 Lenin once said that revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited. And we often see that those who are the worst victims of the capitalist system in ordinary times are also coming out all the more forcefully in periods of revolutions. And that's why it's no accident at all that millions of workers and youth today are joining the struggle against racism and sexism and all other forms of oppression exactly at the time of the deepest ever crisis of capitalism. The struggle against racism and all sorts of division and oppression is a natural part of the class struggle. And without championing the struggle against racism and national oppression, the socialist revolution can never be successful in fact. And we can see all of this in the Black Lives Matter movement that has been going on, maybe at a bit of a slower pace recently, but for the past six or seven months. This has been a movement of millions of people revolting against years and decades of racism, but it's also a reflection of a general revolutionary anger in society. It's an uprising in other words, against poverty, against unemployment, against falling living standards, against decrepit healthcare systems, the education system, the housing crisis, against the media, the establishment, the Donald Trumps and Boris Johnson's these despicable creatures, and the entire establishment. In short, it's essentially an uprising against the whole rotten edifice of capitalism. And racism is an essential part of capitalism. It's an important part of it and it will be a very, very big mistake for us to ignore it or just to brush it aside. Look at the United States, just to take as a first, the land of the free, the protector of peace and democracy all over the world. And yes, I am being sarcastic. How many Black people have been killed over the years in the US? By the police or by poverty that disproportionately affects Black people, by the coronavirus, which also disproportionately affects these layers who are the poorest layers in society. And of course, it's not just in the US. In France over the past years, the ruling class has whipped up a vicious anti-Muslim hysteria on the grounds that Islam as a faith is opposed to the ideals of the French Revolution, in fact, against fraternity, equality and freedom. And on this basis, they've increasingly been attacking the democratic rights of Muslims and attacking every single avenue and oppressing this layer of society more and more. The latest thing is that mothers, for instance, who wear veils, are not allowed to join their children on school trips in France, which is just a disgusting thing. And just a few days ago, there were two Muslim women right under the Eiffel Tower, in fact, who were stabbed by two French women in Paris, who were screaming dirty Arabs and this is not your home and so on. But of course, you haven't heard any of this in the news because it doesn't really fit the general line. And of course, it would have been a completely different thing if it was two Muslim women who had done the same thing. And all of this is a direct result of the anti-Muslim campaign of the past many years in the media and throughout French politics. And all of this in defense of so-called fraternity, equality and freedom. And I mean, the extreme hypocrisy is just nauseating. And this is in fact, this hypocrisy is an important factor for the radicalization of the working class and the youth along these lines of anti-racism and so on. Or look at Britain, civilized Britain run by these civilized ladies and gentlemen educated in Oxford and Cambridge and so on. But you scratch underneath the surface and it's pure rot. Look at the killing of Mark Duggan which led to the riots of 2011. That was not a one-off event. And in fact, just a couple of months ago around the corner from where I live in Tottenham in North London, the police assaulted a 13-year-old boy who was on a bike trip with his father. And the boy had gone a bit further ahead of his father and he was aggressively ambushed by police officers who chased him into some bushes and roughed them up and cuffed them and threatened to taser him and so on. I mean, this must have been a terrible experience for this young boy. And the father was also arrested all because they were black. There was no, not any other reason whatsoever. And ironically, this boy's father runs an outreach program trying to increase the trust between the police and the children and young people living in the borough. Of course, if he didn't have this position this would never have reached the news at all. And it's not just this immediate violent type of racism. There's enormous amounts of discrimination going on on a daily basis. Black kids, for instance, in British schools who are told that they have to cut their hairs because otherwise it looks scruffy when it's too long. And in a thousand and one different ways that the suppression asserts itself. And we can go on. The fact is that racism is rife everywhere in this so-called democratic civilized society that we live in. And it's not just against black people or against Muslims. It's against Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans and so on and so on. And if you are one of these groups you experience racism every single day at work in the news when you're out having a good time with your friends. It can be verbal, it can be physical or even in very, very subtle everyday conversations