 Rydyn llawer o'r pwysig yn i'r cyffredinol yw'r cyffredinol yw'r eich cyffredinol yw'r ystodol. Rydyn eisiau amser i'r ideologi. Ond mae'r hyn yn ei ddiolio'r cyffredinol. A'r cyffredinol eich cyffredinol yn ystodol yw'r cyffredinol yn ei ddefnyddio'r cyffredinol, a hynny'n gallu rhaid i'r cyffredinol yn y fath o'r cyffredinol.現aint specifications that don't really explain anything. They explain well if it such a policy, why does it come to dominate at this time? Why does it dominate this country? Why does this country manage to apply an imperialist policy over other countries? Also that unscientific description of imperialism could be described accordingly applied on ancient Rome yng Nghymru, dwi'n gwneud o'r llwyddiadau pre-cafitoliadau sy'n cymryd, ac wrth gwrs, yn y fawr, rwy'n credu yw'r clywed o'r Llywodraeth. Ond mae'n ymddangos y ddefnyddio'r llwyddiadau llwyddiadau llwyddiadau a llwyddiadau llwyddiadau llwyddiadau. Wrth gwrs, mae'n mynd i'n gweithio'r llwyddiadau llwyddiadau llwyddiadau yma bod gwaith e tra i'r llwyddiadau llwyddiadau llwyddiadau paiddorol i ddweud mae gyhoeddwyd â thallur hefyd, ac jidw ek Dickardyn ni'n gwneud ei wneud e particular Rydym ni καu eu raith ac mae o'n amlwg iawn, lle oherwydd felly ddim yn por juicy o'r llwyddiadau! Dyma rydych chiischer jyda ni i ddim yn rhywbeth Ctrl oherwydd i e rareisio combineiru anghy soapu-pedigentych of effedensaeth suggestion that we clearly do live in an imperialist epoch. So, we needed deeper and a materialist scientific explanation of imperialism and war at a fundamental level. And our starting point, of course, is the laws of capitalist development not the desires of politicians. Imperialism is as you probably know as Lenin explained the highest and final stage of capitalism. Ond yn ystafell yn agwyddiadau'r cyflogau cyflogau, yn gyflogau'r taitl, yn ei ddigon i'r cyflogau cyflogau ar y cyflogau, gan gyflogau cyflogau ar y cyflogau. Yn gyflogau, mae dyma'r cyflogau yn dweud eich cyflogau, dyma'r cyflogau yn osgrifol i'r cyflogau, dyma'r cyflogau'r cyflogau yn dweud eich cyflogau. Ac mae'r unrhyw fyddeidwyddiad, mae'r cyflawni. A wnaeth gwrsio'r gyrfa'r cyflawn. Ond o'r ystod, rwy'n rhoi ddaw'n gweld, mae'n ddweud y ffactorau. Cyflawni'r cyflawni, y gwaith ychydig, dynnu'r cyffraeth yng nghymru. Yn ymddangos, ac Llywodraeth yn y 19th yma, hwnna'n meddwl yw'r bach yn cyflawnio'r ymlaen yn cael ei ddechrau yma yn gallu'r bod a'i dechrau. Yw'r cafeidwyr yn ymddangos yn meddwl yn meddwl achos yn ymddangos, a'i heb yn unig fe wahanol oedd daethu ymddangos. Cymru'r ffordd gyllidol ar ôl, ymddangos teimlo yn fawr yn gwneud audience yn ymddangos'. wrth amser itoeddynt, ydych i fod oeddiog, sgwrwp sydd gymryd hyffordd ond, llwyrwyr wedi gallu olygu llwyr y mae'r capital yn gweithio yn gweithio. Ieol wrth yma, denodd yn oeddiol ar gyfer ymandd o'r market ydy, mae'n gweld i'r rodd y blaen yng Ng немu yn llysmwynt. Mae'r market arall yn y cerdd cyflid yn ei fath, ymlaen y gyda ni weld yng nghyml ac efallai bod hynny gyda i'r market y stryb ym mwy, ac mae'r 19 ysbryd yn ddefnyddio'r llunion am i ymddangis, mae'r cyfnod i cyfnod o'r fanyl, dychydig yn gallu eu gwreithio sydd y cyffredin pan oedd o'r cynhyrchu yn y enghraisEEr, like Britain a France. Mae hyn yn ymddangos, dychydig yn y cyddiad cythig gan gyda'r fanyl a'r cyfnod i'r cyllid i'w meddwl cyndor. Mae wedi'i gweldickiwg mewn ynghylch cyfan. a cyfnoddwg ar y cwmpertyn i'r ddweud. A mae hynny yn ystod o'r basis o cwmperiol. A gyda'r creu o'r gyfnoddau giganticol, fel y cwmpertyn, yn fawr i'r cyfnoddau'r cwmpertyn, yn fawr sgwysig o'r cwmpertyn o'r cwmpertyn, mae'r barai ar y cwmpertyn o'r cwmpertyn oherwydd mae'r cwmpertyn o'r cwmpertyn, a'r cwmpertyn o'r cwmpertyn o'r cwmpertyn, a'r cwmpertyn o'r cyfnoddau hynny. Rytwm iawn i'r cyfnoddau yn ei ddweud. Mae yma ni'n cyffredig yn y cwmpertyn o'r cyfnoddau. Rydyn ni'n cyffredig i'r cyfnoddau yma yn ystod o'r gweithio. Mae'r cyfnoddau yn ystod o'r cwmpertyn o'r cyfeirio, y maen nhw'n hynny'r cyflogau a'r techfnogol o'r maen nhw'n cyflogau o'r gweithio. Cynno, yna yna ymdeg yna, It's just saying that you can't really realistically start a company up in hopes of competing with one of these gigantic corporations And therefore dialectically competition brings about its own negation We have the monopoly area of capitalism in which competition, of course it still exists but it is kind of curtailed and restricted ac y gallwn cyfnod o bobl yn ddweud â'r cyfrannu a'r gweithio ar y 80-rhyw. Nid yw oedd o'i oes i'ch cyfrannu amgylcheddol o'i gwirioneddol, oedd oedd o'r cyfrannu o'r cyfrannu, o'r cyfrannu o'r cyfrannu, o'r cyfrannu cyfrannu a'r cyfrannu, o'r cyfrannu o'r cyfrannu o'r cyfrannu ysaf yn y rhan o'r mawr. Yn dod o'r ysgol, rwy'n dod o'r fforddol. yw trefnidol yn ymgyrch. Yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch, ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ei ddiwrnod. Yn ymgyrch yn ei ddiwrnod, yna yw ddau. Yn ddau'r hynny, yw'n meddwl, o'r bwrdd o'r ffordd yn ymgyrch, mae'r llyfr yn gweithio. Mae yma, oherwydd y ddechrau ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn iawn. Mae'r ddau'r llyfr yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch, Ac y cael ei gweinwyr cwyswyr savings yn y cwysy mor unioniaeth ddweud, ac oes y brwyntwyd cyllewyr hwyl yn yw'r gweinwyr rhagor ni'n gweithio'r cydwyng o'r gweinwyr hwywng gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithwyr hwyll yw'r gweithwyr drws cyllid yn y cyfr approachingfod ar y gweithwyr hwy o gyfer yr hwn. Rydyn ni ddim ni gwybod gweld soludol y Llywodraeth yn gyfer y cyfrannol nad nid yw hawddu llawer yn y cyfrannol. Y cael ei wneud ei fath o'r cyfrannol. Cymru'r bod y tŷr fod yn ysgol, yno dwi'n amlion o'r ddod. A phoblau a'r ddod i gilyddodu'n amlion o'r ddod i'r ffortib. A phoblau i gweld y ffordd, ac mae Lenin wedi'u gwisgwch sy'n wych yn ffordd, rhoi, neu yw'r ddael, mae un o'r ddod i hyfer o'r ddod i rhywbeth celf. Roedd yna, yn tŷr o'r cym dangos cym rhywbeth, ydy'r cyfeif wasteb, ein bod ych chi'n rhaid i'r Ffadau De