 Diolch i'r bydio am ystod yn ymgyrch, y cyfnodau ymgyrch, sy'n cyhoedd am y bwysig. Lennon yn ddiddordeb, ond y cyfnodau am y dyfodol sy'n gyfnod y cyfnodau cyfnodau i'r ddylu o'r cynhyrchu yn y cwmwysig. Felly, rydyn ni'n ddwy'n cyfnod ar y cwmwysig, oedd yn y cyfnodau, y cwmwysig, y bydio am y cyfnodau, Felly mae'n gweithio'n gweithio economaeth yn capital y Mo. Yn gyflawni, mae'r capital yw'n mynd yn bwysig yn gwneud o'r fforddodd rhain a'r cyflawni, yn fawr, yn cyflawni'r cyflawni, yn gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n mynd. Ac yw'r cyflawni yn ymlaenio'n gweithio ymlaenio'n gweithio yma. Inw i'w gwybod, mae'n hyfrifau'r ffordd, mae'n rhaid i gregru eu lleolol, byddwn i'r ffordd yma o'r cyhoeddiadau, oedda'r ffordd yma o'r cyhoeddiadau, oedda'r gael yma, oedda'r cyhoeddiad. Yn allan o'r tymlaeth y其实au, o'r ffordd i gael iawn llawer yn uned ymlaes yr busnes. Byddwn i'r busnes i'r meddwl o'r broliadau. Mae'n ddiwedd i'r gael ymddangos, mae'n ddiwedd, fel y broses yw'r proses sy'n dweud o'r llai'r ddeudol, a'r hwnnw yn gwneud o'r proses yw'r proses yw'r proses, yn ymwneud o'r proses sy'n dweud o'r proses, o daith yn ymwneud. Dwi'n dweud o'r llai'r ddeudol, sy'n dweud o'r proses rydyn ni'n ei ddod ar y clyweddau yn y ddod 19th. Of course, develop a massive surplus of capital because they concentrate so much wealth within their hands, they develop a surplus, more than they actually can reasonably invest, at least for their home market. Additionally, their scale and their efficiency, having conquered all the key strategic positions in the market, tends to provide a barrier for the entry of new or smaller firms into the market. It becomes so expensive, you need so much capital to produce a car efficiently or something like that, that you basically can't. And therefore, you end up having this barrier to competition. And then also, with that, a surplus of capital, too much wealth concentrated in too few hands. And I think, again, you can see that quite graphically today with the lack of investment in the economy and the concentration in a few firms' hands of staggering amounts of wealth. To give the most glaring example of this is Apple, of course, one of possibly the biggest company in the world. And they, apparently, I read the other day have cash reserves, un-spent, un-invested cash reserves of $230 billion. They've just accumulated. Now, that's the most egregious example of this, but there are obviously many, many giant corporations sitting on huge piles of cash, essentially. And for this reason, and this provides the sort of mechanism or the underlying driving force of imperialism, these giant corporations are not able to, not finding enough room, if you like, in the home market for themselves, and having too much capital, beginning exporting their capital to other countries where super profits can be made because the cost of labour is lower, basically. And of course, in doing so, they open up also new markets for themselves. So they produce more cheaply and they open up new markets for themselves. And for that reason, you have, of course, on top of this, the political phenomena of imperialism. In other words, the development of colonies and things like that. So Lenin identified not only monopoly, but capital as characteristic, but specifically the exporting of capital to other countries, to usually undeveloped countries or non-capitalist countries, pre-capitalist countries, saying, this is what he said, he says capital has become overripe and owing to the backward state of agriculture and the poverty of the masses, capital cannot find a field for profitable investment. It's interesting that he adds the caveat that there's a lack that it's owing to the poverty of the masses they cannot find. Because it's not as if to say that we're too rich necessarily in these countries, there isn't useful things to be done, but that actually almost in a sense we're too poor. The working class, of course, cannot just absorb the endless commodities that can be produced by these companies and therefore they have to go abroad. And this was brilliantly summed up in a quote from an American senator in the 1890s. This is at the time that the United States was, of course, beginning to see that it could eclipse Britain. I think around that time it actually began to out-compete Britain in manufacturing. A senator for Indiana called Albert Beverage said, US factories are making more than people can possibly use. And US soil is making more than people can possibly consume. Fate has written our policy for us. The trade of the world shall be ours. We must establish trading posts throughout the world as just distributing points for American goods. I think that really sums up the link between the surface appearance of imperialism and, in other words, the politics of it, the world relations, the establishment of colonies in dependent countries, and the economic foundation for that, in other words, the over-production, the over-accumulation of capital in certain countries. And of course this also creates a situation in which you have dominating countries and dominated countries where you have powerful countries that exploit other countries and hold them back and keep them in a backward state of development. However, we also have to see the other side of the equation. It's not just the case that imperialism does that. Lenin also points out, as he says, and this is a quote, that on the other hand, the export of capital in imperialism influences and accelerates the development of capitalism elsewhere to those countries in which capital is exported. So on the one hand it does establish a relationship of dominance and subservience, but on the other hand it does also accelerate perhaps in a very distorted and on one side in an unhealthy manner, but it certainly does accelerate at the same time the development of capitalism in other countries. So imperialism is, as he said, the highest stage of capitalism, but it isn't the final, it isn't without its own stages. It does have within itself unevenness. In fact, it's based on unevenness, of course, to begin with. It's based on the fact that some countries and companies become much wealthier and more advanced and developed than others and therefore can exploit them. And it may appear for a period of time as if that creates a certain world order in which there's a degree of peace and security and almost a planning of the world's economy. You do have that in the epoch, for instance, in the mid-20th century, the epoch of globalisation under American domination after the Second