 I think this is a this is a very important question to discuss and I think especially in the last years with the economic crisis it has really it has undermined all the stability in the system and also the stability and the credibility it has created a crisis in the bourgeois state it has undermined and are undermining the trust there is in the state so so there is a crisis in all levels of society not least in chop of society if you look at at the situation now I think many saw this article that was shared very widely on Facebook about now the top 1% owns half of wealth in the world so the rich gets a richer but also the scandals and their their way of living gets more and more exposed in scandal after scandal and and it it's clear that that this rotten system this all these scandals is actually a symptom of a system that is in a in the blind alley that is running away and cannot create any progress in any future for humanity actually you see how all these pillars of bourgeois society is getting undermined the police the media the politicians the church the monarchy they're all being riddled with the scandals and I I'm from Denmark and we have some scandals but if you I for this leader I was just looking at what is going on in Britain I think if you want to find scandals you just look at Britain and I'm sure most of you know more about them than I do but there was like the scandal of the news of the world with the phone hacking of a dead girls phone where it was clear that the police the media the politicians they all knew about it and what just like one one clique it just in different departments and there's been the whole really disgusting scandal about all these this ring of pedophiles in the top of society and they're all just covering for each other and I read I don't know if it was one of us our articles they had to go all the way to New Zealand to find a judge who was not involved in this who would actually be impartial and that says something about the leader of British Society there was the expense scandal that also shows something about the lifestyles of these people that you can't even imagine one of them what's his name some some Lord which is also a really strange institution Huck I think his name was he was charging 2,200 pounds for the clearing of a mode which is something you have around a castle that is something in fairy tales that is not something you should actually think exists but he thought that this should be paid by the taxpayers money so I think all these scandals really is beginning to show people that there is something rotten in the system like they know in their own lives but also they can see in the in the top of society and this stability of the boss while state and the boss for society is being undermined from from below and also you can see that all these when the when capitalism was a progressive system there was all this talk about freedom equality and equality for law everybody had the same right but if you look at the law all these people all that are pedophiles making tax scandals they get free a young single mother who in the riots and London steal a pair of sneakers she is very heavily punish it's not equality for law there's a very different law for the rich and for the poor people and people are beginning to see this and are beginning to open their eyes for this system and of course that opens up possibilities for us as revolutionaries as Marxist because people are beginning to to question the state and what could be instead how could another kind of society another kind of state be put in there instead and it's not just in Britain in Ireland you had the whole scandal with the Catholic Catholic Church and it and the lack of trust in the in the church in Ireland was shown with them with the vote on the same sex marriage that people are beginning not just to trust what these authorities are saying in Spain when the king stepped down there was huge demonstrations for Republic with the flag from from the 30s and Denmark which I think is one of the countries that is are still because we had such a large layer of welfare fat you could say to cut away from it's still one of the most stable societies but the trust in politicians have never been lower in 2007 70% had a high or very high confidence in in politicians now it's down to 28% not even a third of Danes have trust in the politicians and I think this is one of the highest amounts of trust in the world I think that says something about the the epoch and the and the period we are living in so if for us the question of the state is essential and you see when people begin to move to change society that at some point the question of the state is raised in a very concrete way like Sirissa one the one one the elections in in Greece got into power and what could they do they couldn't really move that their limits of of Manu was really really small the question of Chavez in Venezuela he was the Bolivarian movement has been in power for 10 years but they have all the time come up against the state apparatus the question of the bus was state that they couldn't really or they didn't really solve in any way and hasn't really moved the demonstration or the revolution forward and also if you look at something like Chile in 73 with Allende he he he got into state power but was was overthrown because he didn't really smash the bus was state actually he didn't really apply a Marxist the understanding of the bus was state and I think first I would really recommend the base and this is also what this leader is based on that to read the state and revolution which is like by linen which is like the basic outline of the Marxist view of the state and what what needs to be done and in this he writes that it is often said and people often believe that for Marxist and for Marx the main point was the question of class struggle but that is actually not particularly Marxist there are many board many right wingers many reformists who say who accept the idea of class struggle they're just on the other side of the struggle but they accept the idea of their class struggle what is actually a make your Marxist that is taking the conclusion on this class struggle that the only conclusion could be the need to smash the bus was state the need to set up what Marx and linen called the dictatorship of the proletariat which I think is one of the most misunderstood concepts I will explain more later it actually means a worker's democracy it means the democracy of the majority as opposed to the democracy of the minority we have today I will explain it more but that is actually being a Marxist a revolutionary just accept the fact of class struggle is not enough it doesn't take you there yes and this book the the state and revolution and I think also this refers to what Michael said in his introduction it was written in the in the summer of 1917 so it was after the February revolution where the saw was overthrown and it was just before the October revolution in the middle of the of the nine months of revolution in Russia Lenin sat down and wrote a book where he actually got back to reading all what Marx and Engels had written about this state sitting