 Mae'r hyn i ond y byddwn yn iawn iddynt o'r gweld i ddim yn gofyn yn y dyma ymlaen i weithio ymwyr. ac rwy'n gwrs o'n mynd, ond oedd rôl eu cyflym yn iawn o'r odd, ydych yn angen i wellio ffwrdd o'r wyf, oedd o'n gwrs o'n gwneud ymgrifenni yn ysgrifenni, mewn i'r hwn, mwywg yn unig mewn i newydd, yn ni, yn ymryd, o rôl 3.6 bilion. Felly yn ydych yn roi'n mynd i metud, Well, look, why don't these 3,6 billion people, just band together, overthrow these 8 and share around their wealth between everyone and everything would be sorted? Now obviously, these 8 people and the capitalist class as a whole, have various ways and means of stopping this from happening, of maintaining the status quo. Mae'n defnyddio, mae'r dweud i'r rai yn gyfath, mae'n dda i'r ddaf yn llwyddiadol i'r cyhoedd yma, i'n ddulliannol i'r cyhoedd yma, ond mae'n ddweud. Ond oes ben yn ymddirionedd, mae'n ffordd o'r rai o'r ymddirionedd yn ei ddaf yn gweithio i'r llwyddiadol yn ei ddaf. Felly, mae'n ddaf yn gweithio i'r ymddirionedd yn ei ddweud, yna'n rai o'r llwyddiadol yn ei ddweud, Is roedd yna'n rhywbeth sydd o'n biasrwyddo ac roedd ystod yn f今日, nad oedd yn gweithio bydd y cyfron ac yn ymwybod arfer. Yn y wneud y byw yn ymwysig o'r ymwysig, ac mae'r ymwysig yn ymwysig o ffrif iawn o weld am yr hyn yn ymryddiadol. The Marxist approach to morality best is a little pamphlet by Leon Trotsky called Their Morals and Hours. In this he basically says, he explains the role, the function of morality in class society. He says, the ruling class forces its ends upon society and habituates it into considering all those means which contradict its ends as immoral. as immoral. That is the chief function of official morality. It pursues the idea of the greatest possible happiness not for the majority but for a small and ever-diminishing minority. Such a regime could not have endured for even a week through Foursalone. It needs the cement of official morality, but that's also good so far, and as Ben alluded to in the introduction, this cement is not indestructible. If we look at society, if we look at capitalism today, capitalism is in a deep, deep crisis. Capitalism is capable of overcoming these crises, but only by preparing the way further down the line for an even deeper crisis. If we look at the last big crisis which happened in 2008, that was solved in a certain sense by states across the world bailing out the banks, which meant, in effect, that all of this private debt that had been accumulated was turned into state debt. And the problem with debt, as I'm sure everyone in this room knows, is that eventually it needs to be paid back. And who paid it back was the working class who paid it back. If you look at just figures for Britain, in the last 10 years, the average wage of working class people in Britain has reduced by £800. That's just the average figure. If you look at people in their 20s, the average wage of people in their 20s has reduced by £1,000 a year, and people in their 30s by more than £2,000 per year. So there it is. That's black and white. That's who's paid for the crisis. There's Trotsky as well who said that in a period of crisis, when the ruling class tries to restore equilibrium in one plane, so, in this case, the ruling class, through austerity, has tried to restore equilibrium in the economic plane. They only do that at the cost of causing instability in other planes, and that's what Ben has alluded to. Also, we can see it. If we just look at the world today, if we look at the political sphere, for example, you name a country pretty much, and the major parties in that country are suffering. In Germany, in Sweden, in France, in Italy, you can literally name pretty much any country, and the major historical parties there are suffering. Obviously Britain is one exception in that the Labour Party and the Conservative Party are still doing very well in the polls, but that is for very specific reasons in that both parties really have been taken over by what the media like to call populists. Anyway, that's another story. Again, you can see major institutions like the European Union are crumbling basically. I mean, sometimes you wonder what's going to happen first. Will Britain leave the European Union, or will the European Union crumble to bits? You can see the national question is rearing its head in country after country. People are questioning age-old bonds or very old relations. You've got a crisis of ideas. Ben himself will be talking on the crisis of liberalism tomorrow. You've got also a crisis of religion. Who would have thought, for example, that in Ireland there would be a vote to legalise abortion? I saw on the news as well that over 50% of people in Britain now consider themselves to be non-religious. So there's a crisis in all planes really, and one of those planes is the crisis of morality. You can just turn on the news these days, and you can open a newspaper, and you can see someone talking about the crisis of morality. There's also a podcast series on at the moment that I saw. It's by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who some of you might know. He's been in the news recently for criticising Jeremy Corbyn for supposed anti-Semitism. That's another story entirely. In this podcast he wonders whether within our culture is there a place for morality anymore. He defines morality as being what lifts us above the pursuit of self-interest and self-esteem. It's the things we do not just because they're good for me, but because they're good for us. At a national level it's about the values, virtues and ideals that bind us together as a society. I think that's quite a good illustration of the function that morality plays in class society from someone who's definitely not a Marxist. It binds people together, it binds contradictory classes together in order to justify the oppression and exploitation of the vast majority of people by the minority. Even so, this definition from Sacks is incomplete. He talks about good and bad as if they're unchanging concepts that are fixed in all of time. When we actually think about it, what actually is good and what's bad? I'm sure most people in this room would probably think that cannibalism is bad, for example. I hope so, otherwise they'll think I'll be making a quick exit. That's not always been the case. There's strong evidence to show that our ancestors