Reform or Revolution?

We live in a decaying social order, the world economy teeters on the edge of a precipice, financial markets flutter in a state of palpitation, and profound shifts in world's relations only serve to intensify the crisis. War and militarism are on the rise, while the poorest parts of the world faced financial, political and social collapse. Barbarism spreads like a cancer. At the same time, the blows of the crisis are having an enormous effect on mass consciousness. Everywhere, there is an accumulation of rage against the system, and this occasionally breaks out in individual acts of violence or in powerful mass movements. Dramatic insurrections flash onto the scene. Governments fall only to be replaced by even less stable formations. Everywhere, all of the classes of society are desperately seeking a way out. So the question of whether capitalism can be reformed, or whether the system must be overthrown entirely, has become a matter of life and death for millions, and it's therefore necessary that we give this question serious consideration. And at the outset, I'd like to explain that revolution does not exclude reform, and the struggle for reforms today does not necessarily exclude revolution. Every revolutionary movement in history has struggled for reforms, beginning with reforms under the existing system. The point is, are these reforms sufficient to achieve the emancipation of the working class, to bring an end to the crisis of capitalism, to liberate the human race from oppression. And this leads us to the concept of reformism. That is, the belief that the ills of society can be gradually and peacefully reformed out of existence within the structures of the existing system, rather than overthrowing the system entirely. And above all, this means reforming within the structure of the capitalist state. Now reformism has many faces. It forms a whole spectrum of ideas, from some who believe in a kind of human capitalism, to some who genuinely want to replace capitalism with socialism. But all of these are united by the fact that they limit themselves to those means that are acceptable to the capitalist order. Marx described social democracy as follows. Democratic institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with the two extremes, capital and wage labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. Now reformist politicians and labour leaders, they always present their policies as their politics as common sense, practical, pragmatic. As opposed to the utopian and apocalyptic schemes of the revolutionaries. The idea is that by winning small victory after small victory, choosing the easiest wins first, the low-hanging fruit, the movement gets stronger and stronger, wins more and more victories in an endless process in which abstract discussions about the end goal of the movement or the nature of the social system in general are completely redundant. As Edward Bernstein, one of the most eminent theorists of reformism, explain, the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the movement is everything. Now this idea is, that was over a hundred years ago, but this idea is still very common throughout the world, especially in the advanced capitalist countries with so-called liberal democratic regimes. Now ideas only take hold on a mass scale if they reflect experience in some way, and the fact is that reformism does have a basis in experience. Above all, in those periods in which significant reforms have been won under capitalism, European social democracy arose in a period of capitalist upswing. The working class in those countries won a number of meaningful reforms, trade union and democratic rights, being proved wages, in Germany Bismarck introduced the world's first pension. The idea took hold that all that was necessary was to maintain the same course, recruit more workers to the trade unions, elect more socialist MPs, and eventually a worker's government would be elected, which would then carry out all of the reform desired by the working class, through entirely democratic and legal means. The post-war boom was another such phase, in which workers in many countries experienced a significant change in their living conditions. British workers got free health care, free university education, no wonder they had reformist illusions. One question is, if reformist ideas take root in a period of upswing, why does reformism retain such a powerful influence in periods of stagnation and crisis? In Britain there hasn't been a significant reform in favor of the working class since about the 1970s, but reformism has certainly not disappeared in the movement. Clearly this shows that ideas don't passively and automatically reflect living conditions. And a key point here is that the working class is not a single homogenous mass. It has layers within it, which face often very different conditions and develop different outlooks for a time. And there is one layer of the class, within which reformist ideas are constantly nourished and reinforced. What Lenin called the labour aristocracy. The most privileged layers of the class, particularly in imperialist countries, can develop an essentially middle class outlook. In Britain you hear about aspirational workers, that is workers that aspire to become bosses. And often these people claim to stand above the class struggle, even reject the existence of the class struggle. Adopting what Marx called a petty bourgeois point of view. And a very important section of this layer is the labour bureaucracy itself. A leading, a trade union leader or labour official comes under a constant pressure from the ruling class. And not necessarily in conflict with them either. He rubbed shoulders with them, comes to an understanding, and often takes pride in his ability to compromise. The parliamentarian, even if he comes from a very proletarian point of view, background, sorry, a proletarian background, inhabits an artificial world of bourgeois legality, due process, debates and so on. Again, rubbing shoulders with lords, bankers, judges, which un-inclinqued its enormous religious faith in the bourgeois state. Something that prudon called parliamentary chretinism. Prudon actually coined that term to describe himself, but I don't have time to go into why, if you're curious, and you can ask me later. And of course, this is fed by a healthy dose of ambition to raise themselves out of the working class. I can't tell you how many British labour MPs I've seen, boasting about their working class background, while trying to get as far away from the working class as possible, both politically and financially. Their slogan is "I am for the emancipation of the working class, one by one, starting with me." I'm sure you have these people in Canada as well, but another important feature of all forms of a reformism is it always offers the path of least resistance, disdain for theory, loose organization and shortcuts, minimal sacrifice of money and time. On the one hand, this does suit the labour bureaucracy, who in my experience actively dislike vibrant discussions and active members, because they have this annoying habit of challenging their decisions or pushing for further action. But it also reflects life under bourgeois democracy itself. In even the most democratic capitalist state, ordinary people have next to no involvement in political decision making, until they're called upon to vote for someone to represent them, as they say. So if there's a section of the movement, made up of people who claim to know what they're doing, who say, "Don't worry about taking time to read, having to constantly attend meetings." All of this is just for middle class intellectuals anyway. Just make a one-off donation of $10 to me and turn out to vote on election day. We'll do the rest. In normal times, that makes sense to a degree. So the end result is in normal times, reformism permeates the movement at almost all levels, and only profound shocks, psychological shocks, given by events, can shake that. But that's a brief explanation of what reformism is, why it's so prominent. More important is what's wrong with that. Marxists don't just criticise reformism because we would prefer to have a