 Efallai, mae'n rhan o'r ddechrau, oedyn nhw – a oedyn nhw. Mae'n iawn o ddechrau, yn oedyn nhw, oedyn nhw'n rhan o'r ddechrau. Ilsa, eu gwnaeth nid yw'r rhaid. Felly i ni ddim yn 10, i ni haes eu gwneud wedi bod ni'n edrych. Felly, mae'n ddiddordeb. Nid yw'r hawn. Felly, mae yn agor i'r ddefnyddio. Felly, mae'n gwneud i'r ddechrau. Felly, mae'n dda i'r ddych i'r ddechrau, Felly mae gwaith iawn cyffredin, iawn gwaith cyngor, gwaith yn barth yn gyweithio. Felly mae'n gweithio gorau a'r ysgol iawn yn mi'n gweithio. Mae'n dyn nhw'n ddim o ddod gwneud hynny. Mae'r mewn cyflos, rydym yn golygu y proceid iddyn nhw. Yn arwt, 我 piston sy'n dod ddim yn gweithio. All peth yn ôl i y beginner. All peth y mae'n cyflos cael afrwyr o'r cyffredin y newillolaeth. Byddwn i ddim yn adrygiaddod i rôl i'r proceid y rôl. Bydd yw'r bwysig, mae'r cyfnodd yn ôl gyda cael ei wneud am y cyfrifiadau. Felly, cyfnodd yn cael ei wneud am y cyfrifiadau a'i wneud am y wneud am y cyfrifiadau. A'r wneud am y cyfrifiadau yn y gweithio'r pethau, y credu have to refer y gwaith gennymau. Mae'n have to train y gweithio newydd o'r bwysig. Ond mae'n cael ei fydd o'r gweithio'r bwysig o'r bwysig. Yw'r bwysig a'r bwysig yn gweithio'r gwaith yn y gweithio'r pethau. Mae'r fawr yn ymgyrch yn y fwyfyd, ystod y byddwch, ond mae'n fwyfyd yw'n ymgyrch. Mae'n fwyfyd y cymodiadau ymgyrch, ymgyrch ymgyrch, mae'n fwyfyd ymgyrch ymgyrch. Mae'r fwyfyd maen nhw wedi'u llwyll. Mae'n fwyfyd maen nhw wedi'u llwyll. Mae'r fwyfyd maen nhw'n llwyll. Felly, os o'r llwyll ymgyrch yma'r cyftylist ymgafodd ygafodd yn llwyllu'r cyflos a gwasanaethau y llwffles, oedlaethau'r roi a'r gyfwysigaf rhan o bobl llwfti eich gw allí. Dan, jod i'n r pork Cro older yn ymdивisio'r cofansiwn. Felly, y bydd y bydd yn ei beithas mild ymddincir, ac mae'r hafterlus yn ddefnyddio. Mae'r bobl hyn yn cael ei brineu'r proces. Mae'r bydd y bydd yn ymdifisio i'r holl gondol i wneud yn nadau gwirio hynny. Dyma'r bobl hynny ymddincir yna, y dylai blynedd y lle hwn yn dwyganol. llawer o dylai dda, a'r ddyn nhw wedi ddyn nhw ddweud hynny y byddwch i ddim yn cael waith sydd nid i'r rent o'r wlad i ni wneud o'ch cyfrifannu, y byddwch yn deall ac yn cyfrifannu, ac ond mae yna mwyaf arall yn maen nhw i'r mwyaf cyfrifannu cysylltiadau, rydych chi'n cael cael oslu ar gyfer y ffordd taeth. Yn rhaid, yilych yn rhaid y pwysig yn cymeradau y gwaith yn yn artist, ond mae'n rhaid i'r rhain o'r relian o'r rhagor hynny. The social relations of capitalism reproduce the worker as a worker and the capitalist as a capitalist each generation. And it's something that doesn't stand still. It's constantly reproducing itself. From the point of view of the worker, it's very simple to see. The worker, in exchange for their wages, provides a certain amount of labour power. But at the end of that process, they are just as propertyless. They are just as much a part of the proletariat as when they went into that. They don't acquire, at no point do they acquire commodities and capital. In fact, all of these say that they're making cars, for example. The worker never owns cars. They never come out with those commodities that they produce, always belong to the capitalist. And they are therefore, individually, they have the semblance of freedom. They can open a contract with the capitalist if they like. They can break that contract and they can stop working for them. But when we consider the system as a whole, the working class as a whole cannot opt out from selling itself piecemeal to the capitalist class. And therefore, what starts out as a process which has the semblance of equality, of equal exchanging for equal, turns into its opposite. It turns into a process of exploitation through the dynamics of this system. But from the point of view of the capitalist as well, the capitalist production process is also the reproduction of themselves as a capitalist. And Marx uses the example. Say a capitalist has a million pounds worth of capital. They invest in production. And that million pounds of capital, they buy machinery, all the other goods and the labour and so forth. And that spits out 100,000 pounds worth of profit. Now say they're a particularly profligate capitalist and they consume that entire 100,000 pounds in truffles and Lamborghinis. After 10 years, they have consumed an amount of wealth equal to a million pounds, the initial capital that went in. And so all of the capital which is now circulating is the product of new labour. In other words, the worker through their labour has reproduced the capitalist as a capitalist. None of the no element of the old labour that was invested, the old capital that was invested, the old values, currently exists in the market. It has all been consumed by the capitalist. So when you hear this, for example, you quite often hear the apologist of capitalism saying, my dad or his dad's dad, and his dad's dad worked very hard to accumulate this capital. And therefore we deserve to inherit that wealth and the benefits that come with that wealth. Actually all of the surplus and all of the capital in circulation at a certain point is new labour that has been expended to reproduce the capitalist as a capitalist. Now I've used the example of this profligate capitalist spending all his money on truffles. Of course in reality they don't spend all their money on truffles, not just because that's absurd, but also because of course they must plough back a certain amount of that money back into the production process. Capitalist production cannot stay at the same level and continue along that same cycle of a million pounds worth of capital this year is invested in a million next year. The capitalist has to say, invest 1,500,000 next year or 1,200,000 in a few years time, 2 million eventually. They have to accumulate capital and they do this for one reason. Whatever the effects of