alldynno'r bwysig i'r ffordd, cyflawni'r ffateriaid o'r gweithio ar sut y mawr yn y rhan o bobl. Mae'r bwysig, mae rhan oes, bod y ffordd pleid Syriae haf oesai ac swyddo, sy'n oed yn hefyd mewn anhygyrchu ac yn gwneud o'r cyflawni 싸w, y ffordd mo�fant a'r rhaglen i eithaf eu ffordd o'r cyflawni hefyd yn cyflawnio eich ffordd. Yn ystod yr hyn yn brifio'r cyfaintl Lennon, mae'r cyfaintl o gwymeidio'r cyfaintl o'r ddigon, oedd y gallai'n cyhoedd, a'r cyfaintl o'r cyfaintl o'r cyfaintl o'r cyfaintl o'r cyfaintl o'r cyfaintl. Mae'r cyfrannu'n gweithio'r cyfrannu, roedd ymddi o'r cyfrannu i'r mynd i, a'n mhawr i'r ffrailio'r gwahodol. Mae'r cyfrannu yn cael ei hunigol arlaed, fel mae oedd ymddi o'r cyfrannu o'r cyfrannu, But there is the value of the wealth they produce is in excess of that because they are more productive companies essentially. So that is an absolutely key characteristic of Imperialism, it is based on the monopolisation and with that the export of capital. That is the impetus for this in creating colonies essentially to protect those exports of capital. mae'r ffordd gyda'r Fyrainau mewn gwirionedd, mae'r ffordd gyda'r ffordd gyda hwnnw, mae'r ffordd gyda hwnnw erbyn. Mae'r gweithio, oherwydd, yn 2011, rydw i ddechrau cymdeithasol, a i'n ddwy soddurio'r model i'r cyfrifiadau i'r cyfrifiadau ar gyfer y ôl iawni, byddai'r cyfrifiadau ar gyfer cyfrifiadau, i'r cwmwysig cyfrifiadau ar gyfer cyfrifiadau. Mae'r cyfrifiadau yn ni ddechrau, Onw o Siwgr angu sydd felly dal yn gwneud tydd i'r cael y dyfodol. Oes unrhyw o'r fwrdd yn dyn nhw ddechrau. Rwy'n credu i wyf oherwydd o'r ffrwng. Fy llawer yn ddweud o'r newid yu cyfnodied 10018 sydd yn y gwelir unrwyntol. Oes bod wnaeth i gael y cwmpans oherwydd gynllun o'r ffrwng rhaid ond bydd gweithio o philgoedd. Dwi'n gweithio'r newid o'r ffrwngen Cymraeg o dweud 20 o ffrwngen. There's 1,318 companies that own revenues accounted for 20% of global revenues, but they appear to collectively own through their, bits of ownership of other firms, were their shares basically of the ownership shares in other firms. They represented, if you took that into account 60% of global revenues just 1,318 firms on the global stage. Ond ffyrdd ydych chi'n gwybod, yw bod ein bod yn ei gweithio'r ffordd i'w ffordd ar y ddiwylliannol 147 o'r ddwylliannol o'r ddwylliannol. Yn y ddweud yr 1818 o fynd, yr 147 o'r ddwylliannol wedi 40% o fynd. Felly, yw'r ddweud ar y 1300, onw yw'r ddweud yn y ddwylliannol yn y ddwylliannol rhaid, yn y ddweud yn y gweithio'r ddwylliannol yn y ddwylliannol. sydd ydych chi'n meddwl o'r cymdeithasio'r cyfaint o'r cymdeithasio'n cyfrannu roedd 40% o'r cyfrannu hyn wedi'i dwbl. Yn gwybod, mae'r ddweud y byddai 147 ddechrau wedi'i ddechrau'r ddechrau'r ddechrau. A yn ymgyrch, mae'n cael ei ddau, mae'r tynnu gyda'r ddweud yn ei ddwylo'r cyfrannu. Cymru. Amazon sells 74% of all ebooks, and 64% of all printed books online. There are only three major liquor companies that own all of the other ones, Suntory, Diagio, and Perno Ricard. By the way, if you're interested in, for example, Scottish Whiskies, you might sometimes be astounded at how many different Scottish Whiskies there are. If you go to the airport and you have a look at the Duty Free. They're basically all owned by Diagio. They appear to be different distilleries. They're actually all owned by one firm. That is normal in the modern economy. We have the same thing with sunglasses, which are dominated by Luxotica. For example, Luxotica owns both Rayban and Oakley. Google and Facebook together claim 64% of all internet advertisement revenues. I forget what it's called. TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer Company, or something like that. They manufacture about 60% to 80% of all of the world's semiconductors. That is the microprocessors that you get in all the devices. You can see that today there is a more extreme concentration of capital, globally speaking, than there has ever been before. Lenin added then that this monopoly capital, which is a key element, as it concentrates itself more and more into fewer and fewer firms, it is also concentrated of those firms into the financial institutions which dominate the rest of the economy. You have stock markets and other financial institutions, you know, private equity, hedge funds, things like that, which become a kind of nerve centre for global capitalism. Nothing can really happen without these companies, how they have their fingers in every pie, and they dominate everything, which is why the global financial crisis was so devastating. With this, finally, he says, the final key aspect of the economic basis for imperialism is not just the domination of these financial firms, but they're close interweaving with the bourgeois states through things like the stock market and the central bank. The bourgeois state is very closely tied up with these dominating financial firms and other monopolies. We have a position where you have these national champions which are protected by the bourgeois states and are used to further the interests of that bourgeois state. In turn, that bourgeois state protects their interests globally, of course. Therefore, we have, as I said, the negation of the era of free competition, gigantic, state-backed monopolies that bestride the world market, and, of course, anti-competitive practices between these corporations. Just as their accumulation of capital becomes a barrier to competitors, new competitors just can't hope to compete, similarly, on the arena of geopolitics, which of course is a key aspect of imperialism, you have imperial blocks forming, which also kind of block off parts of the world economy from one another and prevent the developments of other countries. Lenin says that the world is divided up into a system of colonies, or in today's language alliances, which he says obliges those contemplating a re-division to reach out for every kind of territory, and, of course, ultimately war. And this also means that the maintenance of this system is thoroughly reactionary. The imperialist system