 ond yr ysgol ar y cwylu amnych, fel Alun yn ffaluio newid yn ysgol, ond y gallwn ei wneud y dypen ar y wath rai gael ei fod yn rhaeg, ac yn y cwyrdd o'r ysgol ar gyfer y dyma. Mae'r anhygoel oedd yr anhygoel nad ydych chi'n sung dorodol, anhygoel a'r llach gael ei wneud? Rydyn ni'n gwneud i'r anhygoel, yn ymddir hwn, oedd y meddwl i'r sesŵr ar yr anhygoel. Mae ffordd o'r ddiweddol. Maen nhw'n ddweud hynny. Mae'r gwyffredig. Ffyrdd yma. Mae'n ffwrdd yma? Ymhyfydig. Mae hynny, felly sy'n ddiddordeb. Mae'r gwrdd o Gymrae Hwn. Mae'r gwrdd o Gymrae Hwn. Mae'n enw i. Mae yna llawer o'r anodd yma. Mae'r anodd yma gyda'r yr argyfwyd i'i gael. Mae'n anodd yma. Mae'n anodd yma'r anodd yma. ..y'r cwestiwn yw'r cwestiynau. Yn ychydig, rydyn ni'n mynd i ddweud? Rydyn ni'n mynd i ddweud? Rydyn ni'n mynd i ddweud? Mae'r rhai o'r tyfu yn y ffordd i'r wyrdd. Allan Woods yn ymddi'r cyflawn i gydig o'r bobl... ..y ffordd o'r cyflawn i'r Rhôl Merthyr. Mae'r cwestiwn yw'r cwestiwn... I don't know what he or she might be, but a Marxist, they are most emphatically not. Now look, let's, you see this, we touched upon this question yesterday, didn't we, where I mentioned the nonsense of the postmodernist imbecils who argue that there is no lawfulness about history. You can't understand history because it is a string of accidents caused by the activities of individual men and women about whom you can't really say very much. Now, if we take all the pretentious academic verbiage surrounding this aren't nonsense, you come back to the famous phrase of Henry Ford who expresses himself, I think, much better than the postmodernist in very clear and concise English when he said, and I quote, history is bunk, in other words, history is nonsense. That's what Henry Ford said. And if you don't believe Henry Ford, I will quote another very famous bourgeois historian, Arnold Toinby. He used to be very famous anyway. In my young day he wrote very thick books about history. Arnold Toinby said the following. He said, history, he said, is just one damn thing after another, which I suppose in one sense is true. I suppose so. But you see, I'll quote an even somebody that was a serious historian, a very serious historian of the 18th century from this country, an Englishman, Edward Gibbon, who wrote a very deservedly celebrated, marvellous masterpiece, which I think has never been equaled even to this day, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes. I read that book when I was 14 years of age, believe it or not, during the school holidays. I devoured every page of six volumes. Fascinating, fascinating, really. I recommend it to you. But even Edward Gibbon, you see, he had to conclude. Let me see if I can find it. Yes, he made a famous quote. He said, his conclusion was, having studied the Roman Empire, you could excuse him for drawing this conclusion. He said, history said, is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. As I say, if you study the history of the terrible history of the crimes of the Roman Empire, you can understand this point of view. But nevertheless, of course, such a judgment of this cannot satisfy us as Marxists. We require a scientific explanation of history. Now, it is true. I will give you this. I will give you this. Comparing the history of the human race with, for example, natural selection or the galaxies or astronomy or anything like that, or physics, it does seem to be a bit more complicated. It's more complex interplay, if you like. For example, between objective factors, the material conditions in which history evolves, and the intervention of the conscious intervention of human beings. Now, that is not an important question. For us, that's a very important question. What we call the subjective factor, that's the conscious intervention of men and women in the historical process, is not a secondary question at all, and in fact, there are certain circumstances. You get a certain concatenation of circumstances, for example, as in Russia in 1917, where the subjective factor, the actual intervention of individuals plays an absolutely crucial, decisive role. The same way as the intervention of a good general in a battle can be decisive as against a bad general in a battle. You see, Trotsky made the point that he's quite right. It is astonishing, but I'll make the statement here and now. Without the presence of two individuals, two men, Lenin and Trotsky, the October Revolution in Russia, would never have happened. And if that would have been the case, those who were historians would now be writing that the whole idea of a Revolution in Russia was quite preposterous and most impossible, because it did not happen. No, no, no. The intervention of two men, I would say with Trotsky, he said, no, one man really, because he was the colossal, moral and personal and political authority of Lenin inside the Bolshevik party, which was a decisive factor. But this is a separate discussion that falls outside of the scope of the present talk. Yes, there is a multiplicity of factors, which seems very bewilding. Yes, it is a bit complex, but that's no excuse, is it? The fact that something is complex does not excuse a scientist for saying, well, we can't analyse it because it's complex. If that was the case, the growth of the development of science would have ceased a long time ago. That's not the case. The most complex processes can be understood and can be analysed into their constituent parts. And if you do this, you'll always find the intervention of individuals is important. Yes, but it's not absolute. It's always conditioned by a series of material circumstances which are beyond the control of individuals, completely and absolutely beyond the control of any individuals. And you'll see that in the course of the discussion which we're going to have this morning in relation to Rome. Now, if you take the whole of human history, it is possible to understand it. It is possible to draw conclusions from it. The American philosopher George Santana, not a Marxist, a bourgeois philosopher, but an intelligent man, who said, and I quote, he who does not learn from history will forever be doomed to repeat it. Commons, we don't want to repeat history, history of terrible defeats about which I'm going to delve somewhat in relation to the Roman Republic. No, no. And therefore, it's our duty to learn from history by those ignoramuses and pseudo-Marxists who say, oh no, you can't, I can't discuss ancient Romans and good heavens above. If you come to my house one day, perhaps you will, and look into my library, which is considerable, I've got all the works there of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky that are available currently. This is the 50-odd volumes of Marx and Engels. I have read them all. And what do you find? It's a gold mine. It's full of the most fantastic things. You see, Marxism isn't a narrow thing. The sectarian imbecils who think you're going to do Marxism do a couple of cheap slogans and they strut around