[Podcast] 2025: A year of capitalist chaos Share TweetAs 2025 draws to a close, workers and young people around the world will look back on a year that has starkly exposed the blind alley of world capitalism. Trump’s return to the White House has only deepened the disorder, with his administration’s foreign and economic policies causing chaos on the world stage. The recently released National Security Strategy makes one thing unmistakably clear: the United States is not in the position it used to be, no longer capable of policing the globe on its own.This redivision of the world will not unfold calmly or peacefully – as the events of 2025 have shown. The relentless succession of crises is shaking consciousness on a mass scale, pushing hundreds of millions to question the status quo. Increasingly, people are searching for a way out of society’s dead end, and a growing layer is becoming receptive to communist ideas.In this episode of Against the Stream, Jorge Martín and Hamid Alizadeh look back on the tumultuous year, discuss what lies ahead, and explore how communists should prepare for the struggles to come.Against the Stream is the Marxist current-affairs podcast of the Revolutionary Communist International. New episodes air every Thursday at 6pm GMT on YouTube.Reading listNational Security Strategy of the United States of America The White House“Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds” The GuardianThe meaning of China’s $1tn trade surplus Financial TimesLabour is slow-marching working people to populism Financial TimesHow asset managers like BlackRock took over the world London School of EconomicsThe world turned upside down – a system in crisis Revolutionary Communist InternationalTranscriptHamid0.001% of the world's population controls three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity. The concentration of capital, the creation of monopoly capitalism, is at the same time the transition of capitalism from its earlier stages of development to what Lenin described as imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism and US Imperialism is the biggest imperialist power that's ever existed, the most powerful imperialist power that's ever existed. In few years, we've seen a crisis of US imperialism.JorgeTrump's policy is to concentrate on its core national security interests, but that doesn't mean peace.HamidAmerican imperialism has never been as hated as it is today and is one of the most radicalizing elements in the situation today. And I would say it's never been easier to be a communist. What we are witnessing is not just a revolution here or there. We seeing a global revolutionary movement developing. Welcome to Against the Stream, the communist podcast which analyzes world events in order to understand the true class interests that shape them. If we want to change the world, we first have to understand it. That's our mission in today's show. 2025 has been a whirlwind year. It's been the year of Donald Trump, the year of his trade war against China, the year of the Ukraine war, the war in Gaza, a civil war in Sudan, and a world economy in a very fragile place.At the same time, we've seen revolutionary movements across the world, from Indonesia to Nepal, general strikes in Italy and Spain, and much more. So in this final episode of this year, we're going to take a step back and ask the question, where is capitalism today? And more importantly, where is the communist revolution? My name is Hamid and I'm here today with Jorge Martín once again. This is the last episode of the year. Jorge.JorgeI think you've been a bit unfair on 2025 because quite a lot of those things you said were coming from a previous year.HamidIn a way, we can say everything in 2025 was coming from a previous year.That's a philosophical question we'll answer in the future.But yes, I think we should go through the most important spheres of, the capitalist system as it is today, and just take stock of it, see what stage are we in and what's the score? And I thought we could start with the world economy.The economic situation. On the one hand, there's an extreme contradiction here because on the one hand, you see an extreme jubilant mood on the stock market.In a period where the figures of the underlying economy are extremely worrisome. I'll just make a few examples. The public debt, world debt is now well above 100% of world GDP, more than $330 trillion. US debt is at $38 trillion and is increasing constantly.JorgeAll the time.HamidYeah, all the time. 125% of GDP.The productivity in the west, in Europe, has flatlined. In the US it has been increasing slightly, mainly carried by software. If you take out software development, you actually don't have much of a productivity gain.Meanwhile, you have the stock market, which seems to be completely detached from all of this. Oh, by the way, GDP growth has been almost zero in Europe, 0.1%, 0.2%. In the US we've seen I think around 2.4% growth. But if you take away AI and the investments and the speculation that's taking place in AI, there's been a 0.2% growth of the American economy. So basically no growth whatsoever. Inflation is rising, unemployment is beginning to rise, employment figures are down. And all of the major companies have announced huge series of layoffs.And then we have the AI bubble. The S&P 500, which is the biggest 500 companies in the US stock, how to say those on the stock market, at least those publicly traded ones.They have doubled their value in the past three years.The same companies today have a price over earnings value 40 times their annual profits, which is about double the historical average. So this means the value of their company is on average 40 times higher than what they will make in one year. So if you bought the company, you'd have to wait 40 years for your investment to pay off. Basically.Some of the companies like Palantir, we're talking PE ratios of several hundred.And as I said, without investment in AI, US GDP growth would have just been 0.1%. The majority of this growth, by the way, this is the S&P 500. But the majority of the growth of the S&P 500, almost the entirety of it, is in the magnificent seven.JorgeYes.HamidWhich is the seven biggest technology companies.And what they're saying now is that we're seeing a major bubble.Gita Gobinath, the former or present IMF official, said that if we see a crash, which is very likely, we're gonna see a. This could wipe out over $20 trillion in wealth for American household, the equivalent to roughly 70% of American GDP.JorgeYeah, there's two things here. What you said, you said, you said this is a contradiction. But in reality, it's not a contradiction because as we've been explaining, the reason why there is a bubble in the stock exchange, or one of the reasons is because from the point of view of capitalists, it's much more profitable in the short term to invest in speculation rather than to invest in production. And the reason for that, or one of the main reasons for that is what you said just before that: debt. Because it's not just a question of public debt, it's also a question of household debt and company debt. I think the total debt is about 350% of world's GDP if you combine public private and household debt. So obviously, if the capitalists invest in order to make a return on their capital to make profit, and if they can make profit much quicker and a lot more off on the stock exchange than in real life production by producing things that serve the needs of people, they will do that, clearly. So yeah, it is a contradiction of sorts, but one thing is related to the other. But I will say that, yes, the stock exchange is going up at the same time. In the last few weeks, I will say we've seen jitters in the stock exchange, isn't it the shares of some of the biggest companies, Nvidia, for instance, going up and then going down very sharply, then going up again. Bitcoin, which is the epitome of speculation, going up very strongly for a few years and then collapsing all of a sudden and then going up again. But I'd say that one of the main symptoms of the nervousness of the markets, that is the nervousness of capitalist investors about the future of their own system, is the price of gold and the price of silver, which have been rising constantly. Very much is seen as a safe deposit, a safe place where to keep your money, where everything else could go wrong.HamidOracle, by the way, has lost a third of its value just in the past few days. But we're always told that capitalism is a system which innovates and which develops and pushes society forward. But actually what we see here is the exact opposite. As you said, on the one hand, there's no productive investments to be made. The markets are saturated in a way to invest in a factory which then in 10 years may or may not make a profit, when there's already factories which dominate the entirety of the market, at least in the west, it's very risky. And it's much easier to just drain whatever investments you have and then use the rest in the stock market, which is what a lot of even companies do, even, even industrial companies have a financial arm which engages in speculation and at the same time the bubble reinforces that trend. So it's actually. An economy which is being driven to the ground by its own greed. That's basically what's happening. And one of the things in all of the articles has been making the rounds that's been written about this AI bubble. They interview stockbrokers and hedge fund managers and all sorts. And the one sentence quote which they all of them repeat, they from some banker in 2007, just before the big crash. Then they say, “as long as the music is playing, you got to get up and dance.”JorgeYes.HamidThis I think sums up the capitalist system in a nutshell. And the situation we're in now, the economy