practised cannibalism relatively regularly. You can almost imagine a banquet of cannibals in this time, where the plates are being passed around, and you get passed a big bowl and you're like, sorry, I don't eat human. They'd be completely amusement. People would be like, what are you talking about? It's natural to be human. It's human nature to be human. I think it would be a similar response to what a lot of Marxists get when we question the existence of private property in society today. It's not just cannibalism. I think most people here would think slavery is bad, for example. But if you were to go to ancient Rome or Greece, that idea would be completely nonsensical. Maybe not to the slaves, perhaps, but to good citizens. They would think that it can be completely mad if you questioned the existence of slavery, whether it was right or not. One person to actually question whether it was right to own slaves was Aristotle. I think it shows what a great thinker he was, actually, that he was capable of even asking this question, because when you think about it, his whole existence, the whole reason for him being able to sit around and think all day, depended on the existence of a class of people to do all of the work for him. So the very foundations of society back then depended on the existence of slave labour, and that basically influenced the morality of the time and meant that it was basically impossible for Aristotle to conclude anything else. We're also taught from birth that stealing is wrong. It's wrong to steal. But if you imagine a society where there's no such thing as private property, this kind of moral preset would be considered ridiculous as well. We don't just have to imagine that. It's not like some nice utopian communist society where there's no private property. You can just look at pre-class societies, as we all know. So there are different societies developed at different rates, and there were examples of people from societies where there was this conception of private property who encountered people where this wasn't the case. One example it was told about was Captain Cook, who was this explorer at the time of the British Empire, when he was exploring the Pacific Islands, he came across some individuals in Hawaii, and these people had no concept of private property, and they actually took one of his boats. So being the good British moral man, he went to punish these people, and he tried to arrest their king. In the end he ended up being killed by them. But what I think this shows is that there is no such thing as a super historical morality that exists outside of time and outside of space. Morality changes with the changing society, and it's influenced to a huge degree by the economic structure of society. But people might say, OK, fine. Morality changes to a certain degree, but aren't there some moral precepts? Aren't there some things that are just always wrong? Is it always wrong to kill, for example? Obviously we don't just walk around killing people all of the time. That's very true. There are certain moral precepts that we hold merely from being members of a common society. Actually if you delve a little bit deeper, these moral precepts have less of a hold in certain situations. So these precepts are actually quite limited and can be quite unstable. So if you take this example of killing, just as one example, obviously most people wouldn't ever dream of killing someone else. But if you came across an individual who was absolutely determined to murder you or your family or friend of yours, it's quite unlikely that you'd be wracked with self-doubt. You'd sit around a huge moral, should I act, shouldn't I? I don't think so. I think you'd act to the best of your ability to defend yourself, your friends or your family. The law recognises this with lesser punishment for people who murder and self-defence. Also if you look at the state is what punishes people for committing murder. The state itself will turn this precept 180 degrees if there's a war is declared. So thou shalt not kill, because thou shalt kill as many of the enemy as you possibly can. But these moral precepts that are in existence in society are also limited by the fact that the society we live in is a class society. The moral obligations that we feel to others, I would say we feel all the more strongly the less universal they are. Trotsky gives the example of the solidarity that striking workers feel towards their fellow striking workers. The moral obligations that these workers feel towards each other would be far more strong than the generalised human solidarity that people feel to other humans purely on the basis of being human. Another reason why these moral precepts are limited is the fact that if there's a tense situation, if the class struggle begins to heat up, these moral precepts begin to be questioned. That's what I was saying earlier that this is I think what we're seeing today. There has been this huge radical rupture in 2008 which has caused, eventually consciousness has caught up with some delay. It has caused a widespread question of everything that exists among many people. It did remind me of a section from their morals and ours where there are some caveats because here Trotsky is talking about a period leading up to World War I so there are some differences. But in this pamphlet he says that in this period and the build up to World War I there was a huge upswing of the capitalist system and this enabled the ruling class to give certain concessions to the upper layers of the working class. This meant that democracy appeared solid and the relations between the classes softened at least outwardly. Thus certain elementary moral precepts and social relations were established along with the norms of democracy and the habits of class collaboration. The impression was created of an ever more free, more just and more humane society. The rising line of progress seemed infinite to common sense. I'd say we saw a similar process in the run up to 2008. Now obviously there wasn't a huge upsurge of the capitalist system. I think generally there was among the majority of people at least a sense that at least tomorrow will be better than today. You know people weren't obviously living in luxury but they weren't being crushed to the extent that many people feel today. But as I said we are beginning