 The purpose of this discussion is to look at the Marxist analysis of imperialism, what it is, how it developed. Now of course imperialism involves the building of empires and in that sense the phenomenon is very old. It goes back to the ancient world, the Roman Empire and other such empires. But they were not of the kind that we're going to discuss today and analyse today. They're not of the kind that Lenin analysed in his book on imperialism. The Roman Empire was a constant conquest of new territories and new peoples, grabbing slaves. The economic system was based on slavery. You could say that a lot of the wars the Romans fought were massive raiding to grab as many slaves as possible to keep the system going. But today we don't have that and yet we do have the phenomenon of imperialism. Before today's form of let's say capitalist type imperialism, we also had physical occupation of territories. The rise of capitalism in its early days eventually led to the colonisation of other parts of the world but practically the whole of Africa was colonised. North and South America were colonised. Large parts of Asia were colonised. I was literally occupying these countries, taking them over and exploiting them to the benefit of the imperialist power that was occupying. With this came the export of capital. In Britain you all do at school, you know the East India Company, how it was set up and what it eventually became a tool to colonise the Indian subcontinent. Since then of course we've had a shift from direct military occupation because of the up, the risings of the people, peoples that lived in these countries, direct military presence, direct colonisation was removed and these countries became independent, independent at least in terms of they didn't always elect the run governments, a lot of them were dictatorships but in a certain sense they governed themselves. There was no longer direct rule from Britain or France or whichever was the imperial power at the time. And yet we can say that decades after the colonial revolutions brought down the old empires, the British, the French, et cetera, these countries are still dominated by the same powers through the economy. Today, earlier on, a comment in discussing Ireland quoted Connoly when he said that if you raise the green flag above Dublin unless you proceed to a socialist or workers republic it will still govern you through the banks and the finance system and that is the case today of a large part of the world. It's still dominated by the multinational corporations, by the banks, by the finance system but there's also a military element although it's not a direct military occupation. Just consider the fact that the United States of America does have an empire. It doesn't have a British empire, it doesn't have a viceroy, it doesn't have the direct administration of colonies, although it's got one or two, small ones, but it has a military presence in nearly 800 military bases in 70 countries around the world. It has a huge military presence around the world and they're there not as a direct occupier but to make sure things run according to the interests of the capitalist class that they defend. Now if we want to look at Lenin and look at the essence of the kind of imperialism he was dealing with or trying to analyse was the phenomenon of imperialism as it emerged on the basis of capitalist development, not the old ancient empires. What we had in the early days of capitalist development you had the emerging capitalist class becoming a class that possessed the means of production that invested in industry and production but out of industrial capital you have the emergence of finance capital. Once you have accumulation beyond a certain level you actually have the begins of a division within the capitalist class itself. The industrialists let's say who invest the money and produce goods and sell them and the finance capital which simply provides a huge amount of capital to the industrialists for a cost of course. Interest is how the banks work, how finance capital works. This led the emerging capitalist countries like Britain, Holland before, the French and others to move around the world to directly occupy much less developed countries in most cases. Literally you could say it was land annexation taking over territory and controlling it. That was there in the Roman Empire. They just took over territory and run it. But here there's a different element to it which is this financial aspect. For example Argentina is historically considered an ex colony of Spain like most of the Spanish countries except for Brazil because it was a Portuguese colony. But if you look already at the beginning of the 20th century you look at Argentina you see that it was massively dominated by British capitalism, not direct military intervention but massive loans and investments in Argentina on the part of both British and German capital and there was an imperialist domination of Argentina by the British who had never colonised Argentina directly but dominated it because they were compared to Spain which was a much less developed country from a capitalist point of view. Its colonies ended up being dominated by Britain, by Germany, by the United States. I far more advanced capitalist countries that come in and with the weight of the capital they possess they can start to take control of these countries. You also have different types of imperialist powers. You have the British, the French, today you have the United States. There was a period in which the United States were a colony of Britain and here we have an example of what was formally a colony becoming the most powerful imperialist power that the world has ever seen. Or a Germany which when Britain was rising as an imperialist power was a country that was divided into many statelets and emerged eventually as a powerful capitalist power much later the same with Japan. Or you have a Russian type of imperialism which at the same time as being an imperialist country which is what it was at the time of the Russian Revolution they had an empire, the Tsarist empire which had a lot of similarities to the old empires in the sense that it was rather than a world spread through its financial power it was literally the occupation of territories bordering Russia and at the same time a semi-colony. It was an imperialist power but dominated by the more powerful imperialist countries which is an essential part of Trotsky's analysis of the permanent revolution. At a certain point the world