 Well, normally I tend to speak standing up because it gives me a psychological advantage. However, since I'm surrounded by charming friends and smiling faces this afternoon, I think I'll sit down in a comfortable posture for the remaining hour or whatever I can manage to get across. Wait a minute. Can you hear anything? Can you hear a noise? I can hear a noise distinctly. What is the noise saying to me? There are voices saying to me. I know it's the first sign of man. I'm hearing voices and the voices are saying to me loud and clear with all that is happening in the world. What is Alan Woods doing writing a book about the history of philosophy? Have you heard these voices? If not, you will do. Well, we will deal a little bit with those in the moment. In order to answer this point, I would like to quote a little incident from a work by the great Russian writer Leif Talstoy, which related to an experience he had one time. He was walking through a primitive Russian village along a dusty street, and in the middle of this rough road, which acted as a central street of the village, he saw a little man crouching down on the road waving his hands in the air. First of all, I'm obviously in the presence of a lunatic asylum. But when he grew closer to this man, he saw that it was a peasant sharpening his knife on a stone. Now, you see, when our enemies, both our bourgeois enemies are also our so-called self-styled Marxist critics, when they see our conferences, these meetings, by the way, are not like any other meetings in the labour movement that you're likely to attend in your life. They are not. You go to any meeting, trade union conference, live party, well, why talk about the live party conference? I don't know. You won't get any discussion of ideas. Zero. You're not interested in ideas, and to the degree they discuss anything whatsoever, it's not in the plenary sessions, it's in the corridors. And that's to decide who gets on what committee and who gets this and who gets that and so on. Now, all the meetings, by the way, of our tendency, the international Marxist tendency, is not like that at all. At our meetings, we are very proud of the fact we discuss ideas. Oh yes, that's what you're discussing this weekend. All kinds of ideas, and some of these ideas, it's true, may strike, perhaps even some of you, or perhaps new to the movement, as a little bit abstract. You can't see an immediate connection with the class struggle and revolution. And that's what these clever dicks are saying to us, what they're saying to me. What has all this got to do, what's the history of philosophy got to do with the class struggle and the practical issues facing the working class and sources of revolution? Well, we'll come back to that question. It's an interesting question, which we can come back to in a moment. But you see, when they look at our meetings, I've noted on some of the things that we are quite mad. See, but it was a 12-star reaction to that peasant. What on earth are we discussing? All these strange ideas for what's going on? What particularly surprises and annoys them? No end, it really does infuriate them. It's the fact that by doing this, that is to say, my friends, by taking a serious attitude towards sources of revolution, a serious attitude towards the theories of socialism, we're actually serving to attract, oh yes we are, truth that is in this hall. And many other things, which I can cite, not just in Britain but internationally, in Canada, in the United States, astonishing growth of the IOT. And what attracts, they can't understand this. Why on earth should they be attracted by a bunch of people discussing things like this? And the one thing that fails them, the one thing that all these so-called Marxists, they are so-called Marxists, I use that term advisedly, the one thing that escapes them all, you know what it is? One thing they've never understood, and they never will understand, the enormous power of ideas. That's what they don't understand. Marx understood it, Lenin understood it, Trotsky understood it, and we understood it, the enormous power of ideas. You see, we discuss at length some depth, for example, not just the Russian revolution of 1917, which we must discuss of course, that's vital. We discuss the English revolution, I did a series of podcasts which you might like to have a look at, and it ended up rather longer than I thought. 19 hours' worth, in fact, if you could put up with it. But anyway, the English revolution of Oliver Cromwell of the 17th century, fascinating stuff, and essential stuff, we study, yes, the English revolution, the great French revolution, that wonderful revolution of 17, 18, 19, and 93. A few years ago, you may not notice, perhaps you've heard of the history channel. Hands up all of you, they've got television sets, put your hand up. Nobody's prepared to admit it, I see. Yes, you've spent all your time reading Marxist books, that's even better. But anyway, let's assume you've heard of the history channel. Well, I don't know when was it, about 20 years ago, they approached me. Would I be prepared to appear on the history channel in a program called the French Revolution? I said yes. So then these two guys rang me up from New York, based in America. And there's Mr Woods, you willing to speak about the French Revolution? I said yes, of course. But they said, why? Do you think that the French Revolution was justified? So that's a very strange question you asked me. Very strange. Particularly coming from you. You said why? You're young, aren't you? You're American. And as far as I recollect in the 18th century, you had a revolution, didn't you? And you didn't treat the brits too gently, as I remember from my school books and so on, yes. And yet, you know, it's a fact. And by the way, what about the second American revolution? I said, what they were? So gobsmacked. Second American? What's second American? Civil war. Abraham Lincoln, the emancipation of the serfs. I said, do you know that, comparing relative to the size of population, far more people were killed in your civil war than were killed in the Russian civil war? Do you know that? They didn't. I said, no. And yet, there's a funny thing. All the years that I've been in the movement, nobody's ever asked me, do I think that the American revolution was justified? Or do I think that Abraham Lincoln, oh, by the way, broke every single rule in the constitutional book, broke all the rules of the constitution of the states in this world? Nobody ever asked me if Abraham Lincoln was justified. Now why do you think that is? They couldn't answer. Anyway, they did the interview. They had a room here in the Wallace Collection, and the interview for a bar-an-hour, at the end, even the film crew was astonished and was impressed and interested and fascinated by what I had to say. They'd never heard the justification of the French Revolution before. I think when the programme appeared, I think I was on for about 30 seconds, but there we are. That's what's called freedom of the press, the free media and so on. Never mind. We got an important member out of that in the states, but that's another matter. We study all of these revolutions of the past. Why? Not for entertainment value, not to pass an amusing few hours, but for what we can learn about the science and the technique and the mechanics of revolution. By the way, we're not the only ones. Now of course, if you take the post-modernist morons, I use the expression, the ladies and gentlemen who accept post-modernism, let's be kind to our enemies. They say that the study of history can be waste of