to see those ideas shaken. This Trotsky again deals with in his pamphlet where he describes this breaking down of the old morality. The elementary moral precept seemed even more fragile than the democratic institutions and reformist illusions. Mendacity, slander, bribery, venality, coercion, murder grew to unprecedented dimensions. To a stunned simpleton all these vexations seemed a temporary result of war. Actually in manifestations of imperialist decline the decay of capitalism denotes the decay of contemporary society with its laws and its morals. As I said I think we are beginning to see the beginnings of that very same process. You can just look in countries such as Poland, Turkey and Hungary. In these countries you're seeing the retreats of liberal democracy in some senses. In country after country you're seeing so-called left wing governments come to power promising to end austerity and because they accept the limits of capitalism they go back on their programme and end up carrying out even worse austerity than before. In some countries you don't even need the election of left wing government. The government is just replaced by a technocratic government to carry out the dictates of the ruling class all the better. The one example in the recent period is Italy. What this I think shows is that the faith, the belief in democratic morality amongst the ruling class is beginning to be shaken. This will and is having an impact on the working class as a whole. I'm not sure if people saw this poll that was carried out. I think it was done by the European Union but I can't remember, maybe someone can correct me. But they asked people, would you join a large scale uprising against the government? They weren't exactly beating around the bush here. The answers, this is for between 18 and 34 year olds. These are the people who have suffered most basically from the crisis from austerity. The response of people in Greece was 67% of people said yes. I guess isn't so surprising given the impact of austerity in Greece. Even in Germany I think it's 37% of people said yes. So I think you are seeing there's a widespread questioning of the old bourgeois democratic norms. But I think the point that is not understood by liberals or guardian journalists and no sort of people was understood by Trotsky. He said that morality is a function of the class struggle. And democratic morality corresponds to the epoch of liberal and progressive capitalism. And he also said of that time. And again I think this is applicable in some ways but obviously with some caveats. He said that the sharpening of the class struggle in passing through its latest phase definitively and irrevocably destroyed this morality. That in its place came the morality of fascism on one side and on the other the morality of the proletarian revolution. So as I said I think a similar process is taking place. We are seeing a polarisation to the left and to the right where people under the impact of the crisis and seeing actually the kind of quite brutal and anti-democratic behaviour of the ruling class are concluding at a different extent that this old bourgeois democratic morality is wrong and they disagree with it. Now, the one big caveat is that I think there was Rob Sule gave a talk on this somewhat yesterday and there is a talk on this during this weekend but I should deal with it just because it is an important issue is that we are not I would say likely to see the coming to power of fascism in the near future which is the big difference from what Trotsky was saying. Fascism in order to come to power depends on a mass movement of the middle classes and peasantry which I mean Marx called the Petit Bourgeoisie. Now if you look at the peasantry which has been I mean basically doesn't really exist in Europe at least anyway. You also see many kind of independent shopkeepers as well. Many of them have been put out of business by the concentration of production of capitalism and many middle class professionals actually if you think about doctors, teachers, nurses, university professors many of these groups have actually been at the forefront of struggles in the recent period we are moving very much to the left. Also one of the key reasons is that there has been no major defeats of the working class in the recent period and in every case that fascism has come to power it has been off the back of a defeat of the working class. Even so what I do think we are seeing is that side by side there is a beginning of the rejection of the old morality by both working class people and the ruling class as a whole. Now one of the, you know I'm sure that most people if you're in this room will have heard of this that most viciously attacked by moralists but people who are called immoral most often are Marxists. More often than not the attack comes in various forms but usually on the question of means and ends. Usually Marxists we are told because we believe in this utopian impossible bright future of socialism or communism but because we believe in this we'll do absolutely anything to achieve it we'll resort to murder, we'll resort to gulags, we'll resort to all of these terrible things and so in the naive pursuits of the end of revolution we'll end up causing horrendous crimes look at the 100 million people who died in Russia and China and the rest of it they'll say. Now before answering this I think it is important sometimes to take a step back and think okay fine what system are you defending then? Now including in this included in this 100 million dead that is often quoted supposedly killed by communism they include people killed by famine or if we look at capitalism in 2018 we have over 3 million children starved to death at the same time we have 1.3 billion kilos of food wasted why does that happen? it's because it's not profitable to feed these kids I don't know as well if people have seen this story of where supermarkets or shops are legally required to dispose of food if it's passed itself by date now often this food is perfectly fine to eat but they have to dispose of it they put it in the bins and many people are desperate in Britain and so have been scavenging through these bins in order to find food and what have the supermarkets done? they've prosecuted these individuals for theft this is the kind of mad world we live in equally shelter which is