signifies really that capitalism has become ripe for its overthrow. You have these gigantic firms, which are really, although they still are, the profits are privately appropriated and there's no overall plan to the system, they are themselves, nevertheless, production is social now, and in fact the whole world economy really is one gigantic economy of interdependent labour, where everything that happens is dependent upon stuff that happens all over the world. So we live in an era where allegedly capitalism is all about private individual and the individual getting ahead. In reality, the world economy is socially organised to a very, very thorough extent. But imperialism doesn't recognise that fact. There was Kowski, who's put forward the theory of super imperialism or ultra imperialism, I forget what it was, which was this ridiculous idea that imperialism would sort of almost recognise the fact that social production was the case, and would just sort of gradually grow over into there just being one gigantic imperialist and one gigantic monopoly, which would plan all of production and essentially would just be the realisation of socialism in a kind of automatic sense. So of course it's ridiculous because imperialism prevents that development, in fact. It is the realisation of that final stage of capitalism, but it also prevents the development of other firms and of other countries. And of course the nation states is one of the key fetters that capitalism has along with private ownership in the means of production, that is holding humanity back. So with the development of imperialism, of course, you have a system of alliances of imperialist countries that don't just sort of sit by and allow other countries to develop and to out-compete them or share around the wealth of their plunder, but instead jealously guard it and protect it. Which of course is something that we'll discuss later on in the talk today. And monopolisation itself also becomes a ffeta. It doesn't just naturally grow over into the negation of private property in which we all just sort of collectively work for these gigantic companies and actually run them democratically to meet human needs. Of course that doesn't happen. And these monopolies actually hold back the development of the forces of production for the sake of their own profits out of greed essentially. That's why you see these attempts, for example, to sometimes to break up, you have these anti-monopoly court cases where Google or some other company will get taken to court. Because the strategists of capital are worried that these gigantic monopolies actually provide a disincentive for the development of the means of production. They represent a kind of crowning achievement of capitalism up to a certain stage of development, if you like, and then a kind of a stopping there and actually even a regression in some cases. Because why bother to invest if you already dominate the world market and you have no real competitors? And that is one of the key problems of the modern bourgeois economy essentially. And yes, I hinted at it before, but the development of imperialism in terms of politics holds back the development of other countries. It's not as if when you have the imperialist, the emergence of imperialist powers meddling in other countries and opening up the markets of other countries. It's not as if what the imperialists of that country do is say, oh well, we had a bourgeois revolution 200 years ago. So I think you ought to have a bourgeois revolution and will nurture a capitalist class and allow you to develop just like we did. Of course they don't. They actually exploit those countries and keep them in a state of backwardness in many cases. And in many cases even intervene in their politics to prevent, for example, a revolution, a democratic revolution from taking place. Because it suits those countries just, well, they don't want to see the development of the rest of the world. They want to dominate the rest of the world. And that's why you see these countries in perpetual debt bondage, which is really the modern form really of colonialism in the main, where countries all over the world developing countries as they call them, constantly pay back to the dominates, the banks, the gigantic banking institutions of the imperialist countries, more and more in interest in keeping these countries in a state of poverty and backwardness. One last aspect, I think, of imperialism I would like to highlight on the political rather than the economic plane, is the emergence of social chauvinism, which is an important characteristic that Lenin also identifies in the same book. In fact, he quotes, I think it's Cecil Rhodes, he quotes, who is, of course, an arch British imperialism and is often now the subject of these struggles to get statues of him taken down. He was obviously extremely racist. And there's a quote that Lenin quotes him going to, I think, a workers meeting in London where workers are extremely angry about their wages and the lack of money they have to buy things to eat. And he says he was alarmed by this and he saw the value and the importance in having an empire because basically we can give crumbs to these workers and stop them from revolting is essentially what he says. And now some people, of course, conclude from this that the Western working class is bought off and actually benefits from imperialism, which is the opposite of the case. It is precisely the giving of crumbs, particularly to the top layers of the working class in countries like Britain and America. That it actually is used to keep the working class there from revolting, if you like, and overthrowing capitalism, which, of course, is in their interests. So they use these sort of crumbs to keep us actually in a position of exploitation. But that's an important aspect of imperialism. And again, you can see that today, despite the apparent ending of colonialism and imperialism. You can see it in America where the decline of American imperialism is leading to a very clear decline in the conditions