and interactions between the lines and conversations in jokes and so on. And time and time again, every single day you're told that your opinions and your life is less worthy than others because you're a certain skin color or religion and so on. And this is the cause of a sense of a very, very deep sense of humiliation and powerlessness. On some of the BLM protests we've heard George Floyd's last words I can't breathe. And that is a very, very precise description of the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness that millions of ordinary people feel every single day. But this feeling just as much is a powerful revolutionary force of anger that we cannot underestimate at all. More than 26 million people took part in the protest of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. That's a huge, that's more than 10%, that is around 10% I think, of the whole US population. There's a huge amount. And just like the Russian Revolution where the oppressed nations played a crucial role so too in the oppressed layers in the US and elsewhere will play a huge role in the coming revolutionary upheavals that we will experience in the next period. So therefore, as Marxists and revolutionaries our positions towards racism is absolutely essential and we cannot underestimate it or take it lightly. As is always the case, the early stages of all popular movements are connected with many immature and unprocessed ideas. And of course how could it be otherwise that the vast majority of working people don't have time to study theory or history and what knowledge they have of politics typically is from the type of rotten and hypocritical careerism that they see on TV and which they are justifiably disgusted by. And therefore, when the masses go into the struggle it's because they have reached a certain limit that they cannot take one minute more of the status quo. And so they know what they don't want and they don't want oppression. They don't want discrimination. They don't want exploitation. But the problem is that they do not yet know what they do want. But gradually through their own experience within the struggle, the class interest becomes clearer to them and through that a political program of some sort begins to take shape. Now, as Marxists, it's not our task to impose our will and our program or our ideas onto the movement. Our fundamental task is to assist this process of class differentiation of the political maturing of the movement. And that means to participate and help push the movement forward to the best of our abilities without, however, taking a condescending and cheerleading approach of raising the weaknesses, the obvious weaknesses that any movement would have, the natural weakness that any movement would have in its initial stages to the level of principle. And at all times, our task is to say the truth to the working class. Now, during the Black Lives Matter movement, it happened as is not uncommon that some people were claiming that Marxists should not participate in the movement as an organized force. They were implying that, you know, we are some sort of alien force from outside. And of course, that's not true. Marxists are ordinary workers and youth, just like the ones who are, the rest of the people who are on the streets. Thank you. With one crucial difference, and that is that we are composed of the most of the collective of the most politically advanced and far-sighted elements of the working class and the youth. And therefore, we have taken the time to prepare for these events by studying the history of class struggle and the laws that govern it. And thereby, we've developed a complete revolutionary program, if you may, whereas the movement as we see it are just only in the beginnings of that process. So to argue that Marxists are not allowed to participate in the protest, in essence, amounts to raising the initial and immature phases of the movement to the level of principle and try to restrain the movement. In fact, that's what this demand really reflects. And in fact, in my experience, and I think it's clear for everyone, the vast majority of cases of this type of hostility really covers for political hostilities, not about the question of the organization or not, but it's a political hostility promoted by liberals and other petty bourgeois elements who are using this argument to censor those who want to advance the movement beyond its initial phases, beyond its amorphous kind of vague phase. In fact, the vast majority of workers are more than happy to see revolutionary organizations support their cause, and that's a fact. Now, another argument we hear, which flows directly from this one, is that, well, this is not about socialism, this is about racism, or some people say, oh, Marxists are just class reductionists. But what does that really imply? That implies that racism is not connected to class society or to capitalism, but then we have to ask if it doesn't come from class society, then where does it come from? If racism is not promoted by the bosses, by the capitalists, by the ruling class and the establishment, where does it come from? And the conclusion is simple, white people, including white workers who are collectively somehow racist. But then we have to ask the question, how did white people become racist? Via culture, we're told. But then what caused this racist culture? And that is not answered. And therefore, you cannot