 You have already heard in days' introduction when you actually try to go through a list of events and crises and even revolutionary apeals that we have seen in society both European and worldwide, over the last few years it really starts to sink in, that actually, we have reached a critical turning point really in the history of capitalism and even the history of humanities Ie dwi'r rhagleniaeth o Ballas crossed air ar y mynd ar y enweddialol agynnol Cokus yma, gan ddwygangu'r Cysylltu Gyda'r 2800 i'r gwneud nhw'n ei ddigwydd, ac i wneud o'r gŷ i'r cyffredinungaeth yna, a roi'r gwneud. Rhaid i'n golygu bod nhw'n dweud. Rwy'n gwybod â'r cyfrifiad o ddwygu'r cyfrifiad o dweud o'r grifennu yna yn y gnwysgu'r cyfrifiad yr yng ngyflaesio, ac yn dweud'r cyfrifiad arall i fy gyd, gyda'r cyffredinol yn ysgolodd. Yn hyn o'r cyffredinol, o'n 30 ysgol, y dyfodol clywedd y syniadau o'r cyffredinol syniadol yn ysgolodd, ac yn ysgolodd, yn ymgyrch i'r cyffredinol syniadau yn y sgolodd, wrth yw'r proses yn ymgyrch, ac yn ymgyrch ar y brosie, mae'r cyffredinol yn ysgolodd yw'r cyffredinol yn cael ei cyffredinol, ac mae'r cyffredinol yn cael ei gyfredinol yn gyfoethaf. A dylai dwi'n gweithio Roeddwn yn gyflawr o'r tym Buri Unon o'r brif. A ydych chi'n cysylltu Scotlandia, Dusa, Dyrraegon. Dwi'n cyflawn o'r cyflawn i'r host, yn cyrtych wedi sylwedd yn y blaenau. Ac mae'n fwy o ddannogu'r foddon, o fwy o'r ddlawn. Rwyf i'n gwneud yr cyflawn ymgynghoriad ac armigau. Fyddi'n amlwg ychydig i ddwychiau dyma i'r ac i whyfwyr yn cyflawn. Llywodraeth, ond nesrgwys yw ydy ddweud o bwysig o ffondol iawn o'r gwneud yn y society, yn amlwg mwy o'r ffordd, yn cyflawni fod y bydd o'r hordi meddwl yn y cyfrifol, ond y profydd yn mynd i'r pwyllt o'r rôl yng Nghymru. Mae'r bwysig o'r cyfrifol yw'r fawr, ac yn mynd i'r eich ddau iawn o'r bwysig o'r rôl o'r real yna, hynny'n eich bod yn ei hyffordd o'r ddau cyfrifol. ac mae'r ddod o'n gwneud o'r cyflog, a amladigon nhw i felw yw yw'r brif. Rwy'n cael eu bod youn yn rhaid yr ysgolwyddoedd, ac mae'n peth arú a phoblwch cyntaf o Adam Southaith, dyna gyd. Ychwanegwydol ar y flwyddyn i nesaf, mae'n rhan o gwaith i ddarlunio i'r gwynhau sydd y cyflogwch yn ysgolwch yn gyfwilio. Mae'n cyflogwch gwnaeth i eistedd ar y bydd gennym. Wrth y wnaeth, yma ly wigrwys yng Nghaerdydd, y OECD ei gwneud i'w gael cyfsanio'r cyfsanio'r cyfrwysau yn ddiweddol iawn na gyd wedi'u gwneud. Felly ddim nifer y gyrdith personalon, ac mae gydag o'r trofodaeth yma, o'r gallu fydd yn gyfattu cyfrwys ymddill, yôl fynd yn cyfu rydym yn cyfansio'r cyfrwys. Ac mae'r tîm hynny fydd i'w casio'r cyfrwys yma yw i'w cyfrwys yn cyfrwys yma yw i'w gyrdd In fact, even in a more stable period about 10 years ago, the excess capacity represented about double the effect of demand present. This is been something that has been present in the economy for a long, long time. The solution that was put into effect to overcome this barrier was a huge, unbelievable extension of credit, both in the form of household credit so the irresponsible unregulated lending to households and companies by bank but the racking up of vast state debts in order to increase yw'r wage social, a byddai i gilydd y bwysig yn bwysigon wedi'u gwneud i gael i gael i fath i gael y gweithio. Rwy'n meddwl i'r ffrwng, y fawr gweithio, ein bod yma yng nghymru yn 2008, oedd y gweithio y tîm yw'r ffordd yn y gweithio a'r ffordd yn cael ei ddefnyddio'r ffordd yn gwybod, mae'r ffordd yn cael ei gael, y ffordd yn cael ei gael i'r ffordd yn ein gweithio, mae'n gweithio'r ffordd yn cael ei gael i'r ffordd, Iech chi'n gweld i ddechrau i'r wych, yn y ddweud o ddweud. Mae nid o'r cyfnod oesio i'r cyfrithau i ddweud i'r ysgrifennu ym Llyfrgell, i ddweud o'r cyfrithau ym Llyfrgell i'r cyfrithau i'r cyfrithau i'r cyfrithiau i'r cyfrithiau. Yn y ffordd, mae'r ffordd o'r cyfrithiau i'r cyfrithiau i'r cyfrithiau sydd wedi'u cael ei gweithio. Mae'r proses yn y bydd yn gwneud ar y 100 yma, a oesoron yn gwrthwyr o'r holleg a ddod Odd oedd ond o'r gweithio i'r ystyried cyfedeist ac eu newydd edrych. A rejecting cynnig o'r problemau eraill efallai eraill efallai o'r bobl hwnnw o'r s�annu cyfrifiadaw, efallai o'r bobl hwnnw o'r bobl hwnnw o'r sêl a chynnwys yr unigau maes i'r swyddaeth. Felly mae'n baith bod ydych chi'n ffordd yn ysgrifetio sy'n pergyrchu rddug i unigau ein bwysignol aethol. Felly nid yn dod am y dyfodol yn ddechrau'r ddweud, yn ymwiel yn mynd i'r ddechrau. Felly mae'n bwysig yn cael y dyfodol yn cael y gweithio'r dyfodol yn ddweud i'r ddigusio'r ddydd yn ymgylch yn ymgylch. I ddim yn ddweud i ddigusio'r ddegusio'r ddegusio a'n ddim yn ei rhywbeth arfer. Dwi wedi bod yn rhoi'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r Uneddaeth Clas. union, y byd i amser a hynny be'r bydd gael y bydd hon yn ei bwysig ydych chi'n gweithio. I 편io'r bydd y dyfodol yn yr interests yn oedod y Tych yn meddwl. Felly mae'r ei wneud yn fwy o'r hyn. Llywodd ar bobl y cartiad y Llywodraeth 28 ydyn... Efallai'n rai cyfnod yr styll. Bydd I unig o gwestiwn i unrhyw oherod yno i gweithio i'r credu a bwysigol. Fysiwn i gweithio i'r amser. Mae'r llwyddiad yw 2012 yn cyflawni'r hwylwyr a'r cyflawni'r cyd-fawr yw 500 miliwn. Byddai'n meddwl GDB yn Weston 23% yn ei gael gweld ei gael yng Nghymru, yn eich gael gweld i'n meddwl gael gweld ei gael gweld. Ifrwy'r meddwl hefyd, ond mae'n ei gael gweld ei Gwyrddol gyda'r gwirionedd. Ond yma, mae'n aelod. Mae'n meddwl yw'n meddwl gyda'r gwirionedd. Rydym yn mynd i i'r rŵn, mae'r EU yn yr ysgolwyr a'r ddysgu. ac mae'r cyfrifoswyr yn y diwrnod y four. Mae'n cyfrifoswyr o'r freidwyr, o'r cyfrifoswyr, o'r dgyrchu, o'r fwrdd, o'r cyfrifoswyr, ac o'r cyfrifoswyr, oherwydd mae'n ddweud yn dweud o'r llawr cyfligiau, oherwydd o'r cyfrifoswyr. Mae'n ymwneud dod â'r unionau i gyllaf i'r rhaid o'r oedd yn ymgyrch o'r arnod, ac y rhan o'r rhaglaffau arlaffau i gael o'r awr, yn rhyfeddol, i'r rhan o'r awr, fel y Dda, fel y Cynllun Cymru, ac yn unrhyw yng Nghymru yn fwyaf i'r sefydlion. Mae'r rhaglaffau i fynd i ni'r clywed ar y Cynllun Cwysydd ym Wheslach Europheun. Mae'r rhaglaffau i wneud o'r rhaglaffau politicol, mewn cyflaffau i'r rhaglaffau i'r parlylym yn ym�ed i'r rhaglaffau miliwn. Mae'r pethau sydd wedi bod yn cydweithio gwasanaeth a'r cyfnodau sydd yn cael ei ffordd a'u byw iawn o'r gwaith. Yn amser hynny, mae'r pethau sydd yn cyfnod i gyfrifio'r Unig Unig? Felly, os rydyn ni'n gwybod ar y cwestiwn gyrfa yng nghymru, oedd y cefnod iawn i'r Unig Unig Unig ym nifer. Mae'n gweithio'r ystod yn cyfrifio'r ystod o'r dwyr ffordd yma yn y 20th yma. If we go back to the outbreak of the First World War just over 100 years ago, what we, as Marxists would say, and I think this is, well, hopefully, a fairly common assessment, although in the way, after the centenary, the British government is seeming to take a different approach, but either way, after the carving up of the world into great spheres of influence among the imperialist nations, eventually the contradictions implicit in this gave rise to the necessity, actually, of the historical, necessity of a world conflict, the first ever world war on an industrial scale. Once again, that same process was repeated in the Second World War, which may well have been characterised by a fight against fascism, but also was once again an imperialist war for the division and re-division of the earth. It was after this second world war that the European Union came to be, and this is where one of the, why I would call the creation myth of the European Union first emerges. I haven't actually encountered this viewpoint as much in Britain as in other European countries. France, for example, I've encountered this quite a lot, but there is quite a reasonably common feeling that the European Union, the task and the purpose of the European Union, the reason why it exists and the reason why it's such a good thing, is that it prevented a Third World War, it prevented war between European nations. Personally, I think that's a mistaken view, but I think it warrants a certain amount of further scrutiny. One thing that always perplexes me about that viewpoint is why is it that it took place after the Second rather than the First World War? If it really was, I would say that I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the European population were completely tired and disgusted with the industrial slaughter of both world wars, but the desire for peace on the part of the population has never prevented ruling classes from going to war with each other. And I find it very hard to believe that the European imperialist nations suddenly developed an unquenchable