 Okay, so the question, will there be a boom when in last year there's a lot of talk about whether the decade ahead We're gonna see a return to the so-called roaring twenties and the sun ruining class analysts said well You know tens of millions of people died a century ago with the Spanish flu epidemic And then afterwards you had very strong economic growth or at least you did in the USA And they say so perhaps the decade ahead will look very similar And this is actually what the CEO of Barclays said to the World Economic Forum at Davos early this year It's clearly very superficial kind of thinking. It's really very very wishful thinking But he was he was answered by HSBC senior economic advisor He said well, yes the 1920s did roar for some, you know It was the rich at the top the great Gatsby types and so on but they actually all entered in tears in 1929 with the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression. So be careful what you wish for Now it's true that there's definitely a rebound in the economy across the world Overall, the world economy is expected to grow by six percent this year following a three point two percent drop last year And that's such lots of people at the top are getting very excited about a return to kind of so-called prosperity And there's this idea that once the pandemic is over or at least under control around much of the world Economic growth is again going to skyrocket due to the unleashing of what they call this pent-up demand Now it's true that there is a significant amount of this pent-up demand that's come about as a result of the pandemic It's thought that during the first year of the pandemic alone There's a layer of people around the world who combined save a total of an extra five point four trillion dollars Which amounts to six percent of world GDP? now of course that's extremely uneven like most of this was saved by the richest layers around the world and it's primarily in the advanced capitalist countries But it's true that as economies open back up from the pandemic You know a layer of some portion of this money has indeed and will be spent So whereas last year many economists were worrying themselves about the prospects for a deep depression across the world Now many are worried about the economy going too far the other way. They're worried about it overheating Now there's many factors behind this Not least the huge stimulus packages that have been enacted by governments around the world Essentially to keep the system from collapsing It's these are totaled over sixteen and a half trillion dollars so far Not much of this money was effectively just simply created by central banks through what they call quantitative easing Are you it's effectively created out of nothing? It's really the modern equivalent of simply just printing more money and it amounts to what we understand as fictitious capital I guess money or currency with with no real value behind it to actually back it up So for example in in the USA the m2 money supply increased by four trillion dollars over the course of 2020 Which is a 26% increase, which I think is unprecedented now at the same time There's significant supply blockages across the world economy due to a whole range of factors including you know a mix of Disruption to production seeing factories having to shut down due to lockdowns and also now more recently due to energy price rises The supply chain bottlenecks due to worker shortages, you know, we've seen the increasing demand that's outstripping Supply in or productive capacity in a number of different industries So for example most obvious is the semiconductor industry. There's been some chemicals plastics and other things You only really have to go into a supermarket today to see the effects of all this kind of empty shelves are now kind of the norm and This really all together is a recipe for massive inflation Are you a generalized increase in prices? Since there's now a much higher effective demand chasing a limited supply of goods Now already inflation in the USA has jumped to over 4% which is the highest level since 2008 Prices of some something so like steel shipping rates as a semiconductors Now energy have all risen very dramatically and of course There's been a massive inflation of things like speculative assets things like shares on the stock exchange Cryptocurrencies real estate these kind of things Now there's some including kind of the US Federal Reserve who are saying that you know, don't worry This is all gonna just be temporary and that it's inevitable for prices to rise after such a shock like the pandemic Which actually saw prices of a number of commodities actually fall across the world But there's another Another layer of economists such as Larry Summers who was a former kind of US Secretary of the Treasury Who actually sounding the alarm about this runaway inflation Now his real worry which has echoed by many across the financial press is that into the cure to this inflation Will actually be far worse than the disease itself So for example, if we have really high inflation It's going to require central banks to step in and increase or significantly increase interest rates in order to try and Cool the economy down The problem is though that the world economy is hooked on ultra cheap credit on these are extremely low interest rates So for example, I think the base rate in Britain is 0.1 percent. It almost couldn't be lower Now millions of indebted households and companies will be tipped over the edge if they see their interest payments rise There's hundreds of thousands of zombie companies across the world Which would be made bankrupt by such a move and of course money would then flood out of things like the stock exchange And these other speculative bubbles into safe havens including these you know massively inflated bubbles to burst Now overall, we can't say exactly how these things will pan out. We of course don't have a crystal ball But what we can says that the world economy is an extremely complex system You know it's conditioned by all sorts of factors coming together including and not least political decisions and of course, you know, how the pandemic continues to unfold as well It's still much a very kind of unknown quantity We can clearly see a