down so this is not an academic exercise this was actually a preparation for action for taking power in October night just a few months after and for building a state that could could take Russia towards socialism or or outlining which which path to take and what Lenin does in this book and I think it's very important is he takes out what is actually because many things have been said I think if you go to a university if you have been in a reformist organization if you have lived in society you will have heard many distortions of what the Marxist conception of the state is but what Lenin does is going back and actually reading what what did they write and what does it mean for today in his days and this is also what we should do what does it mean for us today in concrete in practice these ideas about Marxism and where he begins and I think this is also very important for for us and for Marxist this he's going back to how did the state arise and he's going back to angles a book which is called the origins of family private property and the state which is a book that is based on an anthropologist called Morgan and he is saying he's investigation into the early early beginnings of human society and how did the classes and how did the state arise and Morgan had a very materialist conception and Marx and he's basing themselves on this and you can say this book is written 150 years ago so there are many things we have discovered later but the main conclusions I don't know if people saw it I think it was in the Guardian maybe there was a few articles a half a year ago or something new research inequality and classes and oppression of women did not always exist well it fair enough it maybe not it's new research or it's not new conclusions anyway because it's actually the same conclusions that angels reads and Morgan reads 150 years ago 200 years ago but it's nice to know that they still reach the same conclusions as the the Maxis did a long time ago so I think we should just use this so it's still the conclusions are still basically the same the state classes inequality did not always exist it came into existence and in order to understand how to remove it we have to understand how did it arise and to look at this and this is what the angels and Morgan did and if you look at the earliest periods of human society it's clear there's many things most things we can't know but evidence shows they lived in social groups based on on family lines and and they had to to work together in order to survive which is quite obvious we're not the strongest we're not the fastest we're not if you look at the superiority to other animals well we have to work together and in order to survive you have to if you have to kill a mammoth then you have to do it in more than one person and you have to share the food because you couldn't save it so it was a collective a collective a collective hunter and gather a society and also human productivity it couldn't produce a surplus so you couldn't really there was no point in oppressing other people because if you took that what they produced they would die so it doesn't make much sense so we have you had to work together and it was a very egalitarian society and it is what Max and angels called primitive communism because it was a collective and on on sharing out of necessity but about 10 12,000 years ago there were some societies where the climate and the resources they were they were favorable for starting cultivating the land and also keeping animals and so on and that was a huge progress because it meant that human labor human work could actually beginning to produce more than just enough to survive actually beginning to produce a surplus and that was actually the emergence of civilization and also of class society because it meant that that could be produced a small surplus that could free a tiny bit of the population from from doing the actually actual work of producing and actually beginning to think about science about how do you cultivate the land the best about philosophy about all the things you need to take society forward so it was a huge progress and that is the reason why we are now in a stage where we can fight for socialism but of course it was on the on the basis of the suppression of the vast majority of the population and of their of their exclusion from all these privileges of thinking they were just the ones who had to produce the food for those who were thinking and of course for themselves and so it's clear that if you have a tiny minority who have the privilege of not working and are living on other people's labor then you also begin to need a mechanism for them keeping this privilege for themselves you need a state you need an organization that can create that can secure the privileges for the minority from being taken from the majority and that is how the state arose it arose with the with the emergence of classes of inequality in society and English he writes a bit more about the character of the state what it is first of all that it instead of dividing subjects or people on family divides and on territory for us it makes sense it seems very natural but it wasn't at this time it was a process over a long time to divide people on geography and also that the system of the family became dominated by a system of property that was the property relation was the most important it needs a special public power that requires some kind of taxes obviously not in money at this time but in a grain and food and so on and and also it requires a public power that that is no longer just the the arming of the of the population you need what English called and what he said was essentially the state special bodies of armed men so you need a monopoly of violence to to protect the minority and if everybody have weapons then it's difficult for the minority to keep to keep in power so you need the special bodies of armed men and having prisons and so on at their command and so what this means is that the state is not some great idea that someone thought up and then it was implemented it's not something coming from without society it's something that arose in society and with the with the emergence of classes and Lenin writes and I want to quote in in in state and revolution the state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms the state arises where when and in so far as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled and conversely the existence of the state power proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable that the class the state exists where there is class struggle and where they're opposite each other and and that is also the proof that this antagonism exists and if you look at history then of course I have studied history and I know that even if you study history for a long time you will know a very very small part of history but if in very general terms if you look at history the state the state throughout has changed with the as Maxis where historical material is it has changed with the with the different changes in the mode of production and with the different kind of classes and but each time the mode of production have changed the state