thirst for peace and actually the course of history following that would prove otherwise anyway. What happened at, what was the position in Europe after the First World War? Like after the Second World War you had the industrial slaughter of essentially a generation of working class people, a crisis so acute it led to the overthrow of capitalism in Tsarist Russia, but also a revolution in Germany in November 18. And you had a number of formerly powerful powers in a drained state as a result of the mass expenditure and destruction of the world war. Why was that not enough to bring about European cohesion? European powers may well have been drained after that, but you still had a position where the European allies, Britain and France in particular, were in a stronger position after the defeat of Germany and the revolution, that they could actually impose their own terms. Rather than actually pursuing the end to war in Europe, actually the French imperialists in particular, although it's not solely their fault, were pushing in the Treaty of Versailles to basically completely decimate Germany as a country so that it would no longer be able to pose any kind of threat to their interests. Now in the wake of the Second World War, we have to ask the questions, were either of these powers in a position to do this? Britain, the old superpower, who had been in decline basically since the First World War, was in no position to dictate terms to anyone who had been completely shattered by the war. France, which up to the war had never really had that much of an industrial base anyway for historical reasons that I won't go into, was barely a third-rate power by this point. Actually, but Germany of course had been separated between the world powers and had of course lost the war. Really the main players in this situation, this global situation weren't European powers at all, it was the Soviet Union and the United States of America. And this is really the context, the imperial context within which the European Union was formed. The European powers were facing, they found themselves wedged between two superpowers, they had communism on their doorstep quite literally in the case of West Germany and they were facing potentially revolutionary upheavals at home. Now their saviour didn't come from Europe, it came in the form of martial aid. I was looking up some statistics on that and it's been quite impressive, the figures. During the four years of the planet's operational, the United States donated $15 billion and that's in 1948's money. Today that amount would be worth roughly $148 billion. In economic and technical assistance to help the recovery of European powers and countries that are joining the organisation for European economic cooperation. Now incidentally that $15 billion once again in 1948's money was constituted about 17% of their GDP so it was a major investment if you like into propping up West European capitalism. And this was also on top of the $15 billion that they'd already given to Europe between the end of the war and the beginning of the plan. It was on this basis that the European powers were able to reconstruct their industries and actually laid the basis for the post-war boom which Adam has already discussed in his lead-off. Now actually the unification of Europe was something that the United States interests were quite keen on and there were three reasons for this really. The first was that Europe had already been divided between the major powers, the USSR had taken up pretty much all of Eastern Europe and the United States already had hegemony over the Western European powers. The second was that Germany itself was divided. It became known as an economic giant but a political dwarf and that suited the interests of Western imperialism quite nicely. And then with the conflict between the US and the USSR, still brewing in eventually the Cold War, having a powerful NATO base there and the continued presence of American troops which lasted for decades after the end of the war, meant that it was very, very unlikely that these European countries would be pursuing a military imperialist policy completely independent of US interests. In other words what I'm trying to argue is that European Union unity and what eventually became European Union didn't simply spring out of sudden solidarities between the rulers of European imperialist powers. There had been fighting against each other for hundreds if not thousands of years. It emerged out of the mutual frailty of the capitalist European powers. Far from being a European family it was actually a huddling together, a clubbing together of imperial powers in order to then be able to exploit the rest of the world more effectively. Now getting on to the creation of the European Union itself, the founding treaty is called the Treaty of Paris signed in 1951 and so it's worthwhile having a bit of a look at this. It was set up what was called the European Coal and Steel Community, so it wasn't called the European Union and the purpose or rather the stated purpose of that was to bind together those crucial steel coal industries. Not only because they are so economically important but most important of all they were fundamental at that time to the production of arms, tanks and so on. Now this bound France, West Germany, Italy and what was called the Benelux countries together on the basis of West German industry which was now beginning to recover after the war. The declaration by the then French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman is very illustrative of the intentions at least in my opinion of the founders of what became the European Union. It laid the basis for this treaty, it came out a year before and in it he says ostensibly the purpose was to make war between France and Germany and I quote materially impossible. So that kind of what I would call a myth about making war between European states was there in the very first paragraph of it. But later if you look a bit further down I'd recommend everybody goes and has a read of this because it is an interesting historical document. If you go further down you have the following clause with increased resources Europe will be able to pursue the achievement of one of its essential tasks namely the development of the African continent. Now I don't think you need a degree in history to know what is meant by the development of the African continent when it's coming out of a European foreign minister. This shows the real imperialist nature of the European project from the very beginning. Now of course Schuman was the French Foreign Minister and French imperialism was to set about its historic task of developing the African continent three years later when it went to war in Algeria. A genocidal colonial war which still to this day the French establishment won't even fall a war they call the events in Algeria. It really puts pay to the idea that the European ruling class has fundamentally changed and become peace loving in the wake of the Second World War. Rather they were no longer in a position to attack themselves. They were forced to bind themselves together so that they could continue to trample the developing and weaker countries in the so-called Third World. It's also worth pointing out that the Paris Treaty wasn't the only important treaty signed in that post war period. You also had the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. That laid the basis for such bodies as the IMF, World Trade Organisation and the World Bank. In fact all of these are now household names especially when we get on to talking about the Greek crisis. Some of the role that they've played shows them to be purely imperialist bodies. In fact the new world order into which the coal and steel community was born was one of free trade, the free movement of capital and American credit in particular, with the USA as the guardian of all. This is really the period in which we have been living and actually is starting to enter into a period of acute crisis. Now moving on a bit, in 1957 you had the Treaties of Rome which created the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community in addition to the coal and steel community. Now this became known as the European Communities. Now it's interesting to note that during this period, 57, up until the early 70s, about 73, European capitalism was booming. You had huge growth, particularly industrial manufacturing growth in all of the main capitalist powers in Europe. Particularly France which had gone from being actually a largely peasant country proud to the First World War. They preferred