rebound is taking place to a degree across the world But there are many warning signs that things are already beginning to slow down So for example, the number of new jobs that were created in the USA recently has come in well below expectations There's the slowdown of the the Chinese economy, which is actually not not something new but has been taking place over years There's the impending default of property developer ever grand in China, which has the potential there to snowball into a major crisis There's also the energy crisis in Europe, which is already causing heavy industries to shut down and it's going to tip millions of people into further poverty For us though, the real question is what is the nature of the period that we're in and where is capitalism heading? Will there be a boom like in the period after World War two or things going to look more like the interwar period with stagnation and decline? And flowing from that, what impact will this have on the consciousness of the classes and what will it mean for the development of the class struggle? I think to answer this, it's not enough to look at just simply the kind of the most recent developments But as Marxist, we take the longer view of history and we have to try and understand the nature of crises or of cycles under capitalism And also why capitalism goes into crises and also how it gets out of one Now it's worth bringing in here a concept developed by Leon Trotsky in the early 1920s Where he discussed something called the curve of capitalist development Now he introduces that speech to the communist international. It was at the third Congress in 1921 And at that time there was still a fairly large kind of ultra left layer within the international I kind of just thought that the First World War was somewhat automatically just bring about a final crisis of capitalism And they thought that all the contradictions of capitalism were brought to the surface by the war and that The crisis that followed this would kind of just automatically lead to the collapse of the system and the victory of the world revolution Now it's true that the war did indeed result in a serious crisis for capitalism And it led to the working class taking power in Russia as we all know There were revolutions on mass movements across Europe including in Germany, Italy and even Britain But it was due to the betrayal of these movements by the reformist leaders of the working class mass Organizations in these countries that capitalism was able to kind of stabilize itself and recover Now that at that time there was a lot of excitement within the ruling class about the prospects for a new boom at that time And that led to some confusion within the communist movement Some people were thinking well is this it then you know is that it are our perspectives for revolution shattered You know if we're about to experience a new boom Does that mean this there's kind of revolutions off the cards and Trotsky answered by pointing out well Capitalism doesn't develop just in a kind of simple straight line But actually develops in a zigzag manner through kind of continual ups and downs and that the fact that the economy was experiencing a revival Was of course providing this this basis for these apologists of capitalism to think that everything was going back to normal And the capitalism would develop helpfully from then on but Trotsky pointed out and I quote that it was otherwise in reality He said the fact that capitalism continues to oscillate cyclically after the war merely signifies that capitalism is not yet dead That we're not yet dealing with a corpse He said so long as capitalism is not overthrown by the proletarian revolution. It will continue to live in cycles swinging up and down Crisis and booms were inherent and capitalism is very birth and they will accompany it to his grave Be concluded to determine capitalism's age and its general condition To establish whether it's still developing or whether it's matured and whether it's in decline One must character Characterized the character of the cycles once I'm almost diagnosed the character of the cycles The key point though that he was getting is that these cycles of boom and slump are intrinsic to the capitalist system But as well as the kind of normal cyclical movement of the economy through these kind of boom and bust cycles You know what is typically referred to as the business cycle The system as a whole ends up going through different phases That these short-term oscillations sit on top of a much broader long-term curve Which indicates the nature of the epoch that capitalism is in Which is one of either general assent stagnation or decline And now this has important political consequences He developed this argument in a later letter where he developed the concept of the curve of capitalist development in more detail And he points out that if you only had the periodic repetition of the business cycle Capitalism will simply go around in circles. You know, there'll be no development But in reality you find periods in capitalism's history where the boom periods are stronger than the slumps So despite these ups and downs the curve of development is generally going upwards And these correspond to periods in history where the productive forces in society are being developed Are either there's like more factories are being built the productivity of labor is being increased You know society is generally moving forwards But likewise if the booms cancel out the slumps you have a period of stagnation And if the destruction of the slumps is greater than the upturn in the booms then the system as a whole is in decline Trotsky pointed out that of course the business cycles themselves do have an important bearing on politics Are you things like unemployment wages the revenues of the of the ruling class the state budget and so on All these things are conditioned by whether the economy is undergoing a boom or a bust And also at what point along the cycle the system is in And that ultimately these developments will find a reflection in the rise and fall of different political formations So for example, it's not by accident that the Tory coalition that came to power in 2010 You're soon after the 2008 crash enacted a massive program of austerity But