has been perfected and being more centralized and more powerful if you look at it first arose with the with the slave society and then feudal society with the feudal lords suppressing the serfs and what are they called in English a bondsman and and people the peasants if you look at then at the capitalist society it's the capitalist class suppressing the working class mainly and so you can see that that how the the economically dominant class the powerful class becomes also the political dominant class through through the medium of the of the state and if you look at the bourgeois revolutions in Britain in the British Civil War in France in 1789 then you see how the capitalist class took over the state and just perfected it even more for their rule to suppressing the working class they talked about equality and brotherhood and what is the last one freedom of course but it was actually freedom equality and so on for them for their class to suppress the vast majority still of the population of the working class and and it's not something that is like an invention it's something that that has developed for thousands of years in order to to to to meet a need of society and of the of the ruling class so Marx and Engels what did they do they didn't either invent what what kind of state should we put instead what should we do what they did was to sit down and look at the concrete development of the state how has it horizon how has it developed and where what what states is it now so what is the next state if we look at this concrete analysis what is the next state and what what does the experience tell us and you can say when they wrote the communist manifesto it was still in the quite early beginnings of the bourgeois state so there was not a lot of experience on how could a worker state look but what was needed when it came to the first mistake so it was still a bit vague that it says something like the proletariat cannot overthrow the bourgeoisie without first winning political power without transforming the state into the proletariat organized as the ruling class what does it mean it's a bit yes what do we have to do it's very clear that it's not reformist they we need an overthrow of this system we need to take a power with the with the violent means and so on well not violent mean but we need to to smash this this state there is a civil war raging within existing society so there's no room either here for for for reformism but it was first in the in the bourgeois revolutions that swept Europe 1848 to 52 and then might we had the constitution in 489 1849 it was just at first when this movement this wave swept Europe that they could actually look at at more concrete experience and saying that the bourgeois state what they really concluded from this was the bourgeois state cannot be used for the for the purpose of the working class of changing their lives the bourgeois state in each revolution we have seen so far is just being stronger and more perfected the working class when they take power they have to smash the existing state and this is like the main conclusion in Marxist theory about the state the bourgeois state is for the purpose of keep keeping the privilege of the capitalist class so in order for the for the workers to to to further their own interest they have to smash the bourgeois state and set something else up and what was what was to come instead this day they they they couldn't really grasp until the Paris commune in 1871 which was the first time that the workers and this was the workers of Paris they took power and actually began the first beginnings of building a worker state and it wasn't this experience that they began to develop okay so if we smash the bourgeois state what should come instead what should we put instead yes and I will come back to that because I want to say a bit more about about the the bourgeois state before we come to what what should be put instead because if you look at bourgeois society it's quite clear and it says that there are two institutions that are most characteristic it is the the state machine and the bureaucracy and the standing our army and how these things are connected with a thousand threats and I think the scandals I mentioned in the beginning shows this very clearly English is he explains and I want to quote again it's very nice in the democratic republic wealth exercises its power indirectly but all the more surely first by means of direct corruption of officials then he put in brackets America and secondly by means of an alliance of the government and the stock exchange and I think this is very much more true today than it was when Engels wrote it 150 years ago I also looked up a bit about how how in in Britain you it's one of the least corrupt countries if you look at this the official statistics but if you look at the unofficial things I saw that 27 of the richest 59 hedge fund managers in Britain had donated 19 million pounds to the Conservative Party last year I think 10 million since 2010 well then it must have been in a longer period it's very clear there is apparently and I'm not exactly sure what it is something called black and white ball where where the conservative politicians invite rich people from all over the world and where they can actually buy favors there was a Tory MP called Rifkin who had offered his services to Chinese businessmen to say what what can you what do you want me to do you can just give me 20,000 pounds and apparently saying this was he needed to do this because he couldn't live on his salary of 67,000 pounds a year well I think many people would many many people could live on this but but this is a this is their excuse to actually have these parties inviting rich businessmen not just from Britain but from all over the world to give money in order to buy to buy favors there's this whole question of revolving doors where politicians they get really nice careers after if they have behaved properly while in office there's obviously Tony Blair there who has a lot of money and who has very nice jobs in the private sector in Denmark we have them we have a very nice example of a very young because I think also it's something about our generation of young careers she was a she was an MP in the European Parliament for the Socialist People's Party which is a left-wing party or supposed to be a left-wing party she was in in charge in the European Parliament in the fight against the the influence of the banks in the politics she quit her job as a parliamentarian because she was offered a job as how do you say that as the director of public affairs of one of the biggest banks of Denmark the woman she she who had the job before her became one of the advisors of one of the Danish ministers so very nice how of the Social Democratic Party so very nice way of making a career and then you can go back and forth the switching between these different jobs earning a lot of money on it and also you can see it in in Britain for example how people switch there was there was another scandal with the HSBC bank is it called that where the director of the bank that was responsible for a whitewashing drug money from Mexico and making