to have their industrial bases in places like Algeria and Indochina had actually started industrialising metropolitan France. So you had an increased economic power on the part of the individual European nations and it produced an interesting contradiction. You had on the one hand increased cohesion in the form of if anybody studied or studied European law here. You'll find that there's some quite important precedent set by the European Court of Justice during that period where they start to push more and more for economic cohesion and free trade and the elimination of all forms of protectionism in order to increase prosperity across the board. But at the same time, because they're no longer able to wrangle with each other in a protectionist fashion on an economic basis, you have this political wrangling. Particularly between Charles de Gaulle leading France and Germany, but also Britain wasn't quite in the European Communities at this point. He actually vetoed the entry of Britain a couple of times in 1963 and 1967 when the UK suddenly decided, we need to get in on this as well. Interesting, the UK tried to set up its own rival to the European Communities, where the European Pre-Trade Association, which was a completely unmitigated disaster. And when they applied, they sort of learnt their lesson and applied to join what would become the EU, de Gaulle said no. And the reason was quite interesting. He said that the UK would be a trojan horse for American interests. I don't think he spots on, in fact the special relationship between Britain and America proves this categorically. However, in typical de Gaulle fashion, it's fairly hypocritical considering the fact that the very basis of the restoration of French capitalism and the very basis of the European Communities was American martial aid. So it seems to be six of one and half a dozen of the other from him, but eventually Britain did join of course. And then in the 70s, all across Europe, you have a slowdown and a slump in the economy, the crisis of the 1970s, which eventually leads to the flipping round, if you like, from a Keynesian, a largely Keynesian dominated financial programme to a neoliberal one, which once again Adam has covered in detail in his talk and I won't go into detail on that. But it's an interesting thing to know that this process did have an effect on the European Union, how it grew up, because it was in this period, in this period of slump that you had the single market hat. In other words, the stated intention of the European powers to increase cohesion and actually begin the process of finishing the job of European integration, if you like. And eventually this took form in the Maastricht Treaty of 1991. It's from this point that we have the name European Union. This is really when the European Union, as we know it, is born. At the same time, the Maastricht Treaty expanded the concept of the European Union into new areas. It included the common foreign security policy that I mentioned earlier, and it moved towards an EU coordinating policy on asylum, immigration, drugs and terrorism. In other words, it's starting to become a bit more like a super state rather than a trade block between individual nation states. EU citizenship was brought into being for the very first time, and so this was to allow people from member countries to move completely freely between member states and also to access welfare and benefits in their state of residence, which once again is becoming politically a very sticky wicket. The treaty also included the social chapter, the famous social chapter on workers' rights, which the UK opted out of because we respect social rights so much that we didn't feel the need to sign it down on a piece of paper, apparently. And crucially, the Maastricht Treaty, this is where, from an economic point of view, the Maastricht Treaty is extremely important for understanding the crisis that we're in right now, because the Maastricht Treaty established a timetable for economic and monetary union, and it specified the economic and budgetary criteria, which would determine whether countries were ready to join or not. Those criteria included a budget deficit of no more than 3%, and to have a debt to GDP ratio of no more than 60%. Now, it's worth pointing out that actually, at the time that the Maastricht Treaty was laid down, only one nation in the entire European Union met these criteria, and that was Luxembourg, which wouldn't really have been capable of forming a currency union all by itself, and so they started to relax the criteria. They started to say, rather than it being 60% debt to GDP, now it's got to be decreasing. In other words, you could have 80%, you could have 100%. As long as you were proving that it was going down and you were doing your homework, then you were allowed in. Now, by 1999, they'd basically managed to, well, they thought at least, they'd managed to iron out the crisis, they'd managed to fudge the differences, and they opened up the eurozone and the euro currency. Grease actually didn't qualify. Grease's situation even then was already so bad that they weren't allowed to join the euro, but later on they were seen to be eligible, and in the early 2000s they were brought into the club. Now, why is it that, despite the fact that you had this formal treaty setting out these quite strict criteria of budgetary responsibility, despite this, the euro and the eurozone were still formed? Now, I don't consider the German ruling class and the German capitalist class to be stupid. They would have been fully aware of the risk they were taking. In fact, it was a calculated gamble, and the reasons for this related to the interests of the German economy. It's one thing to be very strict on budgets, but the eurozone opened up the possibility of a whole new market within the single market of Europe in which competition by means of devaluating, sorry, your currency was no longer possible. In other words, for the weaker producing countries such as Greece, German capital and German manufacturing could export even more easily to those countries, basically with an open field. Ironically, and this is a process that Marx describes actually, free competition eventually led to monopoly pretty much, and it was the monopoly of German capital. So it was a gamble which paid for a while at least, paid off in a big, big way. I have some statistics here that show that the single market and the creation of the euro were very powerful tools in the concentration and centralisation of capital from which German industry in particular benefited enormously. Germany's balance of trade surplus actually started to rock it upwards after 1999, the euro in which the euro was introduced, and then between 2006 and 2011. So you'll know that three of these are crisis years. The European Union as a whole saw a share of world trade shrink from 17.3 to 15.5%, but Germany's relative share grew. In other words, as the minnows start to become more and more encounter a more and more difficult economic situation, the bigger fish, if you like, start to actually swallow them up. In terms of the performance of industrial production from 2000 to 2011, Germany's increased by 19.7%, so almost 20%, and Greece's fell by 30%. Now, in between that, you also have Italy, which is the third largest economy in the eurozone, at 17.3%. Now, the creation of the euro at the time was presented as a trunk card in the same way that the massive extension of credit and all the various measures that had led Gordon Brown to say that we'd put an end to boom and bust in about the year 2000. The euro was one of these things, not in the case of Britain, in the case of the eurozone, that having a European strong and credible currency backed by successful German capital, it would allow for low cost credit, prevent the return of inflation, and in so doing, it would protect the weaker companies that have been really hit by inflation during the 1970s. Now, of course, we live in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, so what's happened since then? Basically, all of the contradictions, which were being masked by this, in particular by the Maastricht criteria, have suddenly come to the fore and have actually been exacerbated and amplified by these very criteria. There was a huge amount of misreporting, deliberate misreporting of statistics in order to keep within the criteria, or at least close. After, in 2009, the then PASOC government in Greece was forced to upgrade its forecast for the budget deficit from 6% to 8%, which is what it had given previously, which is still too much, to 