this accumulation, there's only one motive and it's the profit motive. Of course we've talked about that. The capitalist finds themselves in a bit of a contradiction here, don't they? They want to consume the wealth that is produced by the workers but they also realise that they have to invest a certain portion of that back into the production process. Marks, he mocks the capitalist actually who claim that they are abstaining from consumption and that is why capital is invested. It's their abstention from consuming everything in truffles and lambaginis that allows the production process to expand. The accumulation of capital takes place and he only does it for the good of the workers. In actual facts, Marks points out that this accumulation process is also going to pay greater profits down the line. The greater capital accumulates, the greater the profits down the line. It solves this contradiction, if you like. The pie continually gets bigger and they do it for one reason. If they don't, they're going to be out-competed by their fellow capitalists. As we've explained in the chapters on machinery and so forth, the capitalist doesn't just sell factories with the same level of technique and so forth as they would have done previously. In fact, they're constantly revolutionising the process of production and capital accumulation is a necessary element in this process of the revolutionisation of the means of the mode of production because for a start you need, for example, you couldn't sell up an oil rig on the basis of £100,000 worth of capital. You would need many tens of millions of pounds worth of capital. Certain machines are so big that, of course, you require an awful lot of capital to invest on developing new labour-saving devices. You gain all of the advantages of co-operative labour by bringing in more workers into one workplace. The net result is, of course, to cut to with this increased productivity of labour to actually cheapen commodities, to out-compete your competitors, to put the small businesses out of business by the medium-sized businesses and the large businesses put out the medium-sized businesses. There is this constant process of, if you like, it's either do or die. You either accumulate or you stagnate and someone else will revolutionise the mode of production and will cheapen their commodities and will grab your part of the market. But what is the net result of this? The net result of this is, obviously, the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands. In fact, of course, the small fish are gobbled up by the big fish. In fact, you do see that precisely what Adam said, this process of integration when someone in their supply chain, when the small suppliers shopkeepers go bust the big supermarkets, take them over and so forth. There is an integration of the supply chain from top to bottom. There is the buying up of small capitals by big capitals in organic growth as they term it. There is this process of concentration and it happens, according to Marx, by a number of mechanisms, if you like. It's not simply the more surplus value is added, if you like, onto this bigger and bigger pile of cash, which is there for investment. There are other means by which the capitalist class also concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands and centralise wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Now, since the dawn actually of the capitalist epoch, you've had the phenomenon of joint stock companies. In fact, Marx points out, you would never have had railways if people had to slowly accumulate the money necessary to eventually lay out on that huge amount of capital involved in building a railway. What happens is a lot of small capitalists get together and concentrate that wealth. They centralise that wealth into a joint stock company to build the railways. The trading companies like the East India Trading Company and so forth were lots of small capitals accumulated, aggregated so that they could put into operation a larger amount of labour power, carry out bigger operations, and capitalism tends towards this process of not just concentrating capital as in the big capitalists put out of business, the small ones, but also centralising the existing capitals and other mechanisms also exist. The big banks do it all the time. They take lots of little bits of money from here and there, small depositors, the current accounts of big businesses and so forth. They take all of that money and they turn it into a huge volume of capital which they can then invest in the production process on a grand scale. You get eventually with the big banks putting out of business, the small banks, the domination of economies by giant banks which are buying up industry, which are investing in industry. In other words, finance capital eventually and huge monopolies eventually top this pyramid of the capitalist mode of production. Free trade gives way to monopoly production and that is again one of the contradictions. You start out with the laws of free trade, you end up with the laws of capitalism in its end phase, if you like, in this period of huge monopolies dominating the world economy. And as a footnote to this discussion and particularly these chapters, I highly recommend Comrade's read Lenin's imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, where he goes into this and Marx touches upon it briefly or anticipates this domination of the economy by a few huge monopolies. And when Lenin was writing at the start of the 20th century, the big banks in the United States which he already described as completely dominating the economy there, their capital constituted about 7% of GDP. Today it is 200% of GDP. So that process that Marx predicted of increasing concentration of wealth at one end of society is tremendously confirmed by the continued development and