socialist revolution. Reformism is wrong because it doesn't work. Even in periods of stability and upswing, actually, such as the ones I mentioned, the exploitation and the pressure of the workers remains intact. And the reformists only limit their reforms to what is acceptable to the ruling class. Trotsky, Leon Trotsky writes, "Reformism in its true essence signifies the subservience of slaves to the laws and institutions of the slave owners." And this this applies in periods of stability as much as crisis. In actual fact, I should point out that the impressive reforms of the post-war period were granted following a revolutionary wave that swept across Europe. In Italy, the workers could have taken power. In France, the Communist Party became the biggest party. Although in those periods, the ruling class is prepared to give away a lot, rather than lose everything. So even then, reforms are not a product of the clever tactics of the reformists. But the limits of reformism are most clearly seen when capitalism enters into crisis. Lenin explained that the key difference between Marxism and reformism is on the question of the state. The bourgeois democratic state is not a neutral forum for all classes to be heard. It is an instrument of oppression by one class, of one class by another. This has been the case for every state in history. Is the reason why states exist. The bourgeois state in particular has been molded for centuries to be the effective instrument of the rule of a particular class, the capitalist class. And Marx said that workers cannot simply lay hold of this state with its standing army, its police, its judges, its parliamentary system. And then use all that for their own purposes. In fact, they have to smash that state and replace it with an instrument of their own class rule. That is what we as communists mean by revolution. And that is exactly what the reformists reject. Like sin. For them, the bourgeois state is not something to be overthrown, but actually it's the very instrument of progress for the working class. So if you think that the state is a necessary instrument of progress, you obviously have to defend it. But if you defend the instrument of the class rule of the capitalist class, then ultimately you must defend their rule as well. So regardless of of their own values or subjective intentions, reform is This ultimately become ardent defenders of the capitalist system, and more specifically of their own national capitalist class, both against other capitalist nations and against the workers of their own country. Hence, the great social democratic parties of Europe in the early 20th century all supported their own imperialists in the carnage of the First World War, sending millions of the workers that they were supposed to lead to the industrial slaughter. The only exceptions were the Serbian Party and the Bolsheviks in Russia. In outside wartime, the reformists supported the domination of the colonies, which is not only antithetical to socialism in general, it harms the working class of the dominating country as well, binding it to the ruling class. We see right now that the Danish social democrats are trying to hang on to Denmark's last colony. All in the name of defending Greenlander independence, of course, but as I'm sure you all know, the capitalist system knows periods of crisis as well as up swing. In such periods, the ruling class starts to push for not reforms, but counter reforms, cuts to public services, cuts to pensions, attacks on wages, increased intensification of work, the lengthening of the working day, and so on. When the workers inevitably resist this pressure, the wonderful democratic institutions of parliament, the courts and so on, start to limit and even roll back basic democratic rights, in short, all of the previous gains of the working class come under threat. And at this point you see the striving for reforms on the part of the workers themselves comes into direct contradiction with the needs of the capitalist system and the capitalist class. So what is to be done? If the only path is reformed within the limits allowed by capitalism, then how can you fight to even maintain the reforms one previously if they threaten the profitability and the fundamental interests of the capitalist class? At best all you can do is limit the damage. And in Britain the term "dentied shield" has been used for decades to justify this. To justify the constant capitulation of the labour leaders, reformers and becomes winning a wage cut in real terms as opposed to nominal terms, winning an extension of the working day by an hour rather than two hours. In other words, the reformist can only lead to defeat. But what if the reformists come to power? If the workers elect their leaders to the government in order to prevent this onslaught? And Trotsky pointed out in the 30s a period of deep crisis for capitalism that the right-wing reformists, the most respectable reformists, the closest to power. He explained that in these scenarios they become anti-reformists and carry out cuts and attacks, not reforms. And this is exactly what we saw following the crisis of 2008. The socialist party in Greece, the Pesok, the socialist party in France, the social democratic party in Germany, all of the traditional parties of the working class, when brought to power carried out brutal austerity. And the many of these parties were almost destroyed when the masses turned away in disgust. This actually provoked a wave of more radical left movements and parties, such as Syriza and Greece, Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Padey Moss in Spain, Bernie Sanders in the United States. But the fatal flaw of all of these movements is that they remained reformist throughout. They would what we'd call left reformism, that is the left-wing of the reformists. The only difference between these and the right reformists, there is no fundamental difference between these and the right reformists. The differences, while the right reformists are advocating and carrying out counter reforms, the left reformists continue to call for reforms, or at least a defensive battle against the attacks of the ruling class. In essence, they're like the shadow or the conscience of the right reformists. They can be pulled very far to the left on the base of events. And to an extent, they can play a progressive role in that they can bring new layers into political activity. Their slogans can animate and give hope to a wider layer. In that sense, they express the leftward shift of the masses who are looking for some kind of alternative. But one thing that we have to understand is at the same time, they also serve as a break on the movement. And the reformists have this amazing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They're especially good at this in Britain. I'm not entirely sure why. I can't give you a historical materialist analysis of why it's so bad in Britain, but is. I think probably the ideology of gradualism is particularly strong there. But the point is, why is this? And what we see is at all times, however radical, however left the leaders talk in a given moment, they will always ultimately pull back to the right. They cling to the right reformists, Corbin, for instance, clung constantly to the Blair Rites who are trying to destroy him. And in doing so, they bind the workers who follow them to their class enemy. And this plays the role of disarming the movement in the end. In fact, I would say often they're left a more harmful than the rights. Sanders drew people into the main political party of the US ruling class. But arguably even worse, then capitulated to the establishment candidate. No one's, not twice, but three times. And I'm sure he'll do it again. Corbin, as I mentioned, clung to the Blair Rites. As a result, the Corbin movement has been destroyed. Trotsky, I think, uses a really good image. He said, "If the bosses of the British Labour Party form a bridal, what you put on the head of a horse, placed upon the working class, then the left are the buckle into which the bourgeoisie inserts the reins." But I'd like to ask, why is this this political weakness of the reformists? I don't think it comes simply from