World War. You have a relative period, a stress relative period of peace and stability in which living standards grew enormously under the Pax Americana and you had a similar phenomenon in the late 19th century under British domination. So it may appear as if it sort of organises the world into one very unjust but nevertheless very kind of peaceful and established system, providing a basis for growth on the dominating powers terms. It's not as simple as that. It's also being based precisely on this unevenness. It also develops unevenly and as Trotsky said, there is a certain privilege of backwardness. There's a certain privilege of being late to the party, having low costs of labour and also being able to learn the lessons and not have to repeat all of the same processes of the imperialist, master being able to import the latest technology. It also provides certain benefits, at least for some countries, some backward countries who can then grow much more quickly than even the imperial master is able to do so. Therefore, you have in the process of imperialist developments a shifting of the relative power and influence of the different powers, the emergence of new powers, the emergence of new wealth in other parts of the world and therefore an unsettling of this balance of forces in world relations over a period of time. I think of course that is the reason that we've put this topic on the agenda is to understand just such a period that we are living through at the moment. Lennan added that monopoly capital also concentrates itself more and more so into finance capital, where the economy becomes concentrated into fewer and fewer firms and bigger and bigger concerns. The role of finance becomes increasingly important as a kind of nerve centre and organizer, if you like, for the whole capitalist system and it signifies a point of development for capitalism in which really it's ripe for socialism because the private character, the small scale private character of production has been done away with and actually now with the domination of finance capital organizing instead of integrating all of the different companies you have really kind of socialized production in a certain sense. In other words, one giant division of labour where all of the companies are sort of dependent on each other, even own bits of each other through share ownership and investments of various kinds through the banking system, and you have therefore this very complicated interweaving of the economy at the centre of which of course is the stock market, the banks and other financial institutions and therefore are doing away with the kind of primitive, low level and private character, small scale character of early capitalism and therefore ripe for socialism, ripe for organizing the world economy on a collective basis. Also with the concentration of capital into giant, not only monopolies but specifically financial institutions, all owning bits of each other, having stakes in bits of each other as is the case. You also have therefore the possibility of a very close enmeshing and interweaving of the interests and the influence of these corporations and the states, which is after all the bourgeois state, Marx of course described the bourgeois state as like a committee for organizing the affairs, an executive committee of the bourgeoisie essentially. And if that is the case then of course once the bourgeoisie has become concentrated into these giant firms, these giant monopolies all knowing each other and having a very close relationship with each other then of course naturally they tend to have a very intimate relationship with the state apparatus as well. So you have this tendency to have national champions national corporations that sort of represents the fate and the interests of that country, of that bourgeois state and the bourgeois state becoming like a representative of the business of that country on the world stage. Those businesses as I've said of course having to export capital, having to go into other countries outsourcing and other kinds of things in order to continue expanding and competing on the world stage, then the nation state which is so closely tied up with these concerns of course takes it upon itself to help them in those endeavours to invade other countries or to secure the unnecessary alliances to secure the security apparatus that is needed and the infrastructure that is needed to lubricate world trade and to make sure that your companies are the ones that are doing well and you frequently see it that the likes of Theresa May and other politicians when they make their trips they often take a cohort of leading businessmen with them and if you actually read the reports of their trip to this or that country they'll have like 40 or 50 businesses when Iran opened itself up for instance to world trade after signing its deal with America a year or two ago you had all of these leading politicians taking with them a little army of business or prominent businessmen to suss out basically what kind of opportunities there were to exploit that market, that new market so indeed you have the ending really of real free competition in the modern era and the domination of enormous corporations over everything you also have the use of these financial institutions to not only to make money out of other countries by facilitating the export of capital but also as a means of control and domination you have of course the use of credit of lending money to other countries through the banks and sometimes through institutions like the World Bank to yes help development take place but also make sure that development happens on your terms and to further dominate those countries on this point it has to be emphasised that imperialism certainly does hold back and hamper the development of many countries throughout the world I think most of us are familiar with the fact that many colonial, ex-colonial countries are in basically debt bondage to the imperialist countries and have paid back their debts to them really many times over but the interest rates of course require them to keep up and they can never get out of this cycle of debt and really that's the reason why so much of the world like Sub-Saharan Africa remains in a situation of extraordinary poverty and backwardness has been kept in that position by the financial institutions of imperialism really and has not been able to develop and it's crazy that in the 21st century with the technology that we have today so much of the world lives in this kind of condition and it's totally unnecessary from