progress of capitalism and we've heard there's about 8 capitalists on the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of humanity. There is this huge polarisation. And yeah, what are the effects from the point of view of the working class, from the point of view of the rest of society? Well, for the working class, of course, laying out more money in terms of capital has a bit of a contradictory effect. One thing is, of course, part of the capital is laid out and buying wage labour, buying the labour of the working class, the labour power of the working class. And therefore, of course, to some extent an accumulation of capital is also a growth of the proletariat, a growth of the grave diggers of the capitalist system. And therefore, precisely as Marx said, the accumulation of wealth at one end of society is also the accumulation of poverty and misery and so forth at the bottom of society. And there are those within, if you like, reformists who see this horrible inequality, and they're like, they want nothing to do with it, they want inequality to be gotten away with. But really, if they don't look beyond the capitalist system, if they don't start talking about socialist revolution, really what they want is a tiger that eats lettuce. It's simply not in the nature of the beast to have a capitalism that doesn't accumulate huge wealth at one end of society and then accumulate a mass of poverty at the other end of society. Now, from the point of view of the working class, of course, it's not simply that workers are pulled into the production process. That's one part of capitalist accumulation, this constant pulling of new layers of workers into production. But then there is another aspect, because of course, precisely the reason that the capitalist is accumulating is to revolutionise production, is to in part replace the working class with newer, more expensive machinery, which overall cheapens commodities and so forth. And therefore, another section of the working class who were previously employed by this capital are now being kicked out of work and you have machines replacing them, of course. So another section of the working class, whilst one section is being pulled into production, another is being thrown out of production. They're being thrown onto the scrap heap into unemployment and so forth. We see the nasty industrialisation that has taken place in much of the western world because there are cheaper labourers going on to work, and cheaper labourers can be purchased in other parts of the world, in particular China and so forth. One of the big debates that is going on at the moment, of course, part of the reason Trump was elected was to bring back jobs from China. That was his thing, it's China, we're going to bring back. But there was a very good article, I think it was in the International Business Times that said, let's suppose that by some miracle we're able to repatriate American capital to the United States. It wouldn't actually be American workers that would take Chinese workers' jobs. It would be American robots that would take Chinese workers' jobs. In other words, of course, the reason that the capitalist lays out capital is fundamentally to cheapen the production process. That's what they're constantly looking to do, and they would sooner invest in machinery than pay American standard of living for their workers, if you like. It's much more cost effective. There is a corollary to that, when there is this constant downward pressure on wages, when workers are being paid far less than they were in the past, you actually see the stagnation of productivity, as it's cheaper actually to take on more workers than it is to invest in new machinery and so forth. So there is this pushing and pulling of the working class. They're being brought into production, they're being thrown out of production. What Mark says is there is a self-regulating mechanism within all of this to capitalism because of course the commodity labour power is subject to the same laws that all other commodities are subject to. In other words, the law of supply and demand. And we could imagine that if accumulation outstrips the supply of the population, the supply of the workforce, the size of the proletariat basically, then eventually demand is exceeding supply. In other words, wages are going to rise on that basis. But what happens if wages rise? Well, on the one hand, they can try to get rid of workers by the accumulation of capital in the form of robots and so forth. So capital accumulation can far outstrip actually the growth in population. But on the other hand, of course, accumulation will eventually slacken if wages are beginning to rise. The paid part of the working day if you like is increasing relative to the unpaid part. So there is this squeeze on profit. Why would the capitalist invest other than to accumulate profit? Therefore, there is this tendency towards the slackening of accumulation. There is a tendency for the growth of unemployment and eventually wages are pushed back down if you like. And Marx uses this to attack some of the ideologists of the capitalist system at that time who said, if you want to understand the poverty of the working class and why there is so much unemployment, well, it's because they breed like rabbits. That's the problem. There's this constant proliferation. They just need to stop creating more babies and new workers basically. And this was the theory of Malthus. And we find echoes of it today, actually. Macron, just the other day, was blaming the poverty of the people of the continent of Africa on the fact that they have too many children, not to mention the vile racism of this, but this is actually something that was completely shattered by Marx. He explains, actually, that capitalism has its own self-regulating mechanism and the unemployed working class is a key part of capitalism. Capitalism cannot exist without unemployment. There always has to be a surplus population, in other words, constantly being thrown out of the production process, constantly creating that excess supply if you like, to therefore push down wages and always there to take up the slack if there is a sudden burst of accumulation, new workers that can be taken on. A reserve army of labour, as Marx called it. It's actually a testament to the deep crisis that capitalism's in. We'll look at this later. How long are we doing? 