became totally divided between the different powers. Every part of the non-capitalist world let's say the non-developed part of the world was literally directly occupied or dominated by imperialist powers. The question that Lenin touches on in his book is once the world is divided can it be re-divided? Can new imperialist powers emerge on the basis of a world which is already divided between the existing powers and he makes the point that it can happen and it does happen. He refers for instance to the rise of Japan and as an imperialist power in the east which starts to encroach on the interests of the established imperialist powers. We have the phenomenon of imperialist powers which enter into decline. That was the case of the British a long-term decline where eventually they lost their empires completely but it wasn't just the loss of territory it was the loss of influence over the colonies and in the same period as the decline of British imperialism you have the rise of US imperialism a former colony which transforms itself into an imperialist power far more power than the British imperialists ever were. So you have declining powers and the re-division of the domination of the world. There was a moment in which within the left, Cowsky was an exponent of this idea you had the idea of super imperialism i.e. that the logic of the situation was that the major imperialist powers would eventually coalesce into one super imperialist power and the logic of that of course was that once that's established we will have peace in the world because there will be no interests to go to war between the different powers. Lenin ridiculed this theory and what happened in the 20th century I think confirms what he said the first and the second world war put an end to the idea that you could have such a thing as super imperialism i.e. a kind of world imperialist administration of the rest of the world and where they sort of peacefully negotiate amongst themselves and they defend their interests in a common way. We're seeing that today is not the case. Now, since Lenin's day 100 years have passed since he wrote his book on imperialism we have this process of a re-division of falling powers and rising powers happening again we saw first the rise of American imperialism parallel to the decline of British since the second world war we have seen American imperialism going to a relative decline if you look at its weight in the economy for example the power of American imperialism was based on one, from the end of the 19th century more or less the 1890s through to the 1950s a development of productivity on an unprecedented scale within the American economy massive growth of the productive forces of the United States out-competing the rest of the world and it was on that basis that America became the power that it became when at the end of the second world war more than 50% of world GDP was produced within the borders of the United States now consider that the United States population as a percentage of the world population in 1945 was 6% that 6% of the world population was producing more than 50% of world GDP that's where the power of American imperialism lies and it was based on massive investment and the growth of the first half of the 20th century since then American imperialism remains the major power on a world level but it's not the power of 1945 which is all dominating it has gradually lost the power it had now depends on the figures you look at between 15% and 20% of world GDP is made in the United States still a very large part for one country but no longer the weight and the power that it had and in attempting to maintain that position we have contradictions on a world scale one, in order to maintain the military spending that the United States has it has to squeeze its own population Hillary Clinton a few years ago said we are not going to give up on our military power well a declining power a relatively declining power to maintain the same military force that it had in the past has to do it at the expense of somebody one section of the world population that suffers is the American working class and with that comes political conclusions it's within the context of this historical decline of US imperialism that you can understand the Sanders phenomenon appearing in the United States you can understand the opinion polls which show that the majority of the youth in America say they would vote for a socialist candidate as president of the United States not so long ago that was not the case in America the growing radicalisation and the instability inside the United States is a reflection of its historical decline and if you want to have a parallel in Britain in the period of its decline you had the emergence of the Labour Party an independent party of the British working class the rise of the trade unions and then you had the general strike in the 1920s that was a product of the weakening of British imperialism and the effects it had internally but the weakening of US imperialism on the global scale has an effect and it explains actually to a great degree what we're actually seeing around us today in the world for example there was a time when the world was dominated by two superpowers that was the United States and the Soviet Union they had the spheres of influence one didn't touch the other Eastern Europe they agreed to belong to Stalinist Russia they had influence in other parts of the world America had its sphere of influence we discussed the question this morning in one of the sessions about Islamic fundamentalism and the situation in the Middle East for example Egypt at one point was gravitating towards the Soviet Union under NASA and if they had wanted to Egypt could have gone could have ended up under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union this is a separate discussion but the nature of the bureaucracy meant that it didn't want to spread its system they just wanted to defend their own position their own privileges therefore they pushed NASA back from moving too far they did that several times in areas which were considered sphere of influence of US and European imperialism the Russians don't step in and equally when the tanks go into Hungary or into Czechoslovakia the West don't step in they had a kind of stable setup with the collapse of the Soviet Union on the one hand you had America emerging as the only superpower on the planet but within that there was the other process which I described which was going on and had been going on for