time, can learn nothing from history. It's just purely entertainment value, that's all, because there's a series of accidents. Now, you see, funnily enough, we don't accept this for one single moment. Any serious person that seriously looks at history can see a lawfulness in it and certain patterns which repeat themselves. Yes, my friends, history is governed by laws. Why shouldn't it be when every other aspect of the physical universe is governed by laws? Why shouldn't the human evolution also be governed by laws? It's nonsense just to think anything different. And by the way, the serious representatives of the ruling class don't think that. Let me prove it to you. You see, we know, we ought to know anyway, we are at war. Oh yes, there's a war between the classes and we're part of that war. And it's a very bitter and ruthless and cruel war it is and will be even more so in the future. And if you don't understand that, you better wake up to it as soon as possible. But you see, there are many parallels. Many parallels between war between the classes and war between the nations. Not by chance, Lenin often used military analogies when he described the Revolutionary Party and so on. It's not an accident. Now, if you take military academies, bourgeois military academies, the places where the future officer caste is educated and trained for war to kill people, okay? What do they study in these academies? They study war. That's what they study. Not just the First World War and the Second World War and the Vietnam War. No, no, no. No, no. They study the wars of Napoleon. They study even the wars of Julius Caesar in detail. And they don't do this in order to amuse themselves. It isn't a pastime. It's a deadly serious business. What are they doing when they study history in this scientific way? This war is a science, by the way. It's an art and a science. They are preparing themselves seriously for the next war and the one after that and the one after that. That's what it's about. Now, it's exactly the same in the case of the classroom. That's why we take this study seriously. And, by the way, the history of philosophy is also a battleground. You probably never thought of it like that, but it is. It's a battle of ideas which has gone on for at least two and a half thousand years. That's what's in this book. And, by the way, if any of you have come to this meeting hoping to hear me describe the history of philosophy for the last 2,500 years, you will have to go way sadly disappointed for a number of reasons. First of all, it's not physically possible. You know, even I think Marx would have found it difficult. Heigl might have managed, had to pinch. Two thousand five hundred years of the most profound, marvellously interesting ideas. You can't deal with that. And I won't even try to do so. I don't intend to try to do that. That's the first reason. The second reason, a materialist one, if you like, is very simple. We want you to buy the book. Because we need the money. I hasten to add not to pay the author who receives precisely nothing, except praise or sometimes not so much praise. But there you are. All contributions are gratefully received. Anyway, we need the money to pay for other books which we intend to produce. So this is it. Above all, we want you to conquer these ideas for yourselves. I will come across you to give you these ideas on a spoon. You have a look at and learn these ideas for yourselves. That's the name of the game. But I'll come back to that idea a little bit later, to return to my point. For two thousand five hundred years, history of philosophy has been a battleground of ideas, of contending schools and ideas, of ferocious battles fought for the supremacy of one idea or another. But you see the postmodernist geniuses, let's be kind of them. That's irony of course. The postmodernist crowd, the postmodernist gang, they see the history of philosophy, like all history, just as a series of accidents. There's no rhyme, there's no logic, there's no reason to assess a group of individuals, people who said this and said that and said the other thing and then disappeared off the record of history forever and ever. We don't see history in those terms. We don't see the history of the class struggle in those terms. And we don't see the history of philosophy in those terms either. No, no, no, no. Because throughout these two thousand five hundred years, the predominant schools which have been struggling against each other are basically, there is another school, but that's another matter, that's not so important. The basic two schools is the school of materialism, philosophical materialism and philosophical idealism, which of course I've got a very ancient history. If one takes idealism that goes back at least as far as Pythagoras and you remember him from school perhaps, you know. The square on the hypotenuse is equal to something I can't remember what. I was the bottom of the class at maths, as you can see. Anyway, Pythagoras apart from a great mathematics, he was a great philosopher, he was an idealist philosopher, as was Plato. The two great proponents above all Plato of philosophical ideas, they were geniuses, they were very great thinkers, no two ways about it. Although their idea seems rather strange if you think about it, incidentally the word idea in Greek, it doesn't mean, it didn't mean an idea at all, it meant a form. Plato asked himself, if I consider what the basic essence of things is, I must answer that it is form, it is idea, okay, idealism. But for example everything has form like this table is a rectangle, this bottle if we don't tip the content underneath it's a circle and so on and so forth, triangles and so on. Yes, but if you look at all real material objects you find that they're all defective. You will never find in the natural material world a perfect circle or a perfect rectangle or a perfect triangle, okay. Therefore, Plato argued, this material is imperfect, grubby, transient, ephemeral, material world of matter, must be an imperfect reflection of a perfect world of forms of ideas which existed before the world itself existed. Okay, and now if that idea seems a bit strange to you, don't blame me, blame Plato, that's what he actually said. And if you think about it, that idea signs very well with something else, with what? You know what? No? You don't? The man with the beard, you know? Religion, religion, God is the creator which if the whole imperfect world came out of, you know? And he is the perfect form and he is perfection in every sense and so on and so forth. Yes, at bottom, oh yes, oh yes, I'll call a Spanish shovel, at bottom and if you strip away all the niceties and so on, at the bottom of all brands of idealism you will find religion, you'll find the almighty. Jiu Jiu man is somewhere hiding in the background. Now, of course, the opposite school is the one which we support, is philosophical materialism which says the opposite, the opposite. Ideas, dreams, theories, mind, spirit, soul have no independent existence separate and apart from matter. The first question is, can you have ideas, sensation and so on and so forth, without a brain? Can you have a brain without a central nervous system? Can you have a central nervous system without a material body? The answer is no to all of those questions and modern science has demonstrated this without a shadow, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Modern science to a large extent, that's why philosophy, that's partly why philosophy nowadays no longer occupies the central position it did in the past, when it was identical with