12.7%. In other words, they've basically just been hiding it in the back room, and all of a sudden they brought it out when the crisis hit. Britain wasn't any better. Britain revised its final forecast to four times higher than the original. In other words, this was something that was waiting in the wings permanently, basically. Obviously, Adam has probably already described the process of the crisis, but what you had is, with the extension of credit, with the racking up of state debt, eventually, when the extent of the bad debts were known, and it's very hard to calculate, but the Wall Street Journal calculated the total of bad debts in Europe in 2013, I think, to be over a trillion dollars, which actually happens to be double the amount in 2008. You were faced with an almost imminent banking collapse. Now, the way that this was solved, this huge hole, is this my fault? I don't know. This huge hole in the balance sheets of European banks was filled by creating a huge hole in the balance sheets of European states, not least among which is Greece. I'd like to concentrate on Greece because it has basically been the main arena of crisis in Europe at the moment. Greece has received three bailout packages after it suffered its sovereign debt crisis from the troika of the European Central Bank, the IMF, International Monetary Fund and the European Commission. Now, their bailouts amount to €252 billion. However, the LFC has done a report, which is very interesting. It says that only 10% of that has actually found its way into financing continued public deficit spending on the Greek government accounts. Now, that's a complicated way of saying only 10% has gone in any way to the Greek people whatsoever. The remainder, well, according to LSE, more than 80% of the so-called rescue package has actually gone straight back into the pockets of banks and lending institutions because they've had to refinance the older, more expensive bonds paying higher rates of interest, pay that back and then take out new bonds on a lower rate of interest in the hope that eventually the interest rate will continue going down and in about 1,000 years Greece will be solving. It's not going to happen. After round after round of austerity measures between 2010 and 2014, Greek public spending was cut by 30%, almost a third, which is difficult to imagine. Sometimes with these statistics, they're a little bit abstract, they're a bit ephemeral, but we can see in the news reports of what's going on in Greece what a public cut of a third of expenditure over such a short period can actually do to human beings. Now, Greek GDP has fallen by 22%, and unemployment now stands at 25%, with almost half of all young people talking about 16 to 24. I still can see myself young about 26, I'm apparently outside of this bracket. Half of people in that age bracket are unemployed. This is an untenable and unbearable situation. Meanwhile, the country's total debt amounts to €323 billion. In other words, more than the bailout package, it's been increasing consistently. This debt will never be repaid. I can say this with a certain amount of confidence. I do not believe this debt will ever be repaid. The only force capable of bringing its reparation is another global swing of capitalism comparable to the post-war boom. Where is that going to come from? I can't see any source of that. Perhaps somebody can intervene from the floor and educate me, but I can't see that coming anywhere. This crisis isn't just restricted to Greece. In Spain, the youth employment figure is similarly high, and we can see the political and social effects of that in the form of the Indignados movement, and of course in the form of the rise of Podemos. In the Republic of Ireland, or rather I should say from the Republic of Ireland, you have an exodus of young people, young graduates in particular, comparable to the scale of the Irish potato famine. It's the Irish job famine. They have no source of using the kind of qualifications they've got. There is a crisis in employment and so the Irish are continuing the historical trend of exporting their people. That's one of the reasons and what ways by which Ireland has been able to hold itself up or be held up as one of the poster children of austerity. The austerity programme has been successful in Ireland because what they did was their employer went off to other countries. Basically, the poverty was just being pushed out rather than pushed under. Greece doesn't have that kind of option. Even in this context, it's worth pointing out that the burden hasn't been completely failing equally across the entire union, far from it. It would seem that Germany had escaped the worst of the crisis. Germany has often held up as continuing to be a healthy and successful economy. But Germany's turn will come. Germany as an economy, as a successful manufacturing economy, depends to a great extent on exports. Apparently about 44% of its GDP is based on exports. Now obviously the point of an export, when you have an export economy, you need someone to import it. You need someone to buy it otherwise you won't be able to continue exporting. So this actually gives us a bit of a background idea to why it is that the German ruling class in particular, which of course backs the European institutions, has been so hard, so intransigent when it comes to the demands of the Greek government in this past year. It's actually not simply an ideological question. I do believe that people like Janis Berifachis make a mistake when they talk about the European institutions, the likes of the ECB being taken over by a hoard of people with the wrong ideological idea who were unwilling to give it up. There is a material basis for this. Actually if Germany let up for even a second, first of all there's the question of contagion. If Greece gets any kind of reasonable package then Spain is probably going to be swiftly on its heels. And then there's the question of Italy as well, which I'll come to briefly. They simply can't afford to let that happen. In other words this current survival of German capitalism is dependent on the beggar thy neighbour policy being pursued under the austerity agenda. It's also worth pointing out a couple of concurrent crises which have hit over the past few months. The Volkswagen scandal is very interesting because it damages a very important thing for the German export economy, which is the German brand, the German quality brand. If people become immediately suspicious about buying German cars it is going to have an effect. Already the car industry is suffering great excess capacity. This isn't to mention the massive penalties that the fines essentially that are going to be levied on that company. This can have a profound effect on the current surplus. The German state currently has actually a budgetary surplus, which you think was unheard of on this region, but it's very slender and it will be damaged by this. Then there's also the question of the refugee crisis. Now I believe that that's probably a subject for a whole other talk but it's something that we can cover in the discussion. As a result I would say of the kind of imperialist intervention we've seen over the past hundred years in the region you have this gigantic human crisis, this wave of refugees seeking refugee asylum in Europe. The political crisis that we're seeing revolving around this could potentially threaten to completely break up the European Union at some point because the division that is going on between the likes of Germany, the leading, the biggest European powers and the more peripheral Eastern European states is something that won't easily be healed while you have this pressure coming in from outside. Germany has taken the lead in taking on migrants. It's taken on 200,000 so far and it's planning on taking on another 800,000. Some estimates are saying that by 2016, so in only a year's time, you could have as many as 1.5 million, which apparently is the same size of the population of Munich. Now this is in a capitalist system where governments don't simply set out mass housing projects to actually house these people. Work is scarce already. Where are these people going to go? Already there are reports of local authorities repossessing people's homes in order to lodge migrants, which is only going to cause even more internal diversion and political chaos within that country. But also it's the economic effect. It is going to cost money. The Financial Times predicts that the slender surplus held by the German state is going to be removed. In other words, it will eventually move into a deficit over