 Felly, gydwch dda'w'n gweithio'n cyflymol, mwyn gyllid恭喜 vermintau wath, yn yw gondol i'w wneud yn bifodol gyda'r lleol ac yn ond y ddag yn ymdweud yn frafyd. Mae'n gwirio gyd wedi gweld yn yw'n hwnnw'n gweithio'n Clyni Marx's capital is a milestone, I would say, in Marxism, where he was able to analyse and spend many years. You're talking about 17 years prior to the publication of this book where he studied and criticised all the main academics and economists of the time in order to clarify the real workings of the system that we live under. As Adam explained, the reason for this was not to have an academic kind of tate-de-tate with the intellectuals of the time, but to prepare the movement, prepare the working class for them to be more conscious to understand what tasks were in front of them in changing society. Clyni, the reason why Marx's capital is more relevant today is quite obvious because we're living under the deepest capitalist crisis since the 1930s. That's tested not just by ourselves, but all the bourgeois economists at this particular moment. In fact, this must be in a recovery phase. That's the worst recovery or the weakest recovery in history. Even now, they have to term it secular stagnation, in other words, that the system itself, capitalism, has entered an impasse which Marx himself predicted. Of course, we have to understand the broad outlines and clearly it resonates with a lot of people, pretty young people caught up in this capitalist crisis because at the end of the day it affects everybody. An epoch now of austerity has been introduced arising from the crisis itself. All the reform is that we took for granted in the past and now under attack. Capitalism can no longer afford the reforms of the past and therefore there's a new normality in attempting to reduce the living standards in order to save the capitalist system. Of course, this onslaught is changing people's conceptions and perceptions. Without exception, all countries are affected. It shows the global nature of capitalism on the one hand, but also it's the working class who suffer. Britain also, the new facts and figures that have been the biggest decline in living standards over the last 10 years, are cutting real wages for 150 years. That's the time when Marx was actually writing capital. That's the span you're talking about. There's this brutal change in the nature of capitalism of an attack of reduction in real wages, of working conditions and general standards of life going down. There obviously causes people to think more about the situation they're in and the system that operates at the present time. Of course, the newspapers and the television and so on, the education services and universities will say this is the best. Nevertheless, despite these little problems, this is the best system that you could ever hope for. Well, they would say that, obviously. But Marx himself explained, well, hang on a minute. What we have here is a social system which is not eternal. Unlike other social systems, has a life itself, has a maturity and has a decline and fall. And Marx was able to, unlike the other economists of his own age who believed in the permanency of capitalism, he saw it merely as a stage in the development of society itself with its own particular laws, which we have to have a look at, and how these laws are very contradictory and inherent in the capitalist system is inherent crises because of these particular contradictions, which we will also go into in a minute. Because it affects young people in particular, I was at the TUC on Monday of this week and I attended a fringe meeting where a young girl was speaking, her name was Georgina, and she was a McDonald's striker, a young girl, and the first time she ever spoke in a meeting, and she was shaking and very emotional and explained to us the real working conditions that she had to put up with and her workmates in this well-known institution McDonald's with a very smiley face and a clown image and so on and so forth, cheery image for young people, but tear away the real face and behind it, you see a brittle employer who carried out quite a, how can I say, intimidatory actions against its workforce and she explained from her own personal experience how she felt degraded and we felt like animals by the employers and the managers of the pressure, of the harassment and even the abuse that they would take, taking it to a corner and abused, reduced to tears and this provoked this feeling of rage amongst themselves and for the first time in the history of this company they had a strike and she said it was the most liberating thing I've ever done, she's the best thing I've done in my life, she just joked that she was enjoying it as it were quote in the famous phrase and she realised how other workers were faced, it's not just her across the board that young workers are feeling the backlash, if you like, of capitalist crisis itself and it was for these people, working people, as Adam explained, that Marx wrote these works to explain to them the nature of capitalism, how it works why they will never emerge any further than being workers why in society there will be an almost polarisation amongst the classes and it will give rise to a struggle within society over the product produced by the working class by the surplus value created by workers, which is the class struggle itself of course we know that Marx has been derided although even today I would say some economists are keen to give a little bit of a compliment to Marx he was like on certain things, like the crisis maybe but don't get carried away, other things he was very very wrong on like trying to change society but nevertheless one of his main theories or rather what he was supposed to have said was this theory of increasing misery and how people laughed at it and the establishment laughed at it how ridiculous living stars are going up they said we're all becoming middle class they said and therefore Marxism was out of date, was a historical non-entity and yet we see graphically today how these tendencies have come to the fore of enormous polarisation in society particularly in relation to the terms of wealth where I think even Oxfam said there were 66 individuals in the world who have more wealth than the half of humanity combined together gives you an idea of the extreme nature of this polarisation where Marx explained that one pole would have extreme wealth and the other pole would have increasing misery and poverty and squalor and degradation and that's increasingly the picture that we have even in the advanced industrial countries let alone the more undeveloped countries where there's brutal exploitation in quite a naked form but this is taking place today in Britain and elsewhere in the 21st century