like peacocks pretending that they've understood that they've understood nothing. Marxism is a very rich thing, which encompasses a vast area of human knowledge and experience and culture. It's vast. And that includes history, and art, and culture, and science, everything. Everything is included, and philosophy, anything you care to mention. But you see, as far as history is concerned, Engels wrote a brilliant book about the history of Germany in the 15th century. It's called The Peasant War in Germany. What was he doing wasting his time? I don't think so. It's an important book which you should read. Marx and Engels actually wrote on all kinds of things. You wouldn't believe it. Did you know that they wrote a history of early Christianity and of Islam? It's all there. Amazing, amazing. Not to be published generally. You find it in the collected works. They took the time to study history. The postmodernist, if you follow them, the only purpose of studying history is an amusement. That's what it boils down to. They read history as an amusement. To pass the time, say, if you read a detective novel, we don't do that. We have a serious attitude towards history. And Marx and Engels explained, even in the Communist Manifesto, one of the most fundamental laws of history is what they say in the manifesto, that all of human history is the history of class struggle. By the way, you must qualify that statement. They're referring to written history. They're referring to the history of what we call civilization, which goes back no more than about 10 or 11,000 years. The first civilization in the Middle East. The beginning is your class society. Prior to that, by the way, the human race was around for quite a long time. How long? Well, who knows? Different ways of calculating it, depending on how you define what it is to be human. But a million years perhaps it wouldn't be unreasonable. Call it 100,000 years then. And throughout that period there were no classes and therefore there could be no class struggle. Also there was no state. There was no police force. There were no prisons. There was no money. There was no bankers. And yet people somehow managed reasonably well under those conditions for a long time. Which answers, by the way, this absolute piffle, this arrant nonsense about human nature. The thing which is against human nature, against the whole of our history and prehistory, is precisely class society and particularly capitalism. That's against human nature. Against some of the most fundamental aspects of human nature. That's another discussion anyway. To come back to the point. All of history is the history of class struggle. You know, we sometimes, I think we'll be there in January for an international executive committee meeting in Turin, in Italy, where there's a marvellous Egyptian museum. I think it must be outside of Egypt, it must be the finest, most complete Egyptian museum in the Middle East. In the world. It's a marvellous place. If you can go to Turin, sometime I'd recommend that you visit this place. And in this place you find something very interesting. This is a papyrus, you know. That's an old word for paper, the old paper and manuscript. It's called the strike papyrus. Oh, yes. It's a detailed account of a strike in ancient Egypt. You know the strike of whom? Of the pyramid builders. Now, I bet you all thought that the pyramid builders were slaves, didn't you? I wouldn't ask you to put your hands up, you know. If you've seen the film, it was on TV the other day. The Ten Commandments by Dimil, isn't it? It shows the conditions of the Israelites enslaved by the wicked Egyptians toiling as slaves, building the pyramids. Well, no, no, nonsense. The men that built the pyramids were not slaves. They were free labourers that worked for the state for a wage and for a stipulated time. Okay? And very often they were paid to things like beer and so on. It's not a bad idea, I think, you know. If you've got, if you're a person of taste like myself. But they were paid in kind, in wheat, in corn, in some meat, I suppose, in fish and beer. Anyway, they weren't satisfied with the way they were, so they went on strike. And this is quite an interesting. If you look at the readings, you could learn a lot about how a strike is won and how a strike is lost. That's a separate matter. If you take the history of ancient Greece, Athens in particular, was a history of fferocious class struggle, fferocious. And revolutions. Oh yes, they were. Revolutions. Wonderful. That's a wonderful theme in itself. Perhaps I'll get down to writing about that one of these days. But the most, by the way, is a marvellous expression by Solon the Great of Athens who was involved in one of these revolutions. You know what he said about the law? Wonderful definition. He said the law. The law is like a spider's web, he said. The small are caught and the great tear it up. Now that sums up the essence of law in a few words. You see how clever the Greeks were. Anyway, let's leave the Greeks to one side. Because undoubtedly the clearest picture, the most complete picture we have of the class struggle in antiquity, is the history of Rome, which is illustrated by a large body of literature, of writing, people like Plutarch, Livy, Seatonius, Tacitus and other writers. Wonderful stuff, which gives us a very detailed picture which you don't get for any other civilization. Well worth reading, by the way. If you have the time, if not you can read my book. There we are. Please buy it, we need the money. Anyway. Anyway. That's to delve a little bit closer into this question. Now, you see, when you look at the development of Rome from the earliest period, it's quite astonishing. It's amazing. How what was originally a tiny insignificant little village more or less on the banks of the Tiber became the ruling power in the whole of the known world of the Mediterranean. You know, and they did so in quite a short space of time furthermore. This is an interesting subject in and of itself. Now, how do you explain this? Well, it's a number of explanations are possible. One is that this was an important strategic point on the banks of the Tiber, commanding a whole area of Italy. There was also the fact they had access to a precious commodity that is not generally realized. They had access to a very important commodity, which was salt. Now, to you, perhaps, salt is nothing very important. You take it for granted, didn't you? You always got it present on the table. You can leave it or not leave it as the case might be. But in the ancient world, salt, and even places like Africa, down to the recent period, salt was an extremely valuable and rare commodity. Fundamental, not just for cooking, but also for preserving food and didn't have refrigerators in those days. So, yes, it was very important. And therefore the salt deposits which they had access to, that was a very important profitable basis for trade and so on. They came under the attention of other powers. There