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2008. The collapse of the US housing market sparks a global economic crisis. Over the next 15 years, the foundations of the world capitalist system begin to crumble.
A documentary exploring capitalism's global crisis, social uprisings, and the founding of the Revolutionary Communist International in 2024.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- Capitalism is in a systemic crisis causing global poverty, war, and social unrest.
- Existing political systems and parties are failing to address the needs of the majority.
- Mass movements and protests worldwide indicate growing rejection of capitalism.
- The Revolutionary Communist International aims to unite global revolutionary forces.
- A new form of workers' democracy is proposed as a solution to capitalist crises.
What the video covers
- The 2008 US housing market collapse triggered a global economic crisis, initiating capitalism's deepest-ever crisis.
- The film documents widespread social unrest including the Arab Spring, European austerity protests, and Black Lives Matter.
- It highlights the growing inequality where the richest hold more wealth than billions combined.
- The documentary covers major geopolitical conflicts such as the war in Ukraine and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
- It critiques capitalist austerity policies and their impact on healthcare, education, and living standards worldwide.
- The rise of right-wing governments and militarization in Latin America and other regions is examined.
- The film presents the founding of the Revolutionary Communist International in June 2024 as a response to systemic crises.
- It advocates for abolishing capitalism, emphasizing workers' democracy and council democracy as alternatives.
- The documentary stresses the urgency of global revolution to address poverty, war, and environmental collapse.
- Historical references to Lenin, Trotsky, and past revolutions frame the RCI's ideological foundation.
Chapters
- 00:00The 2008 Global Economic Crisis and Capitalism's Decline
- 02:55Geopolitical Conflicts and Global Inequality
- 06:07Social Unrest and Austerity in Europe and Beyond
- 09:31Capitalism’s Crisis in Latin America and Pakistan
- 14:09Imperialism, War, and the Rise of New Powers
- 19:31Founding of the Revolutionary Communist International
- 24:24Workers’ Democracy and Revolutionary Ideology
- 28:20The Urgency of Revolution and Future Prospects
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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We're in an urgent situation. A once-in-a-century credit tsunami. We're now skydiving without a parachute.
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The House of Representatives passed a bill that is essential to helping America's economy weather the financial crisis.
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The federal government Tuesday began pumping billions of dollars into US banks. The bankers inside here are responsible for the crisis.
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They're getting rewarded. Whose streets? Our streets! Everyone around the world is trying to deal with this.
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In Europe, thousands demonstrate, angry at tough economic conditions. What the banking sector has done to not only our country, but on a global scale, is such a big issue now.
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But in Rome, anger turned to anarchy. Another day of street riots in Greece. This is the first Arab revolution of the 21st century.
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The Arab Spring that toppled regimes across the Middle East, shock to soothe. “There’s an Intifada in the souk.” “Small children, 9 years old, and old people are all demonstrating.” Mubarak deposed.
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Egypt's 18-day revolution defies all expectation. Thank you, Madrid! Thank you, Manuela. Syriza’s voters have rejected austerity and pushed Greece in a new political direction.
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Are you ready for a political revolution? Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States.
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We are going to start winning for our country. So many people live in such poverty in a society surrounded by such riches.
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A one-nation Conservative government has been given a powerful new mandate. Syriza is just a continuation of the old administration.
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The people are dying because of these floods. Actually see it coming at you in a wall of flame.
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Extinction! Rebellion! What began in the UK a year ago has gone global. But now the growing concerns about the deadly coronavirus.
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I am officially declaring a national emergency. A knock-on effect on global growth. Say his name! George Floyd!
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Mass protests here in the United States have sparked a global movement against racial discrimination.
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Black lives matter! The world’s ten wealthiest men doubled their fortunes. The world’s richest 2,000 people have more money than the poorest 4.6 billion combined.
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The Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine. Putin has accused NATO of having imperial ambitions.
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NATO is more needed now than it ever has been. What Putin has done is war crimes.
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The rules-based order. Israel’s multiple airstrikes on the Gaza Strip have already claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives.
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Targeting health care facilities, ambulances, schools, refugee camps. Really? How many more of us have to die here as civilians?
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Two thirds of the victims have been women and children. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people. Full stop.
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Israel has the right to defend herself. Capitalism is in its deepest-ever crisis and must be overthrown.
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This film documents the founding year of a new, global communist organisation, and explains its programme.
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This is the story of how the Revolutionary Communist International was born... Chapter one. Capitalism’s deepest-ever crisis.
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It is February 2024. The RCI’s founding conference will take place in June. War and poverty are rampant. In every nation of the world, life is getting worse. But why?
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When we say that this is the deepest crisis of capitalism, this is no exaggeration.
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I mean, for anyone who is now 25 or 30. They live their whole lives.
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After the 2008 crisis, from which capitalism hasn't really recovered, and this crisis is not just an economic crisis.
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We see an assault on all the conquests of the past. Health care, education, pensions is being decimated everywhere.
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There's no prospects for the youth of living a decent, independent life. It's very difficult to get on the housing ladder.
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And this is just in the advanced capitalist countries. What we see around the world is massive poverty, misery, millions, tens of millions of people being forced out of their countries in search for better possibilities for life.
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You can sense that it's now starting to crystallise in the form of a widespread questioning of the system, a rejection of the established parties, the mood that they're all the same.
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None of them do anything for us. Basically, what we are saying is that a long time ago, the capitalist system has outlived its usefulness for the development of humanity.
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And it's now a system which is only based on crisis, war, misery, poverty, and on a general crisis of society.
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It is becoming increasingly clear in all countries that there is no way for a better future, for a dignified future for anyone if we don't abolish this capitalist system.
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The cost of living in the UK is rising and it's changing people's lives. Clearly, we have a crisis within Britain which has been taking place for quite a while, particularly from 2008.
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We haven’t really recovered from this. We've had 14 years of Tory government of vicious austerity and attacks.
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Can’t afford to put gas and electric on most times. I put money on and it doesn’t even last a week.
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Several mornings, Michelle, my partner, has actually been in tears. Because we've had hardly anything in the cupboard or fridge.
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We had, a year after Macron's first election, this incredible "yellow vest" movement, which had a very powerful impact, this incredible "yellow vest" movement, which had a very powerful impact, which also allowed us to see how much French society was reaching a boiling point.
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We saw an eruption of anger coming from all the working class, from the depths of this society.
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And we saw how much these events put the government in great, great difficulty and how this movement caused a panic among the ruling class.
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All of this has resulted today in a situation where society has become ungovernable. Enforcing austerity policies, such as attacks on pensions (last year), attacks on unemployment insurance and the unemployed (last year), attacks on unemployment insurance and the unemployed,
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permanent attacks on immigrants, permanent attacks on immigrants, through not only laws, through not only laws, but also permanent racist propaganda, enforcing all this has resulted in a situation today where the National Assembly, enforcing all this has resulted in a situation today where the National Assembly,
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so political parliamentary representation is fractured. The crisis of capitalism in Latin America is very deep.