a technological point of view but it's kept that way by the economic system that we live under another phenomena that Lenin identifies with imperialism is the phenomenon of social chauvinism which is where basically the fruits of imperial domination are utilised in order to sort of buy off and bribe the labour movement I wouldn't necessarily say the working class I put the emphasis on the labour movement because it's not really the working class that is you can't really bribe the whole working class it's the leaders or it's the more privileged and influential sections of the working class that were bought off the labour aristocracy as it was called and Lenin talks about this in imperialism in the book I think it's Cecil Rhodes, it's some British imperialist I'm not sure exactly if it was Cecil Rhodes who goes around, I think he goes around either labour movement meetings or meetings of the poor of some kind and he finds enormous poverty and anger as we know that there was obviously in Victorian or late Victorian Britain and he says basically imperialism is a bread and butter question he says, I think he literally uses that phrase he says we've got to exploit these countries basically so that we can afford to pay our own working class better wages to get dangle crumbs in front of them basically so that they won't overthrow us that was literally what he said so you have reformism, I would argue one of the most important influences in the development of reformism which after all represents the influence of the bourgeoisie and the workers movement represents the idea of compromise and subservience to capitalism and at best winning some small reforms within that system one of the most important things that made that possible is the existence of imperialism the existence of the ability to exploit the rest of the world to develop a tremendous wealth within certain key countries who can then of course afford certain reforms which of course you don't see reforms like we enjoy obviously are losing but nevertheless have enjoyed it in the west you don't see those in many parts of the world and that has enabled not necessarily the bribing of the working class as such but the leaders of the working class who have something therefore to offer their members and obviously are themselves given a coesia a more peaceful kind of career for themselves really and that's a very important phenomena that was identified by Lenin and many others at the time and out of that and this relates to the talk we just had on fascism that is also one of the most important influences I think behind fascism and racism in the modern sense of the term this creation of a privileged section of the working class you know in Britain for instance the working class was given the idea that it was part of a special nation a special race of people superior to other parts of the world who we were civilising and it gave them a certain sense of their own importance if you like it enabled the slave to look down upon a slave beneath themselves that sort of ideology was obviously deliberately propagated and we live with the wreckage of that really today when you see in so far as it is true that working class people might be support anti-immigrant policies, British jobs for British workers the idea that obviously other peoples like Muslim peoples are not welcome here and they're beneath us etc that really is the heritage I think of that kind of ideology which was promoted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in particular Where am I? So finally in terms of characterising imperialism in general of course the book is called the highest stage of capitalism meaning it's really completed, capitalism has completed its historic mission by the time it has evolved into imperialism by the time imperialism comes to dominate the world that means of course that capitalism dominates the world the whole world is organised really into one giant capitalist set of relations one giant market of course in which there are winners and losers but nevertheless one giant market and that means that really capitalism has succeeded it's conquered the world, it's organised one giant division of labour and sucked every kind of social system into itself and really it has nowhere else to take the world it has socialised production it's taken it into the realm of sort of scientific collective management although it's still appropriated privately the wealth of it is taken in by a few private individuals of course but it's become like this gigantic international enterprise by the early 20th century and really there's nothing progressive for capitalism to do beyond that point it's destroyed the sort of village rural kind of basis for previous production put it on an urban and scientific basis and organised it internationally there's really nowhere else for it to go and the fact that it has exhausted its progressive mission and has become therefore objectively a fetter on developments I think can be proven and seen and manifested in of course in the first and second world wars those are the most major and obvious examples of it but in many other phenomena the stagnating of the western world if you like it the deindustrialisation that you find in other words capitalism hitting a certain point of organising society and then kind of gradually going downhill really the privatisation of things all of that is in a sense part of its decay and of course the keeping of so much of the world and dire poverty, the inability even hundreds of years after capitalism's emergence of doing away with those kind of conditions again signifies a very objective, very clearly in terms of stats and real events the hitting of the limit of what capitalism can do and actually the decaying of the system in reality and of course the most glaring example of this is World War I and World War II World War I is a particularly obvious example of the fact that capitalism or imperialism rather has organised the world world economy into spheres of influence into divisions of this imperialist master controlling this section of the world so that any further developments any further shiftings that I talked about in the relations between the different powers as some develop more quickly than others means that wars have to be fought there's no more sort of unconquered places simply to take or to suck into the world market it's already done so so wars had to be started in order to re-divide the world to better fit the new relations of influence that had built up through the economic developments and there's absolutely