but end up kind of reaching the conclusion one way or another that racism is some sort of ingrained thing in white people. And this argument, in effect, accepts all of the basic premises of racism, that there is a fundamental difference between people of different color and of different ethnicity. And therefore, the conclusion is that the struggle is against white people in general, and instead of the struggle between the classes, or what some people falsely claim instead of class reductionism. And instead of this struggle between the class, what we need is a struggle between the racist, which is exactly what the ruling class wants. And this is called identity politics, which is, in fact, the dominant political trend in academia today. And the majority of young people who are being radicalized at the moment are not familiar with any other ideas than these. And in fact, one of the reasons why these ideas are affected is because they reinforce the prejudices that the ruling class promotes via racism, just from the opposite side of things. And this is, of course, the purpose of racism is to introduce these prejudices amongst the oppressors, as well as the oppressed group. Now, what this basically says is that people of different skin color and ethnicity and so on are fundamentally opposing interests. But as Marx says, we completely oppose this line of argument. The way we see it, racism is a product of capitalism. Throughout the history of capitalism is used racism to justify slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and just as importantly, imperialism and colonialism and slavery has been used to promote racism amongst the so-called oppressing groups. These ideas such as the white man's burden, eugenics, race, theory, all of these things, all of these ideas have played the role of stabilizing the rule of the bourgeoisie in a political way. They promote the idea that some of the workers, the white ones mainly in the case of the West, are superior and more privileged than others. And in doing so, it covers for the fact that it's only the ruling class and its immediate hangers on who have any real privilege in capitalist society. We can compare this in a way to the old house, the slave in slave society, you had like field slaves, worker slaves somehow, and then you had house slaves. And the house slaves were often cleaner. They had some sort of education. They would work as servants or teachers inside the house. And in contrast to the field slaves, production slaves who would be more dirty, who'd be illiterate, and so on. And very often you would see that house slaves would take the side of the slave owners and even participate in the oppression of the field slaves. But in the end, in reality, in the final analysis, they were all slaves. They just suffered from slightly different degrees of misery. And the only person who benefited from this was the slave owner. And that is the identity politics of the ruling class. And today's academic proponents of identity politics follow the same basic arguments. For instance, when we're told people should check their privilege. This is the idea that white workers or male workers and so on should acknowledge that they're in a privileged position in society. And it's echoing the same ideas fomented by the ruling class. Instead of overcoming the divisions sewn by the bosses and unifying the working class, these ideas aim to emphasize the division in fact and turn the workers against each other and be built or prohibit them from being built. In reality, however, racist ideas are far more aimed at the oppressor group than the oppressed. Engels once wrote to Marx about Ireland, which is a colony of Britain. He said that Irish history shows what a misfortune it is for one nation to subjugate another. And he said that he continues that all English abominations have their origin in the Irish pale. And in another letter, Marx wrote back to Engels. He said, for a long time, I believe that it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by the English working class taking power. Deeper studies has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has gotten rid of Ireland, i.e. the colony of Ireland and has liberated the Irish. What they were talking about is the reactionary consequence of racism and of imperialism, because the whole purpose of racism is to dilute class differences, to divert the attentions of the workers from the real issues at stake and to rally one layer of the working class behind the ruling class. On the other side of the divide, amongst the oppressors, sorry, amongst the oppressed, the role of racism is the same to create illusions in bourgeois democracy, i.e. thereby to maintain the movement of the workers within the bounds of capitalism and to rally the workers there behind the bourgeois or petty bourgeoisie of the oppressed minority. In other words, as long as we have this Irish-English divide, just taking the example from above, then the English workers or a big chunk of them would rally behind the English ruling class and the Irish workers would rally behind their own capitalist and petty bourgeoisie. In the meantime, none of them would be fighting against the system of private property and capitalist exploitation altogether. Our task as Marxists is to expose this lie and unite the youth regardless of nationality, population, color, and so on. How many times have we heard there's a place of