decades a weakening of US imperialism so the two policemen that we had before became one the one policeman under Bush if you remember they thought this was it we are dominant we can do whatever we want you went into Iraq, Afghanistan thinking they could just behave like they always did but look at the consequences of their intervention in the Middle East instead of having a Middle East with regional powers which obey US imperialism, the Turks, the Saudis and the others what we have is a situation of a declining world power and you can see that more than anything else in Syria where the influence of the US is far less than it would have been in the past the fact that the Russians have a conference with Iran and Turkey and discuss how they are going to solve the Syrian question and don't invite the US or the UN shows you the changing balance of forces that exist around the world what we have is the decline of the major imperialist power of the United States not able to flex its muscles like it used to and that explains also the behaviour of smaller powers now there is a discussion on the left about the nature of imperialism what is an imperialist power can Turkey be imperialist for example can some of these other countries can have imperialist aspirations we would say yes they do Iran for example has a huge influence inside Iraq using the sheer element of Iraq the Saudis are in conflict obviously with Iran as a power they try to promote their interests in the Middle East with the backing of these Islamic fundamentalists they have come off worse of course but they had their own aspirations which were going against the interests of US imperialism in the region the Turks again in the past would have been more in line with the position that the United States was pushing instead we have seen them behaving more independently in the Middle East they attended the conference with the Russians and discussed with them the Russians are using the Turks of course as a minor power to push their own agenda in the region so you have the phenomenon of minor imperialist powers within this context the situation of a breakdown in the world order which had existed for several decades and the weakening of the big policemen then a whole series of contradictions appear in different areas with different powers coming into conflict with each other now if you haven't read it I would advise comrades to read and study Lenin's imperialism because he's tackling he's tackling this phenomenon of what is it and I haven't got time obviously to read the whole book to you it's not that long and it is a very interesting book he talks about it being the highest stage of capitalism some people call it the final stage but there's no such thing as a final stage of capitalism until you overthrow it then you can declare the final stage was the one before it's overthrown but until it's overthrown it's going to have several stages it keeps on living in spite of that idea but the highest stage in the sense of capitalism emerges within individual countries and as it develops the productive forces requires bigger markets eventually capitalist powers emerge investing globally Marx describes the process in the commonist manifesto where he says that capital basically chases all around the world and it brings within its sphere the whole world, the whole planet there's not a corner of the world today which is not part of the capitalist system the predictions of Marx have been proved brilliantly and Lenin based himself on that he looks into the rise of the banks the concentration of capital he looks at what he calls old capitalism when free competition held undivided sway these are the words of Lenin he says, typical of the old capitalism was the export of goods he says, typical of the latest stage of capitalism when monopolies rule, major corporations is the export of capital where they start to use their capital to invest around the world one form of that is lending money the way they dominated Argentina and Brazil was through the lending of money for investment very often you'd have Argentine companies and on the board of directors would sit an English banker or an English capitalist who would be there to make sure the company was operating according to the interests of the imperialists and what gave them the power to do that was the huge capital they had and they had accumulated now the export of capital of course has an effect it changes the world, it doesn't stay as it was it doesn't remain a world of extremely backward underdeveloped countries and advanced capitalist countries the export of capital exports the capitalist system with it you end up first of all in the initial stages you are there to grab the minerals mining, resources etc but gradually they start to invest in industry and you start to see capitalist companies developing where formally they didn't exist one of the elements again of Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution is that in Russia capitalism did not emerge like it did in the Dutch Republic or under Cromwell in Cromwell's period it emerged through the investment of capital by the advanced capitalist countries French, British, Americans they would go to Russia invest and you're not going to build a little tailor shop in Russia, you build a modern factory with thousands of workers in that factory and basically you establish modern capitalist relations within a sea of backwardness and you start to see the emergence of a modern proletariat in Russia which is what led then to the revolution to determine the nature of that revolution but we have for instance the recent phenomenon of the last 30 years this massive investment of foreign companies in China and they weren't just exporting capital in the sense of lending money 450 of the 500 top world corporations have plants, have factories in China and why did they go there well first of all obviously the bureaucracy in China invited them to invest in order to accelerate the development of China and they provided them with good conditions they created the special zones part of this is the facility to repatriate your profits another element was the extremely cheap Chinese labour capital runs around the world looking for sources of good investments where can we invest and get the maximum returns and China is an example of that where because of the cheapness of the cost of labour you turn up with your capital the greatest modern technology you build a modern factory in China equally competitive to the factories in