is being ground down, is being driven to the ground and these guys know it's happening, they talk about it. They're sucking up all of the productive investments out of the system into the stock market, lining their own pockets. This is causing huge dislocations, this is preparing massive unemployment, massive crises, all sorts of things. But as long as the music is playing, as long as you're making money, you have to go and you know there's going to be a crash and we also know who's going to pay for it.JorgeYes, and I think that is very interesting what you said about this IMF official, that now unlike in the past, there is a higher level of ordinary working class families who have some of their savings or some of their money invested in the stock exchange. There's different reasons for this. One, the destruction of, in the case of the United States, the non existence of a public pension system that people need to save for the future. But also the fact that wages, real wages, have been stagnant for so long. People look at this stock exchange going up, going up, going up. And now there are tools, apps and so on that allow small investors to put a little bit of money. And so people think, yeah, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. I'm going to be careful, I'm going to only do it for a while. But I think the figure you gave is 20 trillion of ordinary household money savings is invested in the stock exchange.HamidActually it's 42 trillion. Oh, that's what could be fully wiped out, what they could lose.JorgeYeah, I mean, and that will in turn have a massive impact on the economy again. I mean it reminds me of the dot com bubble at the beginning of the 2000s which ended up in, in a complete disaster. It collapsed. But the difference is that now the figures that we are talking about are much 10 times bigger than it was at that time. So this will have a bigger impact on the economy. And what you said about the chairs, as long as the music's playing, people are dancing. This is very. But this is a very revealing analogy because everyone knows that this is already coming to an end, that this will collapse at one moment or another, but nobody knows exactly when. And so they continue with this speculation.HamidI think in fact, if there's one sentence I would say sums up 2025, it's that sentence because. And it sums up the nature of capitalism. The capitalists compete against one another and therefore they are driven by the laws of the market and of the laws of composition of capitalist competition. If you back down, you're going to lose out and you're going to be crushed in competition. So you have to dance as long, as long as the music is playing. And if you're a responsible fellow saying no, no, no, I'm not going along with this for whatever reason, yes, someone else will take your place, whoever is.JorgeWilling to take that risk and investors will take the money from your company to someone else's company.HamidAnd we're going to go through the rest of the world situation and in every aspect of this, in the political domain, in the military and geopolitical domain, it's all the same thing.The system is made up of people, especially now that the system is in a crisis, who cannot back down. There's a contradiction. There's a contraction happening in a way in the system. The boundaries of the system are narrowing down and the capitalists don't want to back down. And this thing about private investments or private savings, they are the ones who are going to lose out.JorgeExactly.HamidThe working class, I mean those workers who put their. And middle class people who are basically working class at this stage, who put their, their savings in, in stocks. They are the last ones you're going to know about the crash. The big timers are going to run away with their money, pack it up and with the workers money and then these and then the rest of us have to be, will be faced with the bill. Just the result of this again, Marx explained capitalism leads to extreme concentration of wealth on one end and extreme misery on the other. And here we have. There's been the world inequality report recently in the past few days, which talks about 60,000 people. It's 0.001% of the world population, controls three, three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity.JorgeWhich is 4 billion people.HamidWhich is 4 billion people in almost every region. The top 1% was wealthier than the bottom 90% combined.There's a global inequality database is slightly different thing. They say that 20% of global income goes to the richest 1% of the world's population. Income that's produced by. By that, by the 99%. By the way, the poor half of the world receives less than 9%. More than 63% of global personal wealth belongs to the richest 1% of the people. While more than 3.7 billion people live below the poverty line.At least 33.9 trillion is the amount that the richest 1% have gained in wealth in real terms since 2015.I think that's a huge understatement. But let's take that for their answer. This would be enough to end annual global poverty 22 times over.I think this is the problem with this system. And then you have company like BlackRock on the other end of the scale. This is the largest asset manager in the world.JorgeYeah, they have the tentacles in almost every single company.HamidThey control $10 trillion worth of assets, direct control.And with the other two asset managers, Vanguard and State Street, they are the largest shareholder in around 88% of S&P 500 companies.These three companies have a dominant controlling position of almost the entire world economy.JorgeThis is what Lenin said, the crushing domination of finance capital over everything.HamidThese three companies alone, they oversee $22 trillion worth of assets. Now a lot of this money that they control is actually working class peoples’. Yes, but obviously they treat it like their own. And they pension funds, investment funds funneling money into them. BlackRock has close relationships with governments and central bankers all over the world and has been described as a global fourth branch of government. This is an article by LSE Blogs called ‘How asset managers like BlackRock took over the World’. And they say it's not simply the case that asset managers have extraordinary control over the financial system. Massive firms like BlackRock own and extract income from things like schools, bridges, wind farms and homes that are nothing less than foundational to our daily being. Their control over these assets is of course used to maximize their returns. And this requires them to relentlessly squeeze profits out of their holdings, whether that means hiking rents for vulnerable tenants or charging for the use of common infrastructure. I mean, this is LSE. This is the prime economics, financial, whatever educational institute in London, not that that says much about the quality, but this is what they say.JorgeBut these figures are staggering. I mean, it's even difficult to comprehend when these big figures are thrown around, but I saw there was one of the newspapers about the World Inequality Report. Is it called the World Inequality something? The one you mentioned at the beginning. They had like a graph and they said 58,000 people, that is the 0.001% that you mentioned before of the world's population. 58,000 people. These people will fit in a football stadium, medium sized football stadium, not a big one. And they have three times. It's not that they have the same wealth, they have three times the personal wealth than 4 billion people. 4 billion people. 4 billion people is a lot of. It's half of the world's population. So I mean, and the other thing that this World Inequality Report was saying is that the situation hasn't gotten any better. There is more inequality. They had a graph and the line was going up for the wealth of the 0.01% and the wealth of the bottom half of the population was completely stagnant or slightly going down. This is the real situation.HamidMcKinsey had a report recently. Basically, since the year 2000, for every $1 of actual wealth that's been created through investments, $2 have been created through the printing of money and the, and the issuing of debt.JorgeYes.HamidSo that's, that's 60% of the wealth created in the past 25 years is fictitious capital. The majority of this they say has gone into assets, stocks, these kind which predominantly belongs to the rich.JorgeYeah.HamidSo you see through this massive expansion of the credit in society, there has been actually a shifting of wealth from the shifting of the balance of wealth, of the total wealth controlled by, you know, which is going in favor of the riches. And now that that debt is all coming to a head, companies are grinding down or nations are being grinding to a halt. You see Britain with 111% public debt to GDP ratio, France 115, Italy 140, the US 125. Who's going to pay for that debt?JorgeWe know who they're going to ask to pay the bill. In the last few days we've seen the takeover, proposed takeover of Warner Bros. By Netflix. A case of massive concentration of capital in the media sector. But the biggest part of the money that Netflix is putting forward for this purchase is debt is not money that they have, it's money they borrowing in order to buy another company. The whole thing is a casino economy completely.HamidWe can't stay on the economy. There's so much to say here. But we want to move on. The concentration of capital, the creation of monopoly capitalism is at the same time the transition of capitalism from its earlier stages of development toward what Lenin, described as imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. And US Imperialism is the biggest imperialist power that's ever existed. The most powerful imperialist power that's ever existed is controlled, the