the next 12 months as a result of this migrant crisis, which restricts its room for manoeuvre. It's had to constantly bankroll the Greek crisis. What happens if you have another crisis elsewhere in the European Union? I don't see this crisis going anywhere. This is where I come to Italy. Italy, as I mentioned, is the third biggest economy in the euro zone. Its debt is currently standing at over 2 trillion euros. The ECB and German capitalism will not be able to buy Italy out. The position of Italian capitalism is not so much healthier than that of Spanish or Greek capitalism. We have a world slump, which has been threatened by the Chinese stock market crash just past. If this perspective does come to fruition, then what you are looking at is a whole new wave, a whole new episode in the saga which is the European crisis, and one which the ECB or any other international organisation will not be able to stem. It will get very interesting very quickly. What is the human effect? I would like to spend a little bit of time on this. I do feel sometimes that it looks as if civilization is rolling back on itself. It sometimes feels like the fall of Rome. You can see the pessimism that exists, particularly within the ruling class, and the confusion. Just to demonstrate this briefly, around the time of the election of the series of government, and then eventually the wranglings over the eventually 8 billion bailout deal, and the cuts, the 8 billion cuts that won the bailout deal. I was interested to know that in Money Week, which apparently is Britain's best-selling financial magazines, other financial magazines are available, the confusion, but also the complacency on the part of some bourgeois commentators. I don't know if you can see it the bad, but I'll try and show you the front covers. I won't quote from it. This is 30 January 2015, so series of government has been elected. Here the front page shows Angela Merkel perched on a stool trying to swat away a tiny Greek mouse who's sort of grinning and waving a Greek flag saying, I don't panic, the Greek vote is a great opportunity to buy Europe. I didn't follow their advice, thankfully. I don't have any money to invest, but if I had, I might have regretted it. Next, in less than a month, in two weeks time, 13 February, could this man cause a market crash? Varifac is there looking a bit sort of dangerous and sneaky, ripping apart a map of Europe. Next, 20 February, Greece goes all-in, crunch time for the Eurozone, and now you have a sweating Varifac is pushing all his chips in the direction of Merkel. That kind of shows that they had to re-evaluate the perspective very, very quickly, as did the European powers, and of course, as did the Greek government. Meanwhile, what is actually happening in Greece? I've seen some shocking statistics recently that showed that, if I can pull them out, infant mortality in Greece between the years of 2008 and 2010 went up by 43%. Stillbirths were up 20%, 13 of which were under way, and miscarriages have tripled in the period of 2008 to 2012, I think. So that's not even taking into account the last three years. This could be portrayed as the collapse of human civilization altogether. This is a time when the European family, which is bonded together for the sake of peace and prosperity, is quite literally devouring its own children. So the question that we have to ask ourselves right here and now is, what do we say to this? It's all very well having a perspective and understanding of events, but what actually is the Marxist alternative to this chaos and this horror? And I think I've got just enough time to try and do it, but I'll try and cover some of the alternatives and some of the options that have been put forward in society, but also in the left. So the first of all is the question of a social EU. In other words, reforming the European Union to represent the interests of working people and basically move away from austerity. This is the famous programme of the series of government, at least the last one. It's also the programme of Podemos, and it's one that deserves quite a bit of attention. Now in 2014, before the election of the satirist government, Alexis Tsipras ran for the president of the European Union, and he campaigned on the basis of an interesting programme, which I'd like to go through briefly. First of all, put an end to austerity, so far so good, and a new deal for Europe to be financed by low interest lending on the part of the ECB. Suspension of the new European fiscal framework, which requires balanced budgets year on year, at least in periods of recession. The European Central Bank to be a lender of last resort, in other words, for the European Central Bank to lend even more money at low interest credit. This is very interesting. Served plus countries should do as much as deficit countries to correct macroeconomic imbalances within Europe. In other words, they should export less and import more. When they say they, they mean Germany specifically. Germany should export less and import more, presumably from Greece. I don't know what exactly Greece produces to export to Germany, but they must export something, and that's what they want to do to address the macroeconomic imbalance. And then a European debt conference, like that of 1953, which relieved Germany of the economic burden of its own past. Separation of commercial investment banking activities along the lines of Roosevelt's 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, and then effect of European legislation to tax offshore economic and entrepreneurial activities, with which I mean complete agreement on that one. Now, in some respects, this is a good programme. I'd certainly prefer it to the austerity programme being applied at the moment, but you may well have already noticed the several references to the 1930s and to the post-war boom period of the 50s. Basically, this is just a classic Keynesian programme, copied and pasted out of the history books, with not actually any reference to the crisis that we're currently living through. It completely ignores two very important obstacles. The first one I've already mentioned, and that's the global crisis of overproduction. It's all very well-cawdling for public and private investment into creating jobs infrastructure, trying to develop the economy. But investment, which leads to an increased productive capacity when effective demand simply isn't there, will lead you nowhere, will lead you in circles. At best, what they're suggesting is they want to pay workers to dig holes in the road and then fill them up again. That is not a solution to the European crisis. The other question is, where is the money going to come from? This is the multi-trillion dollar question. Where is this money going to come from? Is it going to come from Germany? Absolutely not. Is it going to come from China maybe? Can Europe ask China to write a blank check? Of course, China does depend on the European market. It is in China's interest to give Europe money, but I think China has got the Chinese bureaucracy in charge of the Chinese economy, such as they are in control of it. I've got enough things on the plate, actually, to be trying to bankroll the European capitalism. I don't think Europe, the United States of America are in a position either. In other words, this programme could never have been applied except for one thing, because it's not as if all the money in the world has suddenly disappeared. There is actually the money that we could take hold of and use it to try and bankroll this programme or an even better one. And that's sat in the bank accounts of big international companies such as Apple. That money is there, but we're never going to get hold of it by asking them nicely or trying to negotiate. And we learnt this, and I think it also gives a striking lesson on the class nature of the European Union as an institution from the experience of the Cyprus-Barifacus series of government in Greece. They came with their Thessaloniki programme, a programme which I would support, supported at the time, with an idea of putting it into austerity. And the way that we're going to do it is they were going to renegotiate with the Troika. They were going to come and say, the Greek people have had enough, it's not working, the economy isn't growing at all. Actually, it's making the situation worse. We have worked out a detailed economic plan by which you can help us and also help you out of the crisis. They were awfully reasonable and they put forward logical, within reason, arguments for why they should do this. And Barifacus, after he parachuted