a personal weakness or cowardice. You see some reformist leaders who seem weak and cowardly. But some that are certainly very stubborn and some that I think are genuinely honest, courageous people. But the result is ultimately always the same. So there must be a deeper reason. And on the most basic level, all reformism reflects a philosophical outlook. Now most reformist politicians would deny that they have any philosophy at all, beyond common sense values. In Britain, they have to call them British common sense values now. I don't know if in Canada it's Canadian common sense values. But don't be fooled. While these people are certainly not philosophers, they are the most zealous practitioners of a particularly pernicious philosophy, empiricism. Empiricism begins with the perfectly valid proposition that we must proceed not from abstract, preconceived or metaphysical ideas, but from the facts. In this, empiricism has played a big role in the development of science. I would say that Marxism has a similar approach. However, that's where the similarity ends. Because empiricism goes much further. And the assertion that the immediately observable facts are all there is, or all we can say exists. We cannot observe relations and laws. We can't experience these directly. Therefore we cannot actually say that any of these things exist. Why talk about all this, you know, the laws of the capitalist system? Why talk about the working class? Let's just deal with what's in front of us now. Let's be practical. And with such an approach, who needs theory? Surely all these discussions about philosophy and history is just for academic interest, or intellectual masturbation. I have to say that was the harshest review of the I Don magazine I've ever received. It's true, it's true. He didn't join. I didn't want him to join. Anyway, these ideas have no direct relevance for the movement. Why study history? No event or period is ever identical to the past. So what can we really learn about the struggle today by looking at the struggle 200 years ago? But as Trotsky explains, whoever worships the established fact is incapable of preparing the future. And this is the real fatal flaw of all reformism. Taking the established facts in front of them, often in an especially superficial way, I'd say as well. The empiricist is unable to envisage any fundamental change. Only a linear progression from what already exists. The ownership and control of the economy by the capitalist class is an undeniable fact. I don't deny it. The existence and power of the bourgeois state is likewise a fact. In the liberal democracies, so called, the passing of laws through parliament, universal suffrage, trade unions and so on. All of these are part of the facts of life. The workers movement has won reforms in the past. Therefore, it will continue to win reforms in the future. And further, that is the only way that change can happen. I mean, a good example of this empiricism is Gordon Brown, who was the chancellor in Britain. Chancellor means the like economy secretary, finance secretary. In the year 2000, he proudly announced that they had abolished boom and bust. Why did you think that? Because there wasn't a slump. But not only this, the empiricism of the reformists actually makes them limit the reforms that they even put prepared to put forward. You can see this in the obsession of at least some people with the so-called "Overt and Window". Now what this effectively means is that an idea must already be acceptable to mainstream politics before you put it forward. The public thinks this. Therefore we have to meet them where we are at. So just tell them what they already think. But do it in a clever left-wing way. So in Britain, for instance, during the referendum on EU membership, the left overwhelmingly capitulated to the dominant wing of the British bourgeoisie. Which controlled almost all bourgeois media, by the way. And this is a key point about the "Overt and Window". What decides public opinion? The bourgeois media. And so having identified that the bourgeois media wanted them to support remain, many of the lefts, including people describe themselves as Marxists, put forward the slogan of voting to stay in the EU, but in a socialist way. And what that amounted to was campaigning for exactly the same thing as David Cameron in the Tories. while saying, "Yes, we know that the EU is bad and anti-worker, but if you vote to stay in, you just wait and see, because we are going to fight so hard to make the EU a people's EU." And by this means they're cleverly shaping public opinion. In the same way, I saw a lot of people including self-described Marxists celebrating the election of Joe Biden. Seriously, one because he represented the defeat of fascism in the United States, but not only that, because he was going to be the most pro-labor leader in the history of the United States. The lowest bar in human history. I don't know if he cleared it on it. I don't care to be honest. But this is the logic. The bourgeois media was very happy with Joe Biden. He was very valid, in that sense. Therefore, if we present him as somehow left-wing, then the workers who support him will somehow become more left-wing. It's great optics, because we can smuggle in radical ideas like encouraging workers to join a union, and then when Biden turns around and uses the bourgeois state to ban a strike of unionized workers, the reformists say, "Oh, he shouldn't have done that." That's not very pro-labor. It reminds me of the fable of the frog and the scorpion. Do you know it? Some people are nodding, so they must know it. I don't have a lot of time, so I'll be quick. But I don't know why, but scorpion asks a frog for a lift across the river. And the frog says, "I'm not doing that. You'll sting me." And the scorpion says, "Why would I sting you?" "If I sting you, we both sink and we both drown." That wouldn't make any sense. So the frog says, "Okay, you make a convincing argument." And then halfway across the river, the scorpion does sting him. As they're sinking into the water, the frog says, "Why did you do that?" And the scorpion just says, "It's in my nature." It's very disturbing scene. But that's the same with the likes of Joe Biden. When the reformists say, "Why did you betray the workers?" He's a bourgeois politician. It's in his nature. But first you have to believe that it's possible to understand the nature of anything in order to start coming to conclusions about that. And these people are incapable of understanding any underlying process of development. And by the way, this is what makes reformists ultimately dishonest. Some of them are horrible liars. You can tell. So yeah, usually not very good liars. But some of them are honest, actually. I mean, in the personal sense that they are honest people. And yet, even the honest ones end up being dishonest. Because they don't tell the workers the truth. That's what honesty is, isn't it? They only ever tell them what they think they need to hear at any given moment. Which again, only serves to weaken and disarm the working class. How can the working class struggle even for reforms in an effective way? If it doesn't understand society and its place in it. But this is related to another feature of reformism. The constant search for shortcuts. I'm sure you've heard this. We have to do something now. It sounds very courageous. And again, I'm sure it's honestly men among many people. Enough of all this idle chatter about revolution in the future. People are suffering now. We need to make a difference now, not in 20 years. And I think that that can be superficially convincing for a time. But if we need to do something right now. We can only use what is immediately available to us. What is available to us? In the United States, it's the Democratic Party, the Republican Party. The Democratic Party poses more to the left. And a largely a workers will vote Democrat. Right. Okay. Let's run in the primaries then. That didn't work. So what have we got? Spiden or Trump? Or Harris or Trump? Trump says he's going to do some nasty things. Biden or Harris or Clinton or really any of these people say that bad things are bad. And they're against bad things. We