tax havens for rich people all over the world he was the minister of is it called secretary in Britain he was the secretary of trade in the Cameron government and the and the director of the tax of the British tax system he became an employee of the bank afterwards it's just completely connected and I think you can make this is not a question of conspiracy and then they sit in some rooms and discuss the world and how to rule it this is just the way the system works and it works independently of individuals it works because the state is the apparatus of securing the system and because they all come from the same circles of society and so on and it's linen he he adds to what what English explained that in this period of in imperialism the highest state of capitalism that in this period one of the characteristics is the complete fusion of the state machine and the financial institutions and the big monopolies and I think without not just all these scandals that is one thing but if you look at the system if you look at what is happening in Europe at the moment it is very very clear who decides who decided what policy should be a pursuit in Greece was it the Greek people who elected one government after the other who elected the government in January who promised not to cut who promised to to tax the rich who promised not to privatize they elected them and within six months then the European Commission and the IMF they said well you cannot do that then you will get no money instead you will do as we say as the banks say you will have a new election and we will send an an economist from from Holland I think he is and every time you want to put forward a proposal in the Greek parliament you will have to have it accepted by this economist from from the from the EU before you put it forward for a vote in parliament so who decides in Greece it's very clearly it's not the Greek government or and definitely not the Greek people but it is the banks of Europe and the financial institutions of Europe they have already a few years ago put in a technocrat in Greece like they did in Italy and it's not something people actually speak about but it is if the government does not do what the banks want they put in some some guy to run it and nobody really noticed because that's just the way it is actually so if you look also and already this and I think this is also much more today than it was at the time of Lenin and Engels and so on that if you look at at the at the at the question of of bourgeois democracy because in officially in most of the there are many different forms of bourgeois state the Danish state the British state the US state it's very different they're all bourgeois states what most developed countries have in common is parliaments and and universal suffrage but Engels actually is very clear this he says universal suffrage is actually just the best way for the bourgeoisie to rule it's it's the surest way and it's the cheapest way to have people think they actually decide while I think every one of us is learning that no matter which government you decide they all carry out the same policy we had a social democratic government until you now we had have a liberal government and they are actually proposing the same things and they are voting for each other's policies so it doesn't make any difference and I think this is what you experience all over the all the developed world at the present time and and mark said and I think this is also very good that universal suffrage is actually deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class is to misrepresent the people in parliament so you can choose who who should misrepresent you in the in parliament and I think this is this is also a very important point because also many reformists can say yeah the state we it's it's the bourgeois state but we can fight to influence it and we can use this this universal suffrage to actually gain a majority this was like the strategy of the of the second international up until 1914 saying we can step by step we can gain more and more influence and then we can actually change the system from within it will change by us gradually going forward but but but if you if you look at it every time there is actually some reformist who seems honest try to get in they they they are they are there's how can you say that they are limited by the state and by and by the apparatus and I and I pushed into submission to following the same like if Oland in France who is a very very soft social democrats but before he was elected president he promised to make a millionaire tax and what happened when he came into office the millionaires are friends they like she got to pay you they said bye bye I will move to Russia and the market said if you do it we will just withdraw money so so the bus was state it's not it's for the purpose of the bus was see and and this is what we need to to to understand of course we will use all the if we were bigger we would we would definitely use the opportunities that elections give to come out and speak to people and you can see how a guy like Corbyn he has really used the system I think he also believes in the system but he's using it to get out to thousands of people and get them mobilized and of course we will do that but we will need to use these opportunities in order to to expose the bus was state and its limitations not in order to show illusions that it can be used for for purposes so we where we differ from the reform is to to use all the channels there is that this society of and of course also to know and understand that it's much easier in a democratic society in in a bus for a democracy it to to organize to mobilize and so on then it is in a in in a dictatorship like Iran for example that is still a bus was state but it's much more difficult to organize so of course we will put forward democratic demands but we will you we will do it in order to explain what limits it has also and so this is where we differ from from the reform is and also to say so so what needs to be put instead what we need to put instead was was no this I will come back to because the other the other the other side of this is that you on the one side you have the reformist and they try some of them not so much anymore at Lenin's time they would say but we're still Marxist because what the Engels explained was that the state will wither away so what we just want to do is take get a majority and then the state will begin to wither away but what what Engels was very clear about was you cannot take over this state the bus was there needs to be smashed and then the worker state because it will be a state of the majority for the first time it will be an apparatus for the majority holding down the minority then the state will begin to wither away and what when he explains this he says this is this is an expression that I put forward against the reformist and against the anarchist and Lenin makes it very clear he uses first against the reformist and then against the anarchist and I think this is a lesson for us also because I don't know here but in Denmark if you're on the far left when you meet a lot of young people who are anarchists