[Podcast] The Epstein files and the crisis of Trumpism

The biggest crisis of Trump’s second term is unfolding over the Epstein files. Having initially promised to release the trove of documents detailing Epstein’s crimes and his rich and powerful customers, Trump – one of those customers – quickly changed his tune once in power.

However, this opened a rift within the MAGA movement and woke many up to the fact that Trump, far from “draining the swamp”, is part and parcel of it. Now he’s U-turned again and is expected to finally publish the files. But this threatens to shine a light on depravity, debauchery and unaccountability of the ruling class. 

Meanwhile, the regime in Ukraine is facing a crisis on the frontlines as well as within the regime. City after city is being taken by the Russian army, while a corruption scandal is implicating more and more of Zelensky’s inner circle. 

In this week’s episode of Against the Stream, Josh Holroyd and Hamid Alizadeh sit down to discuss all this and more. 

Against the Stream is the Marxist current affairs podcast of the Revolutionary Communist International. It airs weekly on YouTube on Thursdays at 6pm GMT.

 MAGA Mutiny Over Epstein Forces Trump U-Turn – Revolutionary Communists of America

Psychology’s “Dark Triad” and the Billionaire Class – Psychology Today

Scoop: Trump plan asks Ukraine to cede additional territory for security guarantee – Axios

Scoop: U.S. secretly drafting new plan to end Ukraine war – Axios

The endgame approaches in Ukraine – Ben Curry

Josh

They were apparently asking him, are you for the forgotten people like us or are you for the Epstein class? People are talking about it in terms of it's not just an evil individual. There is actually something, uh, inherently evil about the ruling. Like, what do they mean by an Epstein class? It's not simply a class of paedophiles or a class of pimps. It is the New York financial elite. And beyond actually that, it is the elite itself. And that is incredibly dangerous from the standpoint of the capitalist system.

Hamid

Welcome to Against the Stream, the podcast which analyses world events in order to reveal the true class interests behind them. While we aim for the highest objectivity, we don't claim to be impartial. We stand unapologetically on the side of the workers and the poor, the people that make the world go around. This podcast is for them. 

Yesterday, the US Congress voted to release the files related to Jeffrey Epstein. But what does this mean for the class struggle? And why does capitalism seem to create so many depraved creatures? Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the corruption scandal surrounding Zelenskyy's inner circle is moving closer to the President himself. And at the same time, the US is pushing for a new peace deal with Russia. We're also going to be answering a question from one of our viewers. Why do we seem not to be criticising Russia as much as. As the West? And what is the true Communist position on the Ukraine war? 

My name is Hamid Alizadeh and I'm here today once again with, uh, Josh Holroyd.

Josh

Hi, Hamid.

Hamid

Welcome back. You weren't supposed to be here. We were supposed to have Niklas in, but he got very ill last minute and, uh, get well soon Niklas! You were, you were kind enough to step in. 

Um, now this Epstein thing is, Is blowing up the entirety of the Internet, the media, the ether. Um, this is a person who's been accused, and probably rightly so. Yeah, for doing horrible things to women, uh, sex trafficking, uh, and underage women, underage women, sexual abuse, trafficking, um, extortion, all sorts of things. And he's heavily embedded in the American elite, in the Western elite.

Josh

Yeah.

Hamid

At the centre, at the centre of it. The people in his, uh, Rolodex are, uh, all very, very powerful people. And it's precisely that file, that contact sheet basically, that people want to be, uh, made public.

Josh

Yeah. And they want, um, the FBI's investigation files. Yeah, into Epstein as well. Um, to look at the leads that they were investigating.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

Because they believe that there will be individuals, quite a lot of individuals named in those files who are not only evading justice, but also are extremely influential, wealthy and important people.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

In the United States and in the global economy.

Hamid

Yeah. Ah, let's just spell it out. There's now a thousand women who've come out, uh, ah, revealing that they have been abused by, um, Epstein and his network of people, basically. He's basically been pimping them out, uh, to very rich and influential people on his island or in other places. They've been flown around the world, flown around the U.S. um, and, um, the powerful people so far named. But it's. It's all very vague, but it's clearly been named. Uh, who. People who've had very close relationships with Epstein have been Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, who was, uh, the treasury secretary of Bill Clinton. He's now, I think yesterday resigned from all positions. Yeah.

Josh

You stepped down from OpenAI, didn't he?

Hamid

Yeah. Um, which is, uh, the new hope of the American economy. Um, Peter Thiel, billionaire, also, uh, a madman himself. We can talk about that. The, uh, Prince, uh, Andrew. Our very own British prince. Andrew Peter Mendelssohn.

Josh

We should call him Andrew Mountbatten Windsor now because he's had his title officially.

Hamid

Andrew, formerly known as Prince.

Josh

Yeah.

Hamid

And, uh, um, Peter Mendelssohn, former great hope of the British, uh, diplomatic establishment in the U.S. Steve Bannon, uh, Bill Gates, formerly world's richest man, still probably one of them. Ehud, uh, Barak, former, uh, Israeli prime minister, prime minister, Minister and uh, head of intelligence. Um, although not all of these are, uh, necessarily implicated in the abuse side of things, but they're definitely heavily involved with, uh, Epstein. And of course, not to forget Donald Trump himself, uh, who clearly had a close relationship, at least in certain periods, with Epstein. Um, now one thing that I think stood out to me was the failure of Trump to stop this because he did everything in his power to stop this. And I think this is an important case. It's an important point.

Josh

Um.

Hamid

This case has been brewing. First of all, Trump himself brought it up. Yeah, he brought it up because this was obviously a case that was being swept under the carpet for years and through many, uh, uh, uh, administrations. Democrats, Republicans, uh, everyone knew about this. Epstein's, uh, cases were very, very widely known. And also the irregularities around them were highly irregular. The way that the FBI carried them, uh, the way it carried itself in investigating Epstein, the way that his imprisonment, his first stint in prison, where he basically lived like a king. Um, it was highly irregular. All of these administrations, uh, held their hand over him. Trump came out Saying, no, no, we need to bring out the files. And as late as this, uh, February, Pam Bondi, uh, said that, oh yes, the files are on my desk. 

But suddenly over the spring they made a U turn and they say, oh, there's nothing there, there's nothing to be seen. And they went double, triple down on stopping the release of these files, basically. But in the meantime you had other Democrats and ordinary people, of course, wanting to see what was going on. Uh, you had Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's been coming out, who's a Republican, who's a hardcore MAGA influencer or you know, politician, and she's been clashing increasingly with Trump on healthcare costs, on other things, and now on this question, um, and he disowned her, basically. So he, um, he withdrew his endorsement. But you see, if he had done this with any Republican a year ago, their careers would have been finished. But it seems to me that this has actually made Marjorie Taylor Greene more prominent and has pulled Trump's popularity down.

Josh

Yeah.

Hamid

And in the end the bill was passed with one vote against him.

Josh

Yeah. So he was initially opposed to this bill. Yeah, uh, this bill was brought by Democrat, ah, congressmen, but also with the support of a small number of Republicans. And Trump was opposed to it. And whipping. In Britain we use the expression whipping, basically forcing his representatives in the Republican Party to vote against, threatening not only Marjorie Taylor Greene, but threatening anybody who voted for it with being primaried, in other words, that he would support another Republican candidate to take their place in the. Threatening them with their jobs. Right.

Hamid

Mhm.

Josh

Then, uh, was it earlier this week, not long ago, only a few days ago, he did a U turn and said now all Republicans must vote for it.

Hamid

Which is only because he knew that the rebellion against him was going to be so powerful.

Josh

Exactly.

Hamid

That he couldn't, couldn't, uh, he needed to do it, basically. Um, and it explains the disappointment with the Trump presidency in the US Obviously because he hasn't solved any of the problems that he promised to solve. Cost of living. There's a. Also there's so much talk about the affordability crisis in the US 1/4 of Americans, according to bank of America, um, are living paid paycheck to paycheck after paying necessities, which is rent, utilities. They've spent 95% of their income.

Josh

Right.

Hamid

Which means that they cannot afford any extra unforeseen, uh, bills, uh, and expenses and certainly nothing above. Just basic, basically getting by.

Josh

Um, and this was a major plank of his campaign, wasn't it? I'm gonna Bring down prices. I'm gonna, um, introduce more jobs and good quality jobs.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

Actually I read somewhere that a million jobs have been lost in the US economy.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

In 2025.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

Big companies like Amazon are getting rid of tens of thousands of jobs.

Hamid

Massive amount of layoffs are on the way. Uh, then he, uh, he said he wouldn't go to wars. He bombed Iran. Mhm. He didn't really stop the war on Gaza. I mean, we'll see what happens. He says he's brought peace to Gaza. I don't think there's much peace coming, coming there.

Josh

Not that I can see for now.

Hamid

It didn't stop the Ukraine war. We'll get to that.

Josh

And he's threatening war with Venezuela.

Hamid

Yes. And uh, his tariffs has actually led to higher prices, uh, a decline of the dollar which is pushing up inflation. Um, and uh, he's now had to actually backtrack on a whole series of tariffs, especially on food prices. He's had to come out, say he, he wants to bring, he wants to give this tariff, uh, dividend check, $2,000 to every American who earned less than $100,000, clearly as a means to appeasing the working class, his working class base. Um, and uh, I just read a headline, I haven't looked into it, but, but apparently lots of Democrats, sorry, Republicans, are now saying we can't vote for that. So that's not going to go through either. 