free-race but then later on we can think about the class struggle but the question is how can you solve the question of racism within capitalism? You cannot. But the answer we get by these people who claim this is we can change the law representation on board in board rooms and the governments and so on. And that is essentially what they say is that the oppressed should align behind as before behind their own bourgeoisie but in but in legal terms at least in most western nations, racism is illegal is in fact written into several institutions, but has that changed anything for that reason. And also and even in terms of representation you know a few years ago we had Barack Obama. Did, did the fact that Barack Obama was the president of the United States the most powerful single you know office on the planet. Did that change anything for black people. As far as I remember the black they actually the black lives matter movement erupted in particular during that during his presidency. The police chief in Minneapolis, just to take another example is half black and half Latino. Did that benefit George Floyd, when he was being suffocated by by by Minneapolis police police officer, not at all. Unfortunately, the labor movement and the left has also taken up this identity politics. We see this for instance you know there's this idea of quotas and parity on speaker speaker platforms that has to be equal amounts of every oppressed group on the platform and so on but in reality. What these things are often used for is to censor the left and to dilute the political discussions. And again what these ideas take up it basically accept is the basic premise of racism. They are they are tokenistic and racist ideas, they are the idea of quotas that some people some certain groups should not be judged on the basis of the ideas that they represent but on the basis of their gender or skin color. So these kind of tokenistic measures really serve to do is to trivialize the real problem that people face, and to dilute any political the political content of any discussion, and to reinforce the false dichotomy, which is being promoted by the ruling class. So where does it stop in practical terms, you know how how can you, you have to have equal amount of both genders, or there even more according to some people genders and then you have to have every single ethic minority and so every, but then, what are you going to prioritize, what do you essentially have is that every single group should separate from each other and fight their own corner, instead of fighting together that is the total atomization of the working class, if this idea could be carried out in, fully out in reality, which is kind of course. And that's why the ruling class has no problem with these ideas. You know, in fact, since, since the BLM movement. After another of all of the major corporations in the world have been at least in the in the West has been have been promoting some sort of a quota system, and taking measures to incorporate more people of color, and different ethnicities on the boards and leading bodies in fact, as far as I know now even Prince Harry has woken up to the fact that there, there is actually racism in Britain and he realized that after marrying Megan Megan Marco. And all of this do for the black girl walking working in McDonald's or Walmart or Tesco, or who works on the shop floor. Absolutely nothing. And you have similar ideas put forward in the decolonize movement, which is present at many UK universities and also other universities, which is this campaign to decolonize the curriculum they say that they the curriculum in many British countries are racist, which is, which is true, which is absolutely true. There is a huge amount of falsification and distortion in the in the text in the curriculum. The school system was not built to teach the truth, in particular when it comes to questions of politics. On the contrary, the education system is a key part of the bourgeois state, and its main task is to spread bourgeois ideology. In particular, the curriculum is designed to cover up the crimes of the bourgeois against the working class, and against all of the oppressed masses at home as well as in the colonies or former, former colonies. But the decolonize campaign claim that the main problem is not this is not the falsification the real falsification of history and that should be rectified. But the fact that the main texts in the curriculum have been written by white people. So instead of measuring the truth by how well an idea corresponds to reality, what we have is is a, and a curriculum by his class content, essentially, what we have is measures to, to measure the truth based on the skin color and origin of the writer. But with changing the curriculum to, you know, to be written by colored writers change anything in regards to, to, to, to racism. I don't think so. And essentially what these people are saying is that to change the skin color of people within the state will will change things. What happened in reality, when there's been examples of this let's just look at, if we just look at India and South Africa. What was the result of the state apparatus being taken over by members of the colonized oppressed groups in these areas. For the vast majority, nothing has changed in these countries, aside from from formal democracy, inequality and misery has probably never been been worse than today. We're