15 minutes? Oh, gosh. It's a testament to the unhealthy, the sick nature of the capitalist system is that this unemployment is no longer a cyclical phenomenon. It's not the workers are getting laid off during periods of slump, although they are, and being taken back on during periods of boom, which they're very much not. What we're seeing is even though if you look at the official figure is 4.5% unemployment in Britain. I saw an interesting article in The Guardian which said that if you take into account precisely the things that we've talked about, zero hours contracts where workers are liable to be sent home before their shift, part-time workers who are not getting the hours that they want to work and other sections of workers which are not classed as technically unemployed but are, you know, bogusly self-employed and so forth, not necessarily appearing in those figures, it gets closer to 18%. That is a huge wastage of human potential, people that want to work and can work, but capitalism needs them to remain idle because the dynamics of the system demand it. Now, I think we've talked enough about that. Yeah, so we're talking about, we've spoken about how, if you like, capitalist accumulation takes place, how it creates this surplus population. But we're left in a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, I think, with this you need capital, or the capitalist needs capital to acquire surplus value. But it is surplus value which is then plowed back into production which creates new capital. That is the basis of accumulation, that is how the laws regulating capitalism work. Now, what came first, surplus value or capital? Where was that first seed capital that needed to start the ball rolling, if you like? And Mark's looks at this in the chapters 26 to 30 something until basically the end of the book. And he says, well it wasn't enough for a few merchants or a few savvy manufacturers to it, or whoever else to, or misers to accumulate money. Money is not capital. Money is no more capital than machines are inherently capital, raw materials are not inherently capital. Money, machinery, labour power and so forth they only become capital in the hands of the capitalist. When the capitalist confront, well for a start, has a monopoly on the means of production and by that that also implies the opposite, that there is a large section of the population which is completely deprived of means of production. In other words, a section of the population has to have absolutely nothing but their ability to sell work. They need to be proletarianised and capitalism in its early epoch towards the late middle ages was confronted with a problem because the majority of the population, although it was this acquisition of wealth in the towns and so forth, the majority of the population actually lived on the country land was essentially the title of wealth if you like. That was what made you wealthy was the possession of land, going right back to antiquity and actual fact. The idea of money being wealth was something new to the capitalist system if you like but the majority of people lived on the land. They were peasants and for the most part, what they actually consumed was the stuff they made, the foods that they grew on their garden or whatever else or on their little plot of land. It was the clothes that they were able to patch together themselves. It was the house that they built from their own bare hands and except for a little surplus they might have taken to the market and of course they were exploited, viciously exploited by their feudal lords, they would have to spend half the week working on the lords land but they were not on market, they were not going to buy commodities because they made everything that they needed and furthermore they were not going to sell themselves to work for a capitalist because they made everything they needed again. In other words there had to be a process of what Marx calls primitive accumulation which was not just the accumulation of wealth into a few hands but the expropriation of the wealth of the vast majority and the expulsion of those peoples from the land and this took place not through the natural laws of supply and demand which I've just talked about that happens in the normal process of accumulation to regulate wages or anything but through the most terroristic brutal methods imaginable Marx describes how this period of capitalism the birth of capitalism is written into the annals of history in letters of fire and blood and he is not exaggerating the workers well the peasants first of all many of them were expelled in the feudal wars he looked particularly at Britain because it was the archetypal country of capitalist development they were expelled first in the feudal wars a lot of the workers the peasants were expelled from the land then in the reformation that when the church's property was actively despoiled by the up and coming capitalist farmers essentially they stole the land the Protestant reformation was nothing more than the interests of the bourgeoisie given a religious guys and the peasants again were expelled from the land they were forced off the land and a lot of the lords themselves turned themselves basically into capitalists there was a growing market in Europe particularly for wool for the woolen