must do something now to prevent bad things from happening. So let's support the candidate against bad things. Or what's often called the lesser evil. But again, always they promise. Once they're elected, we're going to hold their feet to the fire. It was the same in France. I remember speaking to left wingers. Who proudly told me they were going to vote for Immanuel Macron. Why? To defeat fascism. Which is a no-belame. But for some reason, it's seared into my memory watching this person look off into the distance in some heroic way and say, I am prepared to do anything to prevent fascism coming to power. So I'm going to vote for the establishment bourgeois candidate in this election for the second time in a row. All the while promising all sorts of amazing struggles in the future. Which never comes for fruition, of course. Because they never have any practical program to carry them out. That's off in the future. Let's deal with what we've got to deal with now. In this sense, the reformists are the most hopeless utopians. So it's not just a case of abandoning the final goal of socialism. The reformists even sacrifice the basic concrete tasks of the movement. In order to clutch even the most illusory immediate game. All the while congratulating themselves on their pragmatism, by the way. But I thought pragmatism was judging something by its effects in practice. Surely even by pragmatic standards. The strategy pursued by the leading left since 2008 has been a miserable failure. Their practical politics turns into its opposite. And when confronted with this, I've heard many lepreformists explain that the movement was always doomed to fail. Because the working class was too, wasn't ready, it was too weak, too stupid, too fascist. So this belief in miracles passes seamlessly into the worst kind of fatalism and pessimism. After Trump's election, you saw people, I don't know about the United States, but in Britain, you had people walking around like they were awake, a funeral. Morning the death of the working class. Curseing the workers. These American workers are too stupid or in Britain after the Brexit referendum. How could the British workers be so stupid? Don't know then what's good for them. And then of course, that gives them the impression that the perspective, because their empiricism, the perspective is therefore for the workers to get more and more right wing until the end of time. And then a Biden or a Macron gets elected and everything's fine again. It must be very tiring actually to be pulled from one pull to another so quickly all the time. But this stems their lack of faith for the working class. That the working class exists is something that most reformists would acknowledge. Not all, but most. But the idea that the working class could replace the existing state and run society by itself is completely utopian in their eyes. Why? For a very simple reason, because the workers aren't already doing it. Accordingly, the bourgeois state becomes the state in general. Bourgeois democracy becomes democracy in general. Capitalism becomes the economy in general. The ideology of the ruling class. Its morality becomes universal values and morality itself. What I'm getting at is that for a reformist, the capitalist order is order itself. It's the only order that currently exists. It's the only order that can exist. And so the only alternative to that is disorder. And anything that threatens the collapse of this order is unthinkable. And I'm not just talking about people like Starmor or right-wing reformists. If you can call him that. Is everyone aware of somebody called Janis Verifakis? I think you are, yeah. Okay. I guess in a sense he could be described as a left reformist. He, um, he described himself as erratic Marxist. I don't know what that means. I think it's opposed to an orthodox Marx, like a dogmatist like me. So what is it to be an erratic Marxist? He explained before he came to power in 2015 that because society is drifting towards fascism, but we are not ready to build socialism yet. This is a quote now. It is we, the suitably erratic Marxists, who must try to save European capitalism from itself. So it's not just the rights who explicitly save the capitalist system. And from this comes that the constant craving for respectability from the capitalist and their representatives. Verifakis talks about how he worked so hard on this great proposal. He called it a modest proposal for the economy. He got it checked by all kinds of economists and respectable universities. He didn't get it checked by the Syriza membership or by the Greek working class. But what do they know about economics? So he turns up to meeting with the German, you know, the negotiators from the European Central Bank and so on. And he presents his modest proposal. And he was horrified. He said it was as if they hadn't even read it. Where was all the debate that I was used to in the academic seminar room? I genuinely think he wanted them to give him a grade. Now, the class struggle is a lot like war. Fundamentally it is a war between classes. An in-war leadership plays an extremely important role. And we've seen it many times in history that with bad generals, even the most favorable situation can be ruined. And defeats can be turned into terrible routes and massacres. The same applies to the class struggle. And this is most devastating in a revolutionary situation. Now, a reform is never expects a revolutionary situation. It's like that Monty Python sketch. No one expects the Spanish inquisition. For them, revolutions are the unfortunate result of short-sighted rulers, crazed agitators. And with sensible policies and compromise, they can just be avoided altogether. In fact, revolutions are made objectively inevitable by the contradictions of the system itself. And don't just happen because governments repress work. Because governments repress work is all the time. Revolutions certainly don't happen because revolutionaries want them to happen. Otherwise, I think we would have had a few more than we've had. It happens because the masses can no longer live in this way. It's like a volcanic eruption, this monumental force of nature. And in these situations, a point I want to emphasize, is that the struggle of the masses for even a modest reform can rapidly acquire a revolutionary dimension. The reform passes dialectically into revolution. Now, most ordinary people do not have an explicit philosophy. I guess similar to the reform is they draw lessons from experience. That's natural. In normal times, the principle, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, does work quite well. Or if there's a specific problem, like racism, for instance. Let's try specific concrete policies to tackle it, rather than building castles in the sky. And what's more, when things start going badly, people don't immediately just become revolutionary. Certainly the vast majority don't. People try every available means to try to rectify things with the tools at their disposal. But at a certain point, consciousness catches up with a bang. Actually this contradiction between the conservatism of thought in normal times, consciousness. And the reality of the situation. It's that that provides the psychological basis for revolution. I saw a wonderful example of this in an article written by American comrades about what was happening in Minneapolis. People were running classes on basically how to track ice, how to defend yourself. And you had people turning up in their 70s who had never participated in any political movement before. A man came with his 14 year old daughter and said, "I'm a very conflict-averse person, but I feel I have to do something about this." And what his daughter said struck me the most. 14 year old girl. It was kind of overwhelming, but I don't think it could be too much because they're just being realistic. Reform passes into revolution through the living experience of the movement. At a certain stage, revolution becomes the most realistic thing there is because it's the only way to pursue the struggle to a successful conclusion at certain times. There's a point in any revolution, in every revolution, in which masses of people say, "No more." But