But uh, it is obviously a big thing and it shows that his coalition is falling apart, isn't it? We said when Trump was elected, we said, yes, Trump is a reactionary and a capitalist, but his coalition is formed out of several divergent forces with diverging interests. One part of it are billionaires. Ah, Such as Peter Thiel, such as, um, Elon Musk. Um, then there's the whole middle class. Libertarians or reactionaries, such as libertarians or the evangelicals, and these kind of layers. And then there's a big working class layer.

Josh

Yeah.

Hamid

Who didn't vote for Trump because he was a reactionary, but voted for Trump because he in a distorted manner gave expression to their class anger. M part of which was related to Epstein.

Josh

Epstein, yeah. He was seen as somebody, although he might be a billionaire himself, he was seen as being outside of this establishment, this swamp that kept on carrying out the same old policies every single administration. And he came along and said, I'm a businessman, I get things done. I'm gonna lower prices, increase jobs and all that. And um, quite a large section of the American working class, uh, and not just white workers in America as well. Voted for him in order to carry that out, but they didn't give him a blank check. And obviously quite a lot of people on the left thought that, oh, well, this is a sign that the majority of the American population is sliding into fascism or whatever, turning in a rightward direction. We're starting to see. Well, I'd say we were already seeing from the beginning, but we're seeing even more clearly the hollowness of that analysis and the contradictions which were, um, inherent within that coalition that Trump succeeded in establishing.

Hamid

That coalition is breaking apart as we predicted, and the working class is becoming more radicalised, I would say.

Josh

Yeah. As you were saying, this Epstein issue is a real point of focus for that radicalization. I think it's, it's easy to underestimate the level of anger and revulsion that is felt by millions of ordinary people.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

At this case and at what is seen as, and I think correctly seen as a cover up as well.

Hamid

Yeah. Yes. Because this is what the Americans people see. They see Epstein, with all of these rich and powerful people committing these horrible crimes. Horrible crimes. And all of these institutions of the state and the media.

Josh

Mhm.

Hamid

By the way, also covering it up. Everyone knew about this. Nothing was done for years and years and years until it exploded and they had to do something. But even then there's so many questions. How did he die? He was, he was on suicide watch. Right. And the camera just happened to be turned off. And there's a lot of conspiracy theories.

Josh

And you can understand why.

Hamid

I understand 100. And I'm sure that there is an element of truth, uh, a strong element of truth to it. And I think, I think this also, you know, obviously this encapsulates the feeling. This becomes the, ah, this embodies the feeling that everyone has towards the system.

Josh

Yeah.

Hamid

Right. Um, that, it. We are ruled by a class of people who don't care about us. Not only they don't care about us, they're criminals, they're parasites, they leech off of us, they abuse us. Um, they do whatever, whatever they please.

Josh

And protect each other.

Hamid

They protect each other. And there is a cabal, kind of, you know, basically there is what, what, what a lot of people believe and still believe is that there's a cabal of abusers, sexual abusers and paedophiles, criminals who run this world.

Josh

Yeah.

Hamid

And in a way it's true. Yeah, that is absolutely true.

Josh

You know, on that I was listening to a, uh, New York Times podcast, the opinions podcast. Podcast and the, they were interviewing this Ro Khanna guy who was the person who first put this uh, bill to get the Epstein files released. And it was interesting. I mean this is no endorsement of him as a Democrat or whatever, but what he was saying was genuinely very interesting that he, after Trump was elected he went to these uh, more rural areas in these so called forgotten towns that have been de. Industrialised, that have got high unemployment. And he went to talk to people who lived there to talk about economic questions basically about how to revitalise their areas. And um, I'm sure that they raised lots of demands in relation to that. 

But one thing that he said in this interview was they kept talking about Epstein and the Epstein files. Uh, and one thing they said to him that he reported on this podcast really struck me was they were apparently asking him, are you for the forgotten people like us or are you for the Epstein class? And I thought the Epstein class, that just pinpoints the issue here, exactly what you were talking about, that they don't see it. And I think in the past there have been scandals. Maybe not exactly like this, but there have been big scandals in, throughout history really. Um, and we can talk about why that is, but I think in the past if this has happened 20 years ago, people. Well it was happening 20 years ago, but if it had blown up like this 20 years ago, people would have probably thought oh, this guy was a real evil guy. We just need to make sure this never happens again. We need to make sure that justice is done and that we move on and that it's more just uh, that this is an evil person who needs to be uh, well he can't be uh, brought to justice of course, but whatever. 

Um, now people are talking about it in terms of it's not just an evil individual. There is actually something uh, inherently evil about the ruling. Like what do they mean by an Epstein class? It's not simply a class of paedophiles or a class of pimps. It is the New York financial elite. And beyond actually that it is the elite itself. And that is incredibly dangerous from the standpoint of the capitalist system.

Hamid

Huh. I think it's a powerful statement. The forgotten people or the Epstein class?

Josh

I couldn't put it better myself.

Hamid

That should be the title of this podcast. Uh, that should be our, our name in a way. Uh, the forgotten people versus the Epstein class. I think it really sums it up. It sums up how people feel. I mean, um, and the fact that it, it falls into this general mood of radicalization and I think I Mean, we get to this, but it's an important part of the revolutionary process I think are uh, these scandals in the sense that they accentuate the hatred and they concretize the hatred that people feel for the system. Because it proves everything they could feel somehow, but they couldn't really put a finger on, you know, of how criminal, how rotten this whole thing is. 

Um, and it's what's interesting is this is not an isolated case. No, you know, and another interesting, as you say, you know, 20 years ago people say, oh, this is just a bad person. But a lot of people are realising it's not. And I think that's. That reveals a very high level of consciousness because if we look at history, there's a lot of this stuff going on. I mean we had Jimmy Savile in uh, in Britain. Similar type of guy, by the way, this kind of charlatan upcomer, Uh, charlatan fixer type, uh, who kind of. He, he survives as uh, one of the comrades. This morning he said it's like uh, they're kind of lubricants for the system. It's kind of fixes.

Josh

He became indispensable.

Hamid

They become indispensable at ah, people who do the dirty work.

Josh

And uh, what's interesting with Savile is he wasn't a billionaire financier, he was a DJ and just basically a clown really, who became famous for his work as a dj. But also, and this is another significant thing that you see a lot with these scandals with his charity work. Uh, the kind of smiling face of the rich helping out the downtrodden and vulnerable, which for people like him also gives him access to the vulnerable. He cultivated relations with people high up in the police. He cultivated a friendship with, now the King Charles, uh, he cultivated a relationship with Thatcher. And these people like King Charles and Thatcher, they weren't innocent victims who were like duped by this person. They sought him out. Why? Because his fame and the love that people had for him, which was carefully groomed by the media establishment as well. Um, for all his charity work, Thatcher in particular. Thatcher was of course known at the time. She was known as Thatcher the Milk Snatcher because she cut free milk for children at school. She was known as this nasty, heartless politician. Her old line was like, oh well, the state shouldn't be providing these things. People should just get by on themselves. 

But the other side of that is that if you have somebody who's a so called national treasure, known for his charity work raising thousands and thousands of pounds for new hospitals and stuff. You can cover your image with people like that. Likewise, King Charles was unpopular for a number of reasons and so all of the members of the establishment were actually helping to elevate him in order to protect themselves, which is why he became untouchable. Like people, I think when his. When things really broke out, um, after he died, people assumed that all of the, um, survivors came forward after he died because they knew they were safe. That's not actually true. Quite a few people had reported it to the police and, you know, rank and file police had started investigating it and in many cases higher ups had siloed it off into secret files so that when future cases would come up in different counties in England, different parts of England, when they looked into it, they weren't able to find the information to build a. Sufficient case to take it forward. So there was an establishment going up, going on since the 1970s.

Hamid

And just, just for those who don't know who Jimmy Savile is, he was a children's BBC presenter. Yeah, uh, children's presenter at the BBC, at dj. Very popular person, kind of a household name.

Josh

Yeah.

Hamid

In, uh, in that period. And uh, he was in. He was shown to be involved in all sorts of necrophilia, sexual abuse of disabled people and, uh, you know, I.

Josh

Mean, a real monster.

Hamid

A real, real monster. And he was. It was covered up by the entire. There's so many scandals about the people who covered him up, who consciously went out of their way to cover up the tracks, his tracks. Um, but yes, I mean, there's also. In the 90s, there was a scandal in Belgium which involved the paedophile ring involving the entirety of the establishment. Judges, politicians, all sorts of people. And that led actually to a revolutionary movement. Hundreds of thousands of people on the streets. They could have overthrown the regime right there and then. Uh, but it didn't happen. 

Recently, um, there's a new scandal's come up involving rich people again. Uh, and abuse of power is. During the siege of Sarajevo in Bosnia, where these Italian, whatever it was, uh, people created, ah, man, human hunting parties. Basically you could pay, ah, 80 to €100,000 in, in the money of that. Of equivalent of that at that time, um, to go to Sarajevo which was besieged, and then snipe civilians.