himself out of the government, actually did an interview where he talked about the kind of conversations he had with people like Wolfgang Schauble, where he was putting forward these ideas and they were probably perfectly reasonable, certainly better than austerity. And the response was simply, no, they weren't having it. They weren't listening. They weren't interested. The reason for that is because their minds have already been made up and their minds have been made up by the necessity of capitalism. It's part of the material situation facing European capitalism. So I would say that this is more than just a woolly programme. This is sadly completely utopian. It actually shows the complete bankruptcy, I would say, of all kinds of reformism, even with the best intentions, even left-wing reformism. Assign your policy to the continuation of capitalism but on perhaps a more reasonable or fairer basis. Then in this current period of acute crisis then I'm sorry but you will fail. And the experience of Greece shows this absolutely. Now I also want to speak a little bit about imperialism, the nature of imperialism. Now Lenin during the First World War, if I can find a note, during the First World War Lenin wrote a pamphlet called imperialism the highest stage of capitalism. Now in it he defined imperialism as the complete domination of the big monopolies and financial houses over not only the economies of the home countries but also effectively of the whole world, as institutions take control of the assets of the foreign economies through the ownership of vast books of their resources, asset shares, lending debts, things like that, which supersedes the old colonial method. Now it's this process that Lenin so accurately analysed that led to the First World War but it's also not of historical significance, it's something that's going on right now. The austerity process, basically the rulership over European nations by European Central Bank, backed of course by the Bundesbank, basically by financial capital, is the most acute and clearest expression of imperialism that you will be able to find. The European crisis is a crisis of imperialism. Let's not forget that before this series of government, before the bailout terms were basically bullied into the series of government, you had the Papandreo government simply deposed, effectively by a coup and replaced by the Papademos technocratic government by the European Union. Who was Papademos? Who voted for him? Nobody was put in charge like a colonial government, governor. He was Europe's Pontius pilot if you like and that's not really a kind of democratic heritage that we as Nazis should defend. Now, I'd also want to have a quick look at the other side of the coin. I've spoken a lot about the European Union as an institution, as another form of class oppression effectively, as an imperialist body and one which I don't think Marxists can support. But does that mean that therefore we support the national capitalist economies of our own home nations? Does that mean that Marxists should in this sense say that it's more progressive to support the United Kingdom over the European Union? I don't think we could possibly say that. I think to pose the question is to show its absurdity because it's all very well talking about the various crimes and lack of democracy in the European Union and we could talk about that all day but we'd need several days to talk about all the crimes and lack of democracy in the United Kingdom on a worldwide scale. So where does that leave us? Leave us. Obviously as Marxists we do still, we can't just sit back and say oh we understand it all and it's all rubbish. We do have to get involved in the movement and connect with the mood at the time and pose and this is the important thing for me and pose a revolutionary socialist alternative. I hope the point in perhaps a bit of a long winded way trying to get across is that actually there is no alternative to the European crisis under capitalism. There is no alternative to the European crisis within the European Union or without it. Actually the only solution to the contradictions and crises that are racking the system at the moment is a socialist one. We as Marxists are internationalists. Of course we're anti-European. The idea of combining the productive forces and knowledge of the European continent into a planned rational and democratic economy based around meeting the needs of all rather than just the profits of the few is one of the most progressive things I can think of. It's something that I wholeheartedly support. The only way you can achieve that is not by a social EU but by a socialist United States of Europe. That's the thing that we should be calling for. That's the kind of point we need to be making because if we don't and if we limit ourselves to basically fitting into either of the capitalist camps that will be put forward in this upcoming debate that's already raging really throughout the European Union then we'll be falling into the trap basically of leading people, leading workers down a blind alley. I believe that as Marxists we have a duty to be honest to the workers and to pose that revolutionary alternative and so on that note I'll finish up. Thank you. That's a very good discussion and I think some of the points have been very good and also given me the opportunity to clarify on some things that I maybe brushed over a little bit in my lead off. I mean obviously this very concrete question of what are we actually going to do in the event of a referendum in any of the member state countries but obviously we're here in Britain and the British referendum is on the way, almost certainly on the way. Before I answer that I'd like to follow up on Steve's point where he points out that we're given no real choice and I think to go about answering the question of what is it that Marxists should actually which camp if you like should we be associating ourselves with if any. In order to begin answering that we first have to pose the question why is it that we have no real choice in this? Why is it that in this referendum, this upcoming referendum which does have far reaching consequences in society and it's splitting along class lines and I'll get back onto that in a second why is it we're being given an option between basically European imperialism the grey suited financiers of Frankfurt or basically right wing populism, farage, farage or miracle it's not a particularly attractive choice for anybody and that leaves us the Marxists in a tricky position because really we shouldn't be associating ourselves with either of these figures or these ideas and what is the reason for this, why have we found ourselves in this position and actually I discovered an article on the Financial Times I think it was by Wolfgang Munshaw that puts forward what I would say is an analysis that's quite close to the Marxist one actually it tends to be the most intelligent analysts and the part of the bourgeoisie tends to speak a lot like Marxists it's just they use different words, they don't associate themselves too closely but the article was entitled the perplexing failure of Europe's centre left and he talks about how we've got basically the biggest crisis of capitalism of all time right wing governments imposing austerity everybody hates them, why is the centre left doing so poorly throughout Europe using an example of Francois Hollande in France and Syriza of course in Greece so why is the centre left by and large not benefiting from the failures of their political opponents the deep reason lies in its absorption of the policies of the centre right going back almost three decades the acceptance of free trade agreements the deregulation of everything and in the Eurozone in brackets the binding fiscal rules and the most extreme version of central bank independence on earth they are all but indistinguishable from their own components I couldn't put it better myself the reason why we are faced with no alternative the working class is faced with no choice and no alternative whatsoever is because of the historic failure of the leadership of the organisations of the world class a world class, working class full stop and every country on earth not simply in Europe in every country on earth the leaders of the trade unions the leaders of the old social democratic parties the leaders of the old sarnist communist parties and even some of the Euro communist groups or various left groups have proven themselves to be totally unequipped for this crisis and the reason for that is because they are brought in to the idea that capitalism