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Some countries are being devastated due to this situation, particularly Argentina, where the crisis has manifested itself in unstoppable inflation.
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Entire countries are devastated by violence, whether by state or between gangs or whether it's drug trafficking, which are like destabilising factors.
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In some countries the state has practically militarised the country. The case of El Salvador, for instance, with Nayib Bukele. In some countries, as in Mexico, it is the fight of the different drug cartels, those who have the country sunk in a spiral situation
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of unstoppable violence. The crisis of capitalism has turned Pakistan into a living hell. The majority of the working class in Pakistan is living in extreme poverty, even dying of hunger, of disease, of malnutrition.
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Every day there are more attacks by the ruling class on the living standards of people.
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According to official figures, around 40% are living below the poverty line. Around 48% of the children are malnourished and have stunted growth in Pakistan.
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28 million out-of-school children in Pakistan and most of them are young girls. The old imperialist, dominant imperialist power, the United States, which is still the most reactionary force on the planet, is suffering a relative decline.
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It can no longer control the world in the manner that it did in the past.
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And we see the emergence of new imperialist powers like China, and to a lesser extent, Russia.
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And this creates a situation which was already described by Lenin 100 years ago, a s
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And the readjustment of the different imperialist powers which take place through conflict, in which hundreds of thousands, millions of innocent people are affected.
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We see that, for instance, in the war in Ukraine, which is at bottom an inter imperialist war between an aggressive military power of the United States and Russia, which is now starting to fight back, also an imperialist power. Or the massacre in Gaza,
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in which, I don't know, at the time of, filming this, segment, we have seen the killing of over 40,000, innocent people by Israel, which is backed by the main Western imperialist, powers.
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This is the real face of capitalism today. Is this supposed to be the best that humanity can achieve?
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To mass-murder people in country after country? in order for some rich people in the imperialist countries to become even richer? Is this supposed to be the best that humanity can achieve?
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That we have 800 or 900 million people starving worldwide? Would this really be the best that humanity can achieve?
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Of course it isn't. Chapter two. What is a communist? We call ourselves Communists. That must mean something.
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We call ourselves revolutionaries. The fact must mean quite a lot. But what is a revolutionary?
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I think I remember consciously deciding I was a communist when I was 16 years old.
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I remember writing an essay at school in Italian it was, it was for my Italian lesson.
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‘Why I am a Communist’. I wish I'd kept it. I'd be curious to see what I wrote.
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But I remember deciding I was a communist, watching my father go to work in an engineering factory, literally working himself to death.
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Which is what happened. He died at 54. Watching my mother work. Listening to the stories of what they'd been through in the Second World War.
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The barbarism, the bombing, the killings. My mother saw young children being shot in the back by German soldiers.
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My father saw his town completely destroyed. He joined the Communist Party in 1946. The war radicalised him.
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He actually wanted to carry out a revolution. Unfortunately, the leaders of the party had other ideas.
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So there's a lot of misconceptions about communism, definitely due to the Cold War, due to the legacy of Stalinism.
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Communism essentially means working class people controlling society, right? Everyday working class people. If you're listening to this and you're working class person, communism means you being in control of society.
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What we have now is a tiny minority. All the major decisions are not even made in the Parliament, but even then they control the political parties.
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But all the major decisions are made in private boardrooms by big capitalists. And that's why the planets being destroyed.
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That's why our lives are getting worse. We're getting increasingly impoverished. That's why you're having more wars that we're seeing spread around the world.
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This is why everything's going to hell in a handbasket. Because of capitalism. So communism is just a simple belief that the working class that produces all the wealth in society can run and control society.
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For the benefit of all of humanity. The United States has the ability to feed the entire population of the world, and it's generating this massive agricultural output, with less than 1% of its workforce.
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The United States has 19% of the world's real estate market, including 50 million vacant homes.
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It has 16% of the world's manufacturing output, energy output and banking assets. You have in the United States the productive capacity necessary to generate in a very short space of time, an economy of abundance.
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If this vast capacity were planned, democratically by the working class. Marx said, to be radical is to grasp something at its root.
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This system is dragging us backwards. And so the most logical, reasonable political idea for anyone to have now is to be entirely opposed to it.
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And that is why that's why we're communists. That's why I'm communist. That is to say inflation, the economy which is completely bankrupt right now, the covid-19 pandemic: we're at a stage when people have had enough. We need to clearly represent
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concretely that we are communists. That we're going to be at the vanguard, and we're going to fight the battle to the end.
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I had a daughter one and a half years ago. It's very fun. It gives you a new perspective on life.
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It makes things much more important because you see this little person that you want to protect and give everything for.
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And my daughter loves listening to revolutionary songs, and she loves Lenin. I don't want her to grow up as a revolutionary.
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I want her to enjoy her life to the fullest. I want her to grow up in a world without oppression, without constant conflict, without murder, without waking up every day in some sort of existential crisis.
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It is my personal responsibility to do everything in my power to overthrow capitalism. And the only way I see that is possible is through organising and joining the Revolutionary Communist International, building this worldwide movement to overthrow capitalism everywhere, to overthrow imperialism.
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The only people who can change anything is us. I am a worker and I am also a revolutionary, a Marxist, and the choice is ours.
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What future we're going to have. Are we going to have socialism or are we going to have barbarism?
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We need to fight for that here and now. The point about being a communist, however, it’s not enough to have it in your gut.
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It's not enough that to sort of feel the anger, you have to understand what's happening and why it's happening.
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You must understand history, understand economics, understand the philosophical outlook of Marxism, understand history, and take those lessons and bring them forward again today and build the organisation that we need.
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We are being presented with a second historical opportunity globally. Let's not waste it this time.
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Chapter three. The crisis of reformism. Let us be together and recognise another world is possible if we come together to understand that - understand the power we've got and achieve a decent, better society where everyone matters.
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Almost all of the wealth and much of the income is going to the top 1%.
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After 2008, this took the form of the rise of, so-called left or socialist movements around Podemos in Spain Syriza in Greece, Corbyn in Britain, Sanders in the United States.
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Some of these leaders were talking about socialism. They seem to offer, radical, at least in words, a radical alternative to the capitalist crisis.
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But they were all proven to be, not enough. To be unable to really challenge the crisis of capitalism precisely because all of these leaders, if they had one thing in common, is that the language was very radical and this made them very attractive,
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but they still limited themselves to trying to offer a solution within the limits of the capitalist system, without really challenging the private property of the means of production.
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I move that Hillary Clinton be selected as the nominee of the Democratic Party for president of the United States.
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It's easy to say, well, they’re just weak. They’re cowardly, they’re so on. Well, let's not turn this into a moral judgment.
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I'm not interested in moral judgments. This is not a question of somebody being brave or cowardly or anything like that.
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It's a political question. They don't even talk about Socialism any more, most of them.