if that were enough on its own, we would have had many more successful revolutions. And it's at this point that the realism, the pragmatism, should we say, of the masses, comes into direct conflict with the so-called pragmatism of their reformist leaders. And where the struggling for reform comes into direct, violent conflict with reformism. What I read about in Minneapolis on a smaller scale reminds me of what happened in St. Wagner Square in Athens. Varifakis in his memoirs described being grabbed by an old age pensioner with his wife. And they both said, "We are prepared to lose everything. Our pension, our home, but we cannot live like this anymore. We cannot be humiliated like this anymore." We will support you. We was on his way into Parliament. We will support you all the way. Just don't back down. That's all they asked of him. Obviously made an impression. He put it in his book. I mean, there's an even better example of this. In July 1917, the midst of the Russian Revolution. A minister in the provisional government, Chernoff, a member of the so-called socialist revolutionary party is suddenly surrounded by a mob of angry workers. They're angry because he's not doing his job. They elected his party in the Mensheviks to the head of the Soviets to represent them, but he was stalling, suspended in a bourgeois government. Doing nothing. One worker looked up at him and uttered the immortal words. And I apologise in advance for my language now. Please excuse my Russian. He said, "Take the power you son of a bitch when they give it to you." I've never read anything that more vividly describes that contradiction between reform and reformism. At this point, there is no more room for clever excuses. It is simply a question of yes or no. World or back, victory or defeat, and the reformists are organically incapable of carrying the movements of victory. Syriza came to power with the promising, promise of reversing some of the cuts. So barely, not exactly radical reforms, more a defensive measure, when Greek and European finance capital said no. Syriza called the masses out for a referendum on whether to accept the memorandum, the deal, or not. It wasn't really a deal. Sipras, the leader of Syriza, actually called that referendum to get out of trouble. He hoped that if the majority voted yes in favour of the memorandum, he wouldn't have to lead a struggle against it, right? I mean, the referendum itself was redundant. The referendum had already taken place when the masses elected him to be a government, lead the government on a programme of opposing the cuts, but they called the referendum. And all the bourgeois media said, "You're going to get kicked out of the EU. Your economy is going to collapse. It's going to be all your fault. Don't be stupid." And the masses turned around and voted by a large majority to reject the insulting imperialist memorandum. Millions of Greek workers were told, "We are going to make your life hell unless you submit." And they decided we are prepared to fight to the finish. But precisely in this moment of victory, or the promise of victory, when if Syriza had gone on the attack with a movement of millions of workers behind them, they could have overthrown the completely pathetic parasitical Greek bourgeoisie and lit a beacon of revolution for the whole of Europe. Now, I would have imagined they would have been quite excited by that. But apparently, in their moment of victory, Cyprus was walking around like a condemned man, because he knew they were defeated. They were defeated because his strategy was never to break with the EU, never to break with capitalism. So confronted with the abyss, he took a step back. He signed the memorandum, which was signed in the blood of the Greek workers, further cuts to pensions, further cuts to public spending, which helped to crash the economy. More people eaten out of bins. He did that and betrayed the entire movement. When he was criticised for this, his excuse were, "We're too weak. We're a small country." In other words, it was never possible to win this struggle. Well, why lead the struggle in the first place then? And this is common to all reformism. The mass workers movement is not something that can take power. It's not an alternative power in society. It's a bargaining chip. A means of persuading or threatening the bosses to accept the workers' demands. But when their bluff is called, they feel a chasm opening up under them. Ultimately either you stand on the ground of the ruling class and its institutions, or you stand on the working class and the future society that it contains in potential. And if you don't believe this potential exists, then there is only one choice you're going to make. You can see the same thing in the 1926 General Strike in Britain. For nine days, Britain stood still. Millions of people came out. And every day the strike was actually getting stronger, more solid. But the leaders called it off under an agreement to have negotiations. Not even a single promise was ever made by the government. But they called off the entire strike. That's not because of the pressure and threats of the government. That's because they were more terrified by the strike than the government was. Because they knew if the strike continued, the government would have to fall. And if the government falls, who's then it will be the government. It would be them. And that horrified them more than anything else. And I don't believe that the left reformists go into the movement intending to betray. But they didn't really intend to fight either. So to turn around in the midst of the battle, that is a betrayal, isn't it? And their betrayal was arguably worse for that fact. It completely demoralized the movement. The Greek working classes needed 10 years to recover from that blow. But they are beginning to recover, as we've seen with the big strike that took place. But an important point that I think needs to be made is that just because reformism has been exposed already, including in our lifetimes, does not mean that we can just confidently look forward to the masses turning directly towards the socialists revolution and the communists on the base of that. As fresh layers of the class move into struggle, they naturally and understandably look towards recognized leaders and mass organizations that seem to provide a way forward. We're seeing this now, to an extent, with the rise of people like Zora and Mamdani, Zack Polanski and the Green Party in the UK. Also the resurgence of D-Linker, the left party in Germany, which had been in a deep crisis a couple of years ago. And this is a phenomenon that we can't just dismiss. Young people are turning towards communist ideas. But they also want something to fight for now. They want to fight against landlords. They want to fight against austerity against imperialism. We offer that struggle, but as long as we can't fill the vacuum that exists and we can't, then various leaders and parties are going to come along offering this. So the overcoming of reformism and the replacement of reformist leaders who actually, with people who are actually prepared to go all the way, is an essential part of the class struggle, sorry, and an essential task of our organization, which events are not going to perform for us. Trotsky says that the principle task of a revolutionary party consists in freeing the working class from the influence of reformism. But how do we do this? First, we must understand. And here theory is vital. We often say the reformists don't have faith in the working class. But where does our faith come from? Is it a religious faith? It comes from a scientific study of the class struggle throughout all of history, not even just capitalism. And it comes from a dialectical outlook that grasps the inevitability of leaps in consciousness. The results of this study is our programme, the basic programme of communism. And without this programme, we are nothing. It is around this programme that we mobilize a conscious minority of the movement at this stage. This is the raison d'être of the revolutionary communist party. But is it enough, once we have organized such a party, to demonstrate the errors of the reformists simply in the