cannot be overthrown it must be worked within and therefore that the role of the left is basically to put forward a fairer, Keynesian alternative alternative to neoliberal policies in a period of crisis like this that's not just a bad idea that's a dangerous idea and it's leading the workers down a blind alley we have to be independent of that we have to put forward an independent class position and then the question arises we've all heard in a discussion in my introduction what I think the independent class position is and then the question arises how but I'd say not just how but where because obviously we as Marxists are individuals who live in society so the question of where we actually the fora in which we actually put forward these arguments is extremely important so first of all the question of how I'll put it negatively in terms of how not to do it and I would use the example of Lafazanes in Greece who after the capitulation of the series of government the left wing of Syriza a group of left wing MPs and party figures including people on the Central Committee the leading body split away on a left wing basis on an anti austerity basis disgusted with the betrayal of the series of government and in this they probably shared the feelings of many many people in Greece many workers in Greece in the last round of elections which Syriza won again they got less than 3% they got fewer votes than the Pesach the Pesach was the socialist party that went in government imposed austerity and has been smashed has been liquidated in elections and they did better than the left platform how on earth did that happen one of the reasons for it is that Lafazanes rather than putting forward a revolutionary alternative we're bearing in mind that in Greece there is a revolutionary situation going on basically the only concrete alternative to the crisis in Greece is the revolutionary taking of the commanding heights of the economy and banks into public control this is no longer a question of not one more minute on the day this is revolution or nothing in Greece essentially and rather than putting that he puts back to the drachma so you're a worker in Greece who's facing a kind of discussion conditions that I referenced earlier you feel completely betrayed and confused by your government in the form of the Cyprus government and the alternative being posed by the left wing of Syriza is back to the drachma it's completely unpalatable and it's utopian as well and although the Oxy vote the no vote I won't try to pronounce it in the Greek referendum was a resounding rejection of austerity of the memorandum it wasn't necessarily a rejection of membership of the EU at the same time now there was a huge amount of blackmail going on from the European establishment saying if you vote no then you're going to get kicked out or this is essentially a referendum on the EU and they were brave enough to still vote no in the face of that blackmail but from what I have heard I'm not Greek but when I've spoken to comrades in line in Greece and people from Greece there is a great deal of terror basically at the prospect of being booted out and having to go back to the drachma because on the subject of economic arguments for and against on a capitalist basis an independent capitalist Greece on the basis of the drachma would be a catastrophic alternative the thing is what the Greek working class is starting to realise very rapidly is that maintenance of the European Union of their membership in the Euro and the European Union will also be catastrophic because there is no exit to this and when it comes to how we make this vote we have to make it like this we have to concretely explain that actually the only alternative is a revolutionary socialist perspective and then there's a question of where where we get more into the tactical question of well who is it we want to be talking to because we're not talking directly to the masses when we as Marxists intervene when we're a small international of a few thousand we're not hoping we're not going to stand in elections up or down the country and tell people vote for us for a socialist United States of Europe as much as I think that it's a great idea I don't think we win the votes required to make that happen and I know for a fact that there's not going to be an option a tick box on the referendum ballot saying socialist United States of Europe so our perspective of Marxist is a little bit skewed it's a little bit removed from the question as it's being put by the capitalist media from our perspective what we need to do is build that alternative the alternative that has been destroyed and all but removed by the established leadership of the working class we need to restore it and base it on the ideas of Marxism and the way we do that is by orientating ourselves to the working class which put in a general sense sounds nice and simple and easy but obviously that is a very complicated tactical question and on a subject like the membership of the EU which is so confused and so complicated by class forces it requires a great deal of sensitivity so on the subject of the confusion and the class forces at play on this subject one of the reasons why the dominant by the vast majority of Labour MPs dominant force within the Labour Party in this country is pro-European it's not actually a reformist thing it's a liberal thing and it's a capitalist thing it's not a reflection of misguided reformists it's a reflection of British big business knowing what side it's bread's buttered they understand that Britain's access to the European market and the USA's access to the European market through Britain is what gives its privileged position in the world market Britain is not strong economic power by anybody's standards its ruling class is in a state of sea now decay as far as productive investment is concerned it's one of the lowest ranking countries in the world it's about sixth from bottom this is a country that prides itself on being the workshop of the world the only way that it can basically get by is having a big role in the world as they like to talk about is basically by having a parasitical financial role and that financial role regardless of how much you lower co-operation tax and financial transaction tax and stuff like that it's considerably less attractive if you don't have access to what is potentially the largest economic market in the world that is the position of British business now does that mean that we should be pro-European because we think the British capitalism is so decrepit that it won't be able to survive properly on its own no because we're not bourgeois and we don't want to be putting forward that perspective to the working class what we want to be doing is building our forces is reaching those layers of the masses that are already approaching revolutionary conclusions already starting to question the crisis question society and actually could be one to the revolutionary ideas of Marxism so how do we do that we have to gauge which way the class is looking and recently now this isn't definitive because we haven't even started the campaigning period for the referendum but recently I saw a Financial Times article that actually talked about the kind of class divide socio-economic divide as I put it between the two camps we talk about in terms of right wing demagogu and left wing liberal human rights and stuff like that it confuses the issue let's get down to the statistics they said that 75% of university educated professionals under the age of 30 were in favour of staying in the European Union and a majority I'm struggling to remember now but over half of people polled who came from the lower echelons of the socio-economic ranking about I think it was CD were in favour of withdrawal now on that basis we can't simply look at that one statistic and say therefore the working class is looking at withdrawal but it suggests something doesn't it now the Financial Times made the argument that actually because pensioners and such like today were less likely to have gone to uni than people under the age of 30 now that actually it's that issue that it's basically loads of grouchy OAPs who are determining the pursuit of withdrawal from the European Union I will let you mind up about that one I think actually there is a layer in society that has looked at the events in Greece in particular but also is starting to see the democratic deficit that exists in Europe and thinking I think we'd be better off on our own or that I can't see any kind of avenue through this that will give me some kind of positive alternative likewise