science actually, it was mixed up with science for a long time. But you see, science today has answered many of those things which in the past were considered to be mysterious, unknown things which we couldn't comprehend and so on. No, no, no, no, no. The development of science technique and the productive forces has stripped away one after the other of these religious mysticism and has driven philosophical materialism into a corner, into a hidey hold. And yet in spite of that fact, in spite of that we know now, we know what ideas are, more or less. No, no, although the brain, if you like, the human, instantly the human brain, is the most complicated thing that we know in the entire universe. You know that? Yes, you've got in your noddles inside your craniums, all of you, all of us, have the most complex thing which is known to science. And even today the certain aspects which still remain to be explained, yes, but they're less and less. It's perfectly clear now that what we call mind, what we call mind or ideas, it's the mode of existence of the brain which as I said is inseparable from a central nervous system and a material body. We know this, we know this as a certain fact. And yet in spite of that, in spite of the fact that idealism really speaking has been debunked and has been driven into a corner, and yet, and yet, these prejudices still exist. Oh yes, not only did they still exist, they still act as a powerful influence over the minds of many billions of people I'm thinking of religion in particular. Imagine, it's difficult to think of this, think about it for a moment. Ideas, primitive ideas, primitive superstitions and fears which come from the cave, from the dark recesses of the cave at the dawn of human thought, still persist and exercise a powerful influence over millions of people, not just what you might expect, primitive poor peasants in the Amazon basin or tribes in the Democratic Republic of Congo or wherever. No, no, no, no, in the United States, in Britain, in France, in the most cultured, cultivated advanced technologically and scientific advanced countries in the world. This dark shadow of religion still oppresses, still exists, it's still there and it's still a threat to human culture, by the way, the threat of the human race, still exists. You know I remember when I was, don't laugh, when I was young and handsome and thin like that. I was, you don't believe me, I'll show you a photograph like that. Instead of anyone in this room, I'll put a bet on it. You know, I remember when the Americans put the first man on the moon, the Russians had beat them to it and they were a bit sore about that. So they got to the moon first for whatever it was worth, didn't go back afterwards. I don't know what that was in Adolf. But anyway, one of the space men that was then, he'd been in the moon, he was going around the world in his, whatever it was, his spaceship, you know, and it was Christmas and he was asked to give a message to the human race. Now, just imagine how the entire volume of literature which exists in this wonderful world, you know, you know what he chose? The first lines of the book of Genesis from the Bible, you know what that is? You want to. You don't read the Bible, you should do I? I've read the Bibles. I like the Bible, it's a very interesting book. Yes, it's full of wisdom and philosophy and poetry and so on. I'm a bit disappointed by the ending, that's the fact. Everything going up in flames didn't fancy that. But anyway, that's probably just me. But anyway, so the first book of Genesis. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Think about it. Think about it. Here's a dialectical contradiction for you. A first-rate dialectical contradiction. This man in his spacesuit surrounded by the most advanced technological marvels of the day, you know, going round the earth in his spacesuit and his brain is full of the accumulated rubbish, accumulated trash left over from the storage. If that isn't the dialectical contradiction, I don't know what is. But there you are. Yes, it still exerts a powerful effect. If I might give a personal, a small personal experience of that. I wrote another book. Actually this was going to be part of a book called Reason and Revolt, which you may have heard of. I hope you will read that because it's a companion to this really. It deals with Marxist philosophy and modern science. And it's been translated into many languages, including Urdu, which you know is probably the language of Pakistan. Pakistan, as you're aware, is an Islamic republic with many fundamentalists in it. It's not common. It's translated into Urdu and I had to present this book in Lahore. It's a big audience. It's as big as this. And I knew for a fact that many, if not most of those presence would be believers. Muslims. Practising Muslims. So I was a little bit teeny a little bit iffy because basically I enjoy life, you know. But anyway, so I thought, how shall I handle this? I know what they'll do. I've got a confession to make. I don't really understand religion. I can't get ahead of that. I don't know what it is. Perhaps you can help me to understand it. I don't know much about Islam, but in Christianity the priest tells us that you've got to be good, you see. If you're good. That is to say, for example, if you're a wife and your husband beats you and tortures you accept it. You accept it and patience and tolerance and so on. And you have to suffer. You must suffer in this terrible world. If you're a worker and your boss exploits you, will you accept it as your lot with patience and Christian resignation? If a policeman comes and slaps you on the cheek you turn the other cheek so you can slap that one as well. Now, if you do all these things, if you're good and obedient and submissive and you accept all these things with Christian resignation, then you suffer all your life it's too. Then everything will be fine and you'll be very happy when you're dead. Now, I said I never really understood this and some of them started, like you, some of them started to laugh. I thought, ah, I'm onto something here. I said, but in any case, the question that you should be asking yourself today in Pakistan is not is there a life after death or not. The question that the millions of people might be asking themselves is, is there a life before death? And then a lot of them started to laugh so that I proceeded unhindered with my message. But you see the point I'm making is that in the 21st century these elements of reaction, of reaction that he backward ideas, the persistence of religion in the 21st century is still a serious, serious problem. But the history of philosophy is there for, I repeat, I repeat, a battleground of ideas, particularly a battle between science and religion. The great philosophers were materialists, not just the Greeks, but also spinos of that wonderful philosopher, Jewish philosopher that had to move to Holland because the Jews were persecuted in the Iberian peninsula, but he was a genius. Now, you might not think this. Hands of anyone that's ever read any spinos have put your hand up. One, two, three, I'm impressed. The great majority have not. This doesn't surprise me. But if you do read Spinoza's ethics, which is his main work, you'd be surprised when I said that he was a materialist. Because every other sentence is about God. God is this, God is that, God is that. Yes, he had to do that because otherwise he'd be in serious, even more trouble than what he was anyway. He was already accused of atheism. But in Spinoza, God equals substance. The universal substance. That's the same