vast majority. It still exerts control over the, over the majority of the world economy. It stands on its own. It accounts for 25%, 24, 25% of the world economy. But it controls far more than that militarily, diplomatically and culturally. There is no rival to US Imperialism. Even now with the rise of China.JorgeFrom a financial point of view, the role that the US dollar plays in.HamidBut in the last few years, we've seen a crisis of US Imperialism that's been one of the most important elements in the developing world situation. That was part of the reason why Donald Trump came to power. He said, look, all of these forever wars, all of this us playing the policeman, intervening everywhere and telling everyone what to do, it doesn't work because we're losing. We're overstretched. In Iraq, we lost. In Afghanistan, we lost. Why are we even fighting this war in Ukraine? Because we're going to lose it. And he said the unexcusable things from a bourgeois point of view, from the point of view of the US ruling class. He said the truth and that's what brought him to power. And he got to power on basis of being the peace candidate. Right now he just received the FIFA Peace prize.JorgeWhich is a consolation prize because he didn't get the Nobel Prize.HamidHe didn't get the Nobel Prize prize, which went to this extremely peaceful Venezuelan lady.JorgeYes, a warmonger.HamidThe warmonger. But what's, what is that? Has he been the peace candidate? What's his, what's the balance sheet?JorgeOh, he was the candidate, but he's.HamidNot been the peace president.JorgeOh, well, he claims he has ended how many. He claims he has ended eight wars single handedly saving the lives of, I think he said, 60 million people. So he is very quick to, to make big claims about himself that he likes. But in reality, none of these conflicts have really been solved. I think that one of the conflicts he mentioned was the conflict in Thailand and Burma, which is now restarted. Again. These conflicts are in the nature.HamidAnd Cambodia.JorgeAnd Cambodia, sorry. These conflicts are in the nature of imperialism in this particular age. And the realignment of the relative strength of different powers leads to these massive explosions in different parts of the world. In Sudan, in Congo, Rwanda, in Southeast Asia, everywhere. And therefore he may want to end these wars. But it's not so easy as wanting to end these wars. But the reason why he wants to end these wars is not because he is in favor of peace. It's because he realizes that the United States is no longer able, this is not a viable strategy. It's no longer able to act as the policeman of the whole world. And he's now put it in writing in this National Security Strategy, which I printed a copy here. Small edition. But it says very clearly that the strategy of the United States went wrong after the end of the Cold War, and the United States cannot be the world's policeman, cannot be worried about every single conflict in the world. And therefore, it needs to retrench, it needs to dedicate itself to solving what the document says it's core national security interests. And these are not in the Middle East, and it explains the reason why. These are not in Ukraine. These are mainly in the Western Hemisphere and in the Indo Pacific. The document is very, very clear, and it backs up everything that we've said for the last one year about this question of world relations. And it reveals, as you said, it reveals that Trump's foreign policy is to admit the limitations of US Imperialism. US Imperialism is very strong, as you said, it's the most powerful imperialist power on the planet, but is not as powerful as it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago and now has to contend with other players on the world scene. And therefore, Trump's policy is to concentrate on its core national security interests. But that doesn't mean peace. That doesn't mean peace. Anyone thinks that this multipolar world of different imperialist powers is now going to be more peaceful. It's not. And we just seen it yesterday. They seized this oil tanker in the Caribbean. They have a massive buildup. 20% of the US Navy is in the Caribbean right now. And he's threatening a whole series of countries, he’s threatened Venezuela, but also Colombia. And he says he's going to attack or invade these other countries. The National Security Strategy says it very clearly. We're going to use our economic leverage, we're going to use diplomatic pressure, but if necessary, we will use military pressure. Our preference is for diplomacy. It means basically throwing your weight around and making people obey your dictates. But if they don't, then we are not averse to using our military, and we will strengthen our military so that we have that leverage. That is the strategy.HamidYes, I think. I mean, I've read this document and what it. The starting point is the organic crisis of US capitalism, although it doesn't admit it and I'll get back to what I mean by that. But they realize that the US capitalism is in a crisis. It's not developing as fast as it used to. Its economy, its technology, its military is military technology if you may, and militarily has been overstretched. The, the, the, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, its interventions in Sudan, the intervention, the proxy war against Russia which is taking place in, in Ukraine. And it kind of admits the need to retrench. And the, the main things that it says is basically we want to, we're going to retract from Europe. You, you correct me if I, if I misremember.We will try to find an equilibrium in the Indo Pacific and instead we will double down in our near abroad. And it says here, and it introduces what it calls the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine is this famous doctrine.JorgeWhich talks about 1823 basically can be summarized in America for the Americans, which should be read as the whole of the American continent. For the United States imperialism.HamidIn the beginning it was to push out European imperialists out of the Americas, Britain, Spain, Britain and Spain and so on. But then later on it became to the United States dominating that whole region. And now the Trump corollary is kind of a return to that in a way. It says after years of neglect, the United States will reassert and reinforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western hemisphere and to protect our homeland and our access to, to key geographies throughout the region. Key geographies. I don't even know what that means. We will deny non hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities or to own or control strategically vital assets in our hemisphere.JorgeOur hemisphere. I don't know who's decided that this is our hemisphere of Washington. And it says specifically says here this we will achieve by moving military assets that have been held up in other theaters into our hemisphere. And this is what they just done. The USS Gerald Ford, which is the largest and most powerful aircraft carrier of the US Navy was moved from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean as part of these operations of bullying, imperialist bullying of Venezuela, Colombia and other countries.HamidIf you saw the speech. Well, you saw the speech of Hegseth, the Minister of the, the, how to say the Secretary of War? Reasserting. It says our hemisphere.JorgeYes.HamidSo they're going to double down militarily to reassert their position in, in Latin America and in the Americas. They also Talk about Greenland, Panama Canal, South America. And meanwhile, they. They say that they want to have a detent or kind of a truce with Russia, cooperation, economic cooperation, investments and so on. And what did they say about China?JorgeYeah, this is interesting, what they say about China. I mean, Hegseth was very complimentary of China in his speech. He had to recognize that China has built up its military in a very fast way, in a technological manner in a short space of time. He said very impressed with that.Rather than impressed. I think he's very worried. But when he pretends to be very impressed, he's impressed. You're doing very well. We don't want any confrontation. We should reach a way in which we should reach an accommodation, that there's no conflict. At the same time, it also says we will strengthen our allies in the region. South Korea, Japan, Australia. They must spend more in weapons and they must protect the first island. They call the first island line. And yeah, contain. Basically contain China. But I think that there's a lot of wishful thinking in here because one of the countries that is mentioned when it comes to the Indo Pacific strategy, this is interesting as well, because it says, basically says Europe is not the center of the world anymore. The center of the world is in the Indo Pacific. It says that's where most of the world's economic growth is going to take place over the next 20, 30 years. This is a completely correct idea, but I said it was a bit of wishful thinking because it talks a lot about India. It says our allies, and then it says India, our allies must spend more money. But India. Is India really a US Ally? Well, it used to be. It was until very recently. But in fact, Trump's bullying of its own allies, of his own allies, has been pushing them in the opposite direction. And in the case of India, India has been the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Putin has just visited India. They've reached the number of deals and agreements. So basically, Trump's bullying of other countries is pushing them into the arms of his rivals. Really. So, yeah, I think they're very worried about the rise of China, and they don't really know how to. How to face. Face up.HamidThey, they. Trump launched a tariff war against China, and the