Josh

Innocent people.

Hamid

Innocent people. And I mean the stories about that is horrible, horrible. Uh, again, interestingly, this was the person who's now at the centre. The witness was now at the centre of this case. He was a Bosnian intelligence officer. He said he did Report it back then. And the Italian intelligence military police came back and said is this won't happen again.

Josh

Right. So there was a couple, acknowledged it.

Hamid

They acknowledged it, it happened and they said we closed the route, it's not going to happen again. And then it was shut down, as far as I know. At least I haven't done a deep dive into this. There's me too again, powerful people. Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein. And. And it's just an epidemic. Uh, you see everywhere where there's power. Yeah, there's the abuse in that sense from a capitalist. In the capitalist system there is the abuse of power and often with the heavy kind of sexual undertone, but in all sorts of ways.

Josh

And it's not just power, it's the counterpart of power, which is the vulnerability and weakness of the poor and the forgotten people that these people in America were talking about. Um, and so that's rooted to inequality sometimes. I'm sure you've encountered this as well. There's this liberal idea, certainly see it in the media. I've also been confronted with it, uh, in conversation with people hold these ideas that you talk about inequality. You communists talk about inequality, but inequality isn't so bad if the economy's growing. And so everyone's getting a bit better off. If one person's a trillionaire and um, one person is earning 30 grand a year but is okay, that's better than just everybody being poor, for instance. Therefore, don't worry about inequality. All you need to worry about is absolute poverty. And then they'll often present extremely massage statistics to claim that that's going down as well. 

But actually inequality is a huge driver of this. We see it's in the nature of capitalism that it create, at the same time it creates billionaires and big established figures, uh, that can manoeuvre within the system and institutions that protect these people, deliberately or otherwise. But they do serve to protect these people. Um, you have a mass, you will always under capitalism have a mass of people who are poor, who are vulnerable. Um, you know, there's this bit, there's been this grooming scandal in Britain now that the girls that this affects are often girls from unstable, difficult backgrounds, poor. Nobody's, uh, looking after them, nobody cares where they are. And so they're congregating in places where people are grooming and exploiting them. Likewise, Savile first started his career as an abuser, if you like, started going to. They were a bit like kind of underage jails. They were basically homes for difficult, uh, children should we say children often that they didn't have parents or they're estranged from the parents. In other words, who was going to believe what they said? They were in there because they'd been bad.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

They weren't wealthy. And so he'd go and he'd take them on car trips and abuse them and basically say, like, even if you talk, they're not going to believe you. And that's actually what happened.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

And so then these people like Savile are able to exploit that and, uh, there's just. Capitalism creates the raw material for this everywhere.

Hamid

Yeah. Well, one of the victims of Epstein was on TV yesterday. One of the comrades showed this to me, um, where she said she, her mother had the brain tumour and Epstein took over the paying of her bills for her treatment. And then he used that as a lever against her to basically put her deeper and deeper into this sort of business and threatened, uh, to withdraw that money and that support if she didn't cooperate. Right. So there you have it. On the one hand, the extreme poverty and misery of ordinary people and the power and impunity of the super rich. 

There is a, um. I mean, uh, this is old knowledge, but there's an article in Psychology Today which is called Psychology's Dark Triad and the Billionaire Class. And it goes through, uh. There is a lot of evidence in the past many years that, that it suggests or that proves that the amount of psychopaths and narcissists at the. In the 1% is much, much, much higher. Right. Than anywhere else. And they talk about the dark triad of Machiavellian ism, basically scheming, you know, manoeuvring, extorting, shameless, um, discompassionate behaviour and psychopathy, uh, psychopathic behaviour and narcissistic behaviour. And, uh, they, they just list a whole series of studies that show how they are more prevalent amongst the super rich. Um, they say the super rich have less empathy, less compassion, higher levels of psychopathy and, and narcissism.

Josh

Not our words.

Hamid

Not our words exactly.

Josh

Words of Psychology Magazine.

Hamid

It's quite interesting. I mean, they don't come. Come to it from a class point of view, but. But they draw a lot of interesting, uh, conclusions. Uh, they say ordinary people, support people, have a bigger need for collaboration and to standing together. They can't, they can't survive on their own.

Josh

Hm.

Hamid

And they need to collaborate and therefore they develop much more social and empathetic traits. In other words, whereas super, um, rich people really don't need other people. Most other people Are competitors to them or some, or people who want someone, something from them and they need uh, this is today's super rich are more likely to find close relationships especially with people of lesser means quite unnecessary in their goal oriented pursuits. Obviously as a working. 

We always say that the mentality, the psychology of the working class is precisely based on its need to collaborate. That's what gives it its social, its communist consciousness in essence. Although I would say that's also a general human trait because humanity needs, is a social animal and it needs society. Yeah. And collaboration to survive. So in effect what you have is a ruling class moving away from the human norm, from the natural human norm.

Josh

It's interesting you say that because often um, when things like this are brought up people I've seen people kind of shrug and say well that's human nature.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

You're always going to have poor vulnerable people and you're always going to have powerful people who abuse that to their own ends. And so it's just part of the kind of human disease. Yeah, but what you pointed out is that. Okay, I mean human nature clearly doesn't exclude this behaviour otherwise it wouldn't be happening. But actually how our human uh, nature expresses itself is determined by our conditions.

Hamid

Exactly.

Josh

And there's something about our conditions that are very, very wrong to be producing this on this scale and this frequency all the time.

Hamid

Exactly. So Marx says social being determines consciousness. Right. And that's the whole point. And I mean they, they list. I, I really suggest people to read it because the examples they bring is just, it's just uh, insane. How many in the most mundane things such as there's a crossing, they, they monitored, some people monitor the crossing and they said rich expensive cars stopped four times less for pedestrians than cheap cars. I mean it's. But then they had other studies about just signs of ability to read other people's facial um, and emotional expressions which is a sign of empathy. There's so many of them. They listed through and through. Um, and then at the end they said there are members of the 1% UM who act upon their dark triad inclinations and impulses. 

That's a serious problem because their extraordinary wealth gives them tremendous influence over our laws, our politics and our public square. And they're eager and able to use their power and resources to pursue a self serving agenda at the expense of the common good. Isn't that just a description of the logic of capitalism? I mean if you want to get ahead in business, what do you need to do? You need to be ruthless. The More ruthless you are, the better you are in competition, isn't it? Um, there's a logic to capitalism which there's a process of selection like in nature you can say, but m in business that selects the most ruthless, depraved, cold, cynical people, um, apart from anyone else.

Josh

Yeah. And as you were talking, I was thinking. Yeah. This behaviour like the human hunting.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

For instance, it shows this, this attitude and not stopping for pedestrians is a much smaller example. Yeah. Shows this contempt for human life that other people, the little people. Yeah. They, they are like ants.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

They're not the same as me. Um, that and that they don't matter. Like who cares if one of these people just disappears? Yeah. There's plenty more of them.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

But then thinking about it, I mean, isn't that how the capitalists approach the majority of society anyway? When you have these um, you know, scandals of people working in, in dangerous, deadly conditions. Um, there was, there was a gas explosion, a plant in, in India, in Bhopal which killed thousands of people and the company could have present, prevented that.

Hamid

We have the Grenfell Tower in Britain.

Josh

Absolutely.

Hamid

How many, you know, how many people died there? How many people, how many people living in really dangerous housing that the bourgeois know is dangerous? M General, uh, Motors, there was a scandal they had a faulty something in the car switch of some sort which meant that their airbags didn't work in certain conditions and the engines would switch off. A hundred people died in the 10 years that the company knew about this and didn't tell anyone. And then it came out. Um, we have cigarette uh, companies. The sugar industry. Yeah. Uh, the weapons industry, the opioid industry.

Josh

Um, just on the cigarette companies. After cigarettes started getting more heavily regulated in the west, cigarette companies started very aggressively marketing cigarettes to kids in Africa where they're saying regulation didn't exist. So they knew, they knew the issue.

Hamid

And then on top of that then you have just your ordinary day to day businesses which grind people down as hard as they possibly can in order to make a profit. And the better you would do that, the more inclined you are and the more prepared you are to force your workers to push them to the end of their limit and to pay them as little as possible, undermining their living conditions and life expectancy in a way, the better you'll do. So it's a part of capitalism. But I would also add, well and then there's obviously the wars, Ukraine, nation states, Iraq, uh, wars, the pillaging of Africa and the less advanced uh, world. Yeah. But I would Also say this, that you have this, you know, Marxist Marx said capitalism came to the world with blood dripping from its every pore. It's ingrained in capitalism this kind of brutality. But I think there's another element as well which is the, the um, the development, the financialization, so to say, the crushing domination of the stock market, the industrialization. 

What we've talked about a lot in the past in this podcast, the development of the capitalist class to this extremely parasitic, extremely short sighted, stockbroking class, M, in essence, uh, which brings the level of short sightedness to a new level. The fact that it's now a class which doesn't have a purpose, at least in the early days of capitalism they were, you know, the British were building, you know, the Americans were engineers and they were thinking decades and centuries ahead and they were building an infrastructure and industry and they were developing science and they had a certain historical purpose, you know, um, but they've completely outlived that. And today they, they just become parasites. They live off schemes, Ponzi schemes. By the way, Epstein was, was involved in quite a few of those, uh, in pillaging the state, uh, looting and that obviously again accentuates the most depraved ways of being.