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They don't even talk about capitalism anymore. They talk about neo liberalism. In other words, what we fight against is not capitalism, but some kind of deviation from the norm.
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It isn't any such thing. The crisis of capitalism does not permit serious reform. That's the short answer.
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And the real reason is very simple. It is this the the left reformist, the same as the right reformers believe that it is possible to achieve what we want to achieve without breaking with capitalism, without expropriating the bosses and the bankers.
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And that's a fatal mistake. By 2024, Syriza, Sanders, Corbyn, and the other left reformists have betrayed their supporters or capitulated.
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Such a hatred towards the entire establishment, combined with such an utter criminal silence from the reformists and the left.
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And I think this is actually one of the defining, most generalized features of the period everywhere.
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The first answer they sought was to vote for the reformists. But as I already said, the first wave of reformism, the pink wave, as some call it, is a sign of this consciousness that has been looking for an alternative to end the crisis, but has not
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found it in the reformists. Immediately afterwards, when they run for election again, the masses prefer to abstain before voting again for the reformists, because they haven't solved anything at all.
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And that has led to some rise on the right in different countries. I think the clearest examples are El Salvador with Nayib Bukele and Milei in Argentina.
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However, this does not reflect, as the reformists say, a turn to the right of the masses.
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On the contrary, the masses are drawing conclusions, they are in successive approaches to seek alternatives, first in reformism.
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If they don't find it there, they abstain and start turning to alternatives. A few months ago, we interviewed Jeremy Corbyn’s former speechwriter Matt Zarb-Cousin for an inside view.
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What he had to say confirmed our analysis. If you rely on establishment liberals as being part of your voter base as part of a coalition, then of course, you are empowering them almost to drive a wedge in that base.
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Politics now is basically, I think the election in America shows this is that people are rejecting status quo, establishment liberalism, neo liberalism, whatever you want to call it.
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Everyone recognizes that they're poor, everyone feels poor, everyone feels like things are not improving.
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If you can't offer an alternative to that as the left and the right appears to offer alternative to that, then the right will win.
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For me, when you say like you can, you can basically trace back Trump and Johnson everything to Corbyn's decision to be pragmatic in that moment, or as Engels would say, opportunistic.
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I think that's true. I think if we had prioritized controlling the Labor Party, then I think that the forces that have emerged since 2019, the more right wing forces, would have been allayed.
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Chapter four. Radicalisation. There is a political vacuum on the left. The masses are looking for answers everywhere.
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An important minority of young people in particular start to draw revolutionary conclusions... The Soviet Union itself is no more.
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This is a victory for democracy and freedom. It's a victory for the moral force of our values.
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You know, as a systematic idea that has some dynamism and some real vitality, liberal democracy is really all there is now.
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30 years ago, with the collapse of Stalinism, it seemed to the ruling class that socialism was discredited, that communism was a dirty word.
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In reality for this generation of young people what is a dirty word is capitalism in their own experience. in Britain, In Britain for instance, according to an opinion poll, 29% of young people think that communism is the best economic system that there can be.
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It is actually 75% of all Swedes who say that the country is going in the wrong direction.
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But the question is, what conclusion do you draw from this? The conclusion cannot be that we should wait for some union bureaucrat, who will never in his life call for a strike or that we should wait for the Social Democrats to do something, to wait for
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the left party to do something. No one is going to solve this situation for us.
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Turn them, go ahead, turn them. Go ahead. What is your dream for the future?
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For my kids to be able to live on their own. To be able to survive in this economy.
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There's a layer of the population out there that did look to Trump, because he seemed to be an opponent of the status quo.
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He was offering to change things up. And when he lets down their aspirations for an improvement in their living standards, they're going to be looking for change in a different direction.
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It's a question of whether we're strong enough to pose the communist alternative at that stage, when people are going to be radicalising dramatically towards the left.
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That is what's coming on the horizon, and that is what urgently need to prepare for.
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Communism has been absent in Switzerland for a long time. The last party was banned in the 1940s.
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And we are picking this red string up to give it back to thousands of young people and old who are beginning to feel that we need to fight now.
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And what we have is a treasure chest full of experience. We have traditions on how to organize and fight.
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Our mission is to give these back to the working class. Currently not to the whole class but to the minority that is radicalising now.
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What we're aiming for is the minority. It's a minority of a minority of a million of the most conscious, class conscious workers and youth.
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And what they desperately need, now, is not to be told ABC stuff. What they need is explanations.
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Why is society as it is? Why is the world as it is? And what's our proposal?
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What's our alternative? I can never in my life I've never seen a moment in history where the ideas of Marxism were more appealing to people, and the youth in particular are wide open to the ideas of Marxism and communism, because,
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the superiority of those ideas have been demonstrated amply, but also because they find a burning need now to to a body of ideas, a doctrine, a body of theory which actually acts as an important weapon in the struggle against capitalism.
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And without that weapon, of theory as Lenin explained, of course, no victory ultimately would be possible.
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We launch a bold campaign with the slogan: ‘Are you a communist? Then get organised!’ AYAC is a hit, and our forces begin to grow...
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Do you want to change the world? Join the Communists! What we're doing is we're saying to people, are you a communist?
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Do you want to see a radical, fundamental change of society? And you want to help us fight for that?
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Capitalism’s crumbling, join the Revolution! Fight capitalism, join the Communists! I saw a poster that said are you a communist?
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And I was like, holy shit. We can say that? Like, people can just say they're communists? Like, that is so sick.
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I guess I would say I was kind of a communist, I wasn't like super into theory or anything at the time, but I, like I joined right away.
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Yeah, it was just so exciting. The response we had was phenomenal. That are you a Communist poster was posing a direct question to people are you a communist?
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And what we found was that word was resonating with people. Yes. Finally, I think I am.
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And it was on that basis that we met thousands of people who wanted to get organised and wanted to join our party.
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And the key thing there was this wide awakening to the idea that there needs to be an alternative to the system.
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And for a whole layer they were like, yeah, and I think that alternative is communism.
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Chapter five. Building the revolutionary party. Throughout 2024, we start setting up new, revolutionary communist parties all over the world.
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But why do communists need a party? [Marx explained that the task of the] of the emancipation of the working class, is the task of the workers themselves.
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That's true. However, if you leave it like that in the general sense, it's not sufficient.
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Because in order to change society, the workers need organisation. Workers understand that very well.
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I mean, they've understood that for over 100 years or 200 years, starting with the trade unions or even the Chartists in Britain.
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An attempt to get a working class organisation an instrument capable of changing society. And of course, the most advanced instrument known to history is the party, the Revolutionary Party, particularly the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, which is our model.
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Now, why the party? Well, to put it simply, listen. The working class is an enormous power, tremendous power.
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People don't understand this. The workers themselves don't understand it. Look, without the kind permission of the working class, not a light bulb shines.
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Not a wheel turns. Not a telephone rings. This is a colossal power. However, it's only a power in potential.