as well as these cyclical developments, you would expect to find significant developments in the what we call the superstructure of capitalism So things like kind of politics, law, philosophy, culture and so on And he said that these differences would also correspond to the different kind of longer term epochs of capitalism Of either kind of upswing stagnation or decline Now, of course, this is an extremely complex relationship by no means a rigid or direct or mechanical one And Trotsky's also stressed that it is in the transition between these different epochs That you tend to find the greatest convulsions within the class struggle and also between the states Now this this was the point he was trying to stress to the communist international That you know despite the temporary ups and downs that the economy was experiencing after the war That capitalism was actually transitioning to a new epoch of one of decline And actually this would have significant implications for this class struggle and for prospects for revolution And actually in hindsight you consider this was indeed born out And you consider the revolutionary crisis in Germany in 1923 Or the chinese revolution of 1925 to 27 The british general strike of 1926 The wall street crash of 1929 and the great depression Or the rise of the nazis in germany the spanish revolution in the 1930s And the explosion of the class struggle in the usa The fact that none of these events resulted in the working class taking power in any of these countries Was ultimately due to the failed policies of the leadership of the working class And also the disastrous impact of the starland's degeneration of the communist international But that of course is beyond the scope really of this lead of Now as well as answering the ultra lefts in the communist international Trotsky also explicitly in his 1923 letter on the curve of capitalist development He also set out to counter the ideas of soviet economist nikolai kondratiev and his theory of long waves Which was being picked up by many at that time Now kondratiev was one of these so-called red professors Who was ultimately someone who was like a fellow traveler of the revolution And he was very sympathetic To the revolution but someone who never really absorbed the method of marxism dialectical materialism Now kondratiev put forward the argument that as well as the regular business cycles that capitalism goes through Which you see on average every kind of seven to 11 years or so There existed longer 50 year cycles of what he called waves Now it is true that if you look back throughout history you can observe distinct periods within capitalism each of their own character So for example the period of 1894 to 1914 was one of profound upswing where the productive forces were being developed And it was this really that provided the the basis for the reformist degeneration of the second international In contrast the period of 1915 to 39 was one of decline and depression Reflected an extremely turbulent period politically with wars revolutions and counter revolutions 1945 to 74 though was the the greatest upswing in capitalism's history with the post war boom Which came to an end with the crisis in the mid 70s Now of course kondratiev had pointed out the existence of such different epochs in the history of capitalism And I think that such epochs exist is pretty much beyond dispute Although of course a lot of people don't agree on the exact timings on the on the turning points between these epochs But that really doesn't doesn't matter The point that what kondratiev was attempting to do though Was just trying to explain the existence for these epochs as being the product of a 50 year cycle of investment And he tried to draw a parallel between marx's analysis of the business cycle and apply it to these longer periods in history Now marx explained how the mechanism for the kind of average business cycle of capitalism Is conditioned in part by the periodic reinvestment of fixed capital Which in marx's time took approximately 10 years or so Now kondratiev took this idea and he tried to then kind of explain the existence of these kind of 50 year Cycles as being determined by what he argued was the replacement and incrementation of something called the basic capital fund Which he said consisted of the capital required to invest in big industrial installations and major infrastructure Now he argued that The replacement of such a fund was not a continuous process but occurred in big leaps And this was though something he never actually explained but only really asserted Now this actually bears very little relation to how investments and innovations really take place under capitalism It's not true that this a large capital fund simply exists, which requires decades to to build up and replace In reality the renovation of capital takes place all the time and this is necessary due to depreciation You know not only due to machines kind of physically wearing out but also due to them becoming obsolete You know the bosses can't wait decades to replace their machinery if their competitors Invest in more productive machinery themselves Now one of the reasons I mentioned kondratiev Is that his ideas still pop up from time to time today? There's actually a whole industry of investment fund managers who attempt to use his theories in order to guide their investments And in order to try and predict the exact timings of beams and slumps But there's also some of the reformists left. You still see his ideas getting an echo For example, Paul Mason in his book post capitalism He said that we should be about to experience a new upswing of capitalism because a fifth kondratiev wave is due Although he said actually to his credit that this is stalled He said because workers wages and organizations are so downtrodden that kapless have no incentive to invest in new technology But instead rely on super exploiting the working class But you know kondratiev's ideas are popular amongst kapless and reformists alike Since if you actually take them to their conclusion They imply that capitalism will always recover to healthy conditions of boom that no matter how severe a crisis It doesn't mean that capitalism needs overthrowing since good times are kind of automatically just