form of propaganda directed towards the masses? This is absolutely essential. But if it were enough, I think we would already be living under socialism. The movement has learned these lessons before. And there's been some pretty good Marxist propaganda out there over the last 100 years. Therefore, more is needed. There alone can only ever reach a minority of a minority. The rest of the class alone is primarily through experience. But we've also seen that when the workers experience defeat and their leaders are discredited, they don't automatically look for the nearest revolutionary party to join and throw to the head of the movement. That is not what happened in the Russian Revolution. And frankly, if this were the case, it would not be necessary to build the revolutionary party at all. It would just build itself. You see this kind of passive attitude among some left-wing sects. A method which has not succeeded so far, I'm afraid, is not going to succeed so far. Not only the limits and the betrayals of reformism, but the superiority of the revolutionary programme must be demonstrated in practice. And this requires a party, a disciplined organisation of revolutionaries capable of taking these ideas into the real movement. But now, how do we do this? How do we take the ideas into the movement? Is it sufficient to say about people like Mandani or Polanski, for instance? These people are reformists? They will ultimately betray, therefore join us. Although all of those things are true, and we need to bring people to these conclusions, but I just wish it were that straightforward. That would make life so much easier. The fact is that there is a big overlap at the moment between those who say they consider communism the ideal social assistance or they support communism. And in Britain, for example, people who would vote for Zak Polanski in the Green Party, which is not a communist party. And they know this as well. The level of illusions in these people is very shallow. And that helps us. And we should try to reach people that we can win directly right now. We should try to reach as boldly as possible. But clearly, there a fydd yna i'n ei wneud i'r gweithio i'r gweithio, ac mae'n ei'r gweithio, ac mae'n ei fwythio, ac mae'n ei fwythio, ac mae'n ei fwythio. Cymru yn yna i'r gweithio yn yna, ac mae'n ei fwythio. Yna fyddio'r gweithio. Yna fyddio'r gweithio yna i'r gweithio. Yna fyddio'r gweithio yna, ac mae'n yna fyddio'r gweithio yna yna. Mae'n ei wneud i'r gweithio yna, ac mae'n ei fforddau yna i'r gweithio yna. hef rolled an aceitewer, tam gweith古 ' 👍🏽 Slytwrnodau bwysfarach 👍🏽 rhawb Berg테fel timedrwy hwnnodaw olmolom yn cadllun anno etna roed rwy'n metŵwod gwaut hwnnodau a recipe etna roedw ffon Rydym yn y gwybod. Mae wedi gynnydraeth, ac ymwyr ymwyr yn ymwyr i ddodd erloiadau, ac mae'n minnau yw'r ddodd ar gyda'r yma. Mae'n ei dewn o gweld, ac mae'n ydynwchwyr i ddynwchwyr i ddodd ar gyda'r yma. Mae'n ei ddodd ar gyda'r yma'n gweld i ddodd ar gyda'r yma. Mae'n ei ddodd ar gyda'r yma. Oran, meanwhile, spoke about inflation and the affordability crisis, he campaigned for free and faster buses, free child care, city-owned grocery stores and taxing the rich, he supported the Palestinians and called for arresting Netanyahu and this landed. 40,000 volunteers campaigned for him last spring, which grew to 104,000 by last November. And on election day, he didn't just win. This was the highest turnout for a mayor election in New York City in 50 years. 85% of everyone who voted for him, self-identified as Democratic Socialist, and 25% of all voters in the city said the same thing. So that's 500,000 Democratic Socialists in New York City. Now, the belly of the belly of the beast, the capital of capitalism, the city that produced Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, has a mayor who said this at his inauguration. I was elected as a Democratic Socialist, and I will govern as a Democratic Socialist. I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical. So this is a huge event. This is one side of the same process happening in Minneapolis. The working class looking for a way forward, testing its leaders, and trying to find new ideas. This is an imperfect and contradictory process, but it's immensely progressive. And this is why Josh was totally right. It's not enough to say Zoran is a reformist to join the RCA. We want to participate in this process and help take it further. We want to separate the progressive from the negative or confused, the necessary from the accidental. We want to generalize and broaden this and connect these lessons to the advanced layer of our class. And all of these Democratic Socialists, that's a part of the advanced layer. And we should be excited to do this, because we support his demands, don't we? But how do we actually accomplish them? The New York Times says that Zoran's program is unaffordable. But all you need is a calculator to tell you that the entire cost would amount to just 1% of the wealth of all the billionaires in New York City. The truth is that they won't fund these programs, because they know that the workers would just want more, which they should. To accomplish these reforms, Zoran needs to rely on the working class and only the working class. For example, public transit. The buses and subways are run by one of the largest union locals in the world. It's 44,000 members could stop everything. And Zoran could refuse to use any of the anti-strike laws on the books. He could ask all of the 100,000 canvassers that volunteered for him and the 500,000 Democratic Socialists in the city to support the picket lines. This would have unprecedented power, and they could demand way more than free buses, free trains, more trains with higher wages, more staffing, and massive investment in infrastructure. But this would be fought tooth and nail by the billionaires, the Fortune 500, and the governor of New York. In other words, the Democratic Party. That's why Zoran would need a new party to lead this, a workers party. With this kind of momentum, Zoran could snap his fingers and create it. And that could lead more than just one strike. A party like that would put the question of workers' power on the table, or could put that question on the table. This is what class independence could look like. And like Josh explained, we would support any step along this direction. But you know, you don't have to wait for Zoran to do or not do this. Because just these 100,000 canvassers could form the nucleus of a future workers party. That's why we're building the RCA. This method of explanation is not new, and it's not rocket science. It's how Bolsheviks connect the problems of today to the need for workers' power. It's what Lenin called patient explanation. It's the transitional method. It's not magic. It flows logically from the power of our class and our confidence in our class to learn from experience. And everywhere we do this, we have success. Josh is right that there's this huge number of people who want something as radical as communism, or at least revolution. But because there's no other option, all they find are the reformists. So in our paper, and this is issue 19, it's very juicy on Zoran. I would highly recommend getting it. We have a series of reports in it. One from a person who canvassed all summer for Zoran. He was a democratic socialist. But then he found the RCA's Instagram. He came to our school in New York City. He joined, and he's here today. (Applause) Now, I'll end on this. On Friday, someone asked about if we really can build a communist party in the United States. The land of anti-communism. Fair enough. And you know, the American bourgeois, they love to talk about something called "real America." Fox News says, "Zoran, Bernie, that's not real America." And the liberals say that Trump, that's not real America. And in a way, they're both right. So there's another report in this same issue of the paper. From a lifelong Republican from Tennessee, who voted for Trump three times. But now he pays dues to the RCA. Minneapolis, Zoran, and even Trump are just early signs of something much bigger coming. These are the workers that we have to reach. Because sooner than we all expect, we're