Germany or the United States but with the added advantage that the workers that you employ are on very low wages compared to what you have to pay an American or a European worker some other added advantages you're not allowed to go on strike in China there is a regime which is a totalitarian regime which doesn't allow for that so when you see there's a lot of talk these days and aside about the Chinese the Congress taking place and Xi's speech some people are saying I see it like going back to socialism the other side of that is that the bourgeois complain that in China they're not reforming enough what they mean is they're not having bourgeois democracy as if to have a capitalist development you must have a bourgeois democracy now I'm a bit older than some of you and I remember that capitalism survived under Pinochet it survived under the military dictatorship of Argentina and further back it survived under Hitler and it survived under Mussolini and under Franco they didn't need democracies to run capitalism in those countries in fact they needed a dictatorship class which had dared to rise up so the advantages in a lot of these countries were in fact that you had a young working class almost non-existent working class they were peasants coming into the factories with no traditions prepared to work on very low wages and therefore easily exploitable from a capitalist point of view that is going on all the time funnily enough China is now being told that the workers are pricing themselves out of jobs because despite of everything they have struggled and they have pushed up the cost of labour in China then they shifted to Vietnam because Vietnam was providing cheap I saw a map recently of countries they're looking at to invest in which include places like Ethiopia and other parts of the world which were very underdeveloped up until recently capital shifts constantly in order to get the best returns the good thing, the good side of this is that in the process they strengthen the working class they build factories and factories whether Tony Blair talks to you or not is not filled by bourgeois they're filled by workers workers who are there to produce the goods the capitalists want them to produce with it comes organisation comes trade unions and eventually also a political voice and going back to what Mark says capitalism creates its own grave diggers and we can see that happening in front of us in China where at the same time as this massive investment has taken place they've created numerically speaking the biggest working class in the world and that means they've strengthened the working class internationally now to go back to Lenin he sees the world at the beginning of the 20th century as a world divided by different powers they've taken control of different parts of the world and the world was completely divided up but he referred to this concept of the re-division as a result of uneven development he says the division of the world between two powerful trusts does not preclude re-division if the relationship of forces changes as a result of uneven development war, bankruptcy etc the changing fortunes of different capitalist powers can lead to a re-division of the world between different powers and this is actually what we've been seeing in the past 30-40 years first we have the decline of the European powers that in order to survive on a global scale had to come together that's what the European Union essentially is and of course they do collectively exploit the former colonial countries but they are powers which all have relatively declined compared to 150 years ago the rise of America and then the gradual decline of America and the emergence of other powers he says the words have led in the capitalist divide the world in order to obtain profits they divide it in proportion to capital in proportion to strength because there cannot be any other method of division under commodity production and capitalism but strength varies with a degree of economic and political development so depending on the development of the individual powers their ability to dominate the rest of the world also changes I can adhere to the fact that once you reach a stage where the division of influence and power can no longer be determined by the terms of trade in economic terms then the bourgeois one moves to another method of redivision which is war and the first and the second world wars were actually the concluding you could say act of imperialism in the sense that once they divided the world globally and as each power developed and as different powers emerged such as Germany becoming an industrial powerhouse at the heart of Europe but because it came late on the scene of history the world was already more or less divided by the British, the French and other imperialist powers at a certain point in order to determine who was to dominate the world market the first world war came now in schools they tell you it's because of what happened in Serbia and of course that is just a fairytale I mean it did happen but that's not the cause of the war all the conditions for that war had been accumulating prior to that and the second world war is often referred to as basically the continuation of the first I've heard some historians talk about the 30 year war started in 1914 and finished in 1945 there's an element of truth in that in the sense that it was a conflict between the powers to see what happens at the end of that 30 year period Britain emerges as a much weaker power France also and America emerges as the major power that was what was decided fundamentally by the second world war and of course another an aside of course is the emergence of a powerful Soviet Union Lenin also looks at the question of young powers he calls them drawing in an extraordinary rapid manner he looks at the USA he looks at Japan and he actually looks at the vigor the life of these imperialist powers and compared to the old powers the senility of British imperialism for instance unable to develop at the same rate he looks at that he says young capitalist countries America, Germany, Japan whose progress has been extraordinarily rapid then he says secondly countries with an old capitalist development France and Great Britain whose progress lately has been much slower than that of the previously mentioned countries and thirdly a country most backward economically Russia where modern capitalist imperialism is enmeshed so to speak in the particularly close network of pre capitalist relations so he's looking