of the American working class and a breakdown in the political setup of the American working class, where they would vote for the Democrats and the trade unions with the give the Democrats some money. That's exactly also what we saw in Britain with the decline of British imperialism, where the working class basically broke from the Liberal Party and set up the Labour Party. So that's in a negative form. You can see that the existence of social chauvinism, as in when an imperialist power declines, you can see the breakdown in that system of social chauvinism. Anyway, on to the question of war, which of course is a key aspect of imperialism. Imperialism means war unavoidably, right? To understand why you get war with imperialism, we also have to understand imperialism in a two-sided or in a dialectical fashion. I think what I've said so far, of course, is true. But if we understand that in a one-sided and simplistic fashion, it might seem a bit as though Kowsky was correct and you shouldn't have war under imperialism because surely you just have the ever-increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of one or two dominant powers and they are so crushingly economically dominant that nobody can even resist and therefore why would you even have war? Well, there are phases of imperialism when that kind of almost appears to be the case. But actually it's a little one-sided to say that imperialism simply holds back the development of other countries. In fact, again in the same book, Lenin points out that the exporting country, i.e. the imperialist country, makes super profits at the expense of other countries, but on the other hand, he says, the export of capital influences and accelerates the development of capitalism to those countries to which capital is exported. So imperialism does develop other countries. Now, I know I was just saying that it doesn't, that it holds them back. Well, it's a very contradictory and complex process. It largely does arguably hold back other countries, which is why so much of the world continues to exist in a state of extreme poverty. But you do have real investments in other countries and yes, the development of capitalism in those countries. Now, when you have a period of relative peace and prosperity under imperialism, in which one imperialist power in particular dominates the world, and there's really two major epochs of that, the epoch under British domination and then of course more recently under American domination, when you have that and then there's relative peace on the world stage, you can have a period of prosperity and of growth, and it appears for a time as if all of the old horrors of war, of chaos, all of that is perhaps put to bed. Now we live in an enlightened era, an era of prosperity basically, and even of the end of history, which is of course what they said in America when the Soviet Union collapsed and when they thought that American power and the American way, i.e. liberal democracy, was just clearly it, that was it forever. When you have a period like that, there's of course the appearance of overconfidence in the imperialists and they invest in other countries and they don't really fear the development of capitalism in other countries. And in particular what I'm thinking of more recently of course is the development of Chinese capitalism, which took place to a large extent with the blessing of American imperialism, which of course made a lot of profits out of production, taking place within China. But of course when you have a sustained period of such growth and investment, as we saw from the 80s through to really much more recently with China, you have of course growth, but you don't have perfectly even growth taking place all over the world. In fact, growth will typically take place more quickly in the underdeveloped country, which is of course having much more advanced technology being very suddenly imported into its country. And in fact in many cases, that technology will be even more advanced than exists in the home country. Lenin again describes how the factories that appeared in certain key cities, and I think Trotsky also makes this point in results and prospects. You have the appearance in Russia of some of the biggest and most advanced factories in the world. Overall Russia remained backwards of course, but you had in certain pockets, particularly in St. Petersburg, really advanced production that was probably more advanced than in Britain for example. And of course we're all familiar with this. We all look at China, look at it's got the most extensive network of high-speed rail in the world and then we look at our own rail. We can see that the heritage we have from prior development, which actually becomes kind of a certain amount of baggage really that holds the imperialist country back. And actually Trotsky points out that there is, as he calls it, a privilege of backwardness. In other words an ability to learn from the development of other countries, to skip over some economic stages, to skip over certainly stages of technology, and to have a more planned implementation of capitalism, a more rational implementation of capitalism up to a point. That also happens, right? And we've seen it undoubtedly. And so as a result of course, the consequence of a few decades of such uneven growth, and imperialism is always based on unevenness in the world economy. A few decades of that means that of course you have after a while a breakdown in the system of world relations, which reflects the past. And you can see that very clearly today where America has a vast amount of military power and alliances. China has very, very few, but the Chinese economy has caught up and I'll come on to that in a moment. And what history teaches us from such eras, in other words eras in which there is a breakdown in the system between the geopolitics, the geo-relations between imperialist powers, is that these periods are very messy, very violent. Of course capitalism is an unplanned, a blind system, not a rational system. There's no