was no such thing at that time as Italy. There was no such thing as Italy, really, until the 19th century, the late 19th century. But it was divided into different tribes. Most of them spoke similar languages. They were known as the Latins. That's where the word Latin comes from. Did you study Latin at school? Hands up all those who studied at Latin at school. Oh, quite a... Not that many, you know. In my day, of course, it was compulsory in my school. Five years of Latin. Quite a difficult language, Latin. You know what we have to say about Latin? I'll tell you. Latin is an ancient language. As old as old could be. It killed the ancient Britons and now it's killing me. There you are. But anyway, the Latins all spoke similar languages. They weren't the same. And the Romans also spoke one of the Latin languages. There were others. Mysterious people like the Etruscans. That's where you get the word Tuscany from. The Etruscans were much more advanced than the surrounding nations anyway. Not more advanced than the Greeks that were in the south of Italy. The Etruscans are a mystery. Not much is known about the Etruscans actually. But at one stage it seems that they actually conquered Rome. Probably they were after the salt or something. Who knows? But the early kings of Rome, according to Livy, were the Etruscan kings. And according to Livy, they were eventually driven out by the Roman people who eventually established their independence. But this early Rome was, if you like, it's class spaces. It was an agricultural nation of course. Agricultural tribes really. They were tribes. The English used it in the origins of the family which is very interesting. But they had a necessity of defending themselves against other peoples surrounding tribes. And they evolved a very special thing. Something which other tribes didn't possess. They had in effect a citizens militia. These were free peasants. The majority were free peasants. The democratic society which England describes. And the citizens were armed. They had an assembly. They took decisions democratically and so on. And this force eventually evolved a special military formation and a tactic which is far superior to the neighbouring tribes. It's known as the legion. You've heard of the Roman legion. This is the origin. The Roman legion. Powerful instrument. And the destiny of Rome was decided by one thing and one thing alone. And that's war. Rome is the product of war. Only war. Who is it? I think it was Heraclitus that said war is the father of all things and have made some men great and other slaves some in free and some in slaves and so on. Very true in the case of Rome. It was formed by war. And this ferocious instrument that they had, this legion, they were disciplined. More disciplined than the neighbouring tribes. And the legions could function in a very disciplined manner. Also in a very flexible manner. OK. They would advance it with a wall of shields. OK. They'd have a very heavy spear. I think it was called a pilum. Very heavy spear. Which they would get within striking distance of the enemy. They would throw this spear. You'd get a rain of these missiles pouring down on your head. Cutting you in half. Shattering the first line. The first line was shattered. They'd then rush in. The shields served like a tank. They were protected by a wall of shields. Then they had a nicer thing called the gladius, which is a sword. So the word gladiator comes from. Sword. A short stabbing sword. A very wicked implement. Once they clashed, they had the wall of shields and then out of this wall would proceed. These stabbing instruments. Cutting down the enemy left, right and centre. This mechanism was quite...wasn't really improved upon until the 18th century. When you had another revolution where they invented the bayonet. The musket and bayonet. Same thing. A volume of musket fire followed by a bayonet charge. The Romans pursued a similar tactic. Anybody cut a long story short. Over a long period they waved wars. They started off as defensive wars. Then they became offensive wars against other tribes. Some of these wars lasted quite a long time. The wars were the Sam Knights. They proved particularly troublesome. But eventually the Romans defeated all of them. And when they defeated the Terrarium, they were quite merciless. They'd take it over, they'd plunder it, and they would take slaves. Although slavery in the early days didn't play a key role. Rome was still a society. Economic formation based on free peasants. Small holders and so on. Now all of that changed when they went further south. You imagine the map of Italy. This long leg with the boot on it. As they proceeded south, for the first time they came across more advanced peoples. Far more advanced than themselves. They were Greeks actually. They spoke Greek. People in Sicily and the southern part of Italy were Greeks, Greek colonists. They spoke Greek to this day by the way. There's a particular culture in the south of Italy. Fred will bear me out here. He's from that part. The test of the blood indicates that there's a very close affinity to this day between the southern Italians and the Greeks. Anyway, they were quite powerful, quite wealthy neighbours. They in turn were being attacked and conquered by the Carthaginians. You heard of the Carthaginians. They were based in Carthage, which is modern Libya, I believe, just across the Mediterranean. They were a powerful mercantile trading people who'd also expanded. They had the beginnings of an empire. In Sicily they had outposts. In Spain also they had outposts. They controlled gold mines and so on. The Romans of course looked upon this with some degree of envy. Of course they clashed with the Carthaginians in every. In what's known as the Punic Wars. Punic Wars is a word for Carthage actually. They were several Punic Wars. Initially the Romans came off very badly in these wars. Many because they didn't yet have a fleet. They weren't sailors the Romans. They were landlubbers. They didn't know anything about ships. They knew about land war but not naval warfare. Whereas the Carthaginians were very skilled sailors and they had a very good war fleet, which systematically initially defeated the Romans until the Romans developed a tactic where they could grapple with these Carthaginian vessels, put a plank down, whereby they'd gain entry into the Carthaginian ships and then they'd wage war the same as on land and then the scales begin to tip in their favour. Incidentally one little amusing incident. The early Romans were on quite a low primitive culture and level actually. Peasants. That was reflected even in their religion which is similar to the Greek religion with the gods of different names. Zeus becomes Jupiter and Athenae becomes Minerva and so on. Yes, but you're struck by the crudeness but the primitiveness of the early Roman culture. Even at a later stage actually Roman culture really was mainly copied from the Greeks. There's a wonderful statue in the British