very close to that. And of course, a tiny minority of people from the oppressed groups in these countries, who took over the state and of the economy, live a very good life. You know, we can take Sierra Ramaphosa, who is Ramaphosa, who is the president of South Africa. He was the leader of the mine workers in South Africa in the 80s, very revolutionary in language in rhetoric. Now he's a president and a prominent shareholder in many different mining companies and one of the richest people in South Africa. And when the mine workers moved in 2012 to strike for better conditions and so on, he conspired with the police to carry out the Marikana massacre, killing dozens of black mine workers. He's also a bridgehead, in fact, of international capitalism and its way, you know, and assisting it in penetrating South South Africa and dominating huge parts of South African of the South African African economy. Another example is Liberia. This is a this was an American colony set up by former black slaves freed black slaves essentially. But the but the irony is that those slaves and their descendants then became the ruling elite, presiding over an extremely degenerate and corrupt regime, which is oppressing the native African people of that particular area. And that is the end result of identity politic, politics when it's carried out to its logical conclusion what it what it really reflects is not a desire, you know, to liberate, in fact, the oppressed, but it reflects the demands of the petty bourgeoisie and the middle of the masses to be able to join the big table with the big bourgeoisie and participate in taking the decisions and enjoy the fruits of the exploitation of the of the masses. Now many of these ideas are theorized and developed within what's called post colonial theory. And this is a postmodernist theory which which we can say originates with the book called Orientalism by Edward Said. Now, Said's theory is based on the proposition that all ideas coming from the West, including Marxism are inherently racist, because they are Eurocentric, and hence, they cannot be used to understand the colonized world. So if you're an American or European, you can't understand the colonized world. Where does the magical line go? Is it at the bus first between you know the dividing line between Turkey or the European and the Asian side of Turkey, or the Euro mountains or is it the Mediterranean Sea. How, and why not even, you know, why not even take it further. How can British people understand the rest of Europe. Well, how come the people from London can understand people from, from, from, from, from, from some other city, and you can go on and on and the result is what is called in philosophy subjectivism that is the idea that we as individuals through our thoughts and prejudices determine the real world and not the other the other way around. But you can then turn it around you can say. Thank you. You can ask how can the post colonial theorists understand the colonized world, you know, and why do these people even bother writing anything if no one can actually understand each other. Now, Said also claims that that colonialism racism is based in European culture going back to Homeric times that is ancient Greece. And it was this racist culture in effect, which caused imperialism colonialism and racist oppression oppression, but of course these are completely baseless assumptions that are not these are not underbuilt, you know, supported by facts. Besides the point today. The question is, where does this culture come from. And the only thing we can assume is that there's some sort of genetic or geographic defect which is causing it. And therefore, Said and the rest of the post colonialists. They criticized the West for you know making sweeping generalizations and putting eternal truths forward, but they maintain the exact same premise as the racist and the imperialists in the ruling class in the West. Now, they decided in particular heavily criticized Western colonialist academia. They all do in fact in particular he was criticizing so as university in London which was, which was, well which has always been an institution for developing the colonial and imperialist policy of, sorry. The imperialist ideology of the UK but ironically post colonialism and Edward Said has now become the main international political theory taught in universities, and in particular and so as with where it is omnipotent all powerful in other words. Now, the question is this, has any of this changed anything in terms of racism is Britain less racist, or less imperialist, not at all, as we can see just by look opening our eyes. The change is that post colonial professors are no longer ignored and then they're not as poor as they used to be they sit on big boards of universities and they have lucrative publishing deals and they go around the world, giving speeches and making thousands of dollars. These ideas in essence are only redressing the same reactionary ideas that the bourgeois have been have been spewing throughout the history of capitalism individual and subjective or you know so called intersectional struggle has never solved anything. Now they're promoted throughout the education system and our task is to wage a determined struggle against these ideas. Any real victory against oppression has always been on the basis of class struggle, you know slavery in the US was abolished not because there