Josh

Yeah, it's funny you say that. It reminds me of a quote from Marx in uh, 1850, when capitalism is still, it's maturing as a system, but in many respects the bourgeoisie is still playing a relatively progressive role in developing the economy. But he says this specifically about the stock exchange wolves. It's interesting that he calls them, um, stock exchange wolves, considering the film Wolf of Wall street, which Marx did not.

Hamid

Watch, which by the way, just is another example of the depraved nature of the bourgeois class.

Josh

Um, and he says that the finance aristocracy is what he refers to them, uh, in both its mode of appropriation and mode of living, replicates uh, the life of the lump and proletariat at the heights of bourgeois society. Now, now lump and proletariat in this context, he's talking about pimps, pickpockets, basically the kind of criminal underclass of society. And he's saying that uh, the people, that the stock exchange wolves are basically taking those habits, if you like, in that way of life, but placing it right at the very top of bourgeois society. And you can see that in the Wolf of Wall street as well.

Hamid

Yes, I mean if you see interviews with the guy that that movie is about M, it's a lot more depraved than that film actually, um, gives credence and these are the ones who run our world.

Josh

Yeah, they're more powerful now than in Marx's day. Marx was attacking them because they, they represented, if you like, a reactionary parasitical wing of a, of a capitalist class which was still actually developed, developing and striving towards power. The French capitalist class would develop things further. The industrial capitalist class still relatively weak by that point. So he was more talking about them, he was highlighting the finance aristocracy in France in the 1850s, uh, as actually a product of France's relative backwardness compared to say, England. Now the most advanced capitalist countries have the most developed, um, financial parasites.

Hamid

And they are all powerful.

Josh

Yeah, they are the masters of the universe.

Hamid

They have total power. You know, they say power corrupts, uh, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And that is what these guys, they have, they have almost absolute power.

Josh

Um, and there's another point that kind of was flowing from what you're talking about with the ruling class no longer playing a productive role. It reminds me of the stories from the um, you know, the days of the Roman Empire where the rich Romans, this wasn't a productive class. You know, the slave owners and the money lenders and all these kind of people, they weren't reinvesting it in industrialising the Roman economy. That didn't happen. They just, they would buy more slaves and um, they would do things like dissolving pearls in ah, acid, sorry, eating peacocks brains and uh, carrying out depraved torture and games of innocent people and slaves and stuff. What else did they have to do?

Hamid

And by the way, that is the time where you have the rise of the populists. Who are these breakaways from the ruling class who appealed to the masses?

Josh

Yeah, well, I mean, um, populism emerged slightly before then, but populism emerges at the same time or shortly after.

Hamid

Uh-huh.

Josh

The big latifundia, by which I mean the big slave plantation economy. So the more that slavery developed, the more this parasitical slave owning class developed and yet that class ends up splitting where. Yeah, you do have this interesting development where people from rich and noble Roman backgrounds, people like Julius Caesar for instance, joined what was called the Popular Party or the populists, who were turning to the poor Roman citizens, not the slaves, but the poor Roman citizens with a vote and um, offering them certain reforms, sometimes things like land reform, or if not reforming the whole system, at least giving them a plot of land, because often these were ruined peasants against the party that at the time was called the Optimist, Optimates by which Means the best or the excellent. And they were the represent the old, more aristocratic senators. And so in other words, it's the same class. Julius Caesar was part of the ruling class and he was from a very noble line, uh, but he was demagogically appealing to a wider layer of uh, Roman citizens against the super rich.

Hamid

Yeah. Ah, these are like the heads of the market, the Trumps and the Farages, although it's not quite a Caesar. Um, but this has revolutionary implications. I think that's the important thing that we need to talk about because, um, there is, you know, my favourite series of all time succession. For anyone who's out there. I don't know if I've quoted this, I've probably quoted this before because I just, I've seen this series three or four times and I think it's the best psychological analysis of the super rich. And by the way, uh, one of the foremost, uh, experts on narcissism, she did this on, on YouTube. She did this um, analysis of it and she said this is the best depiction of narcissism whatsoever. And Succession is about this super rich billionaire family. And she said they're all narcissists. Right. And it's funny because the people who wrote it did it by studying all the billionaire families, the Murdochs, the Trumps, the Kochs and all of the other ones and they kind of synthesise it into this series. But anyway, in this series there is a, um, there is a scene where there's one billionaire is talking to another one and he's saying, look, in ancient Rome they were considering giving everyone the same colour tunic, all the slaves the same colour tunics. But they decided not to do so because if the slaves could see how many they were, they would rebel and they would overthrow the people in power. 

Um, and obviously that's a powerful thing. If the working class could see how big and powerful it is, it would, it was, it would stand, it would rise up and would get rid of these parasites. One of the comrades, Daniel Morley, good friend of ours, uh, made a very interesting counter comment. He said, yeah, it's kind of a commentary on the movie itself because if everyone could see how rotten and decrepit the ruling class was, like these people in the, in the, in the series are. Mhm. They would rise up and overthrow them. And I think that's a powerful thing is these kind of scandals bring out the true nature of the society we live in. They unmask, you know, they unmask this polished surface of bourgeois democracy and Western values.

Josh

And bourgeois morality.

Hamid

Bourgeois morality. Oh, yes, exactly. Uh, and the Epstein thing is even more interesting because he was in touch with everyone. He has pictures with everyone. The Clintons, Obama from Trump, all of these people who wouldn't touch each other in normal times, who accuse each other of being rotten and decrepit. They were all connected through this one.

Josh

Guy because they're all in the same.

Hamid

Class and they all. None of them want to reveal these files. The Democrats didn't want to open it when they were in power. Now Trump doesn't want to open it. Whether he's in it or not, I don't think that matters. It's clear that a lot of his allies, uh, uh, uh, in, uh, it would be in it. And he's definitely connected to Epstein. And it has a profoundly revolutionary role. You were talking about the Reformation before this.

Josh

Yeah, because this point that you made, which I think is right, that capitalism as a system actually promotes this kind of thing, and that these horrendous abuses and crimes against humanity, they've been a permanent part of the history of capitalism. But that raises an important question. Well, if this has always been a feature of capitalism, and periodically you always have these kind of scandals popping up, why hasn't it already led to the overthrow? If all that's required is a big enough scandal that exposes the degeneracy of the ruling class, we should have had the world socialist revolution a long time ago. And I think that there's something about. 

It's not just the impact that this event is having, it's also what it's reflecting in other developments in consciousness that, um, when a system, when a social system. You look back further in history, when a social system is moving forward, is developing, the productive forces, the lives of the masses are relatively stable. Perhaps they're getting better. There's a certain sense of optimism. In other words, things work. That's what I'm getting at. When there's a sense that things are working and that therefore the ruling class, who's. Who's stewarding, you know, guiding, running the system, even if they're running it for their own benefit, it's working. There is this sense, you know, I mentioned before that, oh, these are just bad apples, or this is just a horrendous thing. How could. We can't even understand how terrible this thing is. Let's move on. Let's. Let's have an inquiry into why it happened. Learn the lessons, which you never learned, of course, and then move on. 

But then in periods, uh, often periods of transition, when the old system is decaying. And it's not simply a moral decay, it's a much deeper decay at the level of production, at the level of distribution, at the economy, all level, you know, of diplomacy, military. When a system is dying, essentially, you notice in these historical periods that it starts to be more of a focus on the institutions themselves. And you see that with the Reformation that, um, you know, going back in. And there's an article in the idem. Can't resist a plug of the In Defence of Marxism magazine. Uh, no other magazines are available.

Hamid

Josh, for the information of our viewers and listeners, is the editor of the In Defence of Marxism Theoretical magazine.

Josh

That is right. And, um, this summer, just gone, we published an article by Helene Bissonnette, who's a comrade of ours in Canada, on the subject of morality and the class struggle. Now, as Marxists, we don't think that morality is the driving force of history, that history is just this kind of realisation of a. Of a more elevated or end result of human morality. Um, but morality, um, first of all, morality has changed and been shaped by events and by the development history. But morality does play a big role in consciousness and class consciousness. And there are certain points of history, it's not all the time. There are transitional points in history where all of a sudden the moral outrage of the masses is directed at, uh, entire institutions and entire classes. And that is usually a harbinger of, um, huge revolutionary crises to come.

 And the Reformation is an excellent example of that, in my opinion, because you read people like Martin Luther and the language he uses, not just about, oh, this specific priest selling indulgences and corrupt practises, you know, he talks. And corrupt practises by the Catholic Church at the time were widespread scandals which were enraging people. But you read the language of Luther and he uses languages that I can't repeat on this show. Very earthy language, shall we say, to attack not just the Pope as an individual. That's because in the. Dante attacks the Pope as an individual. But back in the 13th century, but he says it's the papacy as a whole, the entire church establishment is completely rotten and sinful and must be overthrown. And that kind of moral outrage which he was expressing, he didn't just invent that. People were already thinking that that was followed by what. It was followed by the Peasants War in Germany, a, uh, revolutionary war, um, and the whole process of the Reformation, all of the wars and revolutions that are comprised by that term. 