super international capitalist state, which is I suppose what the UN is trying to be, but it can't be, that it's basically kind of referees this process and says, well actually this new country really is more advanced now, so it deserves some colonies and control of trade routes. Obviously that doesn't happen, so you have a complicated violent period, like the period of the first and the second world war in particular. That was really the great period in which British imperialism declined and was challenged by German and American imperialism and Japanese imperialism, of course. And it follows from this that imperialist wars have no progressive content whatsoever and are characterised by the processes I've talked about. In other words, the economic processes, the struggle for markets, the struggle for more productive economies to have control over bigger spheres of the world market. That's the basis for imperialist wars, the real basis, putting aside what the different politicians that obviously claim these wars are about. And such wars obviously have no progressive character whatsoever, they're defined by their imperialist character. Now coming on to today's situation, which of course one of the reasons we're discussing this, when the USSR collapsed, the US was obviously left as the sole superpower on the world stage. As you know, it was very confident. I've described that very briefly, over confident. But that confidence was stretched into the left. Many people on the left who were very impressed by this, this domination and thought, well that's, there's just one imperialist power now and that's it, there's not going to be any changes. You had Hart and Negry, for example, who developed a theory somewhat like Kowsky's theory of ultra-imperialism, saying that there was no imperialist power anymore. There was a sort of abstract imperialist power that didn't have any particular location because I guess institutions like the World Trade Organization and the IMF created this illusion that America didn't actually even dominate. It was kind of an international agreement. These were obviously illusions that today look very quaint in the epoch of competition, imperial competition that we're clearly in. World capitalism today is a picture of chaos, of rivalry and economic crisis and clearly has reached a crisis point with the war in Ukraine. And we've been saying for years that there will be many, many more proxy wars because of the relative decline of US imperialism. And this is bringing into sharp relief many of the aspects of imperialism that perhaps we thought, or many people thought were finished, were a thing of the past. Such as, for example, the intertwining of the state and the key financial institutions. You can see that very clearly with the sanctions that have been applied onto Russia, very severe sanctions, in particular thinking of kicking Russian banks out of the swift payment system. I don't know if you remember that happening a few months ago, but the ability to just exclude Russian banks, basically from all international transactions because of their centralisation in just one piece of technology which is under the domination of US imperialism, that's very clear. And that brings to mind many of the points that Lenin made. And of course, in particular, what is clear is the rise of China and the competition that we can see between the US and China is bringing into relief many of the characteristics of imperialism. Now, to be clear, US imperialism remains the dominant imperialist power and we shouldn't exaggerate the situation which some people get a bit excited about these things and they like to declare that we now live in a Chinese century and everything's fundamentally changed. The United States spends more on its military than the next 11 powers combined, including China. And even that actually understates the imbalance because many of those 11 countries are also American allies such as Britain and France. They're in those 11 countries. Britain and France aren't going to go to war with America. They're not even going to have a proxy war with America, right? So, to a certain extent, they can almost just be added to the American figure. America has 750 military bases overseas. China has three at most. Russia has a bit more, has 15 for historical reasons. Now, it's true that imbalance is increasingly out of proportion with the economic reality because of course, American economic weight is nowhere near that dominant. But that's, you know, natural military and political power always tends to lag economic changes, right? Just as consciousness tends to lag behind economic events. It takes us a while to sort of catch up and accept reality. And of course, America's not just going to accept that it's on the decline and give up. And anyway, the United States economy remains the biggest in the world. Its GDP is about 25% of world GDP compared to about 18% for China. China's GDP per capita, which gives you, of course, a figure of the level of economic development, which is also very important, is about $13,000 compared to $74,000 for the United States. There's a huge difference in terms of the actual economic development. Of course, China has more people. Nevertheless, US imperialism and its economic power has reached a limit and is clearly on the decline. Whilst its GDP, as I said, is now 25% of world GDP, after the Second World War it was 50%. So it's declined as a proportion by half, which is very important. And this is creating an increasingly unstable world. It's creating all of these proxy wars, for example. And it's not just Ukraine, it's Yemen is another proxy war. It's a function of the decline of American imperialism. I don't have time to go into it. But, of course, Chinese assertiveness is the major factor here, with its island building in the South China Sea. It's one belt, one road initiative, for example. One of the reasons this leads to instability is that American allies or countries that were largely in America's sphere of influence now feel that they have an alternative