Museum just down the road. You should visit the, don't miss the British Museum, those of you that haven't been to London before, please go. And if you go there, I'm sure Anna will forgive me if I tell you, you'll meet my girlfriend there. I'm in love with this woman. I've been for many years. Not as nice as my wife, not as beautiful as my wife but nevertheless I've got a special affection. It's the most fantastic statue of Venus, Aphrodite, having a bath. It's the most wonderful. It never ceases to astonish me. How can anyone create a statue like that? It fears if you could touch it and it would still be warm. And it's a stone for God's sake. It's stone. How could they do this? It's really, I don't think any subsequent art has ever improved upon these sculptures. That's a separate matter. But anyway, if you go back, they had a very crude culture and quite a practical attitude. They were practical. Practical was the Romans. No time for philosophy or any of this Greek Mamby Pamby stuff. There's nonsense straight to the point. There's a naval battle took place and of course they were quite superstitious. So they had to have the priest on board and the priest was like a soothsayer. You predict the result of the battle and you would tell him the omens are good or the omens are bad. They had all kinds of different ways, studying in animals, entrails and so on. But one of the tests was they had chickens. Not any chickens, sacred chickens you must understand. Holy chickens. They put grain on the floor and if the chickens would eat the corn, it was a good sign. If they wouldn't eat it, it was a very, very bad sign indeed. Anyway, so before the battle, the commander of the ship called the priest, he had the chickens, he put the grain down. He said, no, no, he said, what's the score? He said, no, no, he can't do it. Look, they're not eating, they're not eating. Bad sign, bad sign. Don't join the battle, he said. Oh, he said, the captain was a practical Roman. He said, well, if the chickens won't eat, let them drink and he threw them into the sea. And he joined the battle. Unfortunately sad to say he lost. Of course, pay attention to what the priests say. Anyway, this is all by the by. The fact of the matter is they succeeded in defeating the Carthaginians and they did so in a very brutal way. There were several wars. At one stage, the Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy and nearly got the Romans to their knees, but he was defeated in the end by the power of Rome. They invaded Carthage and they wrecked the joint, basically. The Romans were like that. They killed most of the people, enslaved the rest, and then they destroyed, the city of Carthage was destroyed completely, and they even went to the lengths. By the way, I should say there was one particularly horrible individual in the Roman senate called Cato who would make a speech on anything on public toilets or anything dogs found in the streets or anything. You'd always finish with the same phrase. De lenda est catargo, Carthage must be destroyed. I think we could take a relief out of Cato's book. We should finish every speech we give with the phrase, capitalism must be destroyed. That wouldn't be a bad thing. Anyway, Cato insisted on this. Eventually he got his way. They smashed the Carthaginian, they destroyed the army, they wrecked the city, they dismantled the city. They even went to the lengths of sowing the land with salt, so nothing would grow on it. Romans were like that. Now, let's leave the moral questions to one side. You can't have a moral attitude towards this. I'm stating facts. These things actually took place, but one of the things you must understand is the consequences of these wars and the main consequence you have to bear in mind is that they all resulted in a vast army of slaves, which was not the case before. A huge army of slaves was introduced into Rome, into Roman agriculture. Think of the lot of the poor Roman soldier, the poor foot slugger, he's away for years fighting the wars and so on. In the meantime, his land is being taken over, his house, his family, his land is taken over by wealthy slave owners. Who then put slaves to work on the land. And Rome becomes a slave economy, completely, completely depended upon the labour of the slaves. Now, what happens to the Roman soldiers when they come home and they find they're dispossessed? They go to the legal records, they can't do anything about it. Power's not in their hands. Well, the only thing left to them is that they're Roman citizens. Keywis Romano sum, I am a Roman citizen, that gave you rights, all kinds of rights. And among the rights were that you could go to Rome and find accommodation somewhere and get fed by the state with so much bread, so much bread and other things, just enough to keep him alive, but it was enough. And therefore, this was the basis of the Roman proletariat. Now here an explanation is absolutely necessary. You see, the Roman proletariat had nothing whatsoever to do with the modern proletariat, nothing. The modern proletariat is the only class which produces the wealth of society. The Roman proletariat feeds everybody, clothes everybody, builds houses for everybody. The modern proletariat, the Roman proletariat produced nothing. There was a small number involved in small scale productions, mainly artisans producing luxury goods for the rich. But the big majority lived a kind of parasitic existence in which the state had to maintain them. They didn't maintain anybody. And the really productive class of society was not the so-called proletarians, it was the slaves. Now that's an important thing to bear in mind. I don't think there's any necessity to explain to you the terrible conditions in which the slaves lived and worked. It doesn't bear thinking about. They were literally worked and starved to death. That's what made them profitable. You see, now here's another point, here's a contradiction of slave labour. All forms of production always got some kind of a contradiction. Here's a fundamental contradiction. You see, slave labour is not very productive. It isn't. For the obvious reason that slaves must be forced to work on pain of being whipped or killed. They're forced to work under dreadful conditions. Therefore, they're not interested in productivity, producing anything. They're forced to work. So the labour of an individual slave of that sort is very low. And slavery can only be productive or profitable if it's on a vast scale. A huge number of slaves whereby you just simply work them to death. They die, the corpses thrown to one side, they replace it with other slaves. The Romans enslaved whole cities. Not just Carthage, a classical case of point is the city of Corinth. The Greek city, by the way, which was a rising commercial power, which they saw as a threat, they saw as a rival. They simply smashed the city of Corinth and enslaved the entire population. Now, just imagine, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. By the