Um, so when I see people talking about An Epstein class in the United States and where millions of people refuse to let this issue go. And people are talking openly about the. You know, we talk about the Catholic Church. I mean, the kind of high financial circles in Wall Street. This is almost like the Vatican of capitalism. You know, this kind of closed community of masters of the universe. Um, the conclave. Yeah. People are talking about this Vatican of capitalism in similar terms to Luther about the Catholic church in the 16th century. I mean, if I were part of the bourgeoisie, I'd be looking at that and feeling extremely worried.

Hamid

Yeah. This is not a case of an individual. It's a class question. It embodies everything that people feel in their bones is wrong with the system. And the hatred that it produces is an important revolution element in the revolutionary process. And we see that, uh, in all revolutionary periods, that hatred stemming from. From looking at this degeneracy and decay is an important driving force of revolutionary movements. Because ordinary people don't learn from books and theory. They learn through experience. And that experience embodies, reflects itself through this. Correct. Moral outrage. 

But class outrage, it's a class morality, in other words. And, uh, what does it reveal? It reveals that this is not. This society is not a democracy. We're not all in the same boat. Uh, our society is ruled by a class of people who don't serve any productive purpose whatsoever. The only people who have an interest in developing society and raising humanity to a worthy level of dignity are the poor, the workers. The ones who are always too told that they're too stupid and m. Too ignorant to rule. They're in fact, the only ones who are. Who have a right to rule this. Hm. Society. And that obviously is an important conclusion, uh, to reach. And, uh, this is an important part of this process. Now, obviously that process is not finished, but we see now the Yeah, still it's confused.

Josh

It's a confused expression of this mood. And it can be directed in all kinds of, um, different places. You know, there's also a bit of a moral panic at the moment about, um, migrants and asylum seekers in Britain also being abusers. So we're not suggesting that this is just some perfect.

Hamid

But. But I think what this really shows is the real abusers. Are not the poor.

Josh

Yes.

Hamid

Who. Who are. Who are coming in desperately because of the abuse they suffer at the hands of imperialists in Africa and Middle east and elsewhere. The real abusers sit right at the top and no one is holding them to account. And the only people who can do.

Josh

That, they're protected A lot more than people in migrant hostels. Yes.

Hamid

Okay, I think, uh, on that note, I think we can continue to the next, uh, topic, which is Ukraine, which should, uh, also, uh, evoke moral outrage, I would say, because here's another country where we've been told this is the spearhead of democracy, of civilization, of civilization, defence of democracy all depends on Vladimir Zelensky and the Ukrainian army defeating the evil Russians who are now coming for our civilised way of life. Um, and obviously that's all falling apart. 

There is a huge, ah, embezzlement scandal, broiling which involves everyone in the inner circle of Zelensky, uh, he himself, we talked about it last week. The anti corruption, um, how to say, uh, institutions are now on a daily basis just drip feeding the public with new revelations, new recordings. And for the first time, Zelensky is in some of these recordings, although he doesn't incriminate himself. But, um, his former Defence Minister, Rustem, uh, Umarov was, is now fully implicated as having, uh, been a part of a scam to procure bad bulletproof vests. Uh, again pushed by this, uh, Mindich, who was a, a close friend of, uh, a billion. A millionaire and a close friend of Zelensky. He's now in Turkey apparently to negotiate some deal, but no one knows about this deal. The Russians are saying, no, no, we don't know anything about this negotiation. Some people say he's now in the UAE and he's skipped town. We don't know if that's true or not. There's a lot of rumours. But this was a Defence Minister. The former Minister of Energy has been fired. The former Minister of Justice has been fired. Um, and now the Chief of Staff of Zelensky, Andrei Yermak, uh, has been implicated. His codename apparently was Alibaba. Of all the code names you can have. Um, and they're now coming for him. There's a political crisis. People are, people are demanding that he, he step back. Um, and there's a rebellion in Zelensky's party. Ten MPs have signed a declaration saying we need a coalition, coalition government, national unity government. 

Right now we should say that part of the people fueling this anti corruption drive is not actually honest people. Because, let's be honest, corruption is so rife in Ukraine and this, this case involves $100 million. But real corruption in this war has been to the tune of billions and tens of billions, most probably. But clearly oppositional oligarchs such as Kolomoisky Poroshenko, the old president and so on, are fueling this as a means to defanging, uh, uh, uh, Zelenskyy, who's been increasingly monopolising, uh, power in his own hands. And they're revealing all of these. They're kind of bringing down a peg. Right. Um, now members of the Zelenskyy Zanpazi are saying, are playing with the same idea by saying, well, we think this is not an ultimatum, but we think that Zelenskyy should form a government of national unity. Now, Zelenskyy's majority, uh, in parliament is only three votes, and he needs that majority in order to extend the martial law, which gives him unchecked powers and allows him not to hold elections. His term ran out a few years ago, so that would put Zelinsky in a very, very, um, tight spot. And now there's a big manoeuvring game going on. 

On the one hand, the, uh, Poroshenko and Kolomoisky and that gang and. And the European Union and the Americans, by the way, they want to bring some sort of a more inclusive, from a bourgeois point of view, government that they can control easier. The to defang Zelensky, make him like a puppet president, uh, and in his own party, there are then people who are saying, well, we might swing to that side and support them. Uh, if you don't get rid of Yermak, who is Zelensky, who represents Zelensky's faction within the party. So they're saying, okay, if you bring all of the factions of the party into the government, we might not swing to the other side. Whereas the other guys are saying, we're going to continue this until you bring us into power. Right.

Josh

So not only opposing parties, but factions.

Hamid

Within his own party as well.

Josh

Seeing more cracks within the regime.

Hamid

Exactly. Um, meanwhile, the front is collapsing. Um, Siversk. I just saw in the last two days, the Siversk from Siversk is the town which is a very important town defending Slaviansk. And Kramatorsk has collapsed. Almost half of it is in Russian hands. As I said, they have started storming the outskirts of Lyman, which is another town just northeast of Slaviansk. Very, ah, important town. Um, Pokrovsk is, for all intents and purposes, occupied. Mirdingrad is surrounded, and the nooses kind of keep tightening. Um, in the Kharkiv region, the Russians have advanced quite a lot. In the Zaporizhzhia region, they're advancing very fast. And now very close to the town of Ulyapole, I think it's called um, and an interesting thing is that about a year ago the Ukrainians took the town of Ugledar, which was a very important, very well fortified town. And the distance between their position now to Ugledar is less, so is more than the distance from where they are now to Zaporizhzhia, that is to the Dnieper. Right. So this is the rate of advance and it's been accelerating in particular in the last three months. 

The military front is collapsing and now all of these scandals are coming. There's never been as many, uh, defections. People are escaping the country left, right and centre. And now all of these scandals come, which are uh, scandals right at the heart of the war. It's um, funding for fortifying, uh, the power grid, uh, funding for bulletproof vests and arms procurement. And so obviously this is a huge, uh, huge problem for Zelensky and now the west, the Americans are pushing, they've drawn up a deal, supposedly a proposed deal, a 28 point deal with the Russians, um, which involves basically Russia taking over Donbass. The Donbas, the rest, the remaining part of the Donbas, freezing the conflict, uh, in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, um, the Ukrainian army to be halved, long range missiles and weapons to be, uh, removed from its arsenals. No foreign troops in Ukraine, no foreign diplomatic, uh, presence. So no Western presence in Ukraine and um, some other things that we're not sure. And then there's the way of how is this all going to be, Is Russia going to be leasing that bit? But this is all rumours. We have no idea what's actually going on.

Josh

It's not clear.

Hamid

Yeah, but it's clear that it's a deal which more or less, well, which does appease all of the demands of the Russians. And in fact, uh, General Kellogg, who was the, uh, one of the two negotiators from Trump was Witkoff, who was leaning towards this deal all along. And there was Kellogg who was leaning towards a European proposal of basically a Russian defeat. Um, he's now withdrawn. Kellogg has withdrawn and, um, and this deal has been been put forward. Uh, Zelensky has supposedly rejected it. He said, no, I have another deal with the, with the Europeans. But what are they going to, what are they going to bring? Um, there is, uh, they don't have any more money. The European Union, they're running out of money and they need to refinance by, by this spring. Whereas the European, the Americans said, we're not going to pay for any of this. The European Union wanted To basically impound the Russian funds in Belgium.

Josh

Yes.

Hamid

Belgian said no. Now Euroclear, the company that holds the money, said no. If you're going to do this, we're going to take you to court. Uh, they can't take any more debts. They're in a bind. Um, uh, and meanwhile, Zelensky goes to France. He makes a deal buying 100 billion euros worth of, uh, jets from France with money that he doesn't have. It's all for show, basically. So the whole, the thing, the whole thing is kind of crumbling and it, it's looking increasingly problematic for the Ukrainians. Now, the Ukrainians have two choices. Either they accept this deal and the damage is basically, they accept the Russian.

Josh

Victory and the loss of the Donbas.

Hamid

And the loss of the Donbas, or they move ahead. Uh, they continue the war and they would get the same result, but probably even more devastating. Probably even the Russians would go even further than, than, uh, the Donbas. And, uh. And it would further undermine, as we've talked about before, the whole basis for civilised existence in, in, in. In the Ukraine, which is what the wars has done.