a homeless charity in Britain they estimate and it can only be an estimation because these figures are quite hard to measure accurately but they estimate that a quarter of a million people are homeless in the UK at the same time as that we have 216,000 homes are left empty, have been left empty in the UK for more than six years why are these people housed because it's not profitable to house them? this is the system they defend they allow people to starve they allow people to be homeless because of the need to make a profit now they might answer at least people are free to starve and be homeless but at least people are free let's look at how working class people have actually treated in the system if you think in the developed west in the developed west we have these eight people who own half the world number eight in this list is Jeff Bezos he's the founder of Amazon he has various warehouses in the developed west which I was trying to say earlier and he employs working class people in these factories and he's come up with various great inventions this is the so-called innovation of capitalism he's come up with many great inventions in order to aid the working process so they've patented Amazon wheeled cages that they put their workers in not entirely sure how that helps with work it could have something to do with safety perhaps the workers in Amazon warehouses are under such stringent targets for moving products from one area of the warehouse to another that there are a lot of injuries caused so workers are in such a desperate situation that often they are forced to urinate in bottles to defecate in bags and this kind of huge pressures are said causes injuries so in the last year alone ambulances were called to Amazon warehouses over 600 times it's not just in the warehouses that other people suffer in the Amazon offices employees are able to anonymously rate other employees and the results from these ratings are taken into account when they decide who to sack it's like something out of Black Mirror really Amazon is not alone in this case there are plenty more examples I'm sure people have seen the example of sports direct in the UK where women are so terrified of taking time off that ambulances have been called because many people have given birth in toilets because they're so scared of taking time off so that's the system that these people who criticise us for defending, that's the system they defend anyway to actually deal with this question of means and ends now when we are deciding whether an action whether a particular action is moral or not we do have to have some sort of basis for deciding this right and if this basis isn't our own personal or social ends where do we, on what basis do we judge if something is moral or not if this criteria doesn't come from the material real world where does it come from it has to come from outside reality we have to conclude basically that morals, the idea of what is right and what is wrong that existed before humanity existed before the solar system existed before reality itself existed we're left with the conclusion that there has to be a God essentially now I've already dealt with this question of how there is no such thing really as eternal morals morals change with the development of society in many cases it's not just Marxists who agree with the idea that the end can justify the means Protsky gives the example of utilitarianism obviously not a Marxist philosophy it says that we should aim for a society that ensures the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number and Protsky points out what is this apart from agreeing with the maxim the ends can justify the means it would say that the ends any means are justified so long as they ensure the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number there are also more recent examples John Rawls for example if anyone is unlucky enough to study politics at university which I was cursed with you would have had to study this man who's a bit of a darling of the liberal philosophies at the moment anyway he said that he ignores all of the history of philosophy all of these different individuals who have said I've come up with the perfect society well luckily John Rawls like the Messiah coming down from above he has actually come up with the perfect society and the perfect society according to John Rawls would be run according to two principles the first of these principles overrides literally everything else which is that each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all and what is that apart from agreeing with the maxim that any means are justified provided they ensure the end of equal basic liberties for all and he does justify various things he justifies huge levels of inequality on the basis actually of you know we all have the equal right to basic liberty but some of us might just utilize it slightly differently but in practical life too the end always justifies the means you know war is always terrible always terrible until it's declared and then this end of I don't know between and country or you know eternal peace or whatever other kind of thing they pull out of their ars basically all of these things are used to justify the most barbaric means of war or another example for any Blair right politicians any and all means, cutting benefits, bombing Iraq literally anything you ask them to do all of them are justified provided it achieves the end of you know their careers basically also what Trotsky points out is that what we can't really have some sort of abstract division between on the one hand ends and on the other hand ends both in practical life and in social movements the means and the ends constantly spot places and he gives the example of a machine if you're building a machine then that machine is the end but once the machine is built then the machine itself becomes a means to further ends with creating further commodities or improving productivity or whatever else but also bourgeois democratic demands can be the end of a particular social movement but once this end is achieved once a parliament or whatever other bourgeois democratic demands they've achieved these ends then become means for further ends social demands or things like that so it's not useful to judge means and ends separately you have to judge them as a whole essentially and anyway one really