way, it wasn't a racial question. None of them were black. These were all white European people, you know, Greeks, Carthaginians, whatever. They were enslaved and then put to work under these terrible conditions. The slave owners had absolute power over the lives of the slaves. If a slave was whipped and tortured and so on, he could be crucified. That was quite normal or killed in some way. Or maybe the slave owner would beat him to death. Nothing would happen to the slave owner. The same is true by the way of women. Women were also regarded as second class citizens as the property of the males. A property of the father would do a delight with his daughters and his wives. This is also the case. Anyway, these are some of the contradictions that existed. Now, you see, there were contradictions also, it has to be said, between the plebians, the proletarians in the towns and the slave owners. The Roman capitalists, if you want to use that. Even that phrase is often used, Roman capitalists. They weren't really capitalists in the modern sense. For one good reason, the modern capitalist is an exploiter, is an oppressor. You can say what you like. But the modern capitalist does play to some extent a role in production. In the sense that he invests a large part of the surplus value in creating new production, machinery, factories, in order to increase the productivity of labour and production. That was the case. But in the ancient world, that was unknown. And if you think about it, what's the point? What is the point of investing a single denari? That was the pennies, if you like, in machinery or labour-saving devices when you had an automatic vast supply of dirt-sheep human labour to be disposed of as you wish. There's no point in it. Furthermore, slavery is incompatible with machinery. Anything delicate, you put some delicate machinery in the hands of a slave, he will wreck it in five minutes. That was the case in, I'll draw a parallel in a moment with the southern states of America where slavery existed up to the Civil War. And you know what a mule is? It's a cross between a donkey and a horse. The mule was invented in the southern states of America for a purpose. See, a horse is a relatively delicate animal. And a horse in the hands of a slave, he wouldn't last five minutes, he'd be crippled, quite destroyed. A donkey on the other hand, he's got many disadvantages, but he's a tough beast, far tougher than a horse. And therefore, by fusing the two in a mule, you've got some of the advantages of a horse and you've got something as resilient as a donkey. This is a product of slavery, as Marx explains in Capital. You couldn't give anything delicate. And therefore, slavery itself was an impediment to the advance of science. Let me give you another example. Did you know who invented this steam engine? The British Commons would say, oh, it's some Englishman, new combing. Who was it? I can't remember. Some Englishman in the 19th or 18th century. That's not correct. Did you know that the ancient Greeks invented a steam engine in Alexandria? And it worked perfectly. They knew how to produce a working steam engine, but it was just a toy of no interest. This is a toy, that's all. No productivity. You couldn't because of slavery. You understand what I'm driving at. So what did the slave owners do? Well, they spent their surplus in ostentatious luxury of the most obscene sort, you know. Hughes Banquets in which they consumed such luxuries as stuffed larks, tongues, or pearls dissolved in wine, all kinds of things, you know. They dressed in silks with somebody, a Cato complaint was an excuse for women to go around naked, but there we are, there was just his miserable old mentality. They squandered their money in idle luxury. That was how the Roman Republic was beginning to degenerate. And therefore there was also a conflict between the poor people in Rome, the proletarians, and the rich gangsters, you know. The conditions in Rome, you see, when you think of Rome, ancient Rome, you've probably been to Rome on holiday, if you haven't, you should, it's a remarkable place. You see all these marvellous remains of temples and marble columns and so on. You think that Rome was like that, Rome was not like that at all. Most of the Roman people lived in miserable existence in very squalid circumstances, in slums, which were built high in order to extract more rent out of people, you know. And of course these places were death traps, they frequently caught fire, they were stinking, there was no hygiene, there were no toilets, the streets was like an open laboratory, you know. Disease was life, and life for most people was a pretty miserable affair. Next to that was this extreme luxury, which obviously produced precisely class conflict and discontent, which manifested itself in repeated uprisings and riots of the city poor. Now, here we come to an interesting episode, which is not generally remembered, unfortunately, and I'll name two names, which you may never heard of them. The Gracchi, or the Gracchi to give its correct pronunciation, the Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracus, okay. These men were aristocrats, they were from the top layer of society, the patricians, the senators and so on. They could have had an easy life. You see, now Marx explains, and this is an interesting point which people don't generally remember, that there comes a point in the revolution where the more intelligent layers of the ruling class, the intellectuals, the higher ups and so on, break from their class and go over to the side of the revolution. Now, that was the case in Rome. Tiberius Gracus could have been a senator, he could have had a nice life, but he was appalled particularly by the condition of these poor peasants driven off the land, and he determined to put a stop to it. His programme was a programme actually, if you like, of an agrarian revolution, agrarian reform anyway. What he wanted to do basically was to put the clock back to restore, to break up the big slave estates and hand the land back to the peasants, and he developed quite a big following among the city poor. Of course, this programme, which was revolutionary in its implications, alarmed the senators, alarmed the ruling class, which were the slave owners, and they decided to put a stop to it to cut the long story short. They smashed the movement, and they brutally murdered Tiberius Gracus and threw his body into the Tiber. Similar fate awaited his brother who tried to carry on the same programme, Gaius Gracus, and the agrarian movement to cut a long story short was aborted. After that defeat of this attempted, aborted revolution, if you like, you had the beginnings of a complete decline of the Roman Republic. The question must be asked, how do you explain the defeat? Why were they defeated? The reason for that goes back to this division between the free Roman citizens, the poor Roman proletarians, and the slaves, because in the last analysis, you see, the poor Roman