Josh

Yeah. I mean, the con. The conditions being faced by ordinary people in the contested areas, but also by people in, um, by soldiers in the Ukrainian army and the Russian army. But the conditions being reported from the front, the life expectancy, the devastation in this war of attrition. You know, we talked about consciousness earlier. You've got people who've been drafted, uh, facing these kind of horrendous conditions, being told, we need to keep fighting, don't worry, the Europeans are going to back us and we're fighting for civilization against these Russian hordes. And then to see that the people in charge, you know, these are ministers of the government and the president himself. Okay. Implicated but not necessarily proven to be guilty of doing the same thing as them. But to see the way that they're behaving, the contempt they have for the very people they're supposed to be leading in this glorious war. 

The question that I have is what impact is that having on consciousness in the front? You mentioned already the level of desertions, but surely that has to be incredibly demoralising when you're facing those kind of conditions. And then you see the, the crooks, uh, and the clowns that are supposed to be leading you. I mean, I think you reported this already last week, but one of these guys, which was it Mindich, supposedly had a golden toilet.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

And the thing is that these, these people, the Ukrainian oligarchs, have been using Ukraine as a golden toilet for decades. And the point is, so, so are the imperialists, so are the, the United States and Europe who've been pushing the Zelenskyy regime into this, which played, I'd say, the main role in turning this into an enormous industrial war of attrition. Uh, m. As far as I could tell, that was not the way that the war started. That was not Putin's intention when he first came in. Um, it became this because of the um, enormous uh, backing, um, given to Zelenskyy and the fact that he himself was even pushed to intensify the conflict. And now what has he got to show for it before the Ukrainian masses, the Ukrainian workers? 

Um, the country now is. The productive forces in many parts of the country have been destroyed. The power grid has been massively damaged. And the horrible sober truth is that nobody is going to pay to rebuild that country on a capitalist basis. The Americans, the Europeans can say what they like. They are not bearing in mind they're struggling to invest in their own production. They're struggling to build and reconstruct, uh, their own industry. You look at German industry, Germany's borrowing loads of money to buy its own arms, to invest in its own infrastructure, its own business. Do they really think that they are going to spend billions of dollars or euros or whatever in order to rebuild the Ukrainian economy? The Ukrainians have been used and we talk about abuse. The Ukrainians have been abused by imperialism. And then they're going to be, they're going to be spat out at the end of it. No matter what the terms, you know, any deal, the end result is going to be that the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian workers lose out.

Hamid

Yeah, uh, uh, it's interesting, you know, there's the pro European factions in the Ukrainian uh, parliament they're talking about, they're basically saying, oh this is the, the anti corruption drive is a European thing. Right? And it's true, I mean, uh, but there's two reasons for it. It's not that Europe is interested in less corruption in Ukraine. They just want to see that the money that they spend to fight the Russians go to the proper use. And one of the things that they're demanding now that they see that Ukraine is in such deep trouble. One of the things that they're demanding is what reducing the draught aid. The military age of the population, it's down to 18, I think it's at 23 or 4 or 4 now. So that means extending the slaughter. Throw another generation into the green meat grinder. That's what it is. And the idea that Ukraine is, they say, oh, Ukrainian self determination against, against Russian aggression. Where is the self determination of Ukraine? Uh, it's not. First of all, the Ukrainian people have no say in this whatsoever. There are different wings of the Ukrainian oligarchy which have some influence and then there's the Americans and the Europeans who are pushing, who've been pushing the country into this.

 Josh

Yeah, the, the Ukrainian oligarchs are small fry compared to the imperialist powers that are, yeah, playing with them basically. Just on the subject of corruption, one thing that I remembered is, um, there's been a lot of talk about Ukraine being fast tracked into the, you know, the bosom of the EU and all this kind of stuff. Before the war, the, uh, EU wouldn't touch Ukraine with a barge pole because of something they called state capture. State capture means criminal networks or individual families. Oligarchs basically have so much control of the state. It's not a functioning bourgeois democracy.

Hamid

Huh.

Josh

It's a, ah, kleptocracy, whatever. In other words, it's basically a hopelessly corrupt state. And for that reason the EU was not prepared to even begin the process of inducting Ukraine into the European Union after war. That all changes. Oh, Zelenskyy's dealing with the corruption now and we're going to bring you into the eu. But that's always been the case. Um, they just painted it over. And one of the conclusions of this is the EU are going to leave Ukraine high and dry. They're not going to bring them into the EU and give them lots of subsidies and lots of opportunities. And they will probably use the corruption, which obviously hasn't gone away. If anything has been intensified as you would expect with all this money flooding in. I mean there's, there's been reports of, um, well, not just Ukrainian companies profiteering, but companies in America setting themselves up as arms dealers and then not delivering on contracts and stuff like that. You know, this kind of situation breeds corruption. Uh, and the eu at the end of this, I'm sure there'll be lots of excuses they bring, but one of them will be, well, the level of corruption and risk of state capture means that we can't integrate you. They will leave the Ukrainians high and dry. And that was always the case.

Hamid

They don't really care about corruption. It's more that they want to have stable conditions for doing business. So it needs to be corrupt, skewed to their advantage. Um, now we have gotten a, uh, a comment on one of our videos or A short, I can't remember, but it was basically someone saying, um, why does it look like we just taking the side of the Russians and why are we only criticising, um, the West? And why are we saying that? Oh, um, the Russians had us had a right to invade Ukraine because NATO was preparing to set up on the doorstep. That's not a reason enough. Right. So I thought this is a good question to, to answer. I think this is a, I think this is a question a lot of people could answer, could ask themselves. Um, you know, people looking at Ukraine, looking at what's happening. There's obviously Russia, one of the greatest militaries on the planet, is invading a country, bombing it to bits.

Josh

Mhm.

Hamid

Literally destroying the power grid, destroying the foundations of civilised existence. So why aren't we, why aren't we attacking, uh, those formally? There's no Western troops involved, uh, and the west, if anything, is just protecting, defending a democratically, uh, elected government. Zelensky. Right. So I think a lot of people would look at the situation like that and we should come up with an answer to those. Now, first of all, I think it is, uh, it goes without saying that we are not defenders of Vladimir Putin or his regime in Russia.

Josh

Absolutely.

Hamid

Putin is a capitalist bourgeois, a representative of one wing of the Russian oligarchy, just like. Which itself is corrupt, which itself is corrupt to the, to the bone and which, uh, which exploits the Russian working class. Um, but that's not the, that's, that doesn't determine the entirety of our, our position. What we are fighting for is the overthrow of that oligarchy, whether it be in Russia, whether it be in Ukraine, whether it be in the US anywhere in the world. We're fighting for a world socialist republic, you know, a federation, a world federation, a socialist federation, essentially. And with the working class coming to power all over the world.

Josh

Mhm.

Hamid

That is our programme. But the question I think is how do we get to that programme and what do we say? How do we deal with the specific situation on the ground today?

Josh

Concretely.

Hamid

Concretely, because you can say from an abstract point of view, we're against all national oppression, including, uh, the oppression of the Ukrainian people by anyone, by the Russians, by the Americans. Yeah, we want the right of all the peoples to determine their own fates democratically. Democratically. Um, but what is the situation that we are in today? I think there's one thing we need to, to highlight. First of all, if you look at the Western media, what is the number one thing you hear? Putin. Putin, Putin, Putin. Putin. Everything is, you know, I bet you, I mean, I haven't really looked into it, but I'm sure there's a lot of articles about Putin and Epstein trying to destabilise. Destabilise.

Josh

There are lots of articles analysing Putin's psychology as a megalomaniac. That he has some kind of. Yeah, just this kind of personal drive to recapture all of the lost territory of the Tsarist empire. Why? Because they want to portray him as gearing up for a war.

Hamid

Yeah.

Josh

Uh, much deeper into Europe.

Hamid

But I think we need to take a step back from that first of all and say NATO. What is NATO? NATO is an extension of US Imperialism. Mhm. It's the military arm of Western imperialism, you can say. And it represents the interest of US imperialism in the final analysis. And of the West. What is the rap sheet of Western imperialism? What is the, how to say, scorecard of Western imperialism? Just in the, in the post war period. 

Now, I did a speech at the Revolution Festival in Britain. We had, over the weekend and I had AI in preparation of that, I had AI scrape the Internet for, um, the coups that the US alone have been involved in, uh, in the post war period. And it mentions 47, 46 to 47 coups. But I was actually looking into it and there's a lot of them that are missing. All the coup attempts in Cuba, basically. The US imperialism has been involved in counter revolutionary reactionary politics in almost every single country. Well, in every single country on the planet.

Josh

Yeah.

Hamid

One way or another, in the whole of the post war period, right up until today. Right. It supported the most reactionary groupings, including the parts of the Russian oligarchy. In fact, it was the west that helped Putin come to power initially, uh, because, well, they thought he was a puppet that they could use. Um, throughout Africa, throughout the Middle east, in Europe, there's not a country that the US has not meddled in to try to control its political development. There's, there's not a revolutionary movement that the US has not conspired against to this day. Not a single one that the US or the west has not conspired against. The wars of US imperialism, just the wars that is Direct wars. The Korean War, the Indochina wars, uh, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Yemen wars, the Libyan wars, the intervention in Somalia. All of these ones, uh, have cost somewhere between 15 and 25 million lives, indirect damage alone. Then there's, uh, the economic domination of the world, which means trillions of dollars every year being moved from the developing countries, from the Less advanced countries to the rich countries. The US being the foremost one of those. The unleashing of Islamic fundamentalism, tribalism in Africa, supporting of the most reactionary groups we see in Sudan. Reactionary civil war. We just talked about it. Both sides supported by U.S. allies.