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Potentially. Okay. In order to become an actual power, a real power, it has to be organised.
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Let me give you a parallel from nature. Steam is a power, you know. It's the basis of the Industrial Revolution after all.
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It moves the whole of society. But steam is only a power if it is concentrated in one particular spot.
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Without that, it becomes dissipated uselessly in the air. And that's happened many times, even in recent history.
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There've been many things like Sri Lanka, in Bangladesh, in Egypt, where the workers could have taken power, if they had this instrument, if they’d had the Bolshevik Party.
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They didn’t, and therefore the colossal power of the masses, which was completely demonstrated, which overthrew the old regimes as if they were nothing like a man swatting a mosquito.
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Yes, but without the party that was lost. And it's a tragedy. And this lesson must be learned.
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The working class must have a revolutionary party and a revolutionary leadership, as in 1917, in order to succeed.
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Otherwise, it will be very difficult to achieve victory. Against, after all, we are faced with a powerful enemy in the form of the bourgeois state, which is a formidable force, and they're certainly organised and centralised.
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You better believe it. And therefore we have to also we have and we also must build a force which is organised and centralised and disciplined and with a sufficient level of understanding in order to carry out this very serious struggle to change society.
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There is a burning need for a revolutionary communist program, and for this reason we are launching a revolutionary communist party in Pakistan this year, in which we will take a revolutionary program to the working class of Pakistan, to students, to oppressed nationalities,
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to women, and every oppressed section of Pakistan. And then we put forward the program of a class war to overthrow capitalism in Pakistan, to seize all the means of production in Pakistan, to take over all the banks, multinational companies, all the industrial base of Pakistan,
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all the big business should be seized and would be under the democratic control of workers.
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All the big feudal lands and big farms should be nationalised under the workers control.
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This is the plan forward to end poverty and misery in Pakistan. And the only way forward is to overthrow capitalism.
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There is no political party with this political program. There is no political party with any revolutionary program to overthrow capitalism.
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Yeah, I was brought up in an ordinary working class household. Yes. You know, workers should they create the wealth after all, the working class creates the wealth.
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But it's the capitalists who reap all the profits. And that was an in felt anger myself.
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Why should it be, why should it be? And it shouldn't be. And therefore we have to do something about it.
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We can't just talk about it and and be critical and angry with it, you know, organise and fight to change society.
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One day we will set aside this charade of bourgeois parliaments and form a true workers' government based on workers’ councils where workers don't just put a ballot in a ballot box every five years, but discuss and decide in the assemblies at every level.
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This is called council democracy; workers' democracy: the highest form of democracy that history has ever known, like in the Paris Commune, like in the USSR, in the first years after the revolution.
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As Marx and Engels said in the manifesto, “Let the ruling classes tremble at the thought of a communist revolution!” “Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains; they have a whole world to gain.” Long live the PCR!
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Long live the Revolutionary Communist International! Proletarians of the world unite! Let us build a great party and victory will be ours.
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We have a chance based on the revolutionary process going on right now, to actually abolish capitalism.
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And if we don't do so during this period when people are actually trying to change society, then that chance will be for naught.
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People will not continue to be out on the street for an infinite number of decades.
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So we have this chance and there is no one else building So we have this chance and there is no one else building a revolutionary communist International than our organisation.
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The old labor movement has long since abandoned the struggle for socialism, for communism. There are communists all over the world We tell them - we have these ideas, we want to fight together with you, we want to organise you.
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Let's fight together. Chapter six. Palestine. At the time of filming Israel is killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, with the full backing of western imperialism.
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We march alongside millions of others to protest against the genocide. [We begin tonight with the Middle East in flames.] Israel has formally declared war.
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Israel has ordered more than 1 million civilians in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south, as troops build up along the border.
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Pentagon now sending an aircraft carrier strike group, part of President Biden's promise of rock solid and unwavering support.
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I want the people of Israel, the people of the world to know where the United States stands.
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A siege is appropriate? Cutting off power, cutting off water?. I think that Israel does have that right.
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It is an ongoing situation, I think, particularly in the West, because of the role of Western imperialism, both historically in setting up and facilitating the Zionist state.
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But today, arming and financially backing everything that Israel is doing, particularly in the West amongst young people, they are enraged.
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Is genocide self defence? Is ethnic cleansing self defence? Rishi Sunak, the Tories, Keir Starmer, and the leaders of the Labour Party, stand behind genocide!
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That has made a whole layer of people very open to the revolutionary solution to that crisis.
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And so for us, we have been able to connect with that, with our slogans, with our explanations historically for how the occupation came about, and also the only path forward today.
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Israeli strikes have now targeted refugee camps, Well in Northern Gaza, many people have been killed in an early morning strike on the Jabalia refugee camp.
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What’s happening in Palestine and what has happened since the 7th of October is so extreme.
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It's the most extreme example of how far the ruling class will go in order to protect their interests.
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The UK government does billion pound arms deals with the reactionary Israeli regime, directly providing weapons and resources that are being used to murder Palestinians.
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Israel is saying it wants to launch an incursion into Rafah. Now more people are going to die from famine and disease in Gaza, than they will from the bombs and bullets of the Israelis.
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That's our government, and they do not represent us whatsoever! Protest against the war in Gaza have been taking centre stage at college campuses.
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We are here, because we want Queen Mary to end its part in the ongoing history of the Palestinian oppression.
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The question that we are posed with then is if this is as far as they will go to do it, we have no alternative but to tear that whole system down.
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And that realisation and that conclusion has been drawn for tens of thousands of people all around the world.
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Chapter seven. State attacks and an unexpected campaign. Between our support for Palestine and our new parties, we start to get a lof of attention...
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We shared the IMT statement on Gaza exposing the lies of the ruling class. The bourgeois press used that to attack social democracy and force them, to clear themselves from these leftist elements.
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That would be us, and force them to really repeat all the lies the bourgeois and the media, told about us word by word.
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The investigations that were carried out by the state prosecutor, against me, actually. And another comrade, Alex, also showed how the bourgeoisie really intends to criminalise all solidarity with Palestine and really set an example for this, of what happens,
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if you speak out. We had our founding congress in Philadelphia. We marched through the downtown area and local media outlets called it a communist mega march This was shared, online also by Elon Musk.
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And after the launch events that we had back in February of last year, Well comrades, you are all officially founding members of the RCA.
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The video of our march through Downtown Brooklyn was viewed 200 million times. The state chair of the Minnesota Republican Party has made several statements about the RCA, warning about the need to kerb our influence, and calling on Democrats and Republicans to unite
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to expose the threat of communism that is on the rise. We are indeed in 2024, 80 years after the ban on communism in Switzerland, we are witnessing the birth of a new revolutionary party.
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When we went to the streets with Palestine flags we were hugged by people who said we were hugged by people who said "Finally, someone stands up!" "Finally, someone doesn't buckle!" And we were able to do this not because we were especially bold.