good point that Trotsky makes is that even if you say the end justifies the means well that says absolutely nothing about what justifies the end I mean as I've said both anti-capitalists and pro-capitalists can agree with this maxim so it really tells you nothing so what for Marxists does justify the end well Trotsky says that something is justified if it leads to the increasing power of humanity over nature and to the abolition of the power of one person over another now does that mean that anything is permissible in order to achieve those ends and quite clearly not I would say so this end can only be achieved through a socialist revolution where the working class takes power and runs society themselves because what power over nature do we really have under capitalism and sure many of you saw the quite apocalyptic to be honest sawries about the state of the environment over the recent period and you know there was all of this stuff about let's all just be moral and turn the lights off after we've left the room and things like that when actually well you know it came out a little bit later at least I saw it a little bit later who are the real kind of what is the real reason for the state of the environment being what it is and that 71% of greenhouse gas emissions are the result of 100 companies so how do we sort out the environment it's by taking these 100 companies putting them under the democratic control of workers and running them not in the interest of profit in the interest of human need again also how do we get rid of the power of one human being over another when we live in a world where people like Jeff Bezos and others can essentially bribe countries in order to make them get rid of all of the labour laws possible by holding investment or whatever else yes and also so you know I'd say we do need socialist revolution in order to achieve this but who is the class or what is the class that we face in order to carry this out it's a class that has all of the wealth and all of the power and so how are we going to achieve this well in order to be successful that would mean that we would need the support of the majority the vast majority of the working class and so that means that this end of the socialist revolution it precludes by necessity basically all of our actions must be directed towards increasing the consciousness of the working class in its own power and strength and uniting the working class as one fighting force and that precludes by very definition we can't carry out any actions that set one part of the working class against another that attempts to make people happy without their active participation in achieving it that lowers working people's faith in their own power and organisation now you could come up with you could apply this to many different examples but one interesting kind of thing that Trotsky applies it to is the question of individual terror now he says our attitude to an individual assassin would probably be neutral if we knew nothing about them so on the one hand we might have some sympathy for example within assassin who in the brutal regime under the czar in Russia who out of their frustration assassinated a government official on the other hand we would probably abhor the actions of an individual fascist who murdered a socialist politician but it doesn't stop there for a Marxist we don't judge whether an action is moral or not purely on the subjective intentions of the person carrying out that action what for us matters in determining what is moral or what is not is that action effective or not does that act bring us closer to the goal of a socialist revolution or not and so Trotsky concludes about individual terrorism he says well actually no it doesn't bring us closer to a socialist revolution because what it does is it replaces the actions of the working class with the actions of one individual person and so it lowers the faith of working people in their own power basically but he then goes on to say that this could all change in a different context so for example in the context of a civil war in the context of the Spanish Civil War the murder of General Franco and one of his other generals the character of that action would change because rather than being individual terror it would be part of a collective struggle against fascism so what this shows I think is that for Marxists moral evaluations are very much tied to the question of revolutionary strategy and tactics they flow from the inner needs of the struggle so unfortunately like many questions there are no easy answers to this question we can't know in advance what is and what isn't permissible from the point of view of Marxist morality ultimately it would be the living experience of the movement with the guidance of theory that tells us what is and what isn't permissible and this question of theory is of paramount importance to be honest Marx said that the ruling ideas of any society the ideas of the ruling class and so we need to study Marxist theory which ultimately is the crystallised experience of the working class in struggle we need to learn from the experiences of the past in order and then apply these lessons to the moving and changing environment that we find ourselves in so what is moral to be a Marxist then finally got there because we do have a morality Marxists do have a morality and what I would say is that what is moral is to participate in a movement that can finally put an end to the want poverty and suffering that blights our world today our job sitting in this room today is not to carry out the revolution ourselves the liberation of the working class is the job of the working class at the end of the day but what history has shown is that whenever the working class has moved into action in order to change society what has been the lacking thing the lacking thing has never been the will of working class people to change society that's never been questioned what has been lacking time and time again is a leadership that can bring these crystallised experiences these lessons from the past and use them to guide the movement as a whole so you know I often get asked what can we do now to change society and what we can do now to change society is to build an organisation now so that once the working class do move into action they have a leadership that is worthy of them thanks