around the corner Because another long wave is just about to arrive Now to answer this it's very useful to contrast kondratiev's method of analysis with that of of the marxist one And as I said kondratiev was sympathetic to the revolution But he never really absorbed the method of marxism His whole method was what we call formalism and reductionism I need to put forward a more or less arbitrary hypothesis on the basis of a few selected facts And then attempt to justify it by kind of selecting the data that fits Now he also treated the kapless system as effectively a simple linear system which operates in a mechanical fashion And implicit in this is the idea that there's some kind of natural equilibrium to which the system strives Now by contrast the method of marxism attempts to avoid putting forward kind of sweeping generalizations a priori Are yes the result of kind of pure thought or abstraction Instead marxist attempt to get a full picture of what is going on around us from all the available data And then by careful examination draw out the general processes and laws Now on the question of kapless equilibrium Trotsky pointed out that and I quote from him again Kapless equilibrium is an extremely complex phenomenon Kapless and produces this equilibrium Disrupts it and when stores it anew in order to disrupt it anew Concurrently extending the limits of its domination And in the economic sphere these constant disruptions and restorations of the equilibrium take the shape of crises and booms In the sphere of interclass relations the disruption of the equilibrium assumes the form of strikes lockouts and revolutionary struggle In the sphere of interstate relations The disruption of equilibrium means war or in a weaker form tariff wars economic wars or blockades He concluded capitalism thus possesses a dynamic equilibrium one which is always in the process of either disruption or restoration So that rather than being a simple linear system capitalism is a chaotic system One that means through events such as crises class struggle and revolution Now Trotsky of course mentioned that capitalism goes through different historical periods Where the productive forces are either being developed stagnates or decline But he denied that these had a cyclical character i.e. that the result of a repeated mechanical process Simply linked to an investment cycle Instead he pointed out that there were the product of a whole range of circumstances Many of which were not in fact economic but political Now it's true that marxists have always asserted that in the final analysis The development of the productive forces is decisive in conditioning the historical process But marx and engels were also at pains to stress that this doesn't mean that we're crude economic determinants That everything is just simply reduced to economics And that the relationship between the economic base and the kind of superstructure of society You know things like politics ideology law culture and so on It's as i said, it's not a simple one-way mechanical process But it's a very complex and dialectical one And in many cases the political structure superstructure can we actually react back on the economic base Either speeding up its development or holding it back according to what policies are pursued So you consider for example that the stultifying effect of the catholic church on the economy of feudal europe Or even today the policies of the torii parties such as brexit Which from the standpoint of british big business is an absolute disaster Or consider even the torii's handling of the pandemic, you know, which is is resulting in absolutely economic chaos Events as well such as wars, military conquests, scientific discoveries And even accidents can play a role in shaping the development of an economy These things are not determined by a repeating 50 year cycle of investment But they develop according to a whole range of overlapping factors For example, it's not possible to explain wars and revolutions by simple economic reductionism Take for example the first world war It was impossible to tell exactly how it would play out in advance And it dramatically shaped the character of the economy and politics in the aftermath Now it's worth here. I think briefly explaining why does capitalism actually go into crisis and why are crises inevitable under capitalism? Now marx of course explain this in the three volumes of capital But you don't need to read capital in order to understand the fundamentals of capitalism's crises Look at what marx and engels said in the communist manifesto They explained that the conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth that's created by them So it's clear here. They're talking about a crisis of overproduction Which is a crisis where too many things are produced and let's be clear It's not too many things produced to satisfy people's needs That's of course not the case but too many things to be profitably absorbed by the market And this is inevitable under capitalism since production is only for profit That leads us to ask well, where does profit come from? Well, as marx explained the amount of value that you produce as a worker Is not at all the same amount of value that you're paid in your wages Instead you receive enough to keep you alive at a certain standard of living Which actually for millions of the working class around the world is barely enough to just keep you alive Therefore the working class has only paid a fraction of the value that it produces The risk goes a surplus value to the ruling class in the form of profit interests and rent The problem is though that the capitalist can only realise this profit if they actually sell what is produced Therefore there must be a market for these commodities But if workers are only paid a fraction of the value that they create Where will the demand come from on the market to buy back all these commodities? You know, there's clearly a big gap You could ask well, if that's the case then why isn't capitalism permanently in crisis if there's always this shortfall? Well, there's several ways around this for the capitalists Firstly, if their market at home is insufficient They can just export their commodities abroad Such as done by capitalists today in in china or germany