nature. Well, if God is the same as nature, there is no God. Is there? It was kind of pantheism, a kind of primitive materialism, if you like, but very courageous and he suffered as a terrible persecution as a result. A whole galaxy of heroes who conducted a stoic struggle, a heroic struggle against religious reaction. And the history of philosophy for us to go back to this, why this book, is not just a series of accidental things, not at all, not at all. It's an organic living process. And the person who really understood that, the only one that understood that, was Hegel, my hero, the great German philosopher Hegel. Marx and Engels started off, I think aliens, by the way. You cannot envisage Marxism without Hegel's dialectic. He was an absolute genius. When I was, how old I think I put it in the book, 17 years of age, I think, I started to read his monumental history of philosophy in three volumes. And for the first time, here, the history of philosophy is presented exactly as an organic development, whereby one school combats another school is defeated. Yes, but something remains. An idea is negated and at the same time it's preserved. This is dialectical, a dialectical idea. And out of this process eventually comes the highest form of philosophy, which finishes philosophy as we knew it, as it finished order. Which is Marxism. But this is unthinkable. I'll come back to this idea a bit later on. But here's a wonderful passage from another famous book by Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind. Incidentally, where's Jack? Jack, where are you hiding? He's hiding somewhere. He's over there. He's hiding. I can see you're hiding. I can see him. Now you see, the commies did a splendid job of editing this book. They really did a professional job. But there's just one little observation I have noticed. I think I put in my manuscript, you will correct me if I'm wrong, Jack. This book is called The Phenomenology of Mind. In this book it is referred to constantly as the Phenomenology of Spirit. Where did this spirit come from? What was the spiritualist in our ranks? That distorted my original? No, I understand what the commies are coming from. You see the German Geist, the word Geist. By the way, it's Halloween, isn't it? The word ghost comes from that. Geist in German can be translated either as mind or spirit, doesn't matter. In a kind mood to the generous mood, we can accept this. Anyway, from the Phenomenology of Mind or Spirit, Jack, he's a spirited character, Jack is. Never mind about that. I concentrated what Hegel wrote, and he wrote these marvellous words. He's talking about a plant, a flower, a rose, you know, and the life of a plant, and he says this. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter. In the same way, when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant's existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom, you understand. These stages, he says, are not merely differentiated. They supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. Yes, he said, but the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity where they do not merely do not contradict one another, but their one is as necessary as the other. And this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole. What a beautiful passage. And by the way, in those few words, in that passage, you have the condensation of the whole of the history of philosophy, the whole of it. And not only that, the whole history of science also. It's a wonderful book. So wonderful, I can't remember what it's called. What book am I thinking of? The nature of scientific revolution. Am I right or am I wrong? Structure. That's right. By Thomas Coon. That's the word I'm struggling for. Thank you, comrades. You see, some of you are still awake after half an hour. These go going. Thomas Coon, an American writer. That's a marvellous dialectical book, which explains the history of science in exactly the same way that Hager presents the history of philosophy. It's a wonderful book which you should read. Not only that, it also conveys the nature of the history of society. What he wrote here is precisely a description in dialectical terms of the development of our own species of society itself. That's a separate matter, of course, which we can come back to. Now, where am I? Now, you see the big question which our sceptical friends will want to do is, why discuss philosophy at all? Well, I got news for you, girls and boys. Marxism began as a philosophy. Oh, yes. Not with the class struggle at all. Although Marx was involved in the class struggle as a young man. But above all, he was a pupil and a follower and a here and an admirer of Hager. So, with Engels. Engels, when he was later in life, he wrote a letter to Marx that he was rereading Hager. And he wrote. How I love the old boy. How I love the old boy. You know, I know what he means, because I also can say the same thing. How I love the old boy. I mean, for all this, and he was idealist, an idealist. You could say politically he was a conservative, if not reactionary. And yet, of course, the authorities were very suspicious of Hager and his views and he would write to be suspicious. Because within this, this colossal masterpiece, there are brilliant ideas which paved the way for Marxism. And Marx and Engels were able to see that and eliminate the idealist side from Hager and therefore create this wonderful, this wonderful weapon. You see, I agree with what Benjai said. What's this? A book, you might say, it's not a book. That's not a book, that's a weapon. It's a weapon in our revolutionary armory and a very powerful weapon it is if you master it, as I hope that you will. Now, you see, why study philosophy? Is philosophy, do we need philosophy? Well, philosophy, of course, is a way of thinking, yes. But it is an unusual way of thinking. It's not the type of thinking which most people engage in every day of their lives, every waking hour of their lives. If you think about it, it's something which fills me with a profound sadness. Profound sadness. When I think of the waste of capitalism, the colossal waste, you know, Trotsky once said, how many Aristotle's are herding swine, are herding pigs? And he added, and how many swine herds are sitting on thrones, he added, quite right. You think of the colossal potential that exists in the human race, in every child, every baby that is born, the potential that's within them to become great. The idea that Marxism says we are all the same, we are all the same, of course we are all the same, thank goodness we are all the same. Imagine if everyone was like me there, Ben. Absolutely unbearable, I'd be the first one to say it. But we are not all the same, everyone is different, yes, and it's this difference, it's the richness, the richness of the human race that we are all different. Yes, but we are all capable of something, of some greatness, of some great achievement. It may be science, it may be brain surgeon, it may be philosopher, it may be an artist, it may be a composer, it may be a footballer. Who knows? And yet you know, as I know, very well, that very soon this spark, this potential which exists, is crushed out of people, crushed out of little children. The earliest possible age, they taught to think that's not for you. You have no future other than what the Bible called the hew is of wood and the drawers of water. What a shameful waste, and when we think about what people think about on a daily basis, their minds are obsessed with what? With a humiliating struggle for existence, and that's been the case forever, forever. Not thinking