source of investment and of power. So, for example, we have Saudi Arabia very much doing its own thing, as seen in the case in Yemen, and even Israel. And that's partly because Saudi Arabia now sells a lot of oil to China. There's many other reasons as well. But that is one factor of it. It has a rival. It doesn't need to just do what America tells it. It can balance between the imperialist powers, and that's creating things like these proxy wars where it feels it doesn't have to obey American instructions. But, of course, also the failures of American imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan, their inability to intervene in Syria, all of these, the lack of, also, it's a political question. The American working class does not want to go, does not want more imperialist wars, and it's beginning to lose, again, this is a function of the decline of American economic dominance. American working class no longer really believes in the American dream and in the power of the American ruling class, which is having all kinds of strange expressions, such as with Trump. But one way or another, that is also contributing to this sense that other countries have, that America is not going to defend us. If we oppose China, we can't rely on America to defend us, or if we oppose Russia, we can't rely on America to defend us. So those messages are being read, loud and clear and understood by many countries of the world, and therefore some of them are defying America, or they're even thinking about moving into China's sphere of influence. We're seeing the beginning of such a process. For example, in Taiwan, of course, very important for these questions, the confidence in Taiwan amongst the population that America would intervene to defend them has dropped from 55% a few years ago to 43% today. So most Taiwanese who don't think that America would step in, I'd be fascinated to see what they have concluded from the war in Ukraine, where America has not intervened, I mean, it's sold weapons, but it has not intervened and has not been able to stop what is happening. I originally wrote this a few weeks ago, and I thought at the time it seemed like this was the case, but I think most people have realised now that Western unity in the face of the war in Ukraine has declined. But a while ago everyone thought, oh yeah, the West is back, NATO is back. We've had a bit of a shock with the war in Ukraine, but that was almost a good thing because it made us realise how much we share each other's values and how much we'll be prepared to fight these things. Well, that is really on the decline now in a big way. The EU is fraying in Italy in particular. There's a lot of disagreement with what's going on, and I don't think that Italy is really... And there's tensions within Europe over other questions with the economic crisis, the bond payments that Italy has to make diverging from countries like Germany. So there's a break up really of that unity. And there's exhaustion already, only a few months into the war and a lack of interest, even, really. And this is having a lot of... In other parts of the world, by the way, the war in Ukraine is not seen like it is seen in the West. For example, I'll quote the Economist. Particularly across the Middle East and in Turkey, the West's concern for Ukraine's sovereignty is seen as self-serving and hypocritical, partly in light of the war in Iraq and NATO-led bombing of Libya. The warm European welcome granted to Ukrainian refugees compared to that accorded Syrian refugees prompts eye-rolling. These sorts of concerns are of long-standing among Arab states, and I emphasise this last point. What has been surprising is the degree to which even American clients have felt free to act on them. I think Turkey in particular stands out for us. Turkey's in NATO. It's now opposing Finland and Sweden joining NATO, and it's almost acting as a Russian ally in this war, certainly at the very least balancing between the two. So you can see very clearly the decline in American domination here. And regarding the war as well, the West, of course, has made a lot of who started it and has tried to popularise the position of the war by saying, well, Russia is terrible and is to blame for this, and Russia invaded and Putin is evil. We mustn't allow ourselves to be sucked into that kind of way of looking at things. One of the key points of war, an imperialist war, is who started it is not the point for us. The character of the war is defined by the major imperialist powers and the real cause of the war is imperialism in general and capitalism in general and the dividing up of the world in this way. And who started it is, even that is, of course, you would say Russia started it, but it's a complicated question. In reality, it's a product of years of tussling over Ukraine. Ukraine has been bombing parts of itself to the breakaway regions for 14 years, and so not for 14 years, for about eight years, and 14,000 people have died in that process, so you could say equally that Ukraine has started it. And by the way, it's interesting to note how this all started. What actually began the process is that in 2013, Ukraine was going to sign some sort of agreement with the EU to be in, but not in the EU, but to be basically in the EU sphere of influence. But because of the financial crisis, which was rocking the EU, if you remember, Ukraine was only offered a billion pound or a billion euros, I think, to sign that agreement in funds that would be given to help develop the Ukrainian economy. And Russia offered 15 billion, 15 times as much. And that reflects, of course, the economic crisis and the decline in the economic heft, if you like, of Western imperialism. They couldn't get their way in Ukraine because of that. And that was the reason that the then Ukrainian president sided basically with Russia. Of course, that led to the Maidan movement and all of the protests. So even that reflects the meddling, but also the weakness of Western imperialism, whereas, of course, if the West was absolutely dominant and