nothing progressive in those wars whatsoever there's no an all imperialist wars and we have to take an opposition for this reason to all imperialist wars they have nothing progressive to bring the world obviously I think in the case of World War I and World War II that is extremely obvious but you see it in many other of course the Iraq war would be another case in point where it was presented as if this is a war for democracy and for freedom which we never buy into those ideas anyway because they're abstractions and are largely fictitious but also in this particular case quite clearly it was actually a war to conquer spheres of influence markets and specifically oil that's quite obvious and I think is widely accepted and so you can see that this allegedly progressive war to bring democracy to people the real effect of it are entirely reactionary and there's been nothing positive about it whatsoever so we obviously take a position of opposition to imperialist wars on principle we don't allow ourselves to get taken in by any talk of democracy or freedom and we don't see the emergence of new imperialist powers challenging the old ones as progressive either it doesn't represent a new development it's just a rearranging of things basically rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic so to speak there's nothing progressive about it whatsoever and therefore we oppose all of those wars now the reason we're discussing this today I think is because it's become increasingly apparent to many people that there is such a shift taking place in the world at the moment that the American century has drawn to a close obviously literally the 20th century ended but also that sort of golden era of American domination seems to be on the wane America seems to be unsure of itself it seems to be tired and exhausted doesn't seem to have much of an appetite for intervening in other countries affairs seems to be generally losing influence also has obviously experienced economic convulsions and crises but also linked I think I think it's not a complete coincidence that the Great Depression took place around the same time of a massive crisis between the imperialist powers of course you can't draw too close a causal link between the two but you know it would stand to reason that once the world is divided up and you have a crisis of imperialism because there's no new markets to be conquered also that you would tend to have greater economic crises since overproduction on a global scale would naturally tend to be at its greatest after years of economic development under one imperial power that I think is what has happened in the last period with the crisis since 2008 where the globalization that took place under American domination has also brought us to bear a situation where on the one hand America has lost market share because the other countries that were being developed under globalization have obviously taken market share away from the United States that's what Trump complains so much about and on the other hand of course that growth that has taken place over the last 20 or 30 years especially in the Pacific region has also obviously glutted the market has obviously created an enormous crisis of overproduction where there are too many goods being produced or potentially produced to be sold and so I think what we're interested in answering is whether or not there are new imperial powers whether or not there is a shift in the relations between the world powers whether there really is the decline of American imperialism and how do we explain the rise of for instance Chinese imperialism but also other imperial powers how do we explain that on the basis of the ideas I've just explained well let's look at China which is I think clearly the best example of the new developments taking place China first of all of course the exporting of commodities is not in itself already imperialism Lenin says that it's the exporting of capital which marks out imperialism but nevertheless clearly the basis for that is the exporting of commodities becoming a leading producer in the world Britain became an imperial power by being the workshop of the world and I think it's quite clear that China has put itself in an frankly unassailable position in terms of manufacturing and is indeed exporting its goods all over the world like no others are China has become the number one trader in the world and the number one manufacturer in the world between 2011 and 2013 China poured 50% more concrete than the United States did in the entire 20th century which after all was called the American century and yet in only two years China poured 50% more than America did in that entire stretch of time China as I've said is the largest manufacturer in the world and accounts for about a quarter of all value in the global manufacturing sector China's coal industry is as big as the rest of the world's put together and by 2018 it's thought that China will have capacity utilisation in coal of only 50% in other words it will only be able to consume 50% of the coal that it has the capacity to produce and of course it has plans therefore to export much of its coal because it can't consume all the it's built up such a capacity to produce coal and it needs to export it because it can't consume it all itself China produces over half of all of the world's aluminium which has led to a collapse in the prices of aluminium competitors around the world China has an over capacity in oil refining by 200 million tonnes a year and in 2014 Chinese refiners were thought to be running only two thirds capacity because they simply couldn't again use up all of the refined oil in other words the petrol and other things that they have the capacity to make and therefore they've massively increased their exporting of diesel and other products of refined oil in the last few years by 79% in 2015 also the over capacity in the Chinese chemical industry has completely destroyed all of the profits the entire profits of the Japanese chemical industry and in steel I think many of us are aware of the domination of China because it's helped to lead to the collapse of the steel industry in the UK and it's quite ironic actually because Mao in the great leap forward in the 1950s insisted that China in a few years would overtake Britain and America in terms of steel production of course it didn't and he had quite a crazy scheme for doing so which I won't go into but it has now easily comfortably overtaken Britain and America in fact in again in only two years China has produced more steel than Britain has in