going to see the real America. Revolutionary America. So let's get to work. (Applause) Yeah, I just wanted to speak about the experience of the Chartist movement. I think it's useful to show how, like, a movement that may appear reformist could actually have undercurrents of revolution. Yeah, so the Chartist movement began in Britain in the 1830s. Important to understand that at that time, the working class did not have the vote. And a lot of faith was placed in this big reform bill in 1832. But it was a complete betrayal. Even after it, five out of six men and no women had the vote. So this led to a radicalization of the working class. In 1837, a group of kind of skilled workers gathered to write the People's Charter. So the demands are as follows. Universal suffrage for all men. Payment of members of parliament to allow poor people to run. Voting by secret ballot. Equal electoral districts. So, like, you know, representation by population. The abolition of property qualifications for parliamentary candidates and annual elections. Now, none of these are revolutionary demands. We have most of these now and have for some time. These were democratic demands in a country that had already had a bourgeois revolution where the bourgeois was in power. So in that case, should we say, "Oh, this is a reformist movement"? The bourgeois certainly didn't see it that way. And neither did the workers. So for liberals, the democratic rights are often seen as kind of an end unto themselves. The working class does not see it that way. One charters said that the aim of the charter was to guarantee everyone, "plenty of roast beef, plum pudding, and strong beer by working three hours a day." Yeah, that part's important. Yeah, the workers, they saw these democratic demands as being a means for achieving social ends. Now, the charters movement, particularly in the early stages, they thought, "We'll just present our demands to parliament. Clearly we're in the right. They'll have to give it to us. There's so many of us." But under the whip of counter-revolution, the movement radicalized and developed in a revolutionary direction. It became clear that the bourgeois were not going to be simply persuaded to accept these demands. So a movement that began, you know, on the basis of these reformist demands, very quickly transformed into a general strike and armed insurrection. So I think for us in the present day it's important to see the social demands that lurk below the democratic ones. I think this is particularly the case in countries that have had incomplete bourgeois revolutions or no bourgeois revolutions. The masses don't kind of wake up one day revolutionary. They learn to be revolutionary through the inability of the capitalist system to fulfill their needs. People begin to ask why the state can't give them these things that seem so basic. So we have to understand these developments in mass consciousness and at every point explain the next logical steps. We can't just say to the working class, "Come back to me when you want a revolution." Yeah, so I think it's important to learn from this history to learn how to kind of apply the method of transitional demands. Yeah, I'll leave it there. [Applause] Comrades, one of the most important and powerful unions in the United States is the United Auto Workers Union. The union was founded in the 1930s. Well, did it organize the big auto companies? The first step to building the UAW was the organizing of general motors. When the UAW was founded at the beginning, a large chunk of the leadership were communist, socialist, revolutionaries. And there was these people that organized a sit-down strike, an important GM factory complex in Flint, Michigan. Yeah, the sit-down strike was basically a plant occupation that the workers took control of the complex. Now, were these workers simply fighting to negotiate with the boss to represent the workers at that particular plant? No, they had a much broader vision. What they fought for was the idea that any and every factory worker for GM in the United States, who joined the United Auto Workers Union, would be represented by the United Auto Workers Union. That plant occupation lasted about two months, but because of their broad demands, they had solidarity strikes and solidarity job actions from GM workers around the country. It brought about a tremendous victory and general motors had to give in, general motors had to concede. In one fell swoop, the UAW was born with thousands of workers, thousands of members. I wanted to bring this up because I wanted to contrast that with the strategy of union organizing that's been ongoing at the Starbucks coffee chain in the United States. You have a union called Starbucks Workers United in the United States, which is not led by revolutionaries. It's led by reformists. Their strategy is to try to organize workers adhering to U.S. labor law. They wish to go store by store and get workers to sign cards, which would generate a government union representation electrification. If a majority of the workers vote to be represented by the union, then that one store can negotiate with the start. The workers at that one store can negotiate with Starbucks. Of course, the union leaders argued that this is a good strategy, a much faster strategy. It will provide good wages and good benefits and good working conditions for the workers. Starbucks has more than 9,000 stores in the United States. More than 1,500 stores. in Canada, more than 40,000 stores worldwide. And in more than five years, they have been able to get 676 US stores to vote the Union in. And not one of those stores has negotiated a contract. Why is that? Well, it's, it's, isn't it apparent that the owners of Starbucks understand that if they simply negotiated a really good contract with one of those Union stores, then they would have to give that contract to all the Union stores. And if that was so easy, what would happen to the rest of their stores? They would all vote Union overnight. The, the owners of Starbucks know this very well. So they stall in the negotiation. The only way the workers would be able to combat and win against the owners is they would need leverage. They would need the ability to shut down a substantial portion of Starbucks. But the whole strategy of the Union leadership works against this. As a result of the frustration, they actually, Starbucks did call a strike recently in some of their stores. It had negligible effect on the company. And the main people who paid for it were the strikers who when they went back, they lost hours on their shift. Class collaboration unionism cannot win. Class struggle unionism can win. If they were serious, they would have to start by telling workers the truth that to organize Starbucks is going to be a tough long fight. It's going to require struggle. And it's going to require building a movement that's not only national, but international, at least you as in Canada. They would start by putting significant wage demands and benefit demands and working condition demands and get people to join a movement. And once you have enough support, then you can, then the workers can decide when and where they're going to take job action. But they have to be prepared to break all those labor laws in the United States. Because those labor laws were not written for the worker to win. They were working, they were written for the capitalist to win. I want to point out that of course our comrades, we have comrades in that, in that union as well. And we of course, we support the organizing effort. But we try to explain how this effort could actually lead to victory if it changed the strategy. The unions in this period must be revolutionary. They can't be reformists. I'll end with a quote from Trotsky. The trade unions can no longer be reformists because the objective conditions leave no room for any serious and lasting reforms. The trade unions of our time can either serve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordination and disciplining of workers and for obstructing the revolution. Or on the contrary, trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. Thanks. Okay. I think this has been a very valuable