far more economically strong, the whole thing would never have even started because Ukraine would have just gone to Europe, I think. At least that would be far more likely. Now I've written down a load of stuff about Chinese imperialism. I don't think I really have time to go into its character and I think it's clear for us that it is an imperialist power. But I'll just say that, yes, in our view, China is a capitalist power and it is now an imperialist power. It is exporting capital. You can see that particularly clearly with the One Belt, One Road initiative. I mean, all the time there's more evidence of Chinese imperialist behaviour, of it taking control of ports in other countries, is building military bases in more and more countries. It just held a peace summit in eastern Africa because it's the major investor in Africa and it's basically now behaving as a mediator in global conflicts, which is a symptom of imperialism, of being a major power. Perhaps the most interesting proof, really, of Chinese imperialism is the speculative powson bubble that has appeared in China, which is threatening the whole economy. I don't know if you remember with Evergrande, this massive property developer is obviously basically bust. There's a massive speculative bubble in the Chinese property sector, which is a sign of an over-accumulation of capital in Chinese capitalism and nowhere profitable for them to invest in. Obviously, they'd like to invest it in other countries, which is what they're trying to do, but there's certain blockages to that because of American imperialism. And China now invests more in other countries than is invested in it by other countries. Of course, as Lenin explained, that imperialism divides the world. It carves the world up into separate spheres of influence and blocks development, and that's the problem that China is facing. It doesn't control the seas around itself. The American Navy effectively controls the seas that Chinese trade goes through. I've listed the military bases that America has. It basically dominates diplomatically and militarily, and China feels the need to push against that and to win for itself what it sees as it's rightful. We'll just reflect its economic development. It's only fair in their eyes. That will lead to decades of instability in Southeast Asia, which is, you know, East and Southeast Asia have been a source of relative stability and economic growth for world capitalism for quite a long time, right? There's not completely stable, obviously, but in comparison to many other parts of the world, I think that's going to come to an end. What we've seen in Myanmar and Thailand in recent years is partly a product of China and America struggling for influence over those regimes and who sits in the saddle in those regimes. We will eventually see countries in Southeast Asia, in particular, I think, break away from American influence. At the moment, there was the Shangri-La dialogue or something took place, which is a kind of a regular conference of security in East Asia and America is always there as well. That just happened the other day. America is being all belligerent about Taiwan and about how terrible Russia is, and don't you think about being like Russia. And, you know, you might expect, the way it's presented here is that countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, they feel bullied by China, all this island building that China does, and they're very grateful for American, kind of, the rules-based international order that America is supposed to enforce and apparently that. But that wasn't the case, in particular Indonesia, but many of the other countries there. They basically said, we're fed up of you two arguing, we just want to trade with both of you and we don't take a side in this. And of course that's the case because their biggest trading partner is China. And sooner or later, you will see the Philippines, quite possibly, or Indonesia, basically become a Chinese ally, if you like, against America. I'm not saying that then what's going to happen is that China will become the global power in America. We'll just, I don't think that's going to happen. But there will be a shift and we will see a lot of instability. And I don't know if you've been following what's been taking place in the Pacific Islands, like the Solomon Islands, but this is like a little harbinger. Obviously these are much smaller countries. Probably easier to basically bribe. But China has essentially won over many of these countries to being in its sphere. And America threatened military repercussions, which is fascinating because they describe what Russia does. And Ukraine is so terrible. Russia meddling in Ukrainian sovereignty because it doesn't like Ukraine looking to the West. But if the Solomon Islands looks towards China, apparently it's okay for America to threaten military consequences. So yes, that will be an increasingly unstable part of the world, I think. And the last thing I want to tackle is the question of Russian imperialism, which we can see playing out in Ukraine, obviously. But some people on the left would say, particularly Stalinists, but not just Stalinists, they would say that, well, Russia's not imperialist. It clearly doesn't meet the criteria of imperialists. I mean, some of them don't even think it's capitalist. But even those who accept it as capitalist would see it as dominated, as undeveloped. And they would say it doesn't export capital. Where are the gigantic Russian corporations dominating the world economy, basically, and investing in other countries? You don't have that. And what they say is it's a kind of parasitic economy, just like living off of the resources of the country, but the oil and the gas and other minerals. And that's what allows it to have its relative strength. But it's not imperialist in the strict Marxist sense. Well, these people would like to present themselves as very strict Marxists, but they don't seem to have read Lenin on imperialism and they don't seem to understand dialectics. Because how do we