proletarians had to understand they also were deriving benefits from the labour of the slaves. They partook of the exploitation, if you like. If you went to parallel, you'd have to go back again to the American Civil War. In the southern states of America, they were slavery. The slaves were black, that was not the same in Rome, but the slaves were black slaves from Africa. And then, of course, you also had another layer of poor whites, very poor whites. The conditions of their lives actually was not that much different to the condition of slaves in many ways. And yet, you see, there's always this mentality. There's always somebody lower than yourself. And they were white after all, you see. They were superior to the slaves. Although they were regarded by the wealthy land-owning families with contempt, they were referred to by the slave owners in the south as white trash. White trash, that was their attitude. Nevertheless, when the chips were down and things were serious, the white trash supported the slave owners and joined the Confederate army fighting in the Civil War on the side of slavery. That was approximately somewhat similar to what happened in Rome. That's the reason why the Roman Revolution was defeated in the last instance. So what happened after that? Well, there was a period after that of change. And the changes, you see, the changes in the economic basis, that's always the decisive factor. The changes towards a slave-owning society led to a fundamental change in the army. I said earlier on that the original Roman army was an army of free citizens, a citizen's militia, if you like. But that finished. That finished because of slavery you had the development of a professional army. Which gradually separated itself from society. The soldiers were no longer loyal to the Republic as they had been in the past. They were loyal to their general. Because the general was the man that assured them victory and therefore a share in the plunder. Particularly important for them was the fact that when they ceased their military service they would have a pension, they would have a plot of land stolen from somebody else, of course, stolen many from the Italians, conquered people of Italy or in Spain and a certain amount of money. This was important at a time when there was no social security and so on. And therefore the soldier, you must get this into your mind, the soldier now becomes loyal to the generals. And the generals were, not to put to fine appointed, a bunch of gangsters. Absolutely gangsters. Military adventurers out for themselves. Out to grab whatever they could grab. Out if possible grab the power of the state. There was a series of these gangsters. Crassus, Pompey, you might have heard Pompey, Marius and ultimately Julius Caesar. You've heard of Julius Caesar, of course. And this is important. This from a Marxist point of view is important because we're here dealing with the theory of the state. What is the state? What is the state? Well Lenin defined it, following angles. He said, the state in the last analysis, sown of all its niceties and embellishments, the state is ultimately only armed bodies of men in defence of property. That's all it is. Armed bodies of men. The army. The army now becomes, if you like, a semi-independent power, increasingly independent of society, standing for its own interests, not even the interests of the ruling class, not even the interests of the slave owners, nor their own interests. The interests of these gangsters and of course the soldiers that followed the gangsters. There was a series of civil wars, brutal civil wars, brutal civil wars, in which one gangster would win and another gangster would lose, followed by terrible slaughter, massacres, prescriptions. You can't imagine the brutality of that period of the republic. And eventually this leads to what we call caesarism. But before we come to that point, I must now refer you to one of the greatest revolutionary episodes in the whole of history. And that's the slave revolt led by Spartacus. Now, you might not know this, but there were not one slave revolt. There were many slave revolts, actually. Particularly in Sicily, the slaves actually took control of Sicily and had to be ejected by terrible force. But the most wonderful event was this revolt of the slaves. It was a film. Let's try a bit of popular consultation again. How many of you have seen the film Spartacus? Not many. You must all see that film. And it's astonishing. It never ceases to amaze me how the producers of a film in Hollywood could produce a film of that. Well, I know why. And I know who's responsible. Who's responsible is Kirk Douglas, the actor. He was quite a left-wing individual. He was a very wealthy man because he was a successful actor. He put the money up for this film out of his own pocket. He said, we must have a film about this man, Spartacus. He plays Spartacus in the film, and it's a wonderful film. Some people can sneer it and say, well, this is not accurate. That is not accurate. Of course, we're dealing here with the work of fiction. It's not an historical work in that sense. I'll tell you one thing. That film is more accurate, more truthful, in its depiction of the essence of a revolution and the essence of the Spartacus uprising than anything else you can read or study. I'll stake my reputation on it. It's a marvellous recreation of what that was like. Just imagine a tiny group of gladiators. That's what they were, because these slaves, some of them were forced to fight and kill each other in the arena for the entertainment of the public. The ruling class had to keep the public entertained. Nowadays, there are good other methods, television, and dare I mention the word football? I don't know my opinion of that particular counter-revolutionary activity, about which I better not say any more for fear of causing another Spartacus uprising in the hall. There's some football fanatics in our ranks, I fear. Anyway, there we are. Yes, it plays the same role. Keep the masses happy with something. Keep their mind off politics with something. You know, you're fighting the other team, the other cities, which is a stupid thing to do. It really has some unpleasant consequences, actually, seriously. It takes your mind off the class struggle. That's the intention of it. We leave that to one side. That was the case in Rome. Gladiate is slaughtering each other in the most horrible way, being promoted as a sport, you know, to keep people... These were gladiators in a gladiatorial school in the south of Italy, who suddenly rose up. I don't know exactly how it happened. There are records of this. The unfortunate thing, you see, comrades, is this. History is written by the victors always. And the voice of the vanquist is never heard. Or it's only heard in a very distorted way. It's only heard through the mouths of the oppressors. You only know about Spartacus on this uprising because of the people who murdered Spartacus and put that down, wrote the