was a cultural change in the US you know because there was an inclusion of this of slaves into into the boardrooms or anything, but because on the basis of the second of the American US Civil War the second American Revolution in other words. Of course, then the bourgeoisie backtracked and installed this the system of segregation they betrayed the black African Americans. But then segregation was again abolished overthrown by class struggle the civil rights movement was not a black only movement it was a part of a broad revolutionary process, taking place throughout the US working class Malcolm X Martin Luther King. All of these people were were were under the impact of the struggle, they were moving sharply to the left at the end of their lives, which is partially well which is actually the reason for for the murders. They were taking up the idea is the socialism and class struggle. They were killed, because the bourgeois were afraid of a united mass based class struggle. And our task as Marxist is to put forward exactly that prospect to fight for the highest form of unity of the within the class struggle. And this doesn't mean that we deny racism, or women's oppression or any other form of oppression. That would be falling in the other extreme which always leads back to the same thing. Our task is to is to take up the real problems of all of the oppressed layers in society and show a way forward. Does this mean that we oppose anyone who brings up the ideas of identity politics. Absolutely not. I will say millions and millions of young people today are starting the political life and development on the basis of these ideas not because they're anti bourgeois reactionaries or anything like that, but because the image show up politically yet. And because these ideas and methods are the only ones they've been presented with their whole lives. And they've not they never been shown any alternative whatsoever. The the the rotten labor movement leaders have completely betrayed this cause on the one hand, they've taken up. On the one hand they've given in to racism, and they've gone along with the racism of the bourgeoisie that goes in particular for the trade unions. And on the other hand, they've been they've been giving into this kind of a quota system and other identity politics measures. And so has the left taken up this identity politics which is also flooded academia. In a good time you always see that you know the movement in its early stages because of the lack of structure democratic structures, often allows accidental often academic petsy bourgeois individuals to take up the fact or leadership of the movements, because essentially, and because no one else is doing that. And therefore they they they their ideas are, how do you say magnified and and spread throughout the movement. And then of course you have as I said before the general immaturity of the movement itself which is very very natural in itself but if there was a real latest leadership. The movement could quickly overcome this immaturity, but there is no such thing and as Marxist we are yet too small far too small to play that role, and there's no one else there. And therefore our task is is the movement first of all the movement will have to learn through its own experiences and our task is first and foremost to bring clarity to the most advanced elements in the movement to most revolutionary elements who want to move forward and to win them over to the ideas of Marxism. At all times we have to, we have to explain patiently, taking our starting point in the immediate struggles that are posed, and the level of consciousness that we meet, and with the ideas of revolutionary Marxism racism and all forms of oppression are a reflection of the barbarism and general want of society to paraphrase Lenin racism at bottom is a question of bread, or rather, the question of bread crumbs, which amasses are asked to fight each other for. And meanwhile the capitalist class sits on the on the most unimaginable wealth and enjoys real privilege. Look at the machinery and technology that humanity has built over the over thousands of years that this that the level of science that we have reached with this productive capacity with this potential. All of the problems of humanity could be solved easily homelessness unemployment hunger malnutrition Coronavirus could have been solved. Earlier than it will be. And yet, millions of billions of men women and children live in the most barbaric conditions of abject poverty and misery, and billions of others have no other future to look forward to, then one of ever more desperate desperate struggle to get why, and none of these these groups are privileged in any way shape or form. All of these are victims of the system, which cannot show any way forward for humanity. And the way forward in the struggle against these poisonous phenomena such as racism is to expose this system is to expose the lies and the hypocrisy and show the only way forward which is a united struggle of all the oppressed, and all the exploited for the overthrow of capitalism and the setting up of a socialist society, and through the united struggle and by by raising of the living standards, which in the final analysis is the only way to overcome all of these divisions. We can finally establish a society of harmonious coexistence and collaborations of real fraternity equality and freedom for all. Thank you very much.