result of that was very telling because they had to. They had to back down.JorgeBack down. Yes.HamidWhat, what. Why was that in particular? It was because of China's control over rare earths, which is a very important series of minerals, and.Which, which, which China, where China controls the entirety of the production chain, and that the US does not have any similar capabilities even in the, even in the technology, it will take them a long time to establish a competing supply chain. Now one of the reasons why they wanted, why Trump and people on his kind of wing of the American ruling class want to wage this war in China is to defang it, to push it back down, to undermine its product, product productive base, if it's industrial base, partially by cutting it away off from the US market, which is the biggest market in the world. But just, just a little. The result of this, what has it been? You know, you would think, oh, the Chinese, Chinese industry is taking a big hit.But here is, I think I got this from Bloomberg. It says in its push for manufacturing and technological dominance, China clear one milestone after another. In the early 2020s, it overtook Germany and Japan to become the world's largest, largest auto exporter. In January, the Hangzhou based artificial intelligence startup Deepseek stunned US big tech company with its own low cost, large language model. Another marker came this week. This is the past week, I believe, when official customs data revealed that China's trade surplus in goods topped a record 1 trillion in the first 11 months of the year. So not only did they not stop Chinese export, Chinese export actually went up to the rest of the. Even by losing the American market, the total exports went up, dragged up by the rest of the world.JorgeIn fact, there was an article in the Financial Times, I think it was a few weeks ago that said, you know, Trump and Xi Jinping reached a deal. It wasn't a deal really, it was like a delay, you know, some truce in this tariff war. And it said, the Financial Times said, when we look back, it was an opinion writer, when we look back at this time, at this deal, this truce, this will be the first time when the United States realized that it couldn't break China, that it couldn't force China back. So they had to reach a deal. There's an uneasy truce, this war will continue. But they couldn't beat China down. And the truth is that all this goes back even further because at the time of Biden, it was the Biden administration that prevented China's access to the most developed Nvidia microchips and so on in order to prevent China from developing advanced technology. This is a bottleneck for China. And what this led was that China realized that they couldn't rely on the rules of the free market and importing microchips from US companies. So they started to develop their own national security strategy to never again be dependent on a foreign power or the United States in this particular case. And this is the reason why they developed this supply chain, complete control of the supply chain for rare earth minerals, which they now using as leverage in the struggle against the United States. Meanwhile, the United States was sleeping basically. And this is what the national security strategy says. And they're trying to catch up now, but it's a bit late.HamidYes. And then there is Russia. The Biden administration. This is openly acknowledged now by a huge number of people. Only the most stubborn nose people would not acknowledge that America provoked a war with Ukraine. The idea was to weaken Russia, poured the drag it into a quagmire such as the American one in Afghanistan, weaken it and then take it over and turn it against China.JorgeExactly.HamidBut what actually happened was Russia came out on top. They're winning on the battlefield. We don't have time to go into it, but every day overcame sanctions, they overcame sanctions. Every day they're advancing on the battlefield. Pokrovsk officially has fallen, which means you owe me ten. Ten, ten pounds. But.JorgeAnd it also pushed Russia into a much closer cooperation with China.HamidSo in effect a trade war against China, a real war against Russia, where a lot of the same elements play a role is. Yes, it's the mass production, the industrial base, the rare earths, new technologies, new technologies, drones, all of these things are very. And the two countries collaboration is very important. So in effect the Americans took on the entirety of this giant landmass with all of its resources, its population and its industrial base. And they lost.JorgeThey lost. And this is in the National Security Strategy. There is one bit here that talks about technology and so on, and it's really panicky. It says we must develop our technology for the military, for defense, in terms of drones, in terms of how they call it the dome, an iron dome. No, it's not. It’s called the Golden Dome. It's Trump after all. It's a golden dome for protection. And it says about what about hypersonic missiles And. And this is the. All the areas where they are hiding behind.HamidThey say the huge gap demonstrated in recent conflicts between low cost drones and missiles versus the expensive systems required to defend against them has laid bare our need to change and adapt.JorgeLaid bare.HamidWhat is this? I think this is where I think this document is a lot of wishful thinking. The way I read it, this document sounds to me a lot like the Project 2025 people, which is the Heritage Foundation. It's reactionary, petty bourgeois, kind of libertarian. It's a lot of middle class people who see what the problem is with The US Capitalism. They see all the greed and all the monopolization and the inefficiencies created by this. They think this is stupid. Why do we keep doing stupid things? Why don't we just invest? But the point is America didn't just become the way it is because some people of stupidity. It's the logic of capitalism which in effect puts stupid people in charge after, you know, at a certain point.The problem in the military industrial complex in the U.S. well. You know, some people exaggerate the role of the military industry complex, but we, and we don't do that. But at the same time we don't want to minimize the rule. The military industrial complex in the US is concentrated in a tiny amount of companies which make a huge amount of money. And a lot of this money they make by over complicating projects which they sell at a very, very high prices to the Pentagon, which is like a bottomless pit. It's the perfect model. It's just free candy, like sticking candy from, from, from children. Right. And then the American taxpayers have to pay, pay for it.To then go to an agile, cheap and flexible kind of military industrial complex means destroying the entire base that these companies have built. Means coming in direct conflict with all of these people.JorgeA lot of vested interest.HamidWith a lot of vested interest. The same thing about we need to find a detente with Russia. Well, we see now the fact is the majority, the dominant wing of the American ruling class has based its whole raison d' etre on NATO, on European integration, on opposing Russia. And these people still sit in huge parts of the state apparatus, the establishment, the media, a big part of the actual capitalist class, the majority part of it. Democrats.A big chunk of the traditional, well, all of the traditional Republicans. And they are doing everything they can to keep America in this war and not to back down from this. So they might say this, but what it reflects is just one side of a civil war that's going on in the American, yes, ruling class, where this wing that's put forward, this position is in the minority, I would say.JorgeHas reduced the influence, but it's in, it's in the driving seat. Yeah, exactly. I will say that one of the things we haven't talked about this is Europe, isn't it? This is a bombshell for Europe because what this document says is we're not interested in Europe. It says we're not interested in Europe, that the center of the world is now the Western Hemisphere and the Indo Pacific. But at the same time it says that the economic relationship between Europe and the United States is one of the most important in the world, which is true. A lot of the commerce, trade takes place through these two blocks. But at the same time it says the leaders of Europe are doing everything wrong. It basically throws a bomb into the heart of Europe, is against European integration. And he basically says the United States will work to undermine the governments of Europe openly. It's in writing. I mean we already knew this. They had this big speech Vance and Hegseth at these European conferences back in February. We're talking about the summary of 2025. This has started earlier, but it's now in writing. And the Europeans are in complete panic because they say, what's this mean? This is supposed to be our main ally. And he's saying that it's going to work openly to undermine our government in order to put other people who are more in tune with the strategy of Trump, which is, by the way, sorry, which is to make peace with Russia when all the European powers want precisely the opposite. And we see now a huge struggle taking place over this question.HamidAnd that's the thing that's interesting is that US Imperialism, the strongest power on the planet, the presidency of US Imperialism should be the strongest office in the planet. But the fact is that they can't control things. The Europeans are pushing the war, they're pushing the whole thing in Ukraine. They got close allies in the American ruling class, they got close allies in the neocons and the Republicans and the Democrats alike and they're sabotaging it. And this is another trend that we see is that, how to say, in the periphery