about beautiful ideas or great things at all, but am I able to pay my bills at the end of the month? Will I be able to pay the landlord? Will I pay the electricity bill? The choice this winter, I think Rob said that yesterday in his marvellous speech, was the choice between heating your home and children or giving them food for Christ's sake in the 21st century in Britain for God's sake, which is a rich country. That's the kind of barbarous society in which we live. People's minds are obsessed. Will I find a school for my kids? Can I afford to be ill? Can I afford to go to work when I'm ill? What happens when I'm old? Look at the disgraceful, you don't know. You don't know. My daughter works as a care worker. I mean for goodness sake. Charles Dickens is, I'm telling you Charles Dickens is not in it. The ghastly conditions that Charles Dickens describes in the work houses still exist in Britain now, and it's a damn scandal. People's minds are obsessed with these things, with these fears. Okay? And then philosophy. The human mind is capable of far greater things than that, my friends. Far greater things than that. It's a shame, a scandal, it's a humiliation, it's a degradation of the human race, and the human race is capable of far greater things than that. If you want to sum up the idea of what socialism or communism is, I'll tell you what it is. Aristotle worked there a long time ago, worked that out. You know what it is? It is to make actual what was always potential. All this potential of the human race always did exist. It exists now. Of course it exists now, but it's shamefully wasted, crushed and destroyed. It is to make this potential a reality, an actuality, that's the real task. I think Fourier, the French utopian socialist said something like that, he was right. Philosophy is a way of thought which is different. It's thinking about the big things in life, which by the way most people sooner or later do think about these things. What is good and what is bad? You know? Is there life after death? What is the meaning of life? Good question? What is the meaning of life? Think about it. Even though it's fortunate to have a job, you get up in the morning, you go to work, you come back tired, you fall asleep. You sleep in front of the television, you sleep, you go back to work again. Is that life? I don't think so. I repeat what I said earlier. The question facing millions of people is not, is there life after death? The question is, is there life before death? That's the point. And it's a very difficult question to answer. Now you see those people who say, of course you don't need it for us. You don't need to read this. Of course you don't need to read it. You don't need to read anything. Naturally, you know. You don't need this. No, but you see without that you miss the point entirely. And those people who say to me, I don't need it for, or rather, I don't have a philosophy. That person is very mistaken. I say to that person, oh yes, you have a philosophy. All right. Because the person who tells me that he has no philosophy, that person will merely repeat like a parrot, like a mindless parrot, the ideas, the prejudices, the religion of the society in which they were born from the moment they are born from the moment that they die. That's all. That's all. Now, here's a challenge. Here's your great opportunity. If you are happy with the kind of society in which we live, if this seems to, this world is good enough for you, then I have nothing further to say to you. You may leave. There's the exit. You may leave now. Nobody's leaving. Okay. Then I say this to you. If, on the contrary, like myself, you are not happy with this world and you want to change it, then you need a philosophy. You need a revolutionary philosophy. And the only revolutionary philosophy which I'm acquainted with which I know is Marxism. That's a simple fact. There's none others. And that's the reason, that's the purpose of this meeting we're having this weekend. Now, where was I? I said it's not too good these days, I'm afraid. The only revolutionary philosophy is Marxism. Yes, but Marxism did not drop from the clouds. It didn't. It has a history. And it is actually the product of a long period of censories of precisely this of philosophy, precisely that, yes. It's the disturbed essence of all that is beautiful and fine and enduring. And worthwhile. Those ideas created by the most brilliant minds that ever walked the face of this earth. Marxism is the distillation of all that. And that's something that we should be proud to take up. Dialectics is not new at all. Marx didn't invent dialectics. The first one to put that forward really in a coherent way was Heraclitus. Although embryonic dialectics can be found even, I think, in Buddhism and certain primitive religions. But nevertheless, the first real dialectics was this great man, this great thinker, Heraclitus, a wonderful man. Not much is known about his life. I've got his collective writings on my bookshelf in my study. It amounts to about 20 pages, maybe a couple of pages more, I don't know. I've encountered them lately. And they're all tiny aphorisms, little statements. And some of them are very puzzling statements. Most of them are very puzzling statements. When somebody once asked Socrates what he thought of Heraclitus, and he was quite bright in those Socrates, he answered in the following, he said, well, the part which I have understood is excellent and I'm sure the rest is also. What a wonderful, he was a modest man. Modesty is very important, we should all be modest in the face of great ideas. When Socrates went to see the Delphic oracle, the oracle of Delphi, and the oracle asked him, what do you know? You know the answer? I think you do. I know that I know nothing. And that made him the wisest man in Athens. That's a very, very important story, you know. I say particularly to the students. Sometimes some of the, some student commies, perhaps they think they know a little bit more than what they do know. I've seen this over the years. It's not a good thing, by the way. Learn from Socrates. Understand that you know nothing, you must learn. You must learn, which is a hard and difficult process as we'll find out. But anyway, Heraclitus, his ideas, his aphorisms were considered to be so difficult, so hard to understand. It earned him the nickname of Heraclitus the Dark. There you are. And, well, there's lots of them, but here's two famous ones. He said, we step and do not step into the same stream, because the water's moving all the time. We step and do not step into the same stream. We are and are not. You see, what do you mean, are? I mean, I'm Marlon Woods, I think. I think I am. And the same Marlon Woods has started to speak another hour ago. Yes, but in that period, you see, there's been billions or trillions of changes in my body, which you can't notice, and I can't notice, fortunately, you know. And therefore I am and I'm not. And over a period, these small changes, these tiny imperceptible changes, become big changes. Quantity changes into quality. Marvellous, marvellous, profound ideas. And, of course, the reason why he was considered to be incomprehensible is because his ideas challenged the existing ideas of most people, challenged something which is called, nowadays, common sense. You know, it's common sense, common sense. What do you mean, I am and I'm not, I'm not, I'm either. Common sense. Common sense can be very treacherous, you know. Common sense tells us that the sun goes around the earth and that the earth is flat, and common sense is wrong. You see? Anyway, that's the