and and and who think that because we talk about a worker state and we are Marxist and so on that that we are actually a bit like the reformist because they also defend the state and I think we need to be very very clear that we are not agreeing with the reformist in any way we are actually agreeing with the anarchist in the goal of a state as a society without class and without a state so the reformist are defending this present state we are agreeing with the anarchist in the need to smash the present state and in the goal the question and where we differ from the anarchists we need to find out how to get there you can't just put up a goal of a we are here now we want to have this we want to have a society with complete freedom how do we get there and this is where they they they get lost because they don't think about this they just think authority that is bad power is bad we need to get rid of all of it instead of thinking okay but if you look at at history there is no if you and if you look at revolutionary movements there can be no power vacuum if you look at Egypt for example in the Arab Spring there was 17 million people on the streets of Egypt power was in the hands of people in the streets but there was a vacuum there was a power vacuum because there was no organization there was no idea on on what to put instead of the state power that was crumbling of the Mubarak regime that was crumbling so there was a power vacuum who stepped in the military because the old and the first was he will have their institution and organs in order to step in and feel a power vacuum if they feel power is sleeping behind the between the fingers in the in the Spanish Revolution and I think this is also something that it all comrades should study a workers several times could have taken power in 36 in Barcelona the workers were on the streets armed with the clubs and kitchen knives and so on on the barricades actually having power the anarchist was really being in the Spanish Revolution and and and especially in Catalonia and they were actually told by the bus I don't know the English word regional governor you can say of Catalonia well I can see you have power take it and the anarchists were like we are against power we're against authority and left and this made Trotsky saying anarchism is a bit like an umbrella with holes in it completely useless when you actually need it and this is if you look at a revolution it is a question of power it is a question of authority it is a quest but the difference is it's a question of the majority of the working class taking power and exercising authority and power against a minority against the capitalist class so so after a revolution in a worker state not everybody there will not be freedom for everybody to do what they want because we need to stop the capitalist in their freedom of exploiting other people's labor so they will not feel happy and there will need to be some apparatus in order to to secure the interests of the majority and this is actually also what this dictatorship of the proletariat means it means that the proletariat the majority will exercise its will in society as opposed to all other class societies where it has been a minority exercising a will their will against the majority the slave owners the feudal laws and and the capitalist class against the big majority and I think this is very important to understand when people say but linen and marks they would just dictate us no they were actually the first ones to actually say it should be a democracy of the majority and not of the of the minority and what they what they they set up from the Paris commune and linen developed this further in the state and revolution he set up like four conditions for a worker state not for socialism but for the first stages after a worker state and first of all it was free and democratic elections with the right to recall of all officials everybody should be elected and they should not be elected for four six years and then they could do whatever they want in the meantime and they're not put to responsibility you elect people and you can recall them right away no official to receive a higher wage than a skilled worker if you look at officials today and their wages especially in the top of society like the main officials in the Danish state they earn in average 160,000 pounds a year and that is just a salary and not the pensions and so on it's clear they have interest that is completely disconnected from from normal people so all officials on a worker's wage I think this is also a demand we should already now put forward in the labor movement if you look at the top of the labor movement they're also earning quite a lot more than than an average worker no standing army or police force but the armed people it should be on the democratic control it should not be a monopoly for the minority to control the the the army and the police force and gradually all the administrative tasks to be done in turn by all because when Lenin said when everyone is a bureaucrat nobody can be a bureaucrat that's also a question of education of people in it but in a country like Britain or in Denmark the basic functions of the state not like the expertise functions like building a bridge that should be engineered but the basic functions of administering the state everybody can do in Russia most people were illiterate that was there was a huge task of educating people but Britain or Denmark everybody can can be part of of deciding and administering state decisions and so on and so this is the condition for a worker state and I think this is very important also to say because those who try to attack the Marxists they try to say but and I think everybody has heard this argument but Lenin he led to Stalin so it's very undemocratic how can you find and also that I think that is why many who young people who are radical who are turning to the left they they they call themselves anarchists because they don't want the bourgeois state and they don't want the state like it was in the Soviet Union so then they think they're anarchist because they don't want any of these but if you look at these conditions put up by Lenin and actually enforced by by the Bolsheviks after 1917 none of this existed on the Stalin and the privileges of the top it was not an average workers wage not an average Russian workers wage there was not free and democratic elections with the right of recall of all officials quite the opposite if you said anything against the officials you will put to Siberia so it was not the direct continuation it was it was something completely different and and what was what was the problem of this and this Lenin actually already explained in state and revolution before the October revolution that you need to have the basic economic foundations for this development of the state into socialism it takes some basic economic conditions the first condition is that you need to to how do you to abolish private the private property of the ownership of how do you say that private ownership of the means of production you need to take what is what is the base of the power of the bourgeoisie that they own the