for example But of course that doesn't really solve the problem It just kind of shifts it around the world because not all countries can be net exporters Now secondly the capitalist themselves use a part of the surplus Produced by the working class in order to reinvest back in expanding production So for also a lot of the demand comes from you know the capitalist buy more machines more buildings infrastructure and so on So but in order for the capitalist to actually kind of use these more these new means of production and use them profitably They of course ultimately have to use them to produce more commodities Which actually then again just sets up this problem, but on an even higher level The main way they get out of the problem is to try and use credit Which is really to I try and artificially expand the purchasing power of people today But of course it comes at the cost of of restricting it tomorrow because of course credit has to be paid back and paid back with interest So over the time this contradiction builds up, you know, you see goods going on sold companies going bust Credit drying up and at a certain state a general crisis will break out Now this phenomenon of overproduction is key to understanding all crises under capitalism Especially that the the crisis of the 1930s Because the depression wasn't like the normal kind of boom and bust cycles that had gone on before it Although there were partial recoveries throughout that decade, you know capitalism continued to breathe as Trotsky put it They didn't restore things to their previous condition. So you had persistently high unemployment throughout that decade and investment levels remained low It's what we refer to as an organic crisis of capitalism It's a product of the fact that capitalism was no longer able to develop the productive forces in the way that it could do in the past And the constraints of private ownership of the productive forces and the nation's state had become massive barriers to the further development of capitalism And as such the curve of capitalist development had reached downward phase and it was reflected in the extremely turbulent period political developments of that period Now there was enormous overproduction on the world scale Which couldn't kind of easily be eliminated without an enormous amount of destruction of the productive forces And this really was a recipe for huge conflict between the classes And also clashes between nations in the struggle to re-establish a new economic equilibrium But as Lenin Trotsky also explained there's no final crisis of capitalism until it's consciously overthrown by the working class And until that happens, it's true capitalism will always get out of a crisis The question though is yes, but what cost? Now let's be clear It wasn't the Keynesian policies of Roosevelt's new deal that ended the great depression But it was in fact the impact of world war two Which involved the destruction of whole continents and tens of millions of people being killed Had a similar effect to a deep economic slump where the excess Productive capacity of the productive forces is wiped out Now as this that cleared the ground for the post-war boom Which was the longest and most powerful of upswings in capitalism's history And therefore the organic crisis of the 1930s had been transformed into its opposite, which was one of a profound boom But it's important to remember though that that boom was only made possible due to the role played by the reformist And the Stalinists at the end of world war two Who actually scuppered the potential of the revolutionary wave which swept Europe and a lot of the world at the end of that war That's they created the political conditions for capitalism to be able to restabilize itself So it wasn't due to any long wave that saw this prolonged period of upswing following the war As Ted Grant, who was one of the founders of the IMT explained at that time The post-war boom came about due to a whole range of factors coming together And significant among these was the massive increase in world trade Due to the international balance of forces that emerged from the war There was enormous scope for profitable investment rising from the reconstruction In order to kind of rebuild from the devastation of the war But also to invest in All sorts of new discoveries so technologies that have been discovered during the war You know things like investing in chemicals, plastics, nuclear weapons and so on nuclear power There was also the elements of nationalization and planning that had been kind of brought in during the war out of necessity But were kept on or even extended after the war itself And there were other political considerations For example, the USA was forced under the threat of revolution to effectively banquet Western Europe through martial aid And as such capitalism saw high levels of investment, you know high growth rates and a strong development of world trade in this period And it's considered in hindsight the golden age of capitalism You know things like full employment, decent welfare states, at least in the advanced capitalist countries And it was that that profoundly shaped the consciousness of millions of people who lived through it Because many came to believe that capitalism could in fact kind of be made to work for them However, of course, this could not last forever. You know as Marx explained overproduction is inherent in the system So even if an element of balance is is achieved between different sections of the economy It inevitably produces a greater imbalance on a higher scale further down the line So it was actually the very strength of the development under the post world boom Which created the conditions for a massive crisis to break out And this is eventually what happened with the worldwide crisis that broke to the surface in 1973 to 74 And the result of that was mass unemployment, a huge upturn in class struggle And even revolutionary developments in a number of countries including Greece, Portugal and Spain However, as before capitalism was allowed to limp on due to the conduct of the reformists and Stalinist leaders In the in the labor movements of various countries Capitalism then restabilized itself in the 80s and 90s kind of due to a whole range of factors