There is no power that is more reactionary than US imperialism. And the interest of US imperialism in Ukraine has nothing to do with defending Ukraine's national independence. Not all it is uh, first of all in 2014 they supported a right wing nationalist state capture if you may coup, uh the Maidan so called revolution which installed an anti Russian, which removed the Yanukovych government, which was a government which was neutral, kind of lean both towards the west and Russia. They installed an anti Russian pro Western government and then they went ahead with the arming and developing of the, of the Ukrainian army with a specific purpose to be an anti Russian army, right, involving with tens of thousands of officers being trained by NATO, armed by NATO, involved the NATO standards with the sole purpose of having a springboard for political and military uh, attacks into Russia. That is the purpose of the Ukrainian regime. It wasn't a regime for the Ukrainian masses. It was a regime, a puppet regime for the US imperialists. And Ukraine is not just the country, it's. The country is geographically like right at the heart of Russia in fact and culturally and economically very intertwined with Russia. It would, it would, it'd be like if Russia uh, started uh, arming anti American Canadian militias and placing nuclear warheads and long uh range missiles in Canada preparing the, a Canadian army for an attack into the U.S. no nation would accept that. You could say oh no, no, we're not doing anything, we're not doing anything. But, but in reality they are.

Josh

Yeah. Just on this, we're not arguing that those facts give Russia or any other nation some kind of legal or moral right to another. This isn't the whole point of uh, Marx's analysis is not. Is that we don't look at this as a purely like moral or legal question. The point is that it was inevitable that Russia would respond to protect. What is it, Russian capitalism, I might add. Um, the, we're not presenting the Putin regime as some kind of worker state and it's not some poor oppressed colony either fighting for its liberation. We've never presented it as that. We're talking about a powerful capitalist economy, very powerful military with its own imperialist interests. 

But the point here is not that somehow the crimes of American imperialism or the reactionary, uh, clearly reactionary Intentions of American intervention in Ukraine gives kind of a get out of jail free card to the Putin regime, or like a legal casus belli that it can then put in the. In the court of morality or whatever like that. It's that the United States knew that Putin would react in that way, one way or another, that the entire intention was to weaken Russia. Either Russia would have to accept that, and if it accepts NATO bases and potentially nuclear weapons on its border within striking distance of Moscow, then its ability. You, uh, know, the further development of Russian capitalism is put at stake. The Russian capitalist class are not going to. And the oligarchy is not going to accept this. And so it was inevitable that Russia would respond, irrespective of whether you think that response is progressive or reactionary. It was inevitable. And the United States deliberately provoked that and pushed Ukraine into this war with a much more powerful adversary precisely in order to kill people, in order to whittle down the Russian army and cause as much devastation as possible. 

They obviously then present as, uh, oh, well, Russia started like kids in a playground. Russia started it. I mean, first of all, is that really the case? But Trotsky explained that in relation to war, like, what is the Marxist position on war and our answer to war? It's not that first you identify who fired the first shot, because, you know, it would be incredibly easy if all we needed to do was identify when the first attack was launched and, well, that's the bad guy. And then we all need to just pile in on, um, that. And, um, sadly, there is not an abstract moral or legal code that can adjudicate on these processes. We look at war exactly as you were saying, from the standpoint of the class struggle, which means from the standpoint of the working class, and linked to this question of the class struggle from the standpoint of working class consciousness. 

Now, Lenin's position on imperialist war is not that in whatever country you're in, you just support the other side. Um, his position is, uh, the only way to end war on a progressive basis, not on an imperialist basis, which obviously just carries the seeds of more devastation and barbarism, is the overthrow of the ruling class in one of the belligerent countries. And by belligerent countries, in relation to Ukraine, I'm not just talking about Ukraine and Russia. I'm talking about all of the European powers and the United States as well. They're involved in this war. So how do we get there? Um, just taking a step back in terms of progressive solutions to the war, I mean, it's probably included already in what we've discussed. But no matter the outcome, no matter what deal or outcome is achieved by the respective powers in this war, the outcome will be reactionary. 

Particularly from the standpoint of the Ukrainian people, um, the only way that this war can end on a progressive basis is if the workers in Ukraine successfully take power or in Russia or anywhere in Europe. And so if we look at that concretely, because I think it's easy to say like, okay, well, Russia isn't simply a weak capitalist country, it is an imperialist power. Although it is weaker than the United States and as you correctly say, its history, it has caused much less reaction and devastation on a world scale. But again, we're not simply totting at points to say, well, Russia has fewer points, therefore it's a more progressive side. That's not what we're arguing. But, um, uh, it is also an imperialist power. It's very easy to take an abstract approach and say, well, United States is imperialist, Russia's imperialist, it's imperialist war, therefore we'll just have nothing to do with it. And we can sit and wait till the end of the war and then retrospectively say, well, wasn't it reactionary? 

We have to engage concretely with what's happening right now. And what's happening right now is that in Ukraine you have people deserting, you have more and more people, um, who are scandalised and outraged at the corrupt activity of their own ruling class. And I'm sure a lot of people questioning what is the continuation of this war for the Donbas is lost by drafting 18 year olds into the army. We're not going to win it back. What are we doing here? Is it progressive to say, well, you've got to keep fighting for civilization or democracy, uh, in the abstract, which is a lie. Meanwhile in Europe you've got. The German ruling class was flirting with the idea of conscription again. It's piling lots of money into the arms industry and carrying out attacks on the working class, broadcasting the fact that it's going to attack labour rights in order to make itself competitive again, and using in part the Ukrainian war as a Ukraine, ah, war as a, as some kind of moral justification for all this.

Hamid

I think, um, you know, as you said, what is the Ukrainians must think, what is this war for? Yeah, and the point, the reason why I listed the rap sheet of American imperialism. Yeah, it is relevant, is it's relevant in the sense that America is the dominant power on the planet. It's true that China is now kind of challenging its dominance. But it is the dominant power on the planet. It is the most reactionary power the world has ever known. Mhm. And it is the most reactionary power today. It is the fountainhead of reaction in every country, including in Russia and in Ukraine and in the end in Europe and so on and so forth.

Josh

And that rap sheet you gave proves that. That's the evidence.

Hamid

And uh, the reason why they provoked the war in Russia was precisely because they realised that with the rise of China their dominance was under threat and therefore they believed that they could weaken Russia.

Josh

MH

Hamid

Dominated, subjugate Russia, essentially make it, turn it into a vassal state like it was in the 90s. In the 90s Russia was, it was like a vassal state for American imperialism and then turn it against China and basically gang up on China together with whoever they installed in Russia. Some of them were saying we should break up Russia. Mhm. Which is a very reactionary thing. And that could have happened if Russia lost this war. That could easily have happened. Right. So that's what we're talking about. We're talking a war which was provoked with the intention of subjugating Russia and potentially dividing, uh, it up. Two very reactionary things. And in order to what? To strengthen the power of the biggest superpower on the planet.

Josh

To restore the balance, old balance of powers of say the 90s.

Hamid

Exactly. And to. And to restore the rule of the Western ruling class at home and abroad. That's an important thing.

Josh

And that balance of power, that kind of rules based orders, let's face it, was a system of exploitation of the.

Hamid

Entire world, of the entire world.

Josh

We do not want a restoration of that.

Hamid

It is the Epstein class, essentially. The way that they are abusing and using the whole world is through that instrument of US imperialism. So that is the purpose of the war from a Western point of view. Now, are we in favour? Russia is, Russia doesn't. Putin doesn't have any, um, progressive ambitions in, in Ukraine. That's absolutely clear. We don't support any of uh, Putin's uh, position. But I'll tell you this, the Russian people, if you talk to most ordinary Russias, they would say, yeah, we don't necessarily support Putin, but we're not letting NATO come here. We've seen what they've done in Iraq, we've seen what they've done in Afghanistan, we've seen what they've done. And so we don't, we don't like these guys, we don't like our own rulers. But we Hate NATO and the west even more. And we've seen what they've done to us in the 90s and we hate them. So that actually undermines class differentiation, that actually strengthens Putin in Russia. 

Now, what is our, our task as, as Communists? Well, first of all, we are mainly a Western based organisation and a podcast, but that's not necessarily, that's almost beside the point. But our task is to fight our own ruling class, which is this incredibly powerful, incredibly reactionary ruling class, the Western and American ruling class. And our task is to expose their hypocrisy. When they talk about, oh, Putin bad and China bad and this, or bad, they are trying to hide behind that Western values, democracy. They try to hide behind their own supremely reactionary imperialist interests and they are trying to rally the working class behind themselves. Come support us. It's true that we, we leech on you, we exploit you, we abuse you, we do all these things, but you need to support us because we are fighting for democracy against this evil dictator. Against this evil dictator. Mhm. That is our task to expose. 