means of production and and take it over collectively so you have the democratic base for for for developing society for the for the in the interests of the majority this is the basic thing and you need to be able to produce enough so that everybody can get enough and in Russia it was a small it was not small but isolated and very backward society they could not produce enough to get everybody what they needed only that a small minority and what Lenin and Trotsky said already in 1917 was that if if the revolution did not spread they could not build socialism that is what Stalin said we can build socialism in one country so this is only the political condition to need also to have the economic foundations for this that is also why we're an international and internationally organized you need to have it on an international basis and have the productive forces of all the developed countries at least in order to to be able to to build towards socialism and towards what Max called communism where everybody can how do you say that where where there is no state where there is no regulation of what you can take take how much you you have to work and so on yes I have to be a bit quick okay and I think no I think I will finish because there are many it's a very large subject and it's and there are many aspects you can go into but I think what is the main thing is this that that the state is something that arose with the with the with inequality and with classes and and I think it was a necessary step in the development of humans was a necessary step in order to to to develop the the productivity of human labor to to a degree where we are now where where humanity can actually produce enough for everybody to get more than enough to to lead a good life now we have actually reached a state where a states where the state and the existence of classes is is not only something that is that is oppressing the majority but it is actually a hindrance of the further development of humanity you can see it more and more clearly now that that the state that the state and classes it is more and more a hindrance for further development so instead of just being a break it is a hindrance and it it doesn't have to be that way and I think that is also a main thing in this it could be different we produce enough food for example in the world in order to feed everybody there is no need for people to go hungry a thousand years ago you could not produce enough so some people go hungry today we can produce enough but we have a system that makes it impossible to actually combine the people who are hungry and the food that is in the surplus so it it could be different and and that is why we need to discuss all the lessons from all what did Max and English right what is the lessons from from the Soviet Union what is the lesson from Chile 73 what is the lesson from Greece today what will be the lesson in Spain in the coming period in Britain and so on and you see how how this blind alley of society is getting more and more people to think and to think about the system and question the system and to look for ways out like Corbyn in in Britain like Susan in Greece and so on and actually beginning to look for alternatives and this is this is what we need to be able to provide and and to explain that that that the present state is a hindrance and we need to smash it we need to put something in its debt we need to the working class needs to take power and exercise its will and and take over the means of production in order to to plan it for the for the interest of the majority and to reach a society in the max in the words of Max where you can have a society where you produce from each according to his ability to each according to his needs that is basically communism where you don't have this a small minority that doesn't have to to work but have to think and where the big majority have to have to have manual work where you can you can get rid of this divide where you can lower the working hours so everybody can actually participate in politics participating running of their own lives today people go to work they go home turn on the television cook eat go to bed get up go to work the next day there's not much time to think about philosophy or history or anything but actually have a society where people is part of running their own lives and it is definitely possible and you can also see that at generation that is also an argument that they always use but if you have this kind of society if you don't have any authority if you don't have any state you just have people just taking everything they want like then everybody will go and take all the food in the shop so they will go and take five limousines or something and it's clear we are not utopian we don't think that just after you have a revolution and people have grown up in this kind of society you can just get rid of all kinds of regulation you will still need regulations and have what angels described as generations who grow up freed of all this of all this shit rubbish that we are that we are educated in but then you will actually see generations who grow up to to to just get used to not having to be afraid of whether they can have food tomorrow and I think there are many examples on this on how this is what Maxis is a material being determined social being determines consciousness that the that the society you grow up in is determining for how how you how your consciousness develops and you see how for example children who grow up in an environment where they know they will have food for the next meal they can test you and throw the food on the floor because they know there will be food next time I saw a documentary about some children who had grown up in families of drug addicts and then came to a children's home and what this child did was at every meal taking some food and hiding at different places at the at the orphanage because they did not know if they would have food the next time so you can see in very small scale how how how how consciousness is determined and a generation who have grown up in a society where where there is no need where there is no whether is abundance well you can have a society where everybody gets according to their need and where work will be something you don't go to because you have to pay your bills on the and you run out of money on the 20th and then you're forced to go back to work on the first but where you actually go to work because it makes sense because you do something meaningful because you do something that makes take society forward collectively for the for the majority not just for your boss and and actually producing shit quality something or making shit service for some very stupid company who just want your labor and and the money of the of the customers and so on so this is actually possible on the basis of of the of the states we have reached now so I think for us this is like the basic basic concept of Marxism of the state and and what it is and what needs to be done but I think also it's important to say this is the ABC like you need to smash the boss for a state you need to set up a worker state that then there is all this experience