of the, of the empire, things are beginning to let loose. And you see this every time an empire collapses is that some parts of that, that normally that before were kind of following orders, play their own game. You see the Europeans doing this, pushing ahead. You see the Israelis pushing ahead with the war in Gaza.Even though the Americans don't want it. Not because Trump cares about Gaza, they don't care about Gaza at all. But they can't do. But they want to focus on China.JorgeIn fact, it says in the document, it says the Middle East is no longer so important for us. We are now self sufficient in terms of energy. We just want to make sure that the Middle East is not under the control of one of our adversaries.HamidBasically, Iran.JorgeAnd yet, or Iran or China. Because if you remember when Trump went to the Middle East recently, he went to Qatar and the UAE and Saudi Arabia and he made deals about AI Factories and data centers. These are countries that had been in the recent past courted by China. And this is another thing that we have been explaining. The struggle between China and the US allows certain regional powers to balance off one against another to a certain extent.HamidAnd what you have is a barbaric situation. This is again where I think about the quote that I said before. As long as the music is playing, we keep on dancing or whatever the guy said, look at Ukraine. The whole country is being destroyed. Not only that, this war is destabilizing Europe and everyone can see it. Cheap gas is off, which energy prices are up. Deindustrialization is massively accelerating. The European Union is now breaking apart because Belgium doesn't want the Europeans to seize the Russian frozen assets. The European Union has come out and says, no, we're going to do it anyway. And by the way, we're going to remove the veto rights of the member nations. So the whole thing is.JorgeThey're now saying, they're now saying we're going to treat Belgium, if Belgium doesn't back down on this question. We're going to treat Belgium, Belgium like we've been treating Orban in Hungary.HamidSo they undermine the fundamental basis of the European Union and they keep doing it. Why?Because they have a vested. They're better off just having this chaos developing than the opposite.JorgeThe reason for this is that they want to keep. Two reasons, I will say. One, they want to keep the United States involved in this war because they know that without the United States, their real weakness will be revealed. And the second is that they can't face up to the fact that they've been fighting against Russia. And now Russia's come out the winner of this war and will have a very strong pull on a whole number of European countries. And it's a big rival from the point of view of who dominates Eastern Europe, who dominates Africa and so on.HamidAnd what are they willing to do for it? They're willing to go into debt. They're willing to undermine the European Union itself, which is their own institution. They are ramping up military spending, pushed by Trump, by the way, to 5% of GDP.JorgeThey are reintroducing conscription in some countries.HamidThere's been mass protests in Germany against this. And they're slashing social spending, opening the path for extreme social turmoil. And they know this. You can read them in their own papers.JorgeAnd in the process, they are completely discrediting themselves. Was it on Monday they had this meeting of Merz, Macron and Starmer, and you look at them and you look at the approval ratings, and each one is worse than the other. I think Merz is 21%, Starmer is, what is it, 11%. And Macron can’t be much higher than any of these. These are completely discredited governments. They continue to rule on the basis of a completely irresponsible policy of continuing this war, ramping up military spending and cutting on social spending, provoking a social explosion in many of these countriesHamidAnd the similar situation you have in Gaza. Devastating war, extreme barbarism. Tens of thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands maimed millions, the whole entirety of the population of Gaza scarred for life, almost all buildings destroyed, infrastructure, pure barbarism, but also destabilizing the entirety of the region, destabilizing Israel itself. And yet, as long as the music is playing, you have to keep dancing. That's what Netanyahu has been doing. He's been pushing ahead, pushing this war to protect himself, his own power, his own rule. And even now, there's supposed to be a peace or developing peace or ceasefire. There's nothing on, just. I mean, there's been almost 800 official transgressions by Israel of the ceasefire. 6,000 trucks are waiting at the Rafah crossing, not being allowed to go in with aid. By the way, the Green Zone, which is more than 50% of Gaza's territory, is still occupied by Israel. And by the way, there was an Israeli general the other day who said, we're not going to leave it, we're going to stay there. And they’re demolishing houses, basically taking it over. Nothing has been solved.JorgeNot to speak of what's happening in the West Bank in the meantime, where they’re increasing the encroachment of Palestinian territories, where they are arresting people, they're killing people, they're increasing the settlements and so on.HamidSo this is barbarism and a festering wound. And they keep doing it, even though it destabilizes their own system. In Sudan, we saw the same thing. Hundreds of thousands dead in a devastating civil war fueled by who? By three American allies, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Supported by who? The RSF, by the way, who has been vilified as these terrible. Well, they were trained by the EU to the tune of several billion euros, to be border guards just to prevent migrants from coming to the eu.JorgeExactly.HamidThe arms that they use are British. There's been a scandal now with British officials telling people in Africa not to speak so negatively about the RSF. I mean, this is the most disgusting force you can possibly imagine. And this is, I think, this sums up the level of the world situation in a way. You have an economic crunch, increased competition between, between the, the powers and the nations, increased friction between the nations, and America in decline, losing control over its allies and its adversaries, and at the same time foisting elements of barbarism. But there's another, other side to it as well, which is that American imperialism has never been as hated as it is as it is today. And it's probably partially also through the Gaza war. But it is the most hated force on the planet and it's one of the most radicalizing, quite rightly so. Yeah. And it's one of the most radicalizing elements in the situation today.JorgeIf I can add one point before we move on. You said earlier on about whether Trump was a peace president or not. Even if you. Look, we just said this ceasefire in Gaza is no ceasefire at all. But even if the Trump plan was to go ahead, which is very unlikely, but even if it was to go ahead, it means what? It means the setting up of a foreign body, foreign administration to rule over Gaza, controlled directly by Trump and Tony Blair, although I think now they removed Tony Blair from it. It's a bit unpopular, but how is this a peace in reality, how is this a solution? There's no solution. The alternative that the Palestinians have been given by Trump is either genocide and ethnic cleansing or the complete subjugation, the disarming of any people, any possible resistance in Gaza and the complete subjugation in a destroyed territory by a foreign power. How is that self determination or anything?HamidWestern values. That's what we call Western values. That's how we import, export Western values to the Middle East. Now we just talked about the, that that was the state of the world's. The international rules based order. Let's move on to democracy, another Western value. What's the state of democracy?JorgeNot very good.HamidWhat is the state of Western democracy today?JorgeThere was this article, I think you got the quote there. There was an article in the Financial Times that put it very starkly. Basically what they're saying, the ruling class is saying is we have a problem. The problem is that democracy can only work if people think they have a stake in it. The people think that they can get something from it. This is what the problem is.HamidShould I read it out? Because I think actually they're more radical than you are. Listen to this. They say this is an article in the FT from a few days ago called ‘Labor is Slow Marching Working People to Populism’ and it says “capitalist democracy relies on a belief that the interests of ordinary voters are sufficiently aligned with the interests of the more successful. The shares of the pie, of course, are unequal”, of course, “but the have nots must see a path to become haves. The have sums to having more. The chance of a home, a job that more than covers the bills, prospects for their children and so on. This is the stake in the system that creates the alignment of interests and embeds political stability. The central crisis of Western politics since the financial crisis has been the erosion of this promise for what happens to liberal democracy and the capitalist model when rising numbers question if they will ever have that stake”.JorgeBasically saying that bourgeois democracy cannot exist in this period of capitalist crisis. That's what they're saying. And they're not wrong. They're not wrong. Because what happens when people realize that they no longer have a stake or any future in this system? Two things happen. One, obviously a massive discrediting of all the bourgeois institutions, which leads to massive levels of abstention everywhere, in all elections going up, and also