 Wrth gael y tîm ymddangos a'r FF that erbyn meddwl hwnnw siarad hynny. Yn Iw'r Cwnggwyll yma, rydyn ni wedi cyfnodd ar y Cwnggwyll yn Sisolant. Mae'r cydweithio f recountau newydd Ynw Ysgolwch Cymru. Fydden i'r arddangos â ymddangos – byddwch yn 2015. Mae'r ddechrau, bydd ac yn 2015. Er Sayf yn y bwyl. Rydyn ni'r fydd yn y rhan oherwydd i'n 2 o bobl o'r hynod... Mae'r ddweud o'r ddweud, y ddweud, y ddweud o'r ddweud, yn ffwrdd, yn Sfotlwn i'r ddweud, yn ffwrdd, mae'n meddwl am ymddangos, ond mae'n cymdeithas yng Nghymru, y ddweud o'r ddweud yng nghymru, y ddweud o'r militon yn 1991, oherwydd Peter Taft yn y ddweud o'r cyfnoddau, yn ffwrdd, o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Yng nghymru o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, o'r ddweud o'r digon, o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r Ddweud i'r Nghymru, o'r ddweud o'r ddweud i'r ddweud oり enthefnu rhai, o dechydig o'r rhai. Mae ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, rydym wedi'i arfer oedd yur oeddennyddol o fe ddim yn sgod ylleg chi, yn ystod yn ysgrifennu o'r sgolwyddau. A'r sgolwyddau yn ystod yn ysgrifennu i'r unedig o'r sgolwyddau yn ysgrifennu bryddoedd. A'r sgolwyddau sy'n sylwgr i'r ddweud y bryddoedd o'r ysgrifennu'n gwneud o'r fforddau. Mae'n ffrifwyr a'r eich lefnod, o'r fforddau ffwrdd. Mae'n fforddau i'r fforddau'n gweithio. A oeddwn i'l modd, I find their arguments quite convincing, kind of posing the class struggle to national struggle. The working class can be for one of the other and that nationalism is always and everywhere an inherently reactionary thing that dampens class consciousness. But the key questions of Marx's orientation to a mass nationalist movement, the relationship between the class struggle and the national question, all that was drawn out at this conference in 2015. A split conference might not sound like the best introduction to revolutionary politics. But I, and comrades at the time certainly didn't think so. I can imagine the comrades who recruited me pulling their hair out thinking, oh my goodness, this is their first congress and everyone's at each other's throats about Scotland. But it really was, I think, a very good introduction to our tendency and to our organisation. It was a very serious discussion, a very high-level political discussion and debate, and it came ultimately to, of course, a resolution. It didn't drag on and on. But the national question they say is one of the most difficult problems for Marxists to master really. I think in some regards that's true. I am still no expert so I can answer every question and every particular national question. But I'll try, I think, today to give everyone an introduction to all the key ideas and concepts and the key approach of Marxists to this problem. It is difficult because it requires, I think, a real grasp of dialectical thinking, a real feel for the mood and level of consciousness of the workers in a given country and a real revolutionary clarity in explaining our ideas in our position against all the ephemeral and secondary questions that are thrown up by the national question. And the national question that comes in so many forms is partly why it's so complex. We have examples that Marx and Engels dealt with, like Ireland and Poland. The former kind of czarist empire that the Bolsheviks dealt with in Ukraine, in Finland, the problem of the east of Muslim peoples in the east and their kind of national question, their national consciousness and so on, the desired formination state. And then other problems surrounding the first of war around Serbia and other small countries, small nations, and their place in the imperialist world system. I know also slightly more peculiar forms of the national question. The question of Zionism is also a form of the national question, whether the Jewish people need a homeland for their own. The question of black nationalism in America, to black people in America constitute a nation that should be separate from the United States and from the rest of the working class. All these kind of questions are very, very complicated and require a lot of study. But the first thing I think to learn and to know about the national question as it is, is that it's concrete. It's a concrete question. There's no abstract position. We don't start from that about whether countries and nations should they be independent in general. Is that always just kind of a good thing on principle or something? In Scotland there's a popular kind of phrase used by Scottish nationalists, which I cringe at very much. Which is that independence is normal, independence is normal. For Scotland it isn't. But for a lot of other countries maybe so. They'll say that and they'll also say small countries that are independent, they work better. A bit of a repeat of this capitalist mantra of small is beautiful when they talk about small business. But if anything, from our point of view, bigger countries are better. We should be for the merger of all countries really if we take this kind of position because in bigger countries there's a larger working class. It gathers them numerically in a bigger form and in the struggle for power in each country it would be an advantage to have a large working class. But this kind of answer that we're often hit with when it comes to answers to this problem of nationalism. People will often dig up this phrase, the workers have no country. But this really is just an abstraction to start from there. It takes the working class as just this homogenous kind of a historical category. And not as they really are, not as the conditions in each country really are. Because each national question is very much based upon material and historic conditions. There's many sides to it that need to be considered and understood in each case. The class balance of forces in the country, the international balance of forces, the relative development of the productive forces, all of these things they come into play when we think about the national question. And to forget all of that is really just to kind of lose yourself a little bit and forget that the nation state itself is something that is a product of historical development. Obviously Fiona covered this yesterday. It's not something for all time. It's not necessary when we start discussing the national question or the question of nations and nationalism to kind of define in a loose way what a nation is in this kind of way. Or create a kind of mechanical formula for answering the national question. Which is what the Stalinists