books. Yes, but even they, in spite of themselves, you can see reading this material were impressed. No doubt about it. Like the final battle where the slaves were finally confronted with the vast Roman force, which they could not defeat. At the end of the battle, they could have surrendered. They never surrendered. They never surrendered. And there was a mountain of corpses afterwards. When the Romans examined the course, the Roman historian says the following. What struck us that there were no wounds on the backs of any of them. All the wounds were on the front. In other words, they died fighting to the last man and to the last minute. And to the last woman also. The women also were active in this movement. But these guys, they turned against the trainers in this gladiator school. They seized the weapons. The weapons of a gladiator are primitive weapons. They're not really suitable for combating the might of a Roman army. An army which has conquered the world. Which at that time conquered the whole of the Mediterranean which is a huge empire. A powerful machine that defeated Carthage. Carthage, okay. Here's a gang of gladiators. Slaves, for goodness sake. Challenging us. Slaves. This is nothing. We'll soon deal with them. Yes, they thought they would. They were mistaken. They sent a force to put down this revolt. In the meantime, the gladiators appealed to the slaves to join them. The army was joined by quite a few people. They seized whatever weapons they could find to hand. Not very good weapons. And here's a Roman legion led by aristocratic young kids, you know, youth, to put them down. And they defeated their army. Not only defeated, they slaughtered them. Even though they were surrounded by a campant on Mount Vesuvius, actually. In the middle of the night, what's the word they used? When they come down on the mountains, Emma will have to help me here. What do they call it? When you up-sailing, is it? When you up-sail down the mountain using vines and so on and so forth. They turned up in the Roman camp. The Romans were all drunk celebrating their victory which they were sure they were. Bad mistake. They were slaughtered in their beds. Every single one, or one they allowed to go back and tell the Senate what had happened. They sent other armies. But each time the slaves won, you see they disarmed the Roman soldiers, they took their weapons. So now they were armed with serious weapons. And this man, Spartacus, he must have been some, very little is known about him. All kinds of nonsense the Romans wrote about him that he was supposed to be some kind of a king. That's because they could not accept that they were defeated by a slave. But an ordinary working man, they couldn't accept it. No, no, he must be a king of some sort. And his wife, his wife must have been some kind of an enchantress, some kind of a wizard. They put this in their books as an excuse to cover their ass, to cover their shame that one by one of the armies of Rome were defeated by the ordinary slaves. And this Spartacus, he must have been some leader. He must have been some leader. I mean, these slaves, it couldn't be an easy thing to fuse all these people together into an organized discipline fighting force. But he damn well did it, he did it, and he led them. He must have had some knowledge, I think, of the Roman methods of fighting. Probably at one stage he'd been a mercenary and auxiliary in the Roman army. There were many of those on the frontier. I guess that must be the explanation. Either way he was an extraordinary man. Now I can't deal with, I have no intention of dealing with who, which is an inspiring thing. And to this very day it's an inspiration. It's not an accident, by the way, that in 1919 Rosalachsburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, they described themselves as the Spartacus. The Spartacus League and so on. This is an inspiring story which I won't expand upon just to say somewhere I've got your Marxist comments if you just allow me to find them. Can I find them? That's the point. I blame the chairman entirely, by the way, messing my notes around. Aren't you? You haven't been looking at them, what do you mean? No, I haven't been looking, no. That's true. Now come to realise, have me look at my notes. They've got notes too. What am I doing here? Can't find it. Oh no, that's the communist manifesto. I've done that. Gallic wars. Caesar nuts. Anyway, where the hell is this quote? Marvelous quote from Marx. You must have this quote from Marx. Interesting. Yes, wait a minute, I'm coming to it. Bear with me. Bear with me. It's coming, it's coming. Aha! Marx, he read the Roman writer Appian who wrote an extensive history of this. He wrote to Engels saying, I've been reading Appian's book and so on. He says the following. I'm quoting it from Marx. Spartacus is revealed as the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history. Now that's some assertion, isn't it? The most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history. Great general, noble character, real representative of the ancient proletariat. In that sense of the oppressed classes. So there we have it. But of course the defeat of Spartacus, eventually they were defeated. I suppose that was the defeat inevitable? Well, probably, probably for that same reason. The weakness of the slavery vote is always the question. The failure to unite with the proletariat with the people in the towns. Although it must be said there were instances, quite a few instances, where the urban poor did go over to the slaves. But it wasn't sufficient. Also there were some divisions among the slaves. They didn't know what to do with their victories. I won't go into the details. It's a matter of speculation. The thing is they were defeated. And the defeat of Spartacus, by the way, you see the hypocrisy of the ruling class. They dare to criticise Lenin and Trotsky for being violent and bloodthirsty, which is a lie. You know what they've really got against Trotsky in particular and Lenin? You know what they... You know why? I'll tell you why. Look, in the hood of history, there have been many cases, many slave uprisings, countless slave uprisings throughout history. They've all been put down and defeated with the utmost violence and viciousness and cruelty by the ruling class. All of them were drowned in an ocean of blood. And here for once, in the Russian Civil War, here for once, slaves armed themselves and they defeated and they won. That is why they can't forgive Trotsky and Lenin. That's why they say that they're bloodthirsty, which is complete nonsense. But the revolution knew how to defend itself with arms. And yes, they took violent measures. You know to the best of my knowledge, you will correct me of course, as far as I know, wars. Did you know wars are about killing people? I think so. You know. What an utter nonsense. No, they can't forgive Lenin and Trotsky because they succeeded in the struggle against the rule class. And what happened to