you need to look into in order to see they're like linen who wrote state and revolution in 1917 said about Britain in 1920 that he thought that could be a peaceful revolution in Britain if because the Labour movement was so strong if the Labour Party and the trade unions wanted they could take over power and begin to transform Britain in a socialist direction I think this is also true today they could the problem is the leadership of the Labour movement all over the world they don't have this understanding of the state as we as we do but it is possible so we need to look at all the different experiences and need to understand the basic lessons of of Marxism and fight to get these into the leadership of the of the working class and the and the Labour movement and and see that now that the decimacy of the of the state is being questioned and and it is actually possible in the next period to have revolutionary movements even in northern Europe that puts the question of another state on the on the agenda and I think I will end with the words of of English who says from this the origins that we are now in a state well he said we have we are reaching a state I would say we are now in a state where where the development of production where the existence of the classes not only is not a necessity but is a positive hindrance to production a classes and state have not already all always existed and society will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will put the whole machinery of the state where it will then belong into a museum of antiquities by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe and I think this is our task is to put the state where it belong on on a museum for history and not in actual society. But good discussion I think and of course this is only the beginning and I I don't have time to say to comment on on all the things I think first of all I think maybe on the question of who owns what because I think it it might be 85 person owns as you said Tim and I think I said it wrong owns the same as half the population I think 1% owns half the wealth of the world actually and and they have just become richer as you said so now they actually have the same as half of of the wealth in the world what you said about yes sorry then about corruption I read an article about how you define corruption and the way they define corruption it's only covering the corruption that is going on in in for example poor countries, ex-colonial countries where the corruption that goes on in in developed countries like Britain and Denmark that it's not counted as corruption and then it's very easy I think Denmark is number one on the in non-corrupt list of countries in the world and there is plenty of corruption going on it's just legalized corruption or just not counted as corruption but I think the main thing also is to say this is a part of the system but the roots is not corruption roots of the problems is not corruption and you cannot get rid of corruption and crime and so on without changing the system fundamentally and I think this is the basic point a few points before I come to the main question that you raised sorry I don't remember your name yes okay but just two other things before that I think one thing that that you very often meet when you discuss with people who are on the left wing but who are not revolutionaries and marxists but who are actually defending the this is the system as it is now they will say but it's much more complex than special bodies of armed men today you have the image is you have education you have welfare you have all these things and it's clear it's much the state it's it's much more than just the military or the police but it's also clear that all these things that is around the state is is the welfare things are things that has been fought and won by the working class and it is not essential to the capitalist state you can see in Greece now how all these things are being sold off and chopped away and you can see it also in countries like Britain and Denmark and so on all these things are being chopped away and when people start to fight to keep them then the state apparatus the police eventually the army is put in on the side of the capitalist class and their interest so when it comes down to fighting over these things and it is actually the reformist who blame us for wanting to to get rid of the state and the welfare they're actually the ones cutting away all these welfare benefits because they are defending a system that no longer can afford all these things that they say is is making the state is so complex so we are actually the ones fighting for these things and they're the ones because of their position of defending the the present state is is chopping in a way another question and that's I think what you said been about reformism and anarchism being actually two sides of the same coin it's also you're very often here anarchists or left-wingers fighting against the state but also seeing the state as something very strong that's almost how on something you can win over I don't remember the English phrase yes you can't beat it and they see this the police and the army and and the state is very strong but if you if you look at it first of all the the rule of ideas and I completely agree with you Ben that they they need the ideas to have the authority and the legitimacy that is being undermined now but you also see in something like Egypt for example that when it when it came to people standing on on Tahrir Square fighting the police and the army the army broke up on class lines what seemed to be a very very strong army securing Mubarak regime for 30 years it actually crumbled they didn't bear to give the soldiers real bullets when they went out because they were afraid they would turn the guns against their own officers and not against the people and many of the soldiers actually went over to the people it's clear then in order to win you have to show force so so the soldiers actually they have to go over because they can see there is a potential of winning and that is a question of the subjective factor of the revolutionary organization actually showing a way forward and I think to come because there's very little time to come to your question Federico which I think is very important but but I agree with one what Tim said I think that that this when we talk about a worker state it's it is not resembling in any way the state as we know it today like the question of a parliament linen is very explicit we don't we want to get rid of parliament tourism and it can sound very odd if you have never thought about it and what he says is not to find it because that is something I admitted from my leader he says we want to get rid of parliament parliamentarism but what he says is the way out of parliamentarism is not of course the abolition of representative institutions and the elective principle but the conversion of the representative institutions from talking shops into working bodies what we need is some a completely different kind of power that is based not from the top but from the bottom like in Russia it was based on what is actually on so yes which