on a plant basis, the AFL leadership actually intervened to split up the workers into 19 separate craft locals. And such division would of course prove fatal. But however, with pressure from below, we'd actually end up transforming the union structures. In the course of 1934 to 35, hundreds of thousands of workers in mass production industries began to get organized. And of course, the AFL couldn't simply ignore them. So 1935 established a committee for industrial and organization. The idea was to organize workers by industry. So all workers in a single plant would be united together. And with increasing resistance by a layer of the AFL leadership, that committee ended up splitting from the AFL in November of 35 to form the Congress for Industrial Organization, which is known as the CIO. Now the growth of the CIO was actually spectacular. There was clearly a militant mood that built up in the working class, which is desperate to find an expression. And with the AFL providing little lead, what strikes it did organize, you know, clearly under pressure from below, they were characterized by desire by the leadership to kind of compromise with the bosses at any cost. But in contrast, the CIO was characterized by militancy by energy. And importantly, it was getting results. And that rise in militancy was reflected in the changing tactics of striking workers. So in the mid-1930s, strikers began occupying their factories in order to prevent the use of scabs. And this tactic was known as the sit-down strike, and it began to quickly spread. So in 36, there were only 48 sit-down strikes in the whole of the USA. But by the next year, this had risen to 477. And this included significant battles at General Motors and the Chrysler plants, where the workers were successful in winning union recognition. So within four years of its foundation, the CIO organized four million workers, and that included breakthroughs in the auto industry, steel, rubber and packing houses. But even white collar workers and agricultural workers were rushing to join the union. And the general rise in militancy also had the effect of whipping the AFL into shape. So by 1939, it then reported four million workers, which was the highest level since 1920 peak. And therefore the situation was really transformed. And that's something that the left performers today can't imagine. So in the space of four years from 1933 to 37, the total percentage of workers organized in the USA rose from just 8% to 22%. And that was, of course, an enormous step forward and important conquest for the working class, as described as labor's giant leap. Despite the enormous potential that exists to harness that militancy into a political struggle for socialism, union leadership still lag far behind. As ultimately there were reformists, you know, they saw the class struggles being limited to simply the economic struggle. They had no perspective of transforming it into a political struggle for the working class to take power. They ultimately played the role of dampening them, see, dampening the militancy of the working class. And they simply encouraged workers to support the Democratic Party, rather than lead a struggle to create a mass workers party. Now, worldwide the radicalization wasn't just limited to the USA in Britain, you had the split of the ILP from the Labour Party, because you had Labour in power carrying out a strategy against the working class. You had the revolutionary opportunities in France with a wave of sit-down strikes in 36. You had Spain, the revolution beginning in 31, leading to the Civil War starting in 36. But also the black reaction in Nazi Germany. You know, all these things, of course, have many factors behind them. But I think the economic depression was clearly important. Now, I'm running out of time, so I just want to come in by kind of drawing out what I think are the main lessons. I don't stress the limits to any historical analogy. And of course the 30s is not going to look exactly like the period we're in now. But I think, firstly, I would say that, you know, COVID-19 isn't the ultimate cause of this current crisis. The ultimate cause is fundamentally capitalism. I think just imagine things will look very different if the system in the world was not run for profit. Secondly, depression is not a one-act drama, nor does it proceed in kind of a straight line of permanent decline. You know, there can be periods of stabilization, like you saw in early 1930, or even temporary recoveries, like you had in 33 to 37. We mustn't let that disorientate us. You know, it's worth bearing in mind when we see the current recovery on the stock exchange, for example, or economists predicting a V-shaped recession. I think that's very much ruled out. There's massive overproduction that's been built up in the system over years. That's not going to be quickly resolved. Thirdly is evidenced by the New Deal. The ruling class will go to great lengths to save their system when they feel it necessary. Hence the trillions that have been spent by governments worldwide recently in trying to prop up their economies. But all these things ultimately have their limits. And I think we're unlikely to see a return of any kind of significant New Deal or Green New Deal. You know, whilst the ruling class may well be happy for the state to save them, the problem is the colossal debts that have been built up over the previous period in order to try and get out of the previous crisis. So look at in China, for example, 2008 to 2009, they had it in effect the biggest New Deal the world's ever seen. There's that famous statistic that they poured more concrete in China in every three years than the USA did in the whole of the 20th century. But in doing so, they actually quadrupled the state debt so that now the amount of money offered by the government is minuscule in comparison to what came before and also in terms of what is needed. I think more likely you're going to see the prospect of government defaults like sort of Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal before or Argentina recently. And that really means massive austerity will be on the edge of the day. Now, fourthly, these events will have a profound impact on consciousness. You know, it'll be the working class and poor who will be made to pay for the crisis. In 1930s, it took a few years for that crisis to be transformed into industrial meditancy. You saw the same thing between 2008 and 2011. But now I think it's likely to be far shorter as that anger has already been built up over the past decade. And actually for many people that the struggles facing them struggles over issues of life and death, you know, kind of, you know, safe operation of work spaces, PPE and so on. And then finally, I think with the rise in the class struggle, we'll see a transformation of the mass organizations of the working class, particularly the trade unions and the political parties. And we of course know that the leadership will play a reactionary role in this in general. You've seen the TUC line up recently with the Tories and the CBI to kind of enact class compromise policies. But there will of course be rising meditancy in the rank and file. And that of course will push a section of the leadership to the left when other cases the leadership will be replaced. In workers' parties, I think they're likely to come even more palerized than they are at the moment. You'll see either the development of a left wing, which I think under these conditions could be pushed very far to the left. Or if that kind of development is blocked, then you see these parties enter into crisis and you see new formations, either as the result of splits or new parties emerging from mass movements. In other words, a continuation of the processes that we've seen over the past decade born in much higher level as the pressure is going to be so much more intense. Now, I think what we could be certain of is that there's going to be no return to kind of so-called new manatee. I think a lot of people still believe that this is a temporary crisis and that once the pandemic is solved, things will go back. But in reality, I think 2020 will be seen really as a kind of fundamental turning point in capitalism's history. Very similar to the way that 1929 was. I think again stress it will be more like the conditions of the 1930s that capitalism will return to. Mass unemployment, destitution, and those of more recent history. And I think it's this process that will fundamentally shake up the consciousness of millions of people around the world. And it's this really that's preparing the ground for social explosion in all countries in which socialism on a world scale will be put firmly back on the agenda. So I'll leave it there. Thank you.