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Rather, because we had our Marxist traditions when it came to the conflict in Palestine.
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Because we have an international where we defend the correct positions together. The whole media circus and all the attention we are getting in the media is not just positive.
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Because most things they write are wrong. They quote us incorrectly so they can damage us politically.
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But they can spread as many lies as they want what they can't prevent is that the masses read these articles and see that there are people who defend real opposition politics.
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They see a position which defends the interests of the working class, that wants to stop this whole system.
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The new Communists are in line with the philosophies of Marx, Engels and Trotsky. In the long run, the idea is to give power back to the working class.
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How does it feel to march under the banners that are the very embodiment of capitalism?
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How does that feel to you? All these brands? What is produced and what they sell, in fact, is not produced by capitalists, it is produced by workers all over the world, who are linked around a global production chain
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and who, in fact, together, could take control of it. But we don't expect the revolution to take place tomorrow.
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But what we can observe today is that there is a process of radicalization that is taking place under the surface and as the Revolutionary Communist Party, we want to bring together exactly these people who are fed up with this system today.
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A leading British comrade, Fiona Lali, ends up in a televised debate in May 2024.
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Her opponent: former Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Braverman hopes to embarrass this ‘naive young communist’. Things do not go to plan.
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Suella is there anything- Great, thank you. Well I respect your opinions. And thank you for coming on to the show to take part in the discussion.
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So after the interview I had with Suella Braverman, the response was incredible, something that I could have never predicted.
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I don't think any of us could have known just how far that interview would go, and how many people would respond in such an emotional way to it.
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Is, is that what you're saying it’s totally detached to October 7th and Israel's response?
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The only thing that is detached, I would say, is actually your views and your approach to this whole situation and the whole of the Tory government, because the conservative government is facilitating and supporting a genocide.
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And not just that, it's also overseeing a horrific set of policies, austerity policies that are damaging everyone's lives in Britain today.
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You are the one and your government is completely out of touch with what actually the majority of people in Britain think about what's happening.
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The majority of people in Britain do not support what Israel is doing and actually want us to stop sending weapons.
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I'll say, I don't think what I said was that impressive, but it was the truth.
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And we never get to see that. We never get access to people like Suella Braverman.
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What is your message to the majority of people in Britain who don't support you?
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Who hate the Tories. Who hate you specifically? And you posing those questions is exactly what makes students in Cambridge think I don't want to talk to you.
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I don't want to talk to any war criminal. You're a liar. Let's talk about the broader context of this, which is Suella Braverman lecturing anyone about racism.
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I don't think it's going to I don't think anyone's going to listen to that basically.
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I want to grow this encampment. I want to grow a movement. Yeah you are a war criminal!
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I think what really struck a chord with millions of people, literally millions. How is it possible for a young girl to absolutely destroy this experienced, polished, professional politician?
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Ben was sitting in the next room and in the same room there were Braverman’s team of advisers.
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The people that tell her what to say. They were in a state of panic!
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They were saying things like, we’re losing it! We’re losing it! This is going badly!
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We're not going to get this back again. And they were quite right! You might not believe this, but I think it's true.
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Even the most inexperienced young comrade in our ranks, you would find, is on a higher level than even the most polished bourgeois politician.
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That's a fact. Fiona’s interview is a viral hit. Then, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calls a snap election for July. Which gives us an idea...
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Actually, I was at a university encampment when the election was called. An encampment for Palestine.
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Keir Starmer and the Labour Party have decided to spend all of the last couple of days purging any pro-Palestinian voice from the Labour Party as well.
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It provoked a lot of discussions in the camp and then also amongst ourselves as comrades and really we started to think, well, you know, suddenly we have a bit of an opportunity here.
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We are running this campaign because the whole of the political establishment in Britain are completely out of touch on the question of Gaza, and they're completely out of touch with what workers and young people actually need in this country.
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We stand for health care and not bombs. We stand for education and not bombs and investing in us.
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We have war criminals to bring down and a world to win. We knew that actually this campaign, if we can run it well, it can really connect with the disgust with the position of the Labour Party over Palestine.
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And then we did it and it was, again, incredible. If elected as an MP, I'm pledging to take an average worker's wage, which in east London at the moment is about £32,000 a year.
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And that's because I mean it when I say it's time for clear out to sweep out all of these careerists and opportunists, we are revolutionaries and not politicians, and I'm going to fight in the interests of the working class and young people.
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And when we were canvassing, the first thing people would say is, are you from the Labour Party?
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And we would say, no. And then people would beam and they would say, okay, now let's talk.
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The cost of living crisis going up, inflation, climate chaos. All of this is on the minds of people because there is a connection, I would say, with what is happening in Palestine and the whole Palestinian movement growing and the general anger in society.
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Oh so you do care about people dying? I said at the beginning! But you’re lying! You’re a hypocrite.
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Break now! Break! Now! And that means nationalising all of these major corporations, all of the public services, and using the money that exists and the resources that exist, to actually give people a decent life!
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We would find that Palestine initially would be the first thing we would talk to people about, and then it just spread.
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It spiralled out. I think it was Rosa Luxemburg, she said, socialism or barbarism, that's what's facing us.
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And that was true then 100 years ago. But it's also true now. Fiona doesn't win, but gets the best result for an open communist in 50 years. What have we learned from the campaign?
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We ran openly as revolutionary communists, and we had the hammer and sickle everywhere. And people were so enthusiastic.
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The British government can find money for Israel. And to support it, but has no money for what we actually need.
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I think the main lesson is you've got to pose yourself fully and truthfully as a revolutionary alternative.
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So I think we're all very proud of the campaign. And we learned a lot through it.
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How to speak to people, how to pose our ideas in a way that actually answers the problems in their lives.
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This is a truly historic occasion. It is a milestone in the development of our international.
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We are proud to stand on the great traditions of the Communist International. We trace our roots far back to the founding days of our movement when Marx and Engels wrote the Great Communist Manifesto.
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Today we are retying the knot of history at a time when the world revolution is beginning to develop.
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Welcome to the founding conference of the Revolutionary Communist International. On 10 June 2024, the founding conference of the Revolutionary Communist International begins!
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Hundreds are present, and thousands are watching online. But why do we need an international organisation?
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The crisis which Marx had predicted based on the way capitalism works, the contradictions of the system, finally arrived in the form of the First World War in 1914.
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The bloodshed ensued for the next four years. Which was followed by a wave of revolution in one country after another.
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It wasn't just the Russian Revolution there was the German in 1918, Hungarian 1919. The Italian 1920 and many others.
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There was an organisation which had been created, formally speaking, on the basis of Marxism, which was known as the Second International.
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The international that gathered the Socialist and Labour parties and social democracy. But at the moment when they were most needed, the outbreak of the First World War.
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Instead of doing what they promised to do, which was to transform the war between nations into a war between the classes, they all lined up behind their own ruling classes and supported the carnage of workers against other workers from other countries.