also at different imperialist powers different degrees of development and also in a certain sense different types of imperialism because Russia was still semi feudal he also looks at imperialist powers which maintain their power thanks to a bigger power and he refers for instance to Portugal Portugal had all its colonies but Portugal was a classic country because of its backward nature in effect was dominated by British capital and British imperialism economically and very often was used around the world for the interests of British imperialism and he looks at that the smaller imperialist powers that can operate locally to defend their interests on the basis also of sometimes the conflict between the major imperialist powers which leaves them a niche to operate he says in one quote that capitalism is developed the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt the more intense the competition and the hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the whole world well let's look at China and it's investments in Africa it's Silk Road which is not just a road it's the sea and it's the roads it's a transport network which links up something like 3 billion people on the planet almost half the globe the investments in Africa where in return the Chinese get the raw materials they get the oil there you see this quest for raw materials because of the economic development of China the industrial development of China and that is leading to conflicts with it comes China for instance investing militarily it's still nowhere near the United States United States has a contradiction China has the same a much bigger military apparatus than it could really afford to maintain on the basis of its economic position Britain still maintains Trident missiles I don't know who they're aimed at who they would hit is it Denmark or Germany or Poland I don't know but they maintain it as a kind of their argument is that it's a deterrent it consumes a huge amount of resources for a country which economically speaking really isn't up to that level but China on the other hand hasn't got the military power of America but it is building it up aircraft carriers for example they've got their second I think they're investing they're planning to have a series of aircraft carriers over the next 10 years now what are aircraft carriers for they're to use where you can't have a military base you can't have an airport to take off from it means long distance it means sea lanes it means defending China's interests on a global scope towards the Middle East in the South China Sea etc and with it comes investment in the military and it still has a long way to go but we see the direction that it's going in now I've seen groups on the left who take Lenin not just on imperialism but almost any question I've seen it happen in other meetings that we've had here it's usually the characteristic of a sectarian who refuses to think refuses to use Marxism as a method of understanding reality we are in rather than a bible which tells you how it should be was, is and always will be and they will take something from Lenin and say Lenin said this, therefore this is it this is how it is to be this is how Lenin he gives a word of warning and I think we should take that on board he says first he says the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism i.e. the emergence of major corporations on a global scale but then he says Lenin and so without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general this is Lenin which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development we must give a definition of imperialism so he gives his definition but he also says that you can't expect a definition to explain everything and also if you read Lenin you see his analysis flows from a study of a process of change that took place under capitalism from its early days to the stage of monopoly capitalism so he leaves open other possibilities he actually says that even in the period of crisis you can have corporations which are doing rather well within a general crisis of the system you can have certain countries moving forward which doesn't deny the overall analysis of a world in crisis think about it, this is Lenin if you try and use it today you say well there is a world crisis of capitalism China is affected but for the last 20 years within a period in which you see the crisis of the European Union the decline of the United States you have the emergence of China which is developing and developing industry, the economy and moving forward of course that in turn then prepares new contradictions because the problem you have on a global scale is when you have competing imperial powers you have growing instability especially when there's not one big bully you know on the playground I remember you'd have the big bully and nobody dare challenge the big bully and then the little bullies would all sort of group around the big bully and everybody else were victims if the big bully wasn't around who was the boss you ended up with a bigger fight than you had normally because normally the big one would keep them all under control there's an element I am oversimplifying world economics and politics but the point I'm trying to make is the decline of one major power brings out all the contradictions which we are seeing and in effect we are seeing what Lenin referred to he says at a certain point the fact that the world is already partitioned obliges those contemplating a re-division to reach out for every kind of territory and he explains that later in the book that the fact that the world is divided doesn't mean it can't be re-divided it doesn't mean that one power can take the influence away from another and for example if what happened to Germany after the first world war it lost its colonies in Africa and were they taken over by the French and the British South West Africa for example which is now Namibia used to be a German colony and it was taken over by the British that is going on all the time I've already near the end I've got a sum up and yet I'm only halfway through my lead off so no I won't repeat what I've already said that's a good way to start isn't it yes I would suggest the comrades if they haven't read Imperialism by Lenin they read it if you have read it re-read it and look at the lessons that come out of it and don't read it as if it don't read it right at Jehovah's Witness which is you look for the sentence that you need to prove the point and ignore of course a lot of other stuff