Chiefly among them, I think with the wholesale attacks against the working class in order to restore profitability So you know by things like smashing the trade unions driving down wages and conditions And this was combined with the opening up of massive areas for profitable investment Due to the privatization of most of state-owned companies across the world And significantly you saw the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR in Eastern Europe And also the opening up of China to the market which gave capitalism a certain breathing spell All the while there was actually a massive increase in credit So both government corporate and household which served to kind of extend capitalism to its very limits But the very factors that drove this expansion forward Inevitably turned into the opposite at a certain point You know the credit that helped drive this boom forward became a suffocating barrier when this actually reached its limits And the system entered into crisis in 2008 And ever since then the system has kind of more or less stagnated With you know various mines minor ups and downs, of course But rates of growth have kind of hovered around the 2% level for the advanced capitalist countries since then And productivity stagnated or even declined in much of the world All the while debt levels continued to go up and up to absolutely eye-watering levels And tensions between nations increased you know with the development of protectionist tendencies Now I said the pandemic has served to accelerate many of these processes which were already kind of in development before And all of the contradictions of the system have really been brought to the surface There's been a further explosion of debt as governments around the world have rushed to bail out the system As well as as I mentioned the colossal amounts of fictitious capital that's been pumped into the economy Which brings us back to what Trotsky said about the curve of capitalist development Is that despite capitalism's ups and downs, so the key thing is to determine capitalism age and its general condition To establish whether it's still developing or whether it's matured or whether it's in decline And I think it's clear that despite the current uptick in the world economy I think the system as a whole is profoundly sick So although production can't keep up with demand for some commodities The general picture overall is is still one of profound overproduction This is evidenced by the fact that capacity utilization in the advanced capitalist countries Hovers between 75 percent in the usa 83 percent in the euro area, but as low as 60 percent in russia And if you take steel which is one of the most important commodities in the whole global economy There's an estimated excess capacity of 606 million metric tons Worldwide which which is actually three times the eu's total steel making capacity And they would take decades to absorb all this steel profitably on the market So we're therefore continuing to see very low levels of investment in the economy Which really is the main engine for for growth under capitalism as fields for profitable investment are still very few and far between If you take britain for example business investment is still 13 percent below where it was before the pandemic These are not the conditions for a profound upswing of capitalism as experienced in the post world boom I'll say that they're rather the conditions of capitalism in its senile decay So whilst capitalism is experienced a rebound after the pandemic We shouldn't expect this to last No, of course capitalism will continue to move in ups and downs But the overall curve of development will likely be a continuation of what we've seen since 2008 Which is one of overall stagnation or even decline Now I think we can say for sure that we're not about to experience a new roaring twenties No, condrative wave is going to come and magically save the world economy And all of this is going to have profound consequences for the class struggle As Trotsky pointed out in the 1920s All the attempts by the ruling class to try and restore the economic economic equilibrium Will have the effect of disrupting the social equilibrium And you can see this already governments are placing the bill for the pandemic onto the shoulders of the working class I mean bosses are driving down wages through tactics such as fire and rehire And inflation is increasingly going to eat away at workers living standards But already we're seeing the beginnings of a backlash In britain tens of thousands of people joined trade unions over the past year as workers are forced into struggle In the usa we've seen what's being referred to as strike tober this month with over 100 000 workers voting for strike action this month alone There's many more examples from all over the world that I don't have time to list But the important point is that the period we're in is one of upheaval turbulence and stormy class battles And now this isn't new, you know, this is we've already experienced a decade of crisis and austerity And that has already led to a deep politicization Like deep polarization and radicalization around the world There's a whole generation now that has grown up knowing nothing except capitalism and crisis And this has an important bearing on the development of consciousness You know, it's not an accident that communism and marxism have viewed increasingly favorably by the younger generations And this fact has the ruling class extremely worried In the years ahead millions of workers are going to be forced to enter into struggle And already they're coming up against the limits of the reformist leadership in the labor movement Who are being put to test on the basis of events In one way or another millions will be forced to draw the conclusion That there's no way forward on the basis of capitalism And so the conditions are being prepared for revolution in all countries of the world Really it's our task therefore to prepare for these tumultuous events In order that when these mass movements do break out The working class can find the necessary ideas and organization Required to put an end to capitalism and begin the worldwide socialist revolution So I say join us in that task and together we can change the world