its entire history and is now producing over half of all the world's steel and again of course there's enormous over capacity in the Chinese steel industry only uses up about two thirds of the blast furnaces that he's actually built and what this means is that this massive over capacity means that it's terrified of unemployment at home the Chinese government lives in terror of unemployment because it has really or like any ruling class bases itself on its ability to take the economy forward it's probably the Chinese base themselves on that even more so than other countries so if there's unemployment if there's a wave of unemployment because of this over capacity because they can't use all of their factories and factory workers because there's simply not enough demand for those goods what are they going to do so they need to export that capacity first of all by selling it overseas but even by then sending those workers and sending the capital of those companies overseas to develop new markets for Chinese steel for Chinese cement etc and less developed parts of the world where labour is cheaper but also where the market has yet to be really developed but also I think it's interesting to note regarding this question of social chauvinism and of racism and fascism that you can also see a development I think in China of a kind of social chauvinism within society as an attempt to promote Chinese influence essentially and to promote the hand Chinese who are the vast majority of China as a sort of special people so China of course has this policy of flooding Tibet and Xinjiang with hand Chinese people is very much kind of oppressing or giving worse opportunities to undermining the culture of the Uighurs in Xinjiang and the Tibetans in Tibet and giving all the jobs to the hand Chinese but also internationally China has a policy of if anyone is hand Chinese or basically saying that they are Chinese even if they're born in another country from another country they see them as really part of greater China and are responsible to China they promote that kind of ideology whereas within China even if you're born in China but you're not hand then there's a sort of you have a less privileged status there's an attempt to create a kind of a sort of quasi racist ideology of just like we have in Britain that the white work is British people more educated and more civilized and sophisticated that was developed especially in the past we still have that today of course I think in China you can see the development of a similar ideology as a means to distract people from the real problems of course now anyway as I said Lenin emphasises the export of capital as really the key feature not just the export of commodities in other words outsourcing and investing in other countries now China as I said is the biggest trader in the world which provides a basis for this but isn't yet the export of capital China really dominates world trade in terms of the shipping routes which are the most world traders carried out on these giant container ships China has I think six of the top ten busiest ports in the world within China number one is Shanghai and number three is Shenzhen and I could go through the rest of the list but you get the idea whereas the United States first position in terms of the world port busiest world ports is Los Angeles which is number 18 so China has six in the top ten alone so you can see there's a huge discrepancy between the one power in terms of trade and manufacturing and the other it's estimated that by 2030 one third of all container ships in the world will be Chinese and it's already the case that one third of the volume of the value in containerised exports in the world are already from China which is three times the quantity from the United States in 1964 the United States had the world's largest merchant marine that is the collection of merchant vessels essentially and that was in 1964 was the world's largest it's now slipped to position 14 and China is in the second position so you can see in general that in terms of trade China is really supplanted the United States quite comfortably at least in the Pacific region and yet it lacks control over the shipping routes that it dominates the American Navy still controls those routes and can shut them off when they want to and I would argue that this position in world trade being the centre really of world trade must express itself sooner or later in imperialist developments you don't come to dominate shipping routes without wanting to have control over those shipping routes you don't dominate the trade of most countries in the world or at least of your neck of the woods without wanting to have some influence and control over those countries and to make sure that you get some kind of advantage for that position that you've won and I think one statistic in terms of the export of capital that really speaks louder than all others is the fact that for the first time two years ago Chinese exporting in other countries exceeded the investment in other countries exceeded the investment into China of course there's been an enormous amount of investment into China especially from the United States but from many other countries but for the first ever time in the last couple of years China has begun to actually invest more overseas and that is invested in itself which is an enormous significance it shows that it is exporting capital but how do we explain this because you might look at it and think well if imperialism is about dominating other countries and exploiting them and holding all the levers of power in terms of world finance and the military how does this happen certainly the United States dominates militarily to an enormous degree and most of the world's leading banks are American the world bank is American the IMF is a sort of European American kind of project and America obviously invested in China America really opened China up so how has it arrived as such a situation where the oppressed country has now seemingly begun to put itself in a position of being able to oppress others and dominate others well we have to understand imperialism in a very complicated way or rather a complex way it's not just a simple one sided affair of total control concentrating more and more in fewer and fewer companies and countries without any counteracting features first of all we can't be so simple as to analyse imperialism without reference to politics now of course the Marxist position stands out for looking beneath the surface of politics and analysing the economic relations that