industry they expelled the peasants themselves and replaced them with sheep there were 10 sheep where one family had previously been in a lot of places and all the way down through the late middle ages even into the 19th century you have the clearances of the enclosure of the common pastures which were tilled in common by the peasantry and the clearances of the highlands and so forth and these people had no idea of where to go basically what did they do they've been expelled from the land they were terrorised into going into the cities they were forced they were whipped they were beaten for a first defence you would have a V for vagrant marked upon your chest if you were found begging in the countryside with an iron poker or you would have your ear clipped off so that you could be seen visually to be a vagrant for a second defence you could be executed you could be thrown in prison for the rest of your life you could even be turned into a slave you had parish slavery was a phenomenon in Britain all the way down into the middle of the 19th century in other words they were terrorised and most of them first of all manufacturing was not big enough to absorb this huge population and second of all these people they had known nothing apart from tilling the land terroristic methods were used against them capitalism came into existence not through economic compulsion but through the physical compulsion of the working class and what is true in Britain and in Europe as a whole is true to an even greater degree an even bloodier degree when we go into the colonial world when we talk about the tens of thousands of native Americans that were entombed forced into slavery and entombed buried alive in the great silver mines of Potosí in other areas the working to death of the native populations in the Americas the hunting of black people for slavery in the Americas from the African continent this primitive accumulation was the means by which and this finally puts an end to this lie that oh you know the capitalist they worked really hard you know their dad's dad and their dad's dad's dad and so forth worked really hard to acquire this property no it was the mass expropriation of a lot of small producers but and this only ended when we get to the beginning of the 19th century it only ended when the working class became conscious of itself as a class finally began to become class conscious finally began to organise began to challenge the capitalist system gained socialist consciousness began to threaten the capitalists with their own revolutionary overthrow and their own expropriation that is when finally the capitalists were forced to step back from naked oppression and let the economic forces of compulsion take part finally were forced to allow trade unions to become legalized and so forth when they were challenged by this new force this up and coming class the working class was a story that I'm telling you obviously the story of primitive accumulation how capitalism has its genesis but it had its progressive side because what it did is it abolished individualised production it abolished the small production of the peasants and the small artisan and so forth and it took all of the productive forces in the society and it centralised them allowing for everything we've discussed the division of labour to be expanded the use of machinery all of the benefits of cooperative labour and labour carried out in common it centralised production in fewer and fewer hands and this process is still going on not just in terms of the centralisation by the gobbling up of smaller and medium enterprises into these huge monopolies but it is also going on in so far primitive accumulation we've talked about the mass slavery the slave markets in Libya the debt servicing which is going on national debt is one massive means of primitive accumulation through the means of which about two and a half trillion the repatriation of profits and debt servicing accounts for a net flow of two and a half trillion in wealth from the underdeveloped to the developed countries under modern capitalism and yet that huge centralisation of wealth is laying the basis for a plan of economic production for a newer, higher stage of society for a socialist stage of society and I think as Adam pointed out we already have the elements of planning under capitalism the big corporation don't leave their internal dynamics to the market no they have a clear strategy and a plan by which they plan production and what we're talking about and this is the essence of capital from this primitive pre-capitalist society through the terroristic expropriation of those people into this greater concentration of wealth the essence is that now under modern conditions we have a huge working class finally production is concentrated in a tiny number of hands and therefore the death knell sounds for capitalism it is time for the expropriation of the expropriators in an act which by comparison with the terrorism which was meted on let's face it our ancestors we are the descendants from those people that were expropriated in comparison to that the expropriation of a tiny number of eight billionaires we could take them the people in this room but by comparisons obviously it's not going to be as it's going to be the organized class conscious working class but in comparison to that the expropriation of a tiny minority by the vast majority will be a bloodless and peaceful affair if it is organized and if we are ready for it and that is the essence of capital that is the essence of what we're doing what we're discussing that is the essence of what we in the international Marxist tendency are fighting for the expropriation of the expropriators and the creation of a better society and the use of the material conditions that have been created by capitalism already pre-prepared for us