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That's why Lenin drew the conclusion that it was necessary to build a new international, to go back to the genuine ideas of Marx and Engels, i.e., the ideas of genuine revolutionary communism.
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The First World War was followed, as I said, by wave of revolutions. A huge opportunity was presented to the working class globally to transform the world.
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To do that you need an international organisation. And that's what the Comintern was. It was an organisation of genuine revolutionary communists who had the aim of building mass revolutionary parties in all countries to lead the working class, as the Bolsheviks had done in 1917.
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That was the significance of the Comintern. The struggle for socialism is a world struggle.
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Capitalism is a world system, and the struggle against it must be international. What we have is the, revolution defeated in one country after another.
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And by the time you get, say to the mid 1920s, you have a Soviet Union which is surrounded by hostile capitalist regimes.
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In fact, the situation began to swing one country after another against the revolution with the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany in the 30s, the defeat of the Spanish movement in the 30s.
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All of this led to a greater and greater isolation of the Soviet Union, and that was one of the key elements clearly, which prepared the bureaucratic degeneration, the rising of a bureaucracy within the Soviet Union and basically a burying of the real lessons of the Comintern.
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All the debates that were led by Lenin and which Trotsky played a big role in as well, all those ideas were buried and forgotten, the real essential ideas of those congresses.
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And we have a bureaucratically led international which became less and less important. If you consider the first four Congresses took place between 1919 and 1922, in the Middle of a civil war.
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They gave such importance to the Congresses. After that, you only have another three Congresses in 1943, that international is dissolved by Stalin signing away the international, dissolving it without even consulting its members, showing that they had no real need for an international organisation.
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And in effect, you had the collapse of the revolutionary kernel, let's say, of that organisation.
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And then unfortunately, for decades, a misrepresentation of what genuine Leninism is. And with the degeneration of the Russian Revolution under Stalin and the destruction of the international by Stalin, Trotsky attempted, under very difficult circumstances, to gather together the small forces that remained loyal to Bolshevism and Leninism,
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and to create the basis for a new international, which would be the Fourth International.
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And this was finally launched officially in 1938. However, one has to say, looking back on it, that this was really a failure.
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Except for the ideas of Trotsky, which still remain absolutely valid as an organisation. The Fourth International never really took off.
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It always remained a small group of mainly small sects. And the reason for the failure was due to the failure of leadership, actually.
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Now, I actually when I was young, I joined the Trotskyists in South Wales. A member of Ted Grant’s group.
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And Ted Grant actually was the main guiding light in my life. My friend and comrade and teacher.
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But Ted was the only one of a whole bunch of the original leaders of the fourth that really understood what Trotsky was saying and really understood Trotsky’s positiom.
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The others, on the other hand, they failed to understand Trotsky's method. They just repeated, like parrots what he wrote in the transitional program.
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Ted Grant is the only only one that really stood out against the stream and maintained the international and of course, I remained loyal to Ted’s position ever since.
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We were expelled from the international. Of course, naturally. But nevertheless the ideas of the fourth still exist today, they still exist, before the international, in that sense, still exists and still the fourth international, in that sense, still exists and still
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continued, continued in our organisation. And I would say only in our organisation, which is the revolutionary communist International.
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To be connected with comrades worldwide is amazing. Like I am like chatting with people from like France and from Pakistan.
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Like it's just so cool to have that sense of like solidarity across nations. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
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And for it to be revolutionary communist too. Like it's very clear what our politics are.
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There’s no country that can solve its problems on its own. And because the system is a global system, the struggle must be global.
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The struggle must be international. And we must bring together all the genuine revolutionaries from all countries as one united force, as one revolutionary communist, international working to change this world and to finally put an end to the nightmare of class society,
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the nightmare of capitalism, and begin to lay the basis for a new society based on rational planning and control of the wealth by those who produce it.
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We’re very modest in our aims. We just want to turn the world upside down, that's all.
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Of course, that's not an easy task to be achieved. And it will not be achieved overnight.
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We have to accept the fact that for historical reasons, the forces of genuine Marxism have been thrown back quite awrong way.
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We must accept that. We must accept that nowadays we are the genuine forces of Trotskyism, of Marxism are reduced to a tiny minority, a minority of a minority of a minority.
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Therefore, we must set ourselves modest but realisable tasks and on the basis of correct ideas and correct methods and correct tactics and strategy, which we learned from Ted Grant and which we are proud to continue.
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On the basis of correct methods we've actually succeeded quite a lot in recent years, in building quite a strong base in many countries of the world, including the United States, Canada, Pakistan and other places.
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And in Britain, of course, we’ve begun to develop a very strong force. Our task is not to overthrow capitalism.
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That's beyond our means. It's not even to win the majority of the working class, that's also beyond our present means.
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It's to win the vanguard of the youth, which today the young people in particular, are wide open to the ideas of communism and Marxism in a way that I've never seen before in my life.
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And this is the thing which we have plugged into, which we've connected with. Lenin, said he who has the youth has the future.
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By winning the vanguard, the advanced layers, that layer, in turn will reach the mass, through the factories, through the schools, through the universities through the council estates and so on.
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And of course, above all, on the basis of Marxist theory, the power of ideas, the power of Marxist ideas.
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That's the key to success, which we’ve started, which we've begun to have considerable success, and we'll have a bigger success once the events begin.
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But of course, the forces for a mass international, as was the case after the creation of the Communist International in 1919, the mass forces can only come from great events, great events which will shake the working class from top to bottom
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and create the conditions, first of all, for the conditions of a mass Marxist tendency and eventually for the creation of mass Marxist Bolshevik parties in every country in the world.
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And this, of course, is our fundamental aim, which we are all striving to achieve.
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Provided we stick to the correct ideas, we will succeed in this. Chapter nine. The power of ideas.
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The conference delves into revolutionary history, Marxist philosophy and Bolshevik methods of struggle. The conference delves into revolutionary history, Marxist philosophy and Bolshevik methods of struggle.
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We explain what we stand for, what we oppose, and what we are fighting to achieve.
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[The most powerful thing in the world] is not armies or navies or air forces.
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It is the power of ideas. Great ideas! And no idea is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
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Sometimes I hear people saying, not usually our own comrades they’re too sensible. But some people say: ‘Yeah, well, it's all very well, these old ideas,’ ‘but don't we need new ideas?’ I have studied the works of Marxism all my life.
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That's a long time now. I've also made it my business to study the so-called alternatives.
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And I tell you this, I have never found any body of ideas. None! That could remotely compare in their profundity, in their scientific exactness, in this sheer brilliance, than the ideas of Marx and Engels, Marx and Engels, they said the ideas of the ruling class are, in any age, the ruling ideas.
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And I would say the ideas at universities, even though on the surface can seem critical or anti-capitalist, they are the ideas of the ruling class.
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The original ruling idea, the bourgeois idea of history, is that history is the story of great men, of kings, generals, popes, heroes, the battles we see in history are battles over ethics and morals and great ideas.