we've talked about the forces of the right on this question of withdrawal we know about the Front National in France these forces aren't going to go anywhere they've been propped up they've been created essentially this historic failure of the leadership of the working class and we should be making that point as well we shouldn't be timid about criticising the people that have put us in this mess and so I would say personally that if the referendum were tomorrow then I would probably I wouldn't feel that I could abstain to be honest if you'd asked me last year I might have said let's make a principled abstention based on what Adam was talking about about the free trade with corrections and the corn laws basically saying either option is reactionary you're basically taking a bit of a holier than now attitude to the whole thing so when people see that this vote as an opportunity possibly to have an impact on their lives and you say don't worry about it don't bother then you're not really connecting with anything so we are going to have to make some kind of a call and for me if the referendum were tomorrow I would probably be voting to lead the European Union but all the same some of the points that have been made must be remembered that actually this is a bit of a moot point the European Union is in a state of collapse already this refugee crisis on the subject of collapse this refugee crisis has been brewing and present for much longer than the last few months it's been going on for years and the European Union is almost all of its foreign policy maybe all of it but certainly in North Africa and Western Asia has been targeted towards keeping these people out this problem hasn't just emerged over the recent period they've spent billions of pounds or euros rather on being able to track people down I know that they recently got rid of the kind of the life saving boats that were in operation in the Mediterranean and also making deals with North African dictators like Gaddafi to keep them out before the revolution started in Libya and before he was deposed at which point the European Union leaders suddenly didn't like him so much he was their boy he was keeping these people out they had detention camps in Libya designed to make sure that people who crossed the Sahara on the way to the Mediterranean make the last leg of the journey in Morocco today that process still continues a friend of mine works in I think it's connected to the UN in an asylum refuge unit working with people in this situation and a lot of their funding comes to the EU why? because if they put up somewhere in Morocco they're not going to come to Europe they're already making deals with Turkey we talk about human rights in Europe they're willing to wave all of their scruples over human rights and fast-track the process for Turkish integration into the EU some kind of half-way house in order that Erdian who's moving in a dictatorial direction by any of the standards can be used as a kind of frontier guard for the European Union a Cerberus at the gates of the European Union once again is this something that Marxist can be putting ourselves into I personally don't think so but as the point has already been made it depends on the way that the working class looks at it this is a lesson that we've learned over the Scottish referendum really what matters is whether it's illusory or not is what people are looking at to be there talking to them and so the last point I want to make before I finish up is following on from this the question of the refugee crisis Emily made the interesting point that it's actually more than an economic problem it's a political problem now it's not possible to say categorically whether all of these people are revolutionary but they're certainly desperate they're certainly hungry and they've been brutalised by a civil war and many of them will be revolutionised by events and that is something that the European powers will be worrying about but it's not just in terms of the influx of people from these countries it's the disintegration of the political bonds holding the union together in the form of the so-called New Europe the former Soviet states that were clashed to the bosom of German imperialism after the fall of the Soviet Union and used as consumer states essentially for German markets all of a sudden they're starting to rebel and they're rebelling on quite a reactionary basis you've got the Prime Minister of Hungary saying that this influx of migrants threatening the European Union's Christian fabric or something like that that's the side of the European Union they don't usually want to show you that's the kind that the liberal media will not want to show you but it very much exists and it's coming into sharp contradiction and conflict with the older powers who wanted to exploit these nations and that can develop into something very nasty but also it has revolutionary implications and this is what I want to end on that what we're seeing Adam was talking about in his talk this morning he mentioned that when a system is no longer able to develop the productive forces it enters into periods of crises and revolutions now we are in that period I don't think there's really any argument over that or there can be no argument over that events have shown it to be categorically the case however we can go a bit deeper into this question of what is a period of revolution Lenin categorised throughout four elements really the first was deep splits and divisions within the ruling class the European ruling class is a house divided we can see this already it's not going to get any better this leaves openings for all sorts of strange and revolutionary developments the election of a series of government in itself is a complete one for the books the rise of podemos seemingly out of nowhere the election of the most left wing Labour party leader in history a catastrophic defeat in the election and the Scottish referendum result this shows that first of all there is a great deal of anger and a desire for change at the bottom and at the top complete ineptitude and confusion just look at the picture of ineptitude that is David Cameron he is an expression of his class it's not just that he's an idiot his class has reached a historical ampass from which it cannot escape it doesn't matter you can have a genius in charge of the country because they have to do it within the capitalist system so there is that element the second element is that the middle class is wavering and actually possibly moving in a revolutionary direction and we can see with the kind of the violent swervings to the left and the right within the European middle class that I wouldn't say that this process is complete but it's ongoing and it's there to be seen and actually the growth of the populist right is a bit of an expression of this and the fact that you can have the growth of, seeming growth of UKIP I think they won 4 million votes in the last election and yet at the same time when they're polled a majority of people intending to vote UKIP said they were in favour of the renationalisation of the railways that's never been Nigel Farage's programme and so already when they've had cross party polling a great deal of UKIP voters who voted UKIP in the last election are looking to Jeremy Corbyn they look like chalk and cheese but actually is people looking for an alternative even a seemingly reactionary one and that in itself has revolutionary implications the third is that the working class are prepared to sacrifice for the revolution to overthrow and to achieve change and that's been categorically proven perhaps not everywhere in Europe but this process has started it's been proven without a shadow of a doubt in Greece and that no referendum result proves it beyond any reasonable doubt the fourth one is that there is a revolutionary organisation capable of taking power and transforming society that is completely absent it exists nowhere it basically exists, I would say it exists in this room and so this is actually why I want to end on this point because it's all very well knowing that society is crumbling around us that the ruling class cannot retain control of the situation and that the working class is prepared to move in a revolutionary direction but without the requisite leadership and without the ideas of Marxism on a strong and influential scale not an organisation of several hundred people all that will ultimately be for nothing and that's why I will use this opportunity to end on asking you to all seriously consider joining with us and getting involved with the IMT thank you