do. They have this just a list of these key features or what a nation is. If it has these features then we should support its right to self-determination essentially. The state itself has existed for as long as class society has existed. But it's not until capitalism that we see the development really of the nation state itself, the national state. And nationalism, as I'm sure everyone is aware, very much coincides with the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century and earlier. It was an ideological force used by the bourgeois to unite the population under their leadership and to implement the programme of the bourgeois revolution. And you see that in Britain, in France, in Germany, Italy, the revolutions of 1848 in America, the American revolution and so on. Now the development of the national state, the nation state of course, creates the conditions for the flourishing of capitalism in a given country. You know a unified national market, the elimination of local kind of feudal bylaws and feudal particularism and regulations and the equality of all property owners before the law, those kind of things. And in this way the creation of the nation state, it allowed for a great revolutionising of society and of the productive forces. It was a very progressive historical force nationalism in a way. But is the nation state progressive today? This is a kind of an interesting and key question I think to consider. I think now we have to say no really. The nation state is very much a fetter on the future development of the productive forces in our society. We are all witness to that I think over the past couple of years with the pandemic and everything, the total chaos that individual nations planning their own responses to the pandemic caused. And indeed every capitalist crisis as well, this contagion that spreads from one country to another and they all try and protect their own interests and throw up trade barriers and so on and so forth. Very much shows that nation states today are kind of reactionary and a fetter on development like I said. And there's a key contradiction really in the world today, a major one, between the existence of nation states but the existence as well of a truly globalised world market and world economy. And the bourgeoisie can only ever temporarily overcome this limits with international trade blocs, things like the European Union and so on. But the particularism and the competition of each national group of bourgeoisie inevitably reasserts itself in times of crisis in particular. That's where you see protectionism, this crisis in the EU and so on. It all goes to prove that capitalism itself is stuck at this stage of the nation state but it can't move beyond it either. But taking all this, does this mean that we disregard the national question of nation states and nationalism in this historic epoch in an abstract sense reactionary? Well, I think not really. Instead all of that it really only gets us to our starting point because the starting point for us as Marxists and analysing any given national question is that we are internationalists, that socialism is international. That we are for the closest international unity of the working class opposed to the exploiters, the exploiting classes of each and every country, whether they be oppressed or oppressor countries. And it's from this point of view that the national question has concrete importance really for developing a Marxist programme really. And it's this solid standpoint of socialist internationalism that Lenin and Marx and so on stood on really. Because the socialist revolution itself begins with the struggle for power and at first it forms, it assumes a national form, the struggle for power in one country before spreading to others typically. We can speak of a Marxist programme in abstract in the kind of general sense but what really is needed is a programme for a given country with a defined international context and international connections with definite social conditions and contradictions in that given society. All that needs to be understood. It's in this way that we analyse how the national question, where it exists, it doesn't happen in every country, intersects with the class struggle in that country and also internationally as well of course. Because as Lenin said and as we all know from the quiz last night, the national question is at root a question of bread. Bread. He means by this that it can be an expression, it's not something that cuts across or abrogates or obeys the class struggle. But in fact it can be an expression of class struggle, of the underlying contradiction of capitalist society. And the desire really for the workers of oppressed countries in particular for freedom and to change society. Now, not all nations are equal. Now we're getting to this quickly actually. Not all nations are equal of course. There are strong and there are weak countries. There are oppressed and oppressor countries. And when we use these terms oppressed and oppressor, we don't always mean something so harsh as like the oppression for example that Britain held over Ireland or anything like this. More than we just mean that there is a relationship of dominance, political and economic between other countries. So for example when we talk about Scotland, Scotland was never a colony of England, it's not an oppressed country in that sense. But there is obviously this relationship of political and economic dominance by England in the Union over Scotland. But in general it is the position of oppressed nationalities that entrust us I suppose the most. And their movements for national liberation. But it's also the duties of Marxists in oppressor countries and perhaps this is a bit more important for us living in an imperialist country. The duties of Marxists in oppressor countries are just as important really or just as important to cover. So as Marx and Engels they both wrote that a people that oppresses another can never be free itself. That the bourgeois reaction in the oppressor country is fostered by the national oppression that they visit on the oppressed country basically. And Marx and Engels they wrote a length about how the repression and oppression on the chartists and the early working class movement. All the techniques and all the boldness with which the ruling class did that. All that was developed and based on the kind of oppression that they used in Ireland. It was Engels who said that it was based on the pale, this kind of colonial carving part of Ireland around Dublin. That this kind of