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All human thought is in human heads. People support it because people use the language that converts them, that makes them want to support it.
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That makes them want to fight, that makes them want to march. That makes them want to support. That matters!
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And only an individual can do it. And according to this view, history is merely a series of unconnected random events.
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There is no change. There is no progress. They're just events that you can study isolated.
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So much of history is caused not by objective material conditions. It is caused by stories in our imagination and why one story defeats another.
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It's very often down to chance. The stories themselves, I think, are a powerful engine of history.
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And they are extremely unpredictable and sometimes irrational. And this view of history is very convenient for those who defend the present system.
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They want to present the system that we live in today, as something that has always existed and always will exist.
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Like this is how it has always been. And therefore like this is how it will always be.
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The most dangerous fantasy that humans ever came up with is the idea of the ability to create a perfect world, not only because it causes you to feel very dissatisfied with the actual world around us, but because it's an open check
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to do the most horrendous things in the world. The task of these bourgeois historians is to preserve the existing order, and that means to use history to justify the present system.
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And that also means that the more capitalism enters into a historical crisis an existential crisis, the less scientific bourgeois historians become. Because they have to justify a system that has historically outlived itself.
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History is not a science, it can't be a science because we can't rerun events in the laboratory and see if consistently war breaks out in 1939, with or without Hitler.
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So what we're doing when we study the past, as the great Oxford philosopher of history R.G Collingwood said, is we're kind of reconstituting past human experience from the bits and pieces that have been left behind.
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And as we do that, it's a very subtle process of mental re-enactment of experience.
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Bourgeois historians cannot be scientific, because if they were, they would have to accept the idea that all previous socio- economic systems have ceased to exist.
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And also this system will. When Engels, he compared Marx's discoveries concerning history with those of Darwin and that I think, is the essence of what is historical materialism.
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He said: just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history.
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That mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion and so on.
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And that is what differentiates us from all these other ideas of history. If you want to understand ideas, the state philosophy, religion of a period, you first of all need to to look at how did these people actually live?
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How did they produce the food that they had to eat? How did they organise production?
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Marx and Engels. They looked at history as different stages of modes of production. Exactly based on how they produced, primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, some places is the asiatic mode of production and capitalism.
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There is this myth that Marxism is just economics, but that's not true. Marxism is the understanding of the interrelation between the material conditions as the base and the structures, the state ideas, religion, philosophy, and so on.
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When the capitalist class was a progressive force, 18th and 19th century, they produced great thinkers.
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Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Ricardo, Adam Smith, great philosophers, Hegel, Kant. And now? Nothing! Nothing worth spitting on!
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Dare I mention post-modernism? Look at the miserable trash which they serve up in the universities these days.
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These poor unfortunate philosophy students who, as I say, my heart bleeds for. Well, identity politics is a very good tool for the ruling class to attack the left.
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It's actually their main weapon to do so. And that's because that many within the left reformists, they are completely influenced by these ideas, and that comes to the end that they are not believing in that you need to fight
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the capitalist society, class society to overthrow oppression. Instead, they think that the way to tackle oppression is to convince as many people as possible to stop having oppressive ideas or oppressive behaviours, it’s through quotas, representations.
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Growing up gay in a small southern town, I was lucky to have a wonderful and accepting family.
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I always struggled with the idea that I might not be able to discuss my personal life at work.
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Imagine my surprise when I was taking my oath at CIA and I noticed a rainbow on then Director Brennan's lanyard.
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I think the best answer for sexism in politics is more women in politics and getting more women who are out there standing up, speaking out.
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So I was like 16 years old when I became a communist, because I saw the inability of like, identity politics of, the liberal feminist movement to secure any kind of actual gains for women, for LGBT people, for anybody.
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Youth is key in that sense to future developments. But they need to be educated and trained in past experiences.
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And also the fundamental ideas of Marxism. Train them, educate them, raises their level, and also increases the thirst for them to read and study of past events.
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The past failures of workers movements. Learn the lessons to prepare the ground for successful revolutionary movements, for the future.
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Well, Marx actually said that ideas become a material force when they grip the minds of the masses.
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That's a very important idea. And ultimately it's the power of ideas which will guarantee our success.
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Now, one of the things which attracted me to Marxism as a young man was the colossal superiority of the ideas of Marxism, Marxist theory, particularly Marxist philosophy, but also Marxist economics.
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And by the way, you can compare those ideas today to any of the bourgeois ideas.
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And you see the superiority. Nowadays, all the theories of the so-called economic theories of the bourgeois, are being consigned by the bourgeois themselves they've been consigned to the dustbin.
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They haven't got a clue. They've got no idea. There's a complete bankruptcy. The most modern document you can read today is The Communist Manifesto, which was written in 1848, 47, actually, by two young men.
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You read those ideas now, now you compare those to any idea, any bourgeois theories put forward.
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You read those ideas and I'll tell you in advance they will merely have a mere historical significance.
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Actual practical application today, zero. But you read the Communist Manifesto, and it's as if it was written yesterday.
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It's as if it's written today. What the manifesto describes is not the world of 1848, but the world today.
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Now that itself should tell you the colossal superiority of Marxism and the, yes, the power of ideas.
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And of course, many people today on the left, there's a bankruptcy, there's a vacuum on the left by the way.
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The reason for the vacuum on the left is very simple, because they've abandoned they never had any theory.
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They never had an understanding of Marxism actualy. And now, they’re in a complete mess, incapable of offering anything serious.
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On the other hand, it's the ideas of Marxism which now are triumphant. Which now, are recognised by many people, by bourgeois economists and so on.
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So here is the power of ideas. And that is precisely what attracts And that is precisely what attracts the people that we are trying to win, which is the advanced layer of the youth, in particular, which is looking for these ideas.
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They’re desperately looking for solutions, for answers, for explanations of the crisis which nobody other than ourselves, other than the Marxists, are able to provide.
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And that is the key to our success. That's what people are looking for, that's what serious people are looking for.
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And therefore, yes, it is tremendous. The power of ideas ultimately is decisive. As Lenin once said, Marxism is all powerful because it is true.
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You can say anything you want in this organisation and we'll discuss it out. And we've done that many times in the past.
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Patiently. And seriously. And that's why we are where we are today. A few weeks ago I was at the British Congress.
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There was a comrade there, I think he was from Wales, it was his first Congress.
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He said, I've been a member of the Labour Party for many years. I've seen congresses, I've seen herd mentality.
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But this is something different. This is conviction. Yes comrades. What we have is a deep going unity of conviction, which is the most powerful form of unity.
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And it's a conquest that we're proud of. It's the result of decades of effort.
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Yes. And many, many, many discussions in which the level of the whole international has been raised.
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I think Alan said the other day he and some other comrades started out 30 years ago, being the weakest force on the left.
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No apparatus. Very few, very little full time staff. What set us apart? It was our ideas.