provide the basis for that that's true but that doesn't mean that politics has no role to play politics is also decisive and interestingly in the Lenin's book on imperialism he actually characterises Russia as an imperialist power however Russia was not exporting capital at all really in fact it was massively importing capital from the likes of Britain and France at the time that this was written so by that definition, by Lenin's own definition it would appear to obviously not be an imperial power and he did say it was an imperial power but it was also oppressed and you can see that in the first world war that it was sort of dragged into the first world war by Britain and France because of the investments that Britain and France had really in Russia and I think he explains it there's another book he wrote called The Development of Capitalism in Russia where Lenin talks about how Russia developed capitalism so the Russian state developed in a peculiar way but it's a very powerful state despite the sort of weak economic development that you had in Russia because Russia is a unique country it has this giant hinterland it's a vast country with enormous natural resources and was in a position where it could really develop although its economy might not be that developed the state could become very powerful because of this enormous hinterland it's scale basically and it could kind of enter into European politics into imperial politics as a sort of semi-independent power with its own aspirations and so the political factors to be taken into account of although imperialism in general of course does have to be based on monopoly capital, finance capital the exports of capital etc but other countries can enter into the equation on the basis of political relations even if really they're not able to stand on their own feet as a capitalist power although that is quite a unique phenomenon but the point is it's not such a simple set of relations as imperial power and dominated country and in which the imperial power is absolute control over the dominated country and in fact you find many peculiar variations on the theme so you also have other examples where Portugal and Belgium were imperial powers but were also dominated by other more powerful imperial powers Portugal of course had a lot of control in Africa and Latin America but was also protector of Britain and Belgium also was fought over in the First World War mainly by Germany and Britain despite itself having colonies so you have many intermediate formations basically and I always like the example of how in the case of Vietnam and China how China was a dominated country obviously in the past a pressed country by imperialism but in itself had been participating in the oppression and exploitation of Vietnam and the Vietnamese resentment of the Chinese because of this but Vietnam has also got a reputation for dominating and oppressing Laos and Cambodia and then in turn within those countries the dominant ethnicity dominates over and oppresses the ethnic minorities now those are not all capitalist imperialist relations clearly Cambodia was not a capitalist power of any kind I'm not trying to say that it is just a mini version of British imperialism but of course the point is imperialism lies upon all of these contradictions and these different balances of power on the world stage to manage its affairs and therefore gives a certain degree of freedom into manoeuvre within the complexity of world relations because of this complicated web of different powers that it has to rely upon and utilize to its advantage and many countries have managed to win a certain influence within the imperialist system despite being quite weak by exploiting the tensions between different imperial powers you know I would argue that the Philippines is doing that right now with regards to China and America it's maneuvering between that deadlock between the powers playing them off against each other to get investment and influence become sort of raise itself up to being an important country because of that peculiar situation specifically China of course had its own revolution which is also of course a political event and it had it because basically because the oppression of imperialism was so extreme especially with the phenomenon of Japanese fascism invading China but of course it was so exploited it actually provoked a revolution a far-going revolution which ended capitalism and in doing so freed the Chinese state from imperial domination and it's true before then China was so dominated by imperialism that it was unable to develop its economy the Chinese capitalists essentially were just office boys for the American and British firms and just you know totally corrupt they didn't develop anything at all but of course in freeing China from imperialism because of the revolution then what they managed to create is a very powerful and independent state apparatus which now has been able to develop an imperial capitalism actually return to capitalism obviously and I would argue that the Chinese state consciously did this even before it was a capitalist power of any sort that under Deng Xiaoping it quite deliberately had a strategy of looking at the example of already existing imperialist powers based on capitalism and basically thinking well we're going to do that too and we're going to kind of conquer for ourselves a central position we're going to sort of you know shed our oppression we're going to kind of revenge ourselves if you like and become a number one or the number one country in the world which is our rightful place that was kind of their attitude and they systematically I think applied that policy protected use the strength and the independence of the Chinese state to protect Chinese industries to protect Chinese businesses to steal the business secrets of other companies and to copy them to a large extent and to therefore build itself up and now you would say that China is actually developed into a very powerful position and I think it's thanks to the Chinese Revolution at least maybe not exclusively but that is an enormous factor in explaining how China has been able to rise from being an oppressed country to an imperialist power an addition though there's more than this it's not just the political factors there are economic factors as well within imperialism it's a two-sided thing yes on the one hand the already established capitalist powers utilise that wealth that they've accumulated to dominate other countries to invest in them and to exploit them and to make themselves rich in doing