and of course our task is to understand why why is it this is taking place if we're going to change things we have to understand why it happens in the first place and though it is true I would say that capital is not an easy read having tried when I started it was a very difficult book mainly because not so much the ideas were difficult but they were new ideas they were very strange ideas having learnt in school about economics this book was totally different from what I was taught about it was a new angle, a new, a different direction but once you begin to understand the fundamental ideas which are not very difficult really to grasp everything tends to fall into place above all is this idea that labour that the labour of the working class creates the wealth of society creates the value of society and this idea, this labour theory of value was held 200 years ago even by the classical bourgeois economists they understood that look what is the value of a thing well surely it's the amount of labour employed in producing it it's quite a concrete thing and you can measure it it's quite understandable, it's quite a simple idea the only thing is it was a very subversive idea and as capitalism developed they dropped this conception altogether because obviously they didn't want the working class to have the full fruits of their labour because that would undermine profits and their justification for existence therefore this subversive idea of a labour theory of value which we will go into today clearly it had to be ditched and another form of understanding had to be brought on board a subjective view of wealth a subjective view of value of marginal utility another such misunderstanding terms which clouded the issue which was the purpose of it in reality and Marxism attempts to clarify, bring out the real relationships in society and where things are moving to the laws of capitalism the idea of monopolies being created from competition of huge multinational corporations being formed because of the development of capitalism itself of a growing working class in society and now that's the case internationally and Marx obviously pointed the fact as a revolutionary not just an economist but a revolutionary who wanted to change the world that only on the basis of the working class becoming conscious of its position and the need to change society would that revolution unfold? It was events that would change things that experience that work would force them to move towards changing society to create a revolution to do away with capitalism and create a planned democratic society where the resources were used for the benefit of all and that would eliminate the problems created by capitalism whether it be mass unemployment, homelessness poverty, squalor, after all we have the resources to resolve these problems but we cannot do it on a capitalist basis because of the laws and power of capitalism held by the capitalist class itself and therefore these ideas in capital to understand the basic laws of the system was a means of educating the advanced layers of the working class and I think capital was called the Bible of the working class in the 19th century when these big labour movements that took place in Europe which fundamentally did the ideas of Marxism in the second international these ideas then were the basis of trying to change society and this Labour Party in 1918 adopted a constitution to overthrow capitalism and bring about a socialist society mainly under the impact of the Russian Revolution but that was the conclusions drawn even by the Labour Party at that stage that capitalism could not solve the problems in fact it was the problem and had to be eliminated and therefore it's the experience of workers in struggle the experience of workers, the life of workers which pushes them in the direction of the need to change society itself to form trade unions, political parties and so on and this is all linked really to these ideas which are not abstract but very concrete for working people what Marx is describing is the day-to-day lives of people and particularly when you read probably the easiest chapter on the working day in capital you can see how a lot of parallels with today of the introduction of zero hour contracts of short term contracts of flexibility of labour and all those things intended to squeeze as much unpaid labour out of the working class as possible in order to increase the profits of big business of the capitalist and all of it is related to really these ideas so I hope that this day will be fruitful for you certainly it's a great opportunity I've never been to a day school on the whole of capital I must admit my life and I'm sure that that will be of great value particularly for younger comrades and young people who will be getting to reach out for these ideas to find out what they really mean and the implications that is drawn from them Marx himself said I hope I don't die before completing capital even in a manuscript form he said and the reason for that he had dedicated his life to this not only volume one but the other volumes that went after it as well because in that he said this is the still essence really of an understanding of which way forward for working people and Marxism above all is not a mystical thing it can grasp it quite easily insofar as it can be defined as the generalised experience of working people it is the best of culture at the time there are three components of Marxism not only of philosophy of a method of understanding but also of history and of economics if you like these three component parts which give an understanding of not just the situation in capitalism but the whole of history itself it allows us to see our role our part in the development of history itself history is not a jumbled concoction of accidental features but is part of a lawful development of society itself the only thing is people make history it's not an automatic process it has to be conscious in the minds of people of what they are going to try to accomplish and that is why the importance of understanding is vital and that's where theory comes in that's where ideas come into being because without those valuable ideas and the reason why we learn about them is if we do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past and the tragedies of the past those who do not learn from history will be doomed to repeat it and that's why we have to learn now in order that we can carry through a successful change of society eliminate in the contradictions and develop in a fruitful society of the mass of the population itself so I hope you will enjoy this day and it will inspire you to become active and to find out more about these ideas and yes, help change society for the benefit of humanity thank you