oppression was based on. Now the bourgeois they sow national hatred. You know there's the nationalism of course of the oppressor country which is certainly very reactionary. And they sow this national hatred essentially and national antagonism in order to block class consciousness. And in fact to maintain of course their exploitation in both countries. In both the exercise of the oppressive thing. And Marx and Engels they both very much dealt in their lifetime with the examples of Poland and of Ireland. They were the most kind of pressing ones for them and for the first international basically. And they dedicated a lot of time, a lot of effort in passing resolutions and making sure that the national questions of Poland and Ireland were debated and well understood in the first international. You know they formally and the Marx and Engels you see an evolution of their thoughts in how they write about these things. You know formally they had this kind of position that the liberation of Ireland and Poland from German or British oppression would kind of come after the fact of a socialist revolution in these countries in Germany and in Britain. As a result of the revolutions in the advanced and dominant countries rather than these more backward ones. And in fact there's quite a lot of harsh words in fact that Marx and Engels wrote about the backwardness of Poland and the backwardness of Ireland. Obviously we know from Daniel's talk that they were very much maintained in that position by imperialism, by national domination. But they changed their position like I said or their thoughts on this kind of question evolved. When they saw how hatred of Irish workers, this national hatred really drove British workers into the arms of their own ruling class. That this was a thing that was used very much to divide and conquer the working classes in Britain. And instead they began to conclude the opposite and something that was quite shocking to people at the time. That in fact there really could be no successful socialist revolution without the recognition of national liberation, without the self determination. In fact Marx basically said that it would be a basic condition of the success of the British revolution or even a beginning that Ireland would have its freedom from British domination essentially. That once that kind of great ideological and social blockage was kind of removed, then it would open up the path basically for British workers. But until that day it would always remain a kind of bulwark of reaction essentially. Now Engels also wrote that a country like Germany or like England perhaps that has oppressed its neighbours for centuries and gotten into the habit of it really. They had to prove that they were really revolutionary and that's what he meant by this self determination was a kind of precondition really. They can only really prove that they are really revolutionary, that the revolution has really begun by standing against national oppression. Which we do obviously and every Marxist kind of agrees in this that we oppose national oppression obviously in a negative sense. But also the need to raise the positive demand of the rights of self determination up to and including separation. And this is the key thing of what the national question is really about. In Lenin's pamphlets he is forced to kind of dance around the question because there are people who try to obscure it by saying the national question is about cultural autonomy or other kind of things like this. Really it's a question of the separation of nations of national independence movements and that kind of thing of self determination. This is all necessary really to clear the decks. This is a phrase that Fred Weston very much uses a lot. But it's very good, it's very clear. To clear the decks really of this national animosity and antagonism that exists between workers of oppressed and oppressor countries. And it's only through this, this clearing of the decks that the unity of the working class, the international unity of the working class can really be brought about. Because as long as this national oppression exists, how can we really in a concrete way talk about the international working class and international unity however. And for the working class of an oppressed country very much the same aim is sought, the unity of workers across borders, across nations. And in oppressed countries it's the special responsibility of Marxists and of revolutionaries there to combat the nationalism of their own bourgeois, their own exploiting kind of class. Because even in these oppressed countries there is a bourgeois class, there is an exploiting kind of class. And their nationalism, their desire for self determination is really only an expression of their desire to carve out their own unique fiefdom in which to have all the spoils of exploitation rather than give over a great part of it to their imperialist masters or whatever it might be. And we do this and we have to in these countries you fiercely oppose the kind of class collaborationist tendency of nationalism of kind of the oppressed countries. Very much exists obviously in Scotland and other places. And in these oppressed countries we need to explain to the working class there that in many ways that national liberation under capitalism and in the world of imperialism will largely be an illusion really. You can be an independent country but you can't really escape the dominance of imperialism there are other ways that countries kind of dominate others. And that the real kind of answer obviously to this question, to this problem is socialism. But we can't as those people who left the organisation 2015 did, we can't abstractly counter pose socialism to national liberation struggles because they're often very deeply intertwined really the struggles. You know we stand on the recognition of the right of self-determination as Lynn pointed out. But we question for these countries how really can it be achieved in real kind of terms. And obviously we say only under socialism can it really be achieved. And James Connolly in Ireland was an example in this regard and saying the cause of labour is the cause of Ireland and the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour. I'm pointing out how deeply intertwined the questions of social liberation and national liberation had become in Ireland. And James Connolly a great example had very much the same ideas about the national question as Lenin even though they never met in their lifetimes. And he's known of course for expressing his kind of