Spartacus? You know what happened. Well, you don't know what happened. According to the film, he was crucified along with the other slaves. I think it was said 12,000 or 20,000 slaves were crucified all along the Appian way. The corpses were left rotting for a long time as a warning to the slaves. Don't even think about rising up against us again. That's the real face of the ruling class. In the film, Spartacus also was crucified. Not so. According to Appian, which I believe, he was cut down in the middle of the... very courageously. Apparently he tried to cut his way right through to the Roman generals and of course he was overcome and was killed in the battle, fighting heroically. Like all the slaves, nobody had any wounds in the back. All received wounds in the front. Fighting to the last man for the victory of the poor people of the slaves. So only that should be our motto today. Anyway, I must finish because now I will run out of time. The defeat of the slaves was the end of the Republic, actually. All the rottenness, all the conflicts were exacerbated, the struggle between different adventurers and so on and so forth. Ending up of course with the victory of Julius Caesar. By the way, he was a very able man, an able general, very brutal general by the way. He wrote a book which we had to read in the school in Latin. The Gallic Wars, about his wars in France, in Gaul. Where he himself boasts, see in those days, the generals didn't try to hide behind, like now, humanitarian pauses and humanitarian wars and nonsense of that character. No, they were honest about it. Julius Caesar boasted that in France he mostly said, yeah, I probably killed about a million people. He said. He's proud of the fact. And nobody thought anything. On the contrary people thought that was quite a quite a nice thing to do. So, he was a very ruthless individual. But he was a very capable general. He was also a very capable propagandist. That's why he wrote a book about his own exploits. Written in the third person singular. He's probably also the inventor, the man who invented what do they call it? The spin doctors, the phrase. Sound bites, that's right. Sound bites. He invented it, like if an example. How's your Latin? Winnie, Weedy, Wiggy. I came, I saw, I conquered. Isn't that brilliant? He said that about his war against the the Parthians. Anyway, the Caesarist party, they were like, they were parties in the fact, he leaned upon the city poor. He did, he leaned, he was a rich, well, a ruined rich man, an venturer. He leaned upon the city mob, if you like. In order to strike blows against the ruling Senate. And there was a civil war. You know, he crossed the Rubicon, this river in the north of Italy which was the boundary beyond which no army was supposed to pass. He passed it. He was bold. Yes, you've got to give the man his due. He defeated the armies of his rivals. Defeated Pompey and so on. To power. He entered Rome. You know the first thing he did when he entered Rome? What's the first thing you would do? What's the first building you'd head for? The treasury, of course, where all the money was. Of course, the treasurer came out and said, I'm sorry I've lost the keys. Well upon Caesar, he used a very powerful argument. He pulled out a dagger and he said, find them. And he did. And of course then he had money to pay his troops which was the purpose of the exercise. Caesar came to power. Balance in between the classes, if you like. He had no intention of allowing the poor people to take power. He wanted power for himself. And here you have the origin of a phenomenon which was called Caesarism which in modern parlance we would call Bonapartism. What is Bonapartism? It's the same as Napoleon Bonapart. It's only the same as Napoleon Bonapart. It's where a strong man with an army at his disposal seizes power. Balance in between the classes but he constitutes power into his own hands. And the real power was in the hands of the army and of Caesar. Formerly it was in the hands of the Senate. And Caesar allowed them to believe that. He paid tribute to them as well. Of course the aristocratic party of the Senators didn't like this. They organized a conspiracy against Caesar as you know and he ended up rather badly stabbed to death in the Senate. It said that he collapsed before the statue of Pompey who he had defeated. Okay. But you see the Senators thought that they were smart. Thought that they were actually counter-revolutionaries. They wanted to restore the not democracy, that's nonsense. They wanted to restore the power of the Senate. The aristocracy, the slave owners. But of course the Caesarist party revived under Mark Anthony. There was a brief amount of fighting. These people were defeated and eventually power came into the hands of another crook. They were all crooks by the way. Not much difference between them. A man by the name of Octavian. Have you heard of Octavian? Yeah. No. Put your hand up to the shores of Octavian. Ah, quite a few. He's known by history by the name of Augustus. The first Emperor. This is the death of the Republic. You know. The people who assassinated Caesar thought that they were going to restore the Republic. They didn't. They finished it off completely. Power was now completely in the hands of Octavian. Power was now completely in the hands of Octavian. I think his only claim to fame is that Caesar, I think, was his great uncle. I think his only claim to fame is that Caesar, I think, was his great uncle. So therefore, he seized power. But here again, Augustus was like Caesar. He was smart. He pretended that the Senate still represented something. He turned up to the meetings. Modestly saluted them. Good day, good morning. Went away and decided everything on his own. Went away and decided everything on his own. Real power was in the hands of Augustus. It was in the hands of the army. Even the name Emperor. Okay? In Latin it's Imperator. That's a military term. It means a military commander. That tells you everything you need to know. If I'm to proceed any further down this road because the Republic is finished I'd have to begin with the Empire which is a different subject. Perhaps we can do this on another occasion. But for the time being I think we better let the corpse of the Republic rest in peace. And here you have the whole story as best as I could express it anyway. Of how the class struggle dominated the whole history of the Roman Republic and eventually brought about its end. Not only that. You must also understand that it was powerful economic factors that was determining everything actually. At every stage it determined exactly what was occurring. And that the individual actors whether it's the Gracchi or the or Crassus or Caesar or Pompey or any of these people were actors who were limited in what they could do by the objective material conditions as Marx explained. I think that's about perhaps it up for the time being. We will perhaps return to the Empire if permitted on some future occasion.