so and of course they do that and to a certain extent that does hold back those countries development but as I also said it also speeds them up imperialism is a very contradictory phenomenon and that's why you do have these strange phenomena in some societies where you have incredibly anti-quated methods of production in the countryside side by side with the tallest skyscrapers in the world you have this very lopsided development because they import the most advanced technology from the west it took the west hundreds of years to develop and they innovate it themselves of course as well but it only goes so far it tends not to filter down it's sort of these little islands of advanced capitalism within a sea of backwardness and imperialism has always been like that but what that means is that the growth rate of those countries tends to not of all oppressed countries I would say but maybe of certain favoured ones with a particularly good position for whatever reason they take a lot of investment from other countries and therefore they have the fastest rate of growth because they're leaping from a low level to the most advanced science and technology that exists in that day so they grow enormously rapidly and in fact have certain advantages as they talk about this privilege of backwardness they have certain advantages over the west because they can learn the lessons you can see clearly how countries like Germany clearly learn certain lessons if you like as compared with Britain whose capitalism was much more anarchic and sort of small scale whereas Germany kind of planned it quite systematically and scientifically looking at countries like Britain and was able to perfect the system really and in doing so become much more advanced really and I would say you can see the same thing with Japan, South Korea and now China and as Lenin points out that those dominating countries on the one hand they reap enormous benefits for their position but in doing so they kind of become lazy if you like they don't really invest in their own countries they invest in other countries where the profits are bigger and in doing so they unwittingly build those countries up into being competitors and I think that's essentially what has happened with China so there's an atrophying of the productive forces in the imperial homelands if you like and an overtaking of them in a few not obviously in the whole world but in a few key countries like China and Japan and I mean it's I can just give a few more statistics that make it really clear as day but you know how much investment has shifted to the Pacific region and how much the West really has lost ground America of course was in a very dominating position after World War Two I think it had about 50% of world GDP was America in 1980 the advanced countries that is Western Europe America and Japan had 51% to 52% of world GDP now it's 30% so you can see this uneven development that's taken place where the West has stagnated and other countries have become the centre of world trade and investments and so finally the last thing I want to talk about is the ways in which China is manifesting itself as an imperial power and is taking advantage of the relative treats of American power in terms of the export of capital I've already mentioned that it started to invest more in other countries but in the last two years there's been a few really significant developments on this score so China in particular has done two new things it's created the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and also it's developed a sort of policy or a program called the one basically it's usually called the New Silk Road but its official name is One Belt One Road and this is basically a plan to develop a New Silk Road between China and Europe but it's basically repeating the old silk road path obviously with the latest technology with roads and with high speed trains and it's doing that because basically it's kind of shut off from control of the Pacific although 70% of China's trade goes through the Pacific on boats that largely sail to America and to Europe although not only but as I said the American Navy completely controls that region so what it's decided to do is to use, it already has a lot of influence over Central Asia anyway political influence, the trouble is Central Asia is kind of insignificant it's undeveloped, its infrastructure is weak it's not seen as you know it's not a sort of strategic place really politically so what China's basically decided to do is to develop those countries and that's another thing that Lenin points out in imperialism that where a new rising imperial power finds its roots to wealth blocked off by the alliances of the already existing powers they try and develop new places so for instance he says that Germany had no real access to the oil market which was obviously becoming incredibly important in the early 20th century which was dominated by Britain and America so what it did is it developed a new oil fields basically in countries that were previously insignificant but had found oil and it used its banks to invest in those countries, I think one of them was Romania I've never heard about Romanian oil but maybe it did have some oil in the early 20th century anyway so it developed Romania essentially as an important oil market and also that it could develop its own oil industry rather than trying to somehow break Britain and America's directly and I think that's exactly what China's doing it's finding roots to its domination blocked off and it's going into new places that America has largely neglected and that really is Central Asia it's spending about 50 billion dollars on developing the roads routes to Europe through Central Asia and also another 46 billion dollars developing a corridor through Pakistan so a route that will go through China and then down Pakistan into a port that they're building in Guadar which is going to be protected by 10,000 Pakistani soldiers China is insisting, protected basically from terrorists and people like that that it's worried about so it's doing this basically in order to have for its own sphere of influence it's trying to develop the economic importance of these countries by placing them at the centre of a new trade route between Europe and China and also the Middle East in China and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is basically backing this and China is plowing into it its reserves of wealth China has accumulated more foreign exchange reserves than any other country in the world that means basically dollars because so