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They ridiculed Alan and Ted for writing Reason In Revolt and Bolshevism. They ridiculed our emphasis on theory.
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They were the real, they were real activists and revolutionaries you know? They don't know what they're talking about.
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They didn't realise that they're attacking our strong side. But that is what brought us where we are today.
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Every step of the way. And it's is the power of our ideas, which is now revealing itself more and more intensely in direct correlation with the intensity of the crisis of capitalism.
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And we're beginning to gain an echo. It's still early days, but one door after another is opening up for us.
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Not because we’re lucky or we’re slick. Not because we have a nice designs and big banners.
Speaker A
Not because we have a massive centre now in London and centres all over the world with hundreds of full timers.
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We are proud of that. But that's not the reason. No, it's because of our ideas.
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That's the only justification for our existence. And now we are exiting our pre-history. And of course, it would be foolish to go too far and get big headed, to overstretch ourselves and to relegate theory and propaganda work.
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Theory is much more important now, as a guide to action. But it would be equally foolish to stay timid and to think small.
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We need to get rid of that mentality. We need to be bold. and it's inevitable that we will make exaggerations And it's inevitable that we will make exaggerations and mistakes, but we can overcome these.
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And we can learn from them. I was talking with Alejandro, I think, from Canada, who was discussing our intervention in the movement in the encampment movement.
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So maybe we have been a little bit too timid. She said something very profound.
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She says, you know, it's like we've been swimming at the shallow end of the pool, and now we have to go on the deep end, and it's a little bit scary.
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I think that's a very exact metaphor. We have to leave the safe shores that we are used to.
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But we also have to remind ourselves that our safety was was never our, you know, organisational method of work.
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you know, organisational method of work. That wasn’t what was keeping us safe. It was the solid rock of Marxist theory which we will have with us at all times.
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You know, Goethe said, ‘mankind errs as long as it strives’. Yes, we will - making mistakes is a part of learning.
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We have the most powerful ideas here, and in the next period, our task is to take them out into the world.
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To every school and every university. To every neighbourhood and every workplace. And boldly announce that the Revolutionary Communist International is here.
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Thank you comrades. I would say that yes, there is an alternative. I think that that is a kind of a hanging question in the backs of people's minds.
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You know, maybe they're not always conscious that they're asking it, but behind a lot of the way they're interacting with the world, whether they vote or not, whether they go to a protest or not.
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Is just is this it? Our answer to that is no, this isn't it. And as a result, there is so much that we have to be optimistic about.
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There's so much suffering and pain on such, a scale. You can't put it into words.
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And we are here to say that there's an explanation for why that has taken place.
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And we know what the alternative economic system needs to be in order to end that suffering.
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And that is what the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Revolutionary Communist International is all about.
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We are a party that you can join. You can organise yourself in a way to change this.
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But we need you to get there, right? We are far too small at this point in time to do it.
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We need to build serious political parties, revolutionary communist parties all across the world. Chapter ten.
Speaker A
After many months of, discussing the manifesto of the RCI, in, hundreds of meetings in dozens of countries across the world after voting the RCI manifesto, which is our our guiding principles and statement of ideas at the beginning of this week.
Speaker A
The time has now come to formally vote on the launching on the founding of the Revolutionary Communist International.
Speaker A
So can I see all those in favor of founding the Revolutionary Communist International? Anyone against?
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Any abstentions? Okay comrades that's unanimous. We have an international. The RCI has been officially founded. Now all that is left is to give some closing remarks...
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I know a lot of people who are not communists. And one thing I see in all of them is this perpetual feeling of frustration.
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You know, alienation, not really having any - disorientation. And they go from one thing to another trying to find happiness in some way, but it always kind of escapes them.
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We are extremely lucky. To have a guiding principle that gives us insight. That gives us insight into the way that the world works.
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You know, Hegel said, Hegel said that an ignorant man is not free because what confronts him is an alien world.
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But we don't - we are not confronted by an alien world. We feel at home in the world.
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Because we understand it and we realise what's necessary. And that's what gives us our energy.
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And it gives us an unparalleled advantage over everyone else in this society. It is a guiding principle that allows us to go about the world with a deep sense of belonging.
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Belonging to the world, belonging to an international organism. Which works across the planet with the same principle belonging to the general course of history which has brought humanity to this fateful moment, belonging to the to the traditions of Marx, Engels,
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Lenin and Trotsky. Who carry the seeds of a future society, and which is now the seed that we carry in this organisation.
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And and I want to end on by with a quote by Trotsky on the founding of the Fourth International.
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He says the great events which rush upon mankind will not leave any of these outlived organisations one stone upon another.
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Only the Fourth International looks with confidence at the future. It is the World Party of socialist revolution.
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There never was a greater task on the earth and upon every one of us rests a tremendous historical responsibility.
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Our party demands each of us totally and completely. Let the philistines hunt their own individuality in empty space for the revolutionary to give himself entirely to the party signifies finding himself.
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Yes. Our party takes each one of us wholly, but in return it gives every one of us the highest happiness, the consciousness that one participates in the building of a better future.
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That one carries on his shoulders a particle of the fate of mankind. And that one's life will not have been lived in vain.
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The fidelity to the cause of the toilers requires from us the highest devotion to our international party.
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The party, of course, can also be mistaken. By common effort we will correct these mistakes.
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New thousands who will enter its ranks tomorrow will probably be deprived of necessary education.
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By common effort, we will elevate their revolutionary level, but we will never forget that our party is now the greatest lever of history.
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Separated from this lever, every one of us is nothing. With this lever in hand, We are all.
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Alan Woods leading The Internationale at the end of the founding conference Communism, really speaking, is in my blood because I come from a poor working class family.
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My grandfather was a tin plate worker and a communist. My mother was a communist, also all her life.
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And therefore I was brought up in an atmosphere where people would discuss, for example, the general strike of 1926.
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So it was very much something I was born into. However, arising out of that instinctive communism, it was instinctive - a class instinct, if you like.
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I later realised the need to deepen my understanding by developing a knowledge of Marxist theory.
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And then I started to need Capital in Swansea Public Library when I was 14 years of age. Still at school.
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I didn't get very far I’m afraid, and in particular when I joined the Young Socialists, as it then was, the youth wing of the Labour Party.
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And I came across the Trotskyists in what was in effect, Ted Grant’s organisation, the Revolutionary Socialist League.
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And I seriously began a study of Marxist theory, and I became not just a Leninist, I was already a Leninist, I became a Trotskyist.
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But this thorough grounding in Marxist theory is what convinced me not only that communism was right from a class point of view, from an instinctive point of view, but it was correct from a scientific, a theoretical point of view.
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And that knowledge of theory has guided me, I must say, has been my guiding star for the rest of my life.
Topics:capitalism crisisglobal economic crisisRevolutionary Communist Internationalsocial movementsArab SpringBlack Lives MatterUkraine warGaza conflictausterity protestsworkers democracy