means literally councils and what you see in every strike and every movement you see people beginning to organize from below in a strike committee or in a factory committee trade unions and is this also in some kind of form you see it in France May 68 you saw in some of the cities people beginning to organize to go out to the farmers to negotiate direct buying of the product so you you could get rid of all the big supermarket chains hey you saw people beginning to organize transportation you saw in big strikes like in we had a general strike in 98 in Denmark the electricians union saying we have cut down electricity of course people still need it if you need it contact the union and we will decide whether we will do the work or not the those controlling the oil and gas well of course if you need gas for ambulances we need that come to the union we will decide whether it's necessary or not or whether it will break the strike so you see in all movements that people begin to organize themselves in order to discuss and decide what needs to be done and to elect representatives to go and discuss on higher levels one thing is to discuss how to get the products in in a city but if you need to do it on a bigger scale how do you do that so it's a completely different kind of organizing power so already there you have people and of course that I don't remember who said it but that a prerequisite for that is is lowering of the working day for example so people actually have time to be to participate and to to discuss and so you elect people and you can also recall them right away and they have to be responsible for what they do and those who are elected not as today where you elect someone and they talk and talk and talk and then you have the whole state apparatus and they actually do the things and I never held accountable or policemen or just people who are hired you should elect people who should organize order if that is necessary or who should administer food and so on but but it's based from below and not from above so so it's a completely different kind of power and it will begin to wither away because the less scarcity there is the less you need to to to use power in order to distribute it the less the more you have that everybody can just get what they need the less authority you need in order to to administer it of course you will still need administration like today you have big corporations that have internal planning you will need some kind of administration of things but mostly today you can do it electronically if I go and buy this in in a in a shop they they will scan it it will register some an electronic signal will be sent this kind of cardigan has been sold it's black we need to produce more cardigan the factory starts produce more cardigans and they sell it and if people stop buying cardigans and start buying something else it it all this administration is more or less just automatic today if we suddenly start to like fat milk instead of skinny milk well you can just change production you don't really need you can you can discuss but you don't really need power in in this way and also in in order that that the in the period after revolution as scarcity is listened that the need to the cap the power of the capitalist class that is what a state a worker state is is actually an organ of holding down the the capitalist class from being a capitalist class from exploiting other people's labor and I that will also very quickly the need for that will wither away because the means their means the the mean the ownership of the means of production that will have been taken over collectively who how will they begin what capital to do anybody have to start a car factory to begin to exploit the labor of others they don't have the capital because you take the means away for them to to oppress other people in this way so it will be also in this this way a completely different kind of state apparatus because it is only the means of suppressing the will of a small minority to do something that is actually against the interest of the of the big big majority but today you have a minority a making the majority do something that is actually against the interest so all already in that sense you have the beginnings of of the state being something completely different that we had have known all through the history of of class society actually so you can say if material conditions it decides consciousness the more people and and already you see it now of course you have in individuals who who hold things because they're afraid that they don't have enough but you also see in every revolution or you see it now with the refugee crisis people are coming and sharing you see it in every strike that people help each other you see it I just read a short article about and some research done in Britain that it was actually how did violence became become stopped in the in the nightlife of Britain it was social control when there are three or more people who started arguing against people fighting they stopped the fight if the police came the violence just became worse but it was actually they had studied CCTV cameras all over some of Britain's when people went out in the night and they could see a pattern that it was social control stopping people from actually fighting for example and in this way you can stop many of the things that we that they argue today is is done by the state but you need the state to stop violence against each other and so on but people also you have it at a workplace you have people discussing what you need to do how can you behave and then selling if somebody is behaving in another way and I think this will exist forever this kind of social control so you can say that in communism Lenin says that the state will be absolutely unnecessary because there's nobody to suppress but that doesn't mean we don't need planning and administration but that is not a state and that is not a sorority that is not oppressing putting having an apparatus to press a group in society but you will still need to meet and discuss and there will probably be violent rows about music and colors and architecture and how to make cities and what do we how what do we need to produce and so on you it doesn't mean that people starts the steps disagreeing and how to raise children what is nice art what is all the things that we can't even imagine because we live in a society where we are so yeah so brought up in this really really that you just need to be a productive machine and fit into the society so I think we can have no guarantees but we can say what is the prerequisite of getting rid of the state that is people taking power and starting and also taking over the ownership of the means of production and then we already today have the means that know that there should be no scarcer and that we can begin to to to remove inequalities and it will be up to the future generations to find out what kind of administration they will need how they will need to organize but but the prerequisite is to smash this state in order to get rid of of oppression and inequality and then you will see how how people develop and how they decide to organize