the rise of anti establishment political forces of the right and of the left wherever they exist, but mainly now of the reactionary right. And this is what's happening everywhere. And what measures do the established parties take in order to try to stop this process? They further curtail democratic, democratic rights.HamidYeah. In Romania they canceled the election and yes, jailed the the main candidate because they didn't like him.JorgeYeah.HamidIn France, they took Le Pen to court and barred her from standing.JorgeYes.HamidThey tried the same thing with Trump, but he was too powerful and too slippery. In Germany.JorgeIn Germany, they're talking about the AfD is what is an anti constitutional party. So therefore we're going to bar them from standing. They haven't gone that far. But the Secret Service issued a report saying that this party is outside of the constitution. So basically, democracy works as long as you are within the very narrow confines of accepting not only the capitalist system, but massive austerity, massive cuts, attacks on the working class. If you, in one way or another, in a demagogic way, even step out of this, then, then you're not democratic anymore.HamidYeah. Well, this morning I was coming to work and I thought, I was thinking about Iran. You know, in Iran you have a guardian council which vets all the candidates for all the elections. And this is. Oh, this is terrible. This is, this is how they do it in the Middle East. They say, you know, and anyone who stands outside of the Islamic Republic or who is opposed to is barred from standing.JorgeAnd yes.HamidSo there's a very narrow field of those who are allowed to stand. How is this any different? No, it's not. It's not very different. I mean we are not. We don't have anything to do with the AfD. It's a. It's a reactionary bourgeois party. Same with the Le Pen and all of these people. But it's, it's a sign. It's a symptom of a ruling class that does not want to, jealously protects its own power at the time when it's crumbling and has no support in society.JorgeYou had the Caerphilly by-election in Wales just a few weeks ago where the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, the two parties that have ruled the political bourgeois political system in Britain for 100 years, they came last. Between the two of them, they got less than 10% of the vote. So discredited they are. And the panicking over this question because this is the only way they have of implementing these measures. We have said many times this is one of the characteristics of 2025. Germany is. Sorry France. Germany is coming after. But France is maybe the most clear example of this where the needs of the capitalist class to implement a massive program of cuts. I think it's 60 billion euro worth of cuts. Enter directly into conflict with the functioning of the democratic parliamentary system because they can't find a parliamentary majority that will implement these measures because some of these politicians bless them, they want to be reelected for their own jobs.HamidYeah. No one wants to vote for it. And we see in every western country a complete destruction of the old political system. In Britain the Tories upholding abysmally. I can't remember. Labour is losing. You have reform as the top.JorgeConsistently Reform is 30% polling 30% since February. And Labour is now 9 or 10 points behind in most of the opinion polls.HamidIn the U.S. The Republican, I mean Trump is very unpopular but amazingly the Democrats are even more unpopular than Trump is. In France, all of the major. The old traditional parties have lost most of their support. In Germany, the coalition, the traditional coalition, the SPD, the CDU extremely unpopular.JorgeThe very fact that they have to have a coalition between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats in order to have enough votes to. To have a semblance of government is.HamidAnd all of this is a reflection of essentially the class struggle in a. In a way the system is hated. All of the representatives of the system are hated them. In all of the elections in the western countries in the past years, the majority part, the biggest how to say party has been none of the above has been the abstainers. It's been consistently bigger than all of the other ones.JorgeYes.HamidAnd the ones who, even the ones who win, win with very, very little support because no one really believes in anything they have to say. Of course there is a problem, we'll get back to that. But there hasn't been a consistent radical alternative on the left.JorgeYes.HamidAnd therefore the ball is passed on to the right. And you will see people like Trump, Farage, these populists, these right populists rising. But that is not the end of the process. I think that's the important thing to say. On the one hand, you have the crisis of the old, the crisis, the collapse of the middle, extreme political turmoil, and through the mistakes of the left, a vacuum being created that was partially filled out by right populist forces. And then what? And then we see the situation.JorgeNot ust the mistakes of the left, the bankruptcy and the betrayal of the left in the previous period, ten years ago.HamidExactly. But those who think that that is the end of it. This is a process. We're witnessing a process. A general crisis of capitalism at all levels. Complete disillusionment with the system and all that it entails and all that it argues for stands for. The class struggle rising, failing to find a true expression through a working class party, then being replaced partially and momentarily by right wing populists. And then what happens? Because this process is not going to stop.JorgeExactly. I'd say if you want to see, if you want to know what happens, just look at Italy. In Italy, they have had a Meloni government which is more or less the same kind of animal or political shade of animal as Trump. And they've had this government. And when this government came to power, everyone said, many political activists said, oh, this is the rise of fascism. The people have shifted to the right. And forgetting that most people abstained in that election. But never mind that now, in the last few weeks, couple of months, we've seen a massive explosion of the class struggle in Italy. A political general strike called by the main trade unions over a question of foreign policy, anti imperialism, against the genocide in Gaza, with the participation of hundreds of thousands, millions of people taking direct action, blockading harbors, train stations, main motorways and roads. And now today, as we're recording this program, there's a general strike in Portugal, there's a general strike in Italy tomorrow. This is the other side of this. When these right wing demagogic populists come to power, they are also unable to solve the problems that brought them to the presidency.HamidAnd they'll be faced with the same forces sooner or later. I think that can move us nicely over to the next bit which is what is the state of the working class and the class struggle? We've had lots of people asking us question on our channel saying when is the revolution coming? And I think the last year really speaking is a, is a, is a demonstration that what we are witnessing is not just a revolution here or there. We seeing a global revolutionary movement developing which is popping up all over. We've seen movements in Greece, in Serbia, very powerful revolutionary movements ongoing still on for more than a year now. We've seen the Gen Z revolutions, Indonesia, Nepal, Madagascar, Morocco, East Timor, the Philippines, Peru. Was there something in Ecuador as well?JorgeYeah, there was a big movement in Ecuador, big movement.HamidI don't know if it's part of the same thing.JorgeIt was a. Yeah, there was a general strike then.HamidWe've seen mass strikes in Italy, in Spain.JorgeIn France, the let's block everything movement in September.HamidYeah we've seen huge Palestine protests, hundreds and hundreds, millions all over the world.JorgeAustralia, Holland, in Britain in a consistent manner for over two years.HamidAnd all of this reflects the complete dead end of the system and the hatred and the seething anger against the system. What would you say is the unifying theme in all of these movements?JorgeI think there's more than one, but one of them is the participation of the youth. These movements are mainly led or propelled forward by a new generation. The mass media described the bourgeois media describes as the Gen Z revolution. But what we should say is that this is the generation of the 2008 crisis. It's the generation that's grown up in a world where there's no future. As the Financial Times was saying, there's no stake for them in this bourgeois democracy. The system is in crisis but at the same time as a genocide in Gaza, the climate crisis, violence against women, this young generation is rebelling against the whole of the capitalist system. They played a key role in all of these movements in Nepal, in Madagascar, in Morocco, everywhere in Indonesia. This is the generation, the generation that's driving this process. And also in France and in Italy in these big strikes, the youth played a key role. The second question is that these youth, they reject the whole of the political establishment. In the case of Nepal, the Communist Party was part of the government coalition. They were seen quite rightly as part of the establishment. They were also hated. In Indonesia, anarchist moods develop amongst the youth, not surprising. In Madagascar they overthrew the government and also didn't want the opposition. So in the end, some military figure came through that for lack of anything better. I think that these are maybe two main features of these movements. The youth, the generation that's driving this question, the rejection