beginnings of dialectics. And Marxism is based on the whole history of ideas. As you will see, if you read this book, you'll understand more of what I'm attempting to, not very successfully, perhaps, to explain to you. Now, of course, there is a very good book which I recommend you to read, you probably have read it, by Lenin, which is called The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, where he explains. You see, Marxism didn't, I said it didn't drop from the clouds. And then it explained, for example, Marx undoubtedly carried out a great revolution in the field of economics. Yes, but he didn't suck it out of his thumb. He based himself originally on the ideas of the great English classical economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who, by the way, they discovered the labour theory of value, not Marx. Yes, but Marx, what he discovered was surplus value, which carried the whole discussion on to an entirely different level. That was a revolution in effect. Same thing in the field of history, where Marx was the first one to explain that history is not a series of accidents, as the postmodernist clowns tried to tell us. But it's got a lawfulness of itself, and that is determined ultimately by the development of the productive forces, but that's a separate question. The great utopian socialist, but Marx didn't invent socialism. Socialism and communism existed long before Marx. You find it in the Bible, in the Acts of the Apostles. The early Christians were communists, as a matter of fact. Communists of consumption, a primitive sort of communism, but they were revolutionaries and communists originally. They didn't accept private property, for example. But you see, the early 19th century utopian socialists, the Frenchmen Fourier and Saint-Simon, and the Welshmen. He was Welsh, by the way, did you know that? Robert Owen was Welsh, not English at all, or Scottish, by friends. He was Welsh. They had great ideas, wonderful ideas actually, which Marx, of course, it was the starting point. The difference is what separates Marx from the utopians is this. With them, it just appears like a good idea, a moral idea, you know? As such it could have existed a thousand years ago, a hundred years ago, whenever, and saved humanity a lot of unnecessary suffering. But Marx is with us, that's not the case. It's not a good idea. It follows inevitably from the development of society, the objective development of capitalism from feudalism and the development of the corrective forces. But that's a separate discussion and I don't want to expand. I can't expand it, there's no time for it. Now all these things, you see, were great titanic theoretical conquests. Yes, but, yes, but you must understand. In the last analysis all of these theoretical conquests are the product of one thing and one thing alone, and that's dialectical materialism, the method of Marxism, the scientific method of Marxism. And precisely for that reason, of course, the enemies of Marxism, they always pick on dialectical materialism as the fundamental target, because they know perfectly well. You demolish dialectical materialism and you demolish the entire edifice of Marxism, it depends on that. Absolutely no doubt about it. Now there's angles that pointed out that there are three kinds of struggle. To go back to my chorus of disapproving critics, you know, who wonder why I waste my time writing books about philosophy. Angles pointed out that there are three types of struggle actually. There's the economic struggle, yes, very important, that strikes and so on and so forth. The struggle for better wages and conditions. There's the political struggle, that doesn't need any explanation. Yes, but there's also the ideological struggle. And of the three, as Angles said, the ideological struggle is equally as important as the other two, if not more important than the other two. Of course, I have met, in the course of my long and eventful life, I've met quite a few people who consider themselves to be Marxists, they make a lot of noise, they tend to be very noisy people. Most of them go around with sectarians, you know the sort, you must have met them. You can tell them by the expression on their face, for some reason they all look as if they just swallowed a pint of vinegar, I don't know why. I don't know whether they're born with that expression or whether they practice hard to attain it, but anyway. By the way, you should say, you know, that's ridiculous, I mean you go to any factory and ask to speak to the chief steward or the convener. You'll never find somebody like that. You always find a man or a woman that's cheerful and open and will have a drink and talk about football and have a laugh and so on and so forth. Otherwise the workers would never elect and be sure of it. And we are not like that, I hope. I hope that we said that, you used to say, you asked me when I was 18 years of age. What are the main, most important features of a revolutionary? I thought, what would that be? Courage, tenacity, high theoretical everything, no, no, no, no. A sense of proportion and a sense of humour. And the longer that I've lived, the more I understand the wisdom of those words. These so-called practical marks, practical people, they want to do the practical, but the question is that workers are only interested in that, they're not interested in this kind of stuff. The workers, workers, working class, they even put on an accent. I never quite worked, 99% of them are petty boos while the stewarders, they put on donkey jackets and put on an accent. I never quite determined, indeterminate accent, somewhere in the region of Essex, or somewhere like that, fools nobody by the way, fools nobody whatsoever, that sort of nonsense. Anyway, these guys, oh no, you've got to be practical, see. This nonsense has got nothing in common with real Marxism whatsoever, you better take it from me. And by the way, if this are all practical politics, this lands us straight into the swamp of opportunism and reformism immediately. That's not what it's about at all. Our tendency would have no reason to exist as a separate tendency if it wasn't for the fact that we attach enormous importance towards theory. Lenin, by the way, I think, you think that Lenin could be considered vaguely as a Marxist of some sort? I think so. Take a photo, all those in favour of Lenin being a Marxist, put your hand up. Oh, overwhelmingly carried, there we are. The eyes have it, the eyes have it. Lenin is saved once again. Lenin had nothing but contempt for these people, nothing but contempt for the vulgarisers of Marxism who he referred to as a trend, as the economist trend, you might have heard of that, you know. And he raised a pitiless struggle in the early days of Marxism, a pitiless struggle against this tendency, most notably in his famous 1902 classic, What is to be Done, where we read the following. Now, those of you who are still awake, I think as one or two might still be awake after all this time. You want this to finish as soon as possible. Anyway, we are materialists. Listen to this, girls and boys, listen to this. This is from what is to be done. This is Lenin. Without a revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. And he continues, this idea, listen to what he says, this idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation of the narrowest form of practical activity. Okay. And he adds, the role of Vanguard, get a road of this, the role of Vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only, only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory, that's Lenin. Okay. Is that not perfectly clear? I can't hear anything. Is that not perfectly clear? No, I still can't hear you. Is that not perfectly clear? That's more like it. That woke you all up, didn't it? Right. Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolution. A child of six could understand what Lenin wrote, but not these wise acres, not the real Marxists with the donkey jackets and the Essex action. No, no, no. You know, they got a very narrow and superficial version of socialism. Not new, by the way. Now, one such person, you probably know, it's a bit unfair really to compare this gentleman, this man with these id imbecilies, these idiots, sectarian idiots. There was a man called Weitling. He was a German utopian socialist. Actually, he was a worker, an artist, I believe. But he was a leading figure in an organisation called the League of the Just. Some of you might have heard of that. It was an early organisation which Marx and Engels had here to. They joined it. And they had quite a lot of success. But unfortunately, Weitling, I think he was a bit jealous actually. It sometimes happens in small groups. You won't get jealous. He was jealous of the success of Marx and Engels that they were having. Because of their ideological superiority precisely was clear among the workers of the League, because the workers were interested in theory. Absolutely interested in theory. But then Weitling tried to undermine Marx and Engels by referring in contemptuous terms to intellectuals who spend all their time on theory. You write books about those three of us, people, for example. As opposed to the practical questions that he alleged, the only things that the workers were interested in, they all could understand. Now, this is interesting. An event which perhaps you're not acquainted with. There was a discussion between Marx and Weitling. A present at that discussion was a Russian revolution called Aninkov. He was present. And he recalled that the discussion became quite heated. Weitling started this nonsense about the fact that these intellectuals are barged in where they fancy theories and so on and so forth. And he went too far. He went too far. And Aninkov, it became very heated. This is unusual because Marx was a very patient man actually. And he remained calm usually. Even when people said stupid things he still remained calm and continued to listen. But Weitling just went too far. And Marx exploded. He exploded. He banged the table with his fist. Very unusual. Banged the table with his fist. And he shouted at Weitling, ignorance never helped anybody. Marvellous. Marvellous. And I replied to my critics with exactly the same phrase of Marx, my friends. Ignorance never helped anybody. Now, let's be clear on one thing. You may or may not know. I myself am a work-in-class family. I'm the first member of my family to have a secondary education. Never mind about university education. And I think I know the work-in-class quite well. I really do. I'll tell you frankly from my own experience. It is simply not true. It's a slander against the work-in-class. It's something that makes me furious. Not many people. Not many things do. It really makes me mad. When I hear people say that workers are not interested in theory. It's a damned lie. It's a colony. And it's an absolute disgrace to them. And by the way, that shows to me the person who makes remarks that is a petty booswater the mother of his bones. Who knows nothing about the work-in-class. And never will know anything about the work-in-class. And by the way, this prejudice of the petty. We think the workers are little children. Ignorant kids. They can only understand simple, can't understand difficult ideas. Doesn't that show contempt? Doesn't that? I'll tell you what. If I have a contempt, it's because of the eight years I have to spend in my life suffering in a university which used to be considered an elite university at the time. And I found some of the most ignorant people in society in the four walls of that university. I still have the greatest contempt for most academics in the internet as a matter of fact. I don't mean the revolutionary students who are present, but I think you know what I'm referring to. And it is entirely wrong to refer to that in those terms. In my experience, workers are very interested in theory. I could prove that with a thousand examples if I had the time, which I do not. This prejudice is deeply rooted in the middle class and the intellectuals. It comes way back from the Neolithic time when, first of all, society was divided into mental and manual labour. What the Bible refers to is the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. Girls were treated just as contemptuously as slaves in the society. The brainy boys, the boys who could write, the boys who had command of language of the Word. You know what the Bible says? In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Now this sums up the whole mentality of the priest caste, describes the intellectual smart-asses, you know. And at that time, and ever since that time, the masses have been expropriated, not just physically, but also culturally. They've been denied access to culture for two thousand, no, ten thousand years. What am I talking about, the Neolithic tonight? That door slammed in their face. And by the way, Angus made a very interesting statement. He said that in any society in which art, science and government are the monopoly of a few, that few will use and abuse its monopoly in its own interest. And you have a complete summing up of the class division of society. Yes, the possession of culture is a colossal weapon in the hands of the ruling class. And by the way, if you want to overthrow this society, this rotten society, this rotten society, if you want to tear it up by the roots, destroy the foundations, you must tackle the ideological basis of this society also. As was the case in the past, in the French Revolution. The Philosoph, the French materialists of the 18th century, prepared the way for the fall of the Bastille. There's no two ways about it. And that's what we are doing. Precisely by conducting a ruthless struggle against the ideas of the bourgeoisie. We are preparing the ground ideologically for the great revolution that undoubtedly is being prepared. Now I don't have a lot of time left and we've got a very hard man here in the chair. You can't see it, he's kicking me into the table, you can't see it. I'll report him after the meeting, you know. But anyway, look, in the past, philosophers were heroes, rebels, people that weren't afraid to fight against the existing order, like Socrates. They forced him to drink a cup of poison headlock because he waged a pitiless struggle against the prejudices of his fellow Athenians. Or Giordano Bruno, who was condemned to be burnt alive by the Inquisition because he refused to recant his materialist views. And other people, many other people of that sort. But that's not the case today, is it? Today, if you ask most people what they think about philosophy, the official philosophy that is, they either have a complete indifference towards it, indifferent to it, not interested in it, or they treat it with absolute contempt. My friends and comrades, that contempt is well deserved compared to this galaxy of heroes that you can read in this book. What are the boosters you're capable of producing today? For goodness sake, nothing! Nothing, not one figure of any, not any thinker of any statue, not any idea of any importance, nothing. Of course modernism, God preserve us. May God preserve us. The words, words, words, it reminds me, you