Now, at the same time, by doing so, we are showing the Russian workers, they are being told, people in the west don't like you. No, no, no, we're showing the Russian workers, no, no, the Western working class is standing with you. We don't have any interest in, in, in dominating you or subjugating you. Now, what is, but it is not, we are not going to dictate how you're going to, uh, run your country or who's going to run your country. That's up to you. Now, what is the, what is the task of the Communists in Russia? What are they going to say? Uh, just mirror that, like crudely mechanically mirror that position and say, oh, our main enemy is Putin and therefore down with, uh, Putin and down with the war. Well, for a lot of ordinary Russians, well, for almost, uh, all ordinary Russians, they would say, what are you talking about? Do you want these animals to come here and exploit us in the same way? Because that's what it would mean. Do you want them in charge again? We're not going to stand for that. But a lot of ordinary people are saying, well, yeah, we want to fight NATO, but why are they taking our pensions? Someone said that once to me. So someone, a Russian person said that once to me. Why are they taking our pensions? 

Yes, that is the point, that the Russian ruling class is a capitalist class and therefore is limited in the way that it can actually fight imperialism and in the extent that it will to the extent that it will go to, um, a great example of that is Syria. What happened in Syria? In Syria you had a civil war first. You had a revolution. That revolution was derailed. It was hijacked by the west and their allies who turned it into Islamic insurgency in order to overthrow the Assad regime was Iranian pro, Iranian pro Russian bourgeois. They wanted to install their own regime. Okay. This became then a uh, reactionary Western intervention in Syria now.

Josh

And you saw how that ended up in Libya as well. Yeah.

Hamid

What they did in Libya, we saw all of that. Now the Assad regime supported by the Iranians, so the national bourgeoisie supported by Iran was also, uh, in relation to the US at least an oppressed nation and with the support of Russian imperialism, defeated American imperialism in Syria. Was that a good or bad thing? I'll say my own personal view. This is my, I stand on this. I'll pay m for it myself. Right. It's free of charge. Uh, that was a good thing that um, that the Americans lost in Syria because it added to the crisis of US imperialism abroad and at home. Right. But. And we see that with, with the anti war movements and sentiments in the US and so on and so forth. But did that solve the situation for the Syrian masses? No, because the extent of the anti imperialism of the Russians and the Iranians was to install their own, to have their own kind of part of the cake and then come to an agreement with the West. That's what they wanted. And what was the result? That Syria, the situation in Syria worsened also under the impact of Western sanctions. By the way, they had a huge part in this, but it weren't helped by the Russians and the Iranians and the Syrian bourgeoisie. And at the end the situation was so grave, poverty, misery, decomposition, corruption, that once the Islamist Jelani and these guys moved, no one wanted to defend the Assad regime. And the Russians opportunistically switched sides. Yes. That means what? It doesn't mean that we shouldn't support American imperialism or we should take a neutral, uh, side, but it means that we have to say no. Only the working class can fight this war out to the end. Only the working class can defeat NATO properly.

Josh

Exactly.

Hamid

And in Ukraine, what would. This is what the Russian workers must do. They must take power themselves. Mhm. And they must wage a revolutionary war against NATO. That's what they would do. And then how would they do that? They would appeal to the, to the Ukrainian workers and say, we have no, we don't want to destroy your country. Destroy your Nation, we want to defend your democratic rights. You are being used now as pawns by these reactionary imperialists and the oligarchs in power to subjugate us. Let's rise together and overthrow all of these and establish workers rule in Ukraine and in Russia and by the way, also in the west and establish a new Soviet Union where Ukraine can have the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian working class can decide its own fate. Whether they will be part of Russia or another part of Russia, that's up to them. And that is the only way you can gain.

Josh

Yeah. So when you say a new Soviet Union, you mean Soviet Union under Lenin.

Hamid

Yes.

Josh

The Bolshevik approach. Not to be simply forced into some bureaucratic bloc.

Hamid

And just one last thing. On Ukraine, you know, people talk about the self determination of Ukraine. Now one of our, um, collaborators spoke to Jorge a few years ago, uh, who is also a regular on this show and he said Lenin created Ukraine, but the Ukrainian nationalists destroyed it. What does that mean by taking a decision to become American and Western puppets? Because that's the decision they took at a certain point and to becoming an anti Russian regime. That's how they make their money. That's become their reason for existence. The Ukrainians destroyed the little self determination that Ukraine had under capitalism. M and there is no self determination of Ukrainian capitalism.

Josh

And there won't be.

Hamid

There won't be. Either Ukraine will be a Russian dominated country or Western dominated country. The only way you can escape that is through a workers revolution.

Josh

Yeah.

Hamid

And that's what we stand for. We stand on. Not on any of these sides. But who is the main enemy of the working class in the west and in the whole world? It's obviously America, American imperialism, NATO, Western imperialism. It's the most dangerous enemy. Doesn't mean that Putin is a friend or Xi Jinping is an ally. Not at all. They represent the same class interests in that sense. They're equally reactionary. But in the role that they play, there's no competition with the US in the reactionary role that they play.

Josh

Yeah. And obviously the Russian ruling class exploits and oppresses the Russian people. But going back to, I think a point you already introduced is the role of communists is to raise class consciousness to the extent they're able to. And um, raising class consciousness involves. We talked a lot about consciousness today. Raising class consciousness involves driving a wedge between the ruling class and the working class. The ruling class has lots of different ideas it uses to bind the workers, whether it be nationalism or you know, sometimes uses religious ideas. The task of communists is to show, not just to say, well, actually they're bad. You need a revolution. If, if it was possible to, um, win the workers to revolution simply by telling them about all the bad things that capitalism does, we would have had a revolution. We need to be able to show the working class in all countries in practise through that own experience that what is required is for them to take power into their own hands. Now, if you look at the political situation in, let's just exclude the United States, talked a lot about the United States, but just in Russia, Ukraine and Europe for a moment. How do we get, you know, that there are concrete differences as to how you can raise class consciousness in Russia. The pressure that has been put on Russia in sanctions and with the war has meant, as you said, that the class question has, has become to an extent confused by the war. And frankly, I do not blame ordinary working people in Russia from saying, well, NATO is trying to destroy our country. There is a strong element of that. It is in effect, yeah, uh, uh, and so what you do is you need to highlight the ways in which the Russian oligarchy and the Russian ruling class is failing to do that. And by the way, if and when, really it's a question of when Russia wins this war, um, and what gains Russia may make from that, it's not going to translate into huge gains for the Russian working class. Russian capitalism will still exist. It will still be, um, a corrupt capitalist class in conditions of capitalist crisis. And we need to highlight the ways in which Putin and the Russian ruling class are not fulfilling the promises they're making in terms of waging this anti colonial struggle. And you have to do it concretely. Um, whereas in Europe you have this ruling class which is in abject crisis, can't find a way forward anyway, is carrying out ruthless austerity against the masses, which working people are very, very conscious of. 

The message we should be putting forward is immediately down with European imperialism. Expose the role that they're playing in this war, linking it to the role they play in Africa and Latin America and everywhere, and see that the most progressive thing that we could do right, we're speaking from London. The most progressive thing we could do right now in relation to the Ukraine war is seize power in Britain as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we're not in a position to do that right away. And we have an opportunity to raise, um, that idea in people's minds. 

Because when I speak to British people, as in people who aren't communists, um, working class people in Britain, they are to be Honest. Even from the start, there wasn't a huge amount of enthusiasm for Ukraine. They tried to drum it up so much. But people were coming up to me when I was selling the paper of the revolutionary Communist Party, the Communists, it's called now, and people were saying, I cannot believe that the BBC is showing people with Nazi memorabilia on their shoulders already. People saw that there was something fishy about this. We need to intensify that. We need to pick up where, you know, we need to take up the demands and the ideas that workers are themselves putting forward and translate that into the language of revolution. 

In Russia, the ideas and demands that workers are taking forward is not down with Putin and victory to Ukraine, it is down with NATO. So we need to take that up and translate that into the language of revolution. In Britain, it is, um, a hatred towards our own ruling class, a growing realisation of British imperialism's appalling role. Look at Palestine, for instance. We need to pick up all of these things, including the role that our ruling class is playing in Ukraine, and intensify that to the nth degree. And so when we come on the show and we talk about the corruption within this prettified Ukrainian establishment and, and we talk about the appallingly reactionary intentions and means used by our own ruling classes, that's what we're trying to do.

Hamid

Yes, precisely. Down with imperialism. Down with the Epstein class.

Josh

Absolutely.

Hamid

That's one and the same thing. And that is what we put forward in this, uh, podcast. I think those are very good words to end on. Do you have anything else you want to add?

Josh

No.

Hamid

Okay, well, me neither. Thank you very much, Josh. It's been a pleasure. And thank you for all of you guys there tuning in. Uh, again, if you have questions, if you disagree or agree with something and you want to raise it and bring it to our attention, please do so in the comments sections of our, uh, on Spotify, on YouTube, wherever else. You'll be, uh, listening to us. We do listen and we do read all of the comments and try to incorporate answers to them in the shows, uh, with those words. Uh, that is the end of this week's show. We'll be back again next Thursday, 6 PM UK time. Thank you very much.