of all bourgeois politics. But if you want to see another character of this, another feature of this movement is that there doesn't seem to be any alternative on the left. So these movements, some of them, they get very far. Some of them overthrow the government. But what is put in its place is not a real alternative. There was a revolution. There was an overthrow of the government in Sri Lanka two years ago, overthrow of the government in Indonesia one year ago, overthrow of the government in Nepal. And has anything been solved? No, a new government's been formed, sometimes tacking a little bit left or involving some of the student leaders in the government. But this because the fundamental basis of the capitalist system has not been touched. They haven't solved anything.HamidYes, because the problem is not the individual government. The problem is a system in total decline. Yes, you have. They talk about AI. AI, AI, yeah. AI has huge potential, potential for humanity. With AI and robotics, you could reduce working hours to five, 10 hours a week and everyone could live a decent life. You could automate and industrialize and modernize the entirety of the world and connect it in all sorts of ways, raise living standards. But what is the role that AI is playing now is preparing the path for millions of layoffs and mass unemployment. This is the system we live in. On the one hand, the technology that we have brings enormous potential, and on the other hand, it's actually undermining the system. This is what Marx explained, that the productive forces are rebelling against the relations of production. And these revolutions don't touch any of that. We talked about it before. The extreme inequality and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny few. Well, that has not been touched. And that is the main problem. If you don't want to touch the ownership, the monopoly of a tiny group of people over the means of production, over industry, over the economy, over the banks and their monopoly over the state, which is organized violence against the majority. If you don't want to touch those things, then you can change however many representatives you want, but the fundamental system will remain the same.JorgeYeah, unfortunately, the idea. Many of these movements have been driven by the question of corruption and the obscene accumulation of wealth at the top. All completely correct, but because of the lack of the subjective, there's the lack of a revolutionary Marxist organization with enough roots in the movement. Many people get the idea that it's just a question of having cleaner politics, cleaner politicians, of tinkering with a democratic system, of election so that we get better, more responsive representatives, but in reality, without understanding that corruption and the accumulation of obscene wealth at the top is part and parcel of the capitalist system.HamidAnd I would say this, these movements show the enormous potential and creative, how do you say, potential of the masses. Yes, this mood exists.JorgeAnd courage. And courage. And courage.HamidThis mood exists everywhere. As opposed to what the left always say. Oh, people don't care. People are too selfish. No, the left, that is, they're describing themselves. Yes, These people without any education, revolutionary education, without any, how do you say, basis and theory or knowledge or organizational experience have achieved more. Even though they haven't achieved the ultimate goal. They have achieved more than the entirety of the left has the past 20 years.JorgeYears, sometimes in 48 hours, sometimes in very little.HamidTheir weakness, the lack of organization, the lack of a correct scientific program. I don't think we can, we can blame them. And I think that moves us to the next segment. We can stop it here. What is the state of the left? Because how can you blame people when these people for not attacking the, the centerpiece of the system, so to say, if no one else is saying it. All of the so called leftists, the so called radicals, what are they saying?JorgeWhenever, as a matter of fact, whenever there is even a glimpse of a left alternative, people flock to it. In Britain we saw the launch of the Your Party back in July, and in the space of two, three weeks, 700, what was it, 800,000 people signed up to join and then they made a mess of it. That's the second part of the story. In New York, the capital, what did they say? Capital of capital, the capital of capitalism. Mamdani started from nothing. He was polling what, 5% or 1%? And finally he mobilized a million people, won the election. He had tens of thousands of volunteers. On the basis of a seemingly radical sounding program that was offered, that people mobilized, people were prepared to support such a program. So that shows that the potential is there, but the actuality is very much lacking.HamidYes, it seems to me that Mamdani and Your Party, and also the Greens in Britain, the Green Party has taken off, has doubled its membership, is polling relatively well, sometimes number two in the polls.JorgeYeah, the Green Party has, What is it, 23 or 25, is the first party amongst all the under 49 year olds in Britain.HamidOn the basis of what? On the basis of talking about nationalizing the utilities, nationalizing the railways, abolishing the Landlords, abolishing landlords. Now I listened to a podcast by Zack Polanski, the leader of the Greens and he was as liberal as ever. But that's not what people see. People see all of these things which are very radical sounding, which taps into the revolutionary, latent revolutionary mood that exists in society. And I think what we're seeing is gradually political expressions coming to the fore of this new wave of, how do you say, revolutionary moods. That's beginning to. We had the first wave after 2008. You have the Arab revolutions, the indignados. There's a wave of political expressions of that. Syriza in Greece, Podemos. Podemos in Spain. Jeremy Corbyn, the first time around, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders that declined because of the mistakes of those leaders. Now we see a new wave of radicalization and we're beginning to see kind of political expressions of that. And. But what are these people offering? That's the key question.JorgeNot much. If you go deeper into it. The main idea is tax the rich, which we discussed last week. This is the idea of Zack Polanski, this is the idea of this guy Zucman in France is the idea of Mamdani. And at bottom what it says is it's not the system that's the problem. It's not the capitalist system that's the problem. It's just that the rich are a bit too greedy and if they were just to contribute a little bit more, then we could solve the problem. And that's fundamentally wrong. I will say.HamidAlso, Zack Polanski said that we should just deficit finance, just take up more loans, more debt without realizing that's where a huge part of the problem is all this incredible debt. He says, yeah, but you know what? The markets don't. I saw an interview he did with The Rest is Politics and it was just, he, they, these guys are reactionary right wingers, but they were asking him, how are you going to finance this?JorgeYes.HamidSo we're just going to take up debt, we're just going to take up this debt, more debt, it doesn't matter. Money is just something that we invented. It's just an idea. Yes, well, it's an idea that, that demands to be repaid, isn't it? And if, and if you don't repay it, they're going to come for you. And we discussed all of that last week. But the other thing is this: capitalism could afford certain reforms in some parts of its lifetime. In the post war period, you had an exceptional period of growth for capitalism in particular in the Western world, massive developments of new industries, new technologies, and building on a completely destroyed basis of what was left after World War II.JorgeBasically, when the cake is growing, they can allow themselves to throw a few crumbs off the table to the working class.HamidBut now it's different. The system is in a crisis and the bourgeois are fighting with each other to protect their own piece of the cake. Each one of them would tell you, yeah, we should pay more wages, just not from my money, not me. And in between the nations they also say, well, yeah, but you know, America first, yes, and yeah, okay, yeah, sure, but Germany first. And that's how it works. This is a system you cannot control. And once it enters into a crisis, the room for reform dramatically narrows.JorgeRight.HamidAnd that's what these people don't understand, is that you can't reform this system. You can't in particular, in a situation of crisis, even in the normal times, we always say, look, yes, capitalism can find room for reforms, but the capitalist class will always find ways of undermining that reform and taking back with the left hand what they gave with the right. But in this situation it's even worse. And therefore this question of tax the rich, besides, from what we discussed last week, it can't be solved. Now we've had. What's her name in Britain, Zarah Sultana, I think, shows a new trend which, which will proliferate in the next period, which is. She's, she's. She started talking about not just nationalizing a few utilities which are unprofitable and.JorgeWhich even the Starmer government is doing. They renationalizing the railways because they're completely bankrupt and they, they need to be able to transport people from A to B to go to work.HamidAnd they're saving the capitalists who own that. But she has been saying we need to nationalize everything. The banks, the commanding heights of the economy, the banks, the construction companies, the 50 richest families in Britain, which control. Who control them. Basically what we talked about in the