policy, his kind of famous quote about raising the green flag over Dublin Castle. But you can do this but England will still rule you through its capitalists, through its landlords and so on showing that really only through socialist revolution can self-determination or can national liberation truly be meaningful. That was his message to the working class of Ireland and to the national movement there. Because the formal political independence of a newly independent country or an ex-colony or something like this can be contradicted by the reality of economic domination like I said in this global capitalist market. This doesn't mean however to go back to the point earlier I suppose that we just kind of abandoned the national question because it's maybe an illusion under imperialism. As Rosa Luxemburg argued in Lenin's pamphlet The Right of Nations to Self-Determination that's where he takes up this question and takes up kind of Rosa Luxemburg's arguments and so on against it. Which he essentially argued that because national liberation under imperialism is kind of an illusion it shouldn't be in a Marxist programme. But Lenin rejected this because although this relationship of economic domination may still exist the question is of political independence. And socialist revolution is at first a political question and therefore there's a need to address it essentially. And that's why Lenin fiercely defended the inclusion of The Right of Nations to Self-Determination in the Bolshevik's programme or in the programme of the Russian Social Democrats. And insisted that the common turn adopt a similar policy of course in the 1920s towards colonies and towards oppressed nations. But I think to return to like the essence really of the question which is what builds the revolution, what conditions it, what makes it more likely. This is I think the kind of key thing to have in your mind when we consider national questions in each kind of case. It's essential that we can tell between what is reactionary and what is progressive. This is the fundamental point of our theories, right? If Marxism can't do that then it's really useless. And Lenin, like Marx, wrote about the need to draw out the progressive content of certain national questions concretely defined. It was Marx who wrote about the need for the British working class which was obviously more developed than the Irish working class. You had much more greater organisation and much more socialism, much more of a force there. The need of them to imbue the Irish national question with a real revolutionary character really to support Irish workers against even their own bourgeois. But ultimately to support this rate of self-determination. And one of the many phrases I think that stood out in the 2015 Congress that I attended was this idea that nationalism can be the outer shell of an immature Bolshevism. Kind of a strange, strange and striking thing to say. This was Trotsky writing about Ukraine in fact, about Ukrainian nationalism. I think today when we look at Ukrainian nationalism we maybe would not say the same thing a large part. But at the time essentially Trotsky was dealing with this problem of how to maintain the integrity of the Soviet Union when there was this feeling of this desire for national independence in Ukraine. And I had to deal with that and thus he argued for an independent Soviet Ukraine in order again to clear the decks of centuries of national oppression of Russian workers by Ukrainian workers. And yeah, this phrase, you know, kind of shocking, it was kind of ridiculed somewhat or they said it was being taken out of context this 2015 Congress. But the meaning of this phrase is that the class struggle and the will of the working class to change society can be expressed not always perfectly or in a fully formed way. It can be expressed in all kinds of distorted and peculiar ways and in fact one of the most common ways is the national question, the desire for national liberation independence self-determination. We know that consciousness in general is kind of conservative, I think we stuck to time quite well but to sum up, is conservative, that it lags behind events but it's also very contradictory. You know, when you speak to workers in general they hold very contradictory ideas in their minds at the same time. And this is true, you know, I feel like of Scotland, of people who support independence but are fully aware of the fact that the SNP's programme for independence is not a very progressive one. But given this, I mean it just means that we must be flexible enough, basically, that we can accomplish our fundamental task which is to build the revolutionary party of course. We can do this under all conditions, even ones that are not ideal, ones that we wouldn't choose, for example. Because if we could ignore the national question, if we could say, oh it's not important, you know, we just want to focus on international caste struggle, that would be ideal. But that's not the reality of the world that we live in, unfortunately. And thus we do have to encounter it and we do have to have a good position on it. The national question, as Lenin recognised, I think, in his consideration of it from the point of view of world revolution, has immense power to create and to foster revolutionary crises in countries. I think we definitely see that in Britain today, that a defining feature of the coming British revolution will be this crisis of the Union as we write about in the paper, the national question in Scotland, the persistence of the national question, the problem of the border and partition of Ireland, is causing chaos and real headaches for the British rhythm class. And they have no real solution to this Northern Ireland problem and they're gearing up for quite a straight head on fight, I think, over the Scottish national question. But in this revolutionary crisis that it provokes, we know that there's no other force, we don't need to worry about, I think, reactionary nationalists and so on really taking over. Because really in this epoch there's no other force other than the proletariat led by its most advanced section that can challenge the entrenched ruling class and take power into its own hands. And it's for that reason that the national question, I think, has importance for us and I hope everyone will has a lot of questions for the breakout sessions. And after today is inspired to do some study and some reading in the national question because it's a whole world of theory and it will make you a better Marxist, so I think that's good.