know. You've read Shakespeare's Hamlet, without? And I think it's Polonius who asked it. My Lord, what are you reading? To which Hamlet replied, words, words, words. And that's the same. Anyone that wants to waste their time looking into this drivel which is produced by the philosophy department, postmodernist drivel, that's all you'll find. Words, words, words. And I say that with the same spirit of monotonous contempt with which Hamlet expressed it at that time. I won't say anything further. The very idea that everything is determined by words. Which means, by the way, if everything is determined by words, then all problems can be solved by words. For example the oppression of women by man, which is a very serious problem. That's easily settled by changing words, you know, changing a few words, can't say this, must say that. In other words, an extremely important question, that's what makes me angry, an extremely important which is the oppression of women by men, is reduced to a trivial expression. The most trivial expression and of course the real oppression of women continues as before and nothing changes. It's not in the slightest bit affected or impinged by the nonsense which is talked in the university seminar rooms. This is, and that's the whole reactionary nature of this. I could say a lot more but I don't wish to spend any more time if I didn't distaste with the talk about the subject. If you must know. If you must know. And of course, when they say, there's no such thing as progress, that's what they say. Yes, what they mean to say is that in their confused out of brains, what they can see is that capitalism has got, is no longer capable of any progress. That's true. Capitalism can no longer offer, guarantee to them that tomorrow will not be worse than today. And that's quite correct. Yes, but instead of doing the correct conclusion that what is required to overthrow this system, they say, no, no, no, there's no such thing as progress in general, in general. Or they say, there's no such thing as ideology, really. Postmodernism is an ideology by any, by any standard, a very bad one, a very empty one and so on and so forth. What they mean to say is that the booze was in the present period of decline of capitalism, seen out of decay of capitalism, is not capable of any broad generalist, any great ideas which they did have in the past. And therefore philosophy, to finish, I have to finish, with the challenge of being very patient with me, all good things must come to an end, Joseph Ditchkin, again he was an interesting man, he was a German artist and a worker, who developed the ideas of dialectical materialism independently of Marx. He said philosophy, he was referring to the official philosophy, philosophy is not a science but a safeguard against socialism. He said social democracy, what he meant in those days, term used for socialism. And that's still the case now, still the case now. Although they tried to deny it, they hide between a spurious so-called objectivity, they're not objective at all. No, no, no, the universities and the philosophy departments are the nerve cells of ideological reaction, there are two ways about it, and hostility towards Marxism of course is perfectly clear. Now I have to finish, not through lack of material or lack of interest, but just to say this, by presenting this book, let's come back to the book, that's what it's all about after all, what can I promise you? First of all, an important thing that Marx said, he said, ideas become a material force when they grip the minds of the masses. Now of course those ideas, we can't reach the minds of the masses, it's beyond our power to do so. Yes, but it's experience itself, it's the experience of the crisis of capitalism, which is forcing day by day forcing people, many people, millions of people to come to terms with reality, to begin to question things which they never thought they would question, to question the existing set-up, and impelling them into struggle as day follows night, and the question is before us is not, will there or will there not be a revolutionary movement? Of course there will be, it's implicit in the whole situation. You better believe in, dialectics tells us this, that beneath the surface of apparent calm and tranquility there's a seething anger in society, a seething irrepressible discontent, rage, fury, indignation, sense of injustice, it's there and it's building up until it reaches a critical point where that will explode. That's not the question, the question, the only question of very importance to us is this, when that critical point is reached will the Marxists, will our forces be sufficiently prepared to take advantage of that to provide the necessary leadership which at the moment is missing? That's the question, which each one of you personally, I'm asking you to consider, because it's in your hands personally what is going to occur here. And therefore, I will just finish by, what can I promise? Well, I'll tell you what I cannot promise, I can't promise you an easy ride, I can promise you a hard time, a hard struggle and sacrifice to build the revolutionary organisation and even the struggle for ideas. You know, I am conscious of the fact, every beginning is difficult, I know that. And therefore, it's like climbing a mountain if you like, you start off by climbing a mountain and you're full of great ideas and you want to reach the top and as soon as you really, this is hard slog, this is more difficult than what I'll never get to the top here. You'll have many doubts like that, yes, but you persevere don't you, you persevere. And once you get to the top, to the subit, you're breathing pure fresh air, you're looking around, you're above the clouds and on all sides you see the panorama before your eyes, a wonderful panorama vision of the majesty of nature and it's all worthwhile. Well, I can promise you that in relation to Marx's theory also. Yes, it might be difficult at first, you might find some difficulty, it's possible. Okay, but my advice is persevere, work hard at it, work slog, slog await it. And when you've conquered these wonderful ideas, these beautiful ideas, they are beautiful. And by the way, essentially they're simple ideas, they're beautiful in their simplicity like all great ideas. Once you've reached the summit and have conquered these ideas, I'll tell you, this is a life changing thing. This will change your life, this will raise your horizons in a way which you can't imagine. Because Marxism is not just about economics, not just about the classroom, it's about everything, it's a key that opens many doors of philosophy, of art, of culture, of literature, of anthropology, you name it, you name it, all at your disposal. 2500 years of human culture is spread before your very eyes and that's the secret. And that is the most important there, I'll finish on that. By doing this, you are preparing yourselves individually for the great revolutionary tasks in front of us. And above all, for the greatest revolutionary transformation in history, that decisive leap from capitalist barbarism and savagery to a new civilization in which poverty and misery and exploitation will be a thing of the past, in which men and women will be free and equal as never before, and which the world of culture, the doors of culture which have been locked for 10,000 years will be thrown open for everyone to participate and raise themselves up, to realise in practice what was always possible potentially, to use the immortal phrase of Frederick Engels, mankind's leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.