understand a category like imperialism, dialectically, right? When we say imperialism, is it just a list of features, which admittedly I did more or less list at the beginning, but is that how we should understand imperialism? Is it just a list of features like, well, it must have two arms, two legs, et cetera? Well, actually, any way of... I mean, that can be a useful way of like a shorthand for understanding of something. You know, if you want to understand what an animal is, if it has these features, you set out as one of those animals. But even that, that doesn't tell you anything about why that animal exists, what its history is, what it evolved from, what its life cycle is. And of course, many animals would belong to that species, but would diverge from and might lack one of the features that that species has. It might be missing a limb, for example. You wouldn't say it's not a member of that species, right? So, actually, a far richer way of understanding a category is to look at it dialectically, i.e. the history, the development of it as a system, and to understand the place within that system that the component parts have. World capitalism is, you know, we do have a world economy, i.e. not just an adding up of separate national economies that you can kind of aggregate, but actually a system, you know, that dominates the parts. And within that, of course, the different capitalist economies are different precisely because they're part of that system. Some of them specialize in some part of the economy and others in another. They play different roles within the system and that binds them together. It's precisely the fact that they don't play the entire role that makes them dependent upon one another. That's how we should understand, if you like, a category and that's how we should understand the world economy. So, imperialism too is a system, and it doesn't mean that every imperialist power that is participating in that system has to have 100% of the features, the classical features of imperialism. Russia is a bit of an outlier, it's true. It doesn't export much capital, but actually Lenin in imperialism defines Tsarist Russia as imperialist, although he there points out that at that time it was actually a dominated country. It had the features of a country that it dominated, but it has capital exported to it, or rather it imports capital, which is the opposite of imperialism, but he just defined it as imperialist because it participated in the world stage in that way. Russia today is very similar to that and it punches above its economic weight because of its geography, its vastness and its resources, its history and its inheritance of a massive military and a sphere of influence from the former Soviet countries and the fact that there are Russian speaking minorities in a lot of other countries. Enables it to play this important role on the world stage, even the fact that it sits on the UN Security Council for historical reasons, obviously helps it. So yes, it isn't classically imperialist, but it is participating in the imperialist system and therefore is obliged to behave in an imperialist manner in order to compete. Plus we should only go so far in saying it's not economically imperialist. It is a capitalist economy and it does export capital. For example, Sperbank, the biggest Russian bank, invests all over the world. For example, it broke the merger between Renault and Nissan. It's actually the largest bank in Eastern Europe and the third biggest bank in Europe overall. It acquired the Austrian bank, Fox bank in 2011 and the Turkish bank, Dennis bank in 2012. So it's not a dominating economically imperialist power, but it does have aspects of it. Whereas Russia, sorry, the Soviet Union, being a planned economy, of course it also had to compete with imperialists on the world stage and in some respects behaved a bit like an imperialist. But because it was a planned economy, it didn't behave economically in that way. So when it signed deals with Cuba, for example, in many cases it actually subsidized other economies. It actually subsidized the Cuban economy in order to win for itself an ally. It had no incentive to economically exploit Cuba in the way that it would if it's a capitalist economy. But Russia today isn't like that. It does exploit other countries where it can. Anyway, I'll just sum up that the, we know from history as I mentioned before, that when the epoch of the domination of one imperialist superpower comes to an end, as it is clearly is now, that means an epoch of crisis. It means an epoch of instability, of bigger economic crises as well. We can see that clearly with the protectionism that's rising, the breaking up almost of the world economy into separate blocks. The competition over countries, the war, all of this, we will see more of it just as we saw in the previous equivalent period, really, i.e. the early 20th century. But with that we'll get revolution, right? Such an epoch we'll always bring with it. The disturbance, the breakdown of social chauvinism and things like that, and the breaking up of conservatism and routinism even. That will tend to encourage revolutionary developments throughout the world. I was just reading an article in The Economist today talking about how global unrest is on the rise. They did many ways of measuring it, both in the language used in the press, the numbers of protests, how violent the protests were, how many regimes have been toppled. They said it's on the rise and that's only going to increase because of the war in Ukraine and the inflation. Look at the strikes we're seeing in Britain. Look at Corbyn being elected leader of the Labour Party. Of course that's over now, but that was a very important thing. We already have moved into a period of war, crisis and revolution. The war in Ukraine is a harbinger of many more things like that to come. It's a proof of the fundamentally reactionary character of capitalism and imperialism. Therefore, we have to utilise these revolutions to overthrow that system once and for all.