that contradicts you read it to learn the method that Lenin applied not in a dogmatic way not for the definition which is the final and last definition of an understanding of a process but the method that he used to understanding Imperialism then take that method that he applied 100 years ago and apply it to today's world and look at the changes that have taken place this is the rest of my lead off where you have all the changes a lot of it is to do with the decline of US Imperialism the rise of China as a power and also the developments in China itself which I can't go into in detail here because of time I have here the figures for example figures such as the top 500 corporations on a global scale if you look at the last 30 years I'm not going to look in here I might write it down as an article every 10 years you look at the situation the number of Chinese companies in the top 500 grows the number of US companies declines it's still a case that the US companies far outnumber the Chinese ones but that's not the end of the story you've got to look at a process which way is America going and you see this change of balance taking place and it has consequences also for the practical situation that we're in today because you couldn't understand what's happening in the Middle East if you didn't understand what has happened between the different imperialist powers you couldn't understand the European situation without understanding what has happened to the United States as a power or what's happened to Russia the collapse of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union an enormous collapse in its economy but then a recovery at least a partial recovery of Russia mainly based on exporting oil and gas which it has a huge quantity of stabilisation let's say of Russia as a power and whereas if you remember earlier whenever the Americans encroached on what was Russian influence the Russians would just stay quiet and it would happen Russia saw NATO getting right up to the borders of Russia they took Poland and other countries then you see Russia reaffirming itself re-stabilising and beginning to behave in a different way we saw not only in Georgia where they put an end to America's encroachment there in the Ukraine they went as far as saying right you behave like this I'm taking the Crimea and the Americans what did they do here's a different relationship of power what did the Americans do what did the Europeans do to the Russians nodding nodding boy you're not supposed to do that and then Putin says okay I've got a 7 year old kid I know what it's like and they say okay what are you going to do next and the only logical thing next is a big slap in the face but you can't do it because of the change relationship of children with their parents today um and the same with imperial the same with imperial is power you say that to Russians you can't do it and you don't back it up with a major military threat but they've taken the Crimea they've taken it in the eastern Ukraine they're operating in the eastern Ukraine in Syria the Russians went in and said you've made a mess of it in fact they did they had made a mess of it the way Russia is behaving is the consequence of the change relationship even in the last 10-15 years where Russia at least regaining a certain strength on a global scale not the same as China so understanding what imperialism is first of all so read Lenin but also understand that it's a fluid process there's a constant change taking place in the different levels of development of different economies as Lenin noticed the decline of the old powers growing on a slower rate in a certain sense becoming senile the more rapid development of the new powers and something similar has happened to America in relation to China and this has consequences for world politics and for the whole global situation so it's not just it's not just a discussion an interesting discussion about what Lenin said or what imperialism is or is it just an export of capital or is it investment and creating new industries etc it's all of this but as a process and if we understand it then it helps us to understand what's happening around us I was listening the other day to some documentary they quoted some I don't know if he was a historian or an artist or something he just noticed something he said there's a lot of chaos in the world there's a lot of turmoil you know and that was part of his explanation and I thought wow a genius he's noticed that the world is in turmoil and there's chaos but unless you understand Marxist economics and unless you understand society from Marxist point of view it can appear like just total chaos what's going on there's some people who explain it the Jehovah's Witnesses and they say well this is all predicted you see not by Lenin it was predicted in the bible it's the end of the world and that's how it must appear to some people constant wars terrorism bombings etc and they can't understand what's behind it it must be a very frightening world if you can't see what's behind it and why this is happening but if you're a Marxist you can understand what's behind it what's driving this so-called chaos and instability and it is the crisis of capitalism itself and it's an unprecedented crisis it's the most serious crisis this system has been in its whole history far worse than what happened in 1929 in the 30s a much bigger scale think about it the second world war they called it a world war but in reality it was a part actually a small part of the world geographically speaking was involved I know the Brazilians sent 300 soldiers so they can claim they took part but today capitalism has truly globalised the world in a sense that every part of the world is interconnected and it is a system in deep crisis what is required is to overthrow it because there is no solution to this problem outside of removing the system itself that's what the whole of this school is about it's discussing theory it's discussing what's happening in the world it's discussing history economics philosophy etc in order to understand better the situation that we're in the world that we're in we need to understand it but to be able to explain it to other people to the young people that we meet in the Marxist societies the workers we meet on demonstrations when we're doing a paper sale we've got to arm our workers with the analysis a serious real concrete analysis of the world as it is and why it is in order to explain the better the need to change the world that's what it's about