beginning. Yes, that little concentrated clique of parasites. And she's come under attack by all of the united forces of the left and the right.JorgeThey say, oh, this is maximalist. And what do you mean the workers can run the economy better than the. This is not on. The working class doesn't exist anymore. And this is so 20th century and this already failed. And I mean these old tired left wingers, they're so, they're so pathetic and they're so. Yeah, they’re basically skeptics and cynics. They do not believe that a revolution is possible. Now Sultana is not very clear sometimes in what she says. She does say some things that we fully agree. Workers can run the economy better than the unelected capitalists and parasites. That's fine, we fully agree, we fully back behind that program. But that needs to be developed into a proper program, into a proper explanation. Otherwise you run into problem.HamidWe've also seen that when she's come under pressure, she's wavered. She didn't have the answers. She was on Laura Kuenssberg’s how recently and she was asked what is the commanding heights of the economy. And then suddenly it wasn't the entire economy, it was the utilities. Right? And then she talks about creating cooperatives with cooperatives also privately owned entities. They're just owned by the. By the particular workers and all history shows that cooperatives, because they function within capitalism, they perpetuate the competition and the mindset of the capitalists. They eventually become just normal capitalist corporations themselves. Some of them huge multinationals in fact.JorgeLike the Mondragon group in Spain.HamidPrecisely. So what is needed is not just a vague program of nationalizing the entire economy. It must be a concrete program of complete expropriation of the wealth of the richest people. That means the 50 families, whatever you want. The 200 biggest corporations in every country. They need to be nationalized and put under the democratic control of the working class.JorgeThrough a democratic plan of production which produces not for the private accumulation of wealth of a small minority of parasites, but in order to satisfy the needs of the majority. Yes, need for housing, the need for education, the need for health care, which everyone can understand.HamidAnd at the same time, that is breaking the economic stranglehold of the capitalist class over the economy. But we also need to break the political stranglehold that they have through the breaking up of the bourgeois state, which is a state where 99% of officials are not. Not elected. And even those who are elected, they're completely controlled by the capitalist class.HamidA state where you don't have a division of. Between the legislative and the executive branches, where in fact you have democratic elections and recallability at all. All officials, all top officials of the state, all the dominant and controlling officials of. Of. Of the state, none of whom are to be paid more than. Than a workers wage. That would be a true democracy which would tie the political development of the country to the interests of the majority themselves rather than now, where inevitably the interests of the people within the state and the politicians, however well meaning they are to begin with, there's a pressure for them to be moved away and move closer to the capitalist class, which in reality controls. Yes, all of these things. That is the full program. That's the program of the communists. That's. That's the only program which can solve the question of inflation, sorry, corruption. Also inflation, de-industrialization, unemployment, housing, housing, decay of infrastructure, education, health care, the question of the elderly, pensions. You know, on the basis of that kind of transformation, you can use all of the existing technology and the means and the enormous creativity which exists within the population to raise us far beyond the conditions that the majority of people live in today.JorgeAs Engel said, the beginning of the real history of humanity. Leaving behind barbarism and the prehistory of mankind.HamidPrecisely. And that's what we're fighting for. Which is the last point today, which is we've seen the state of capitalism. What is the state of the communists?JorgeYes.HamidThe Revolutionary Communist International is an organization. Is an international Revolutionary Communist organizations organization. We have sections and parties and groups in more than 60 countries. Over the past year we reached 7,000 members globally. But I think we're well on our way to reach the 8,000 in a not too distant future. We have, we just held the Revolution Festival in Britain in the past. When was it? In November? November, more than.JorgeI think it's 1100.Hamid1100 people participated. We have 1300 members in Britain organized Communists who study the idea, the theory of Marxism and prepare for. For revolutionary events. We've had events all over the US in Italy and Canada. We have 750 members each, each. Lots of other countries, all western countries. basically we have sections in, if not all of the Latin American countries, the vast majority of Latin American countries.And elsewhere as well. We just had a World Congress this year. 350 people participated in person, but two and a half thousand people from over 60 countries again participated online.And we've had a series of schools, as I said, the Revolution Festival. We had the Montreal School in. In February in Canada with more than 600 people. We have a website, we have podcasts, we have a theoretical magazine. We just did a documentary which has gotten 40,000 views in the past couple of months. And actually that's just online because I know thousands of people have been watching it in live events all over the world. We have this podcast which is. Our podcast in total has hit the million lifestyle lifetime streams mark. And I would say and on YouTube we have had 750,000 views just for the past year. And I would say that's just the international part of it. We our different national sections are adding hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views and listens to all of these. And I would say it's never been easier to be a communist than it is today. Yes, we are still a very small force because as all of these movements develop, we are not big enough to actually make an impact and to actually be take a lead in any of them yet. But that is what we're building towards. But at the same time, our ideas, which for decades were seen as outlandish, demonized and abstract, and demonized heavily by the ruling class, is now coming true.JorgeMakes sense. Yeah.HamidThe idea that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, people will say, yeah, that's. Is it really going to be like that, is actually happening today.JorgeYes.HamidAnd therefore we see a massive wave of radicalization.JorgeYes, it is true, as you say, we have to have a sense of proportion. We have 7,000 members. That's a very small force in the general scheme of things. But I think that the most important question is the trajectory. That is, all of our sections are growing, are growing at a very fast speed. And we find out there that there is a thirst for ideas. It's not only people who say, yes, I'm a communist, I want to get organized. There is a growing number of people who come to you. This is my experience by selling the paper before my meeting of my branch of the RCP. Many people say, you ask them, are you a communist? They say, no, but I want to know more. Tell me more about it. What is this about? Open to these ideas? There is no instinctive, oh, this is very maximalist. Or this is outlandish this. No, no, no. They say, yeah, well, I mean, yeah, capitalism is in crisis. Tell me more about this communism. How do we get there? What does it mean? How will it work? What will it look like? There is a growing thirst for ideas. Inevitably, we are too small to capitalize on all of it. But I will say there is an urgency in building our organization. Trotsky said once, Trotsky said, a small axe can fell a big tree as long as it's sharp. And this is the basis of our organization. Sharp Marxist ideas and theoretical understanding. Theoretical understanding of what? Of how capitalism works. The history and the experience of the working class movement, its defeats, its victories, the history of the Russian Revolution, which was the only successful time when workers took power and held it. And this is how Marxist theory is useful for the struggle. We need a sharpened axe in order to fall the capitalist system. And this is what we're trying to build.HamidPrecisely as Lenin said, without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. And that is what we're about. Of course, for us, theory is not just we don't stick it to. We don't stick just to theory and bury ourselves in academic understanding and go on podcasts and try to appear clever. But it is all a preparation for action in the class struggle and as using theory as a tool to understand the world so that we can change it.JorgeExactly.HamidAnd so if any of you guys out there are interested in these ideas and agree with them or want to hear more, if you have things that you want to discuss with us, do contact us on marxist.com/join-us. I think we'll put the link in the description.And see and come and hear about what it's like to join a revolutionary, international, revolutionary communist organization. I think that's a good place to end it. It's been a incredible year, but as all good things, it must come to an end. And so must this season of Against the Stream. And we'll be back again on the 15th of January, after a little break, but we'll be back stronger and better than before. Thank you very much. My name is Hamid Alizadeh. I was here today with Jorge Martín. We'll see you soon.