many dollars are spent buying Chinese goods they've accumulated all these dollars that's also why they lend so much money to America, they're actually a creditor to the United States and they're plowing some of this money into the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank so basically countries sign up to it and put a bit of capital into it and hope to get some of the influence and some contracts out of the you know the projects that it helps to fund the infrastructure projects it's like the World Bank and that project is apparently the biggest act of economic diplomacy since the martial aid that America carried out after World War II so that is of enormous significance and also what's very significant is that every country signed up to the infrastructure projects it's like the World Bank essentially it's China's rival to the World Bank which is controlled by America and hilariously even Britain signed up enthusiastically to this much to the annoyance of Barack Obama and the Americans in fact the only countries I think which didn't sign up to it of any importance were America and Japan and they kind of shot themselves in the foot really by doing this so that is really the clearest evidence of an imperial power it's carrying out the biggest act of economic diplomacy since World War II or since the martial aid so it's clearly of enormous significance of course they're not only trying to develop that part of the world they're also trying to rest control of the Pacific away from the United States as I've said the American Navy controls this region but China is trying to take back control of it so it's building islands in certain parts of it and putting its bases on those islands as you probably know which is annoying a lot of people but it's doing it basically and it's getting away with it and what I think it's trying to do is it's trying to create what they call facts on the ground in other words do little things which are kind of naughty basically but are not so bad that anyone's going to go to war with them and it will just gradually build them up build them up build them up build more and more islands and then basically then you've got a set of facts as they say which add up to something quite significant suddenly China really controls that part of the world because it has all of these posts these military posts all over there and bit by bit Chinese money basically is going to take its toll on the American alliances in the region because all of these countries that America is allied with like Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan etc the American allies but their biggest trading partner is China and eventually that's going to take its toll and I don't know if you've seen what's happened with the Philippines but it's quite clear that the Philippines which is now claimed or it's president New President has claimed it's going to be part of China's sphere of influence and has just accepted $13 billion of alleged contracts from China also China's now said it's going to allow its tourists to go to the Philippines which is very important for the economy and it's going to allow Filipino fruits to be sold within China which is also of enormous significance for the Philippines and America again has therefore lost that but it's clear that for a period of time a section I think of the Filipino bourgeoisie was actually kind of probably pushing for this because they are China's obviously where the money is at for them but they were largely shut out of that market by being America's closest ally Thailand has also begun to drift into China's sphere of influence because of the coup that took place there which China praised and America sort of tutted at and so Thailand has begun to shift into China's sphere of influence which is a huge shift and in fact Thailand has agreed to buy three Chinese nuclear submarines which is of enormous significance because when you buy hardware like that that means that you have to basically China controls those submarines because China has the technology it's China can repair them apparently that might not actually go through but the fact that it announced it even shows that it's really thinking twice about allying with America and I think what we're going to see just to sum up is that not only China but basically America is in retreat it's still the dominant power and it will be for some time to come I think that's incontestible but it can't exert itself like it did before it's lost prestige and its own working class has no appetite for American imperialism really anymore Trump actually reflects that to one extent or another in his own reactionary way and China and other countries but obviously more than anyone else China will begin to step into that breach will challenge America and will take it will test America like Russia has done in the Crimea basically saying and like China is with the island building they're basically saying are you going to do anything about this if we take this bit of land and they're basically embarrassing America because they're showing that it doesn't really have the appetite to fight back and they're weakening the resolve of its allies in doing so because they're showing that America won't necessarily protect you that is going to create a period of enormous turbulence and instability in the whole world as I said imperialism really has these two phases it has the phase of total domination of one power more or less total domination in which you have relative prosperity and peace because you know there's one master controlling it there's security there's confidence to invest I mean that's a bit of a simplification but you kind of have that phase of history which was obviously the post war period but then you have the phases when that breaks down and that not only means that there's wars and there's revolutions and there's instability and there's a loss of ideological confidence from the ruling class but it also means you have economic problems because you have a lack of confidence you have a lack of certainty in the world economy and in general insecurity so I think the period ahead we have for us that this signifies is an enormously turbulent one not like the past of a period even in the pacific of wars of instability of coups as America and China fight vie for influence in the region and obviously Russia is playing a similar role elsewhere and therefore a period of increasing uncertainty and of ideological kind of questioning within capitalism lie ahead for us and I think therefore we cannot expect the future to be like the past