discussion. Comments have made a lot of interesting points. I'm conscious that we're quite tight for time. So I'll try to respond to the questions that are asked. I think I'll have to give quite brief answers. So do feel free to challenge me afterwards if that's what you feel like. So first of all, how does say what is differ from empiricism? I suppose the short answer is that empiricism cannot say what is. We must tell the truth to the working class. And empiricism is at best agnostic on whether there is any objective truth to our ideas at all. What I mean by that is we experience things a little bit later. We experience some more things. How can we truly say there is any necessary connection between those events? I see a yellow disc in the sky. Can I really say that there is objective truth to my idea of the sun that is causing that light? So what on earth does this have to do with reformism? Because by constantly taking things at face value, the reformists cannot tell us what is going to happen in the future. Which is the most important part of saying what is in this context. So when Gordon Brown says there's not going to be another capitalist crisis, he was wrong. When people say that the US is descending into fascism, they are wrong. So to take this approach is to deceive yourself and to deceive the working class. As Marxists, we have to start from the facts before us. But we look at things as processes in which there is a necessary logic of development which we can discover. I don't have time to go into why that is exactly. But one thing I would say is that the predictions of the Marxists have been a lot better than the predictions of the reformists in the last few years, am I? Because we try to get to the essence of things, the essence of the class struggle, the real role of the working class into society, and bring that to the working class. So they can see the truth. That's saying what is. But there's another side to this that I wanted to briefly touch upon. Which is that I have seen it where Marxists have taken only a very general truth. So something that's still true in general and then have proceeded from that rather than actually basing themselves on the real situation. And that can fall into the opposite of empiricism, formalism, just to give one small example. The crisis of capitalism is the crisis of reformism, because the reformists can't deliver any reforms. That is true in general. There are hundreds of examples of that in history. It's true. But then how do you explain when reformists come to power and do carry out some reforms in a period of crisis? Gustavo Petro came to power in Columbia and he has passed some reforms. He hasn't passed his entire program. He hasn't solved the problems of the Columbia working class. He's still a reformist and he's acting as a break on the movement, pushing it into democratic channels. But under the pressure of the masses, he has succeeded in carrying out some reforms. The point is we have to proceed concretely to say what is, is to say what really is and map out the necessary objective course of the movement. Another question related to how do we defend reforms one through the state when the state is the enemy, bourgeois state? Yes, it's worth emphasizing that we are for any improvement in the lives and conditions of the working class. We don't stand outside the working class telling them what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable. The communists are the most conscious and far-sighted part of the working class movement. And Lenin explained in left-wing communism and infantile disorder, "The we must be prepared to use every means of our disposal, including the means provided by the bourgeois state. The point is we don't limit ourselves to those means. In the course of the movement, it may become necessary to struggle for better trade union rights, for instance. The struggle for universal suffrage by the charitess was a struggle to have a part in the bourgeois state, isn't it?" And we have to point the way forward for this movement. There's also another point here that Tom made that we must be prepared to not only push for laws that favor the working class but break laws that don't favor the working class. The point is we don't make a fetish of the state either way. And I mean, another way in which Lenin used the state is Bolsheviks stood for elections under an absolute state, not a bourgeois democracy. They did not do that because they thought they would be able to reform Tsarism from the inside. They did it to expose the state and to use it as a platform to address a wider section of the masses, with their revolutionary program to elevate the confidence and the unity, the appetite for struggle of the working class. I consider that to be completely acceptable. What's completely unacceptable is any method outside or inside the bourgeois state that causes the working class to lose confidence in itself, to lose unity, to lose the appetite for struggle. That is reactionary. And that is the reactionary role that reform is in all too often place. And the subject of using elections, the comm rate asked who we should vote for. And well, I suppose the answer, by short as answer is I don't know. But more generally, we're not obliged to vote for any particular party. If we're not standing elections, there isn't a party that puts forward our programme. We don't have to vote just for the sake of it. We don't even have to spoil our ballot. If we as a party call for a vote, that goes beyond the question of what we as individuals vote for. And it is us, we are effectively saying to the workers that they should vote for this party. And there are times when Marxists have called for a vote for a party that isn't communist, is social democratic, is reformist. And it's not just because that party is popular and so we kind of want to be part of that. It's a key star, I'm a winner, landslide. We didn't call for a vote for him. Although it would be very, it was never popular, so that doesn't prove my point. It's linked to what I was talking about before about showing the necessary course of the movement. If you have a movement that's mobilising for a set of demands, a programme which has been put forward by a reformist party, and we're explaining how that can be carried out into practice, then one logical way in which that could be carried into practice would be by putting these people in power. We call for a vote for Syriza in 2015 for that reason. We said, "You're for this reversing austerity. We support that. Go and do it." But to say, "Oh well, you'll betray, so don't bother voting for them, it's to stand aside from the struggle. I just want to underline that that doesn't mean that we have to find. If there isn't a party that has that kind of movement behind it, we don't have to find a party with the most left-wing programme to then apply this tactic." And I mean, on the subject of that, I guess the general principle I'm trying to bring out is the difference between principle and tactic. If we call for a vote in a election, that is a tactical question. And our tactics should be determined by how we can build, what we get out of it, how we can build the forces of communism in a given country. Because they are subordinated to our overall strategy, which we must remember, is the building of a mass revolutionary communist party. And linked to that was the question about your party. So for anybody who's not aware, in some way last July, a Labour politician, Zara Sultana, announced the creation of a new left-wing party, splitting from Labour, with Jeremy Corbyn, who it seems was rather taken by surprise by this. So an opinion poll showed that one, sorry, 800,000 people said they would be interested in supporting such a party, before even a programme was announced, which shows the enormous potential that existed, but that potential has almost, that has been largely squandered. Ever since Zara Sultana and Corbyn have been locked in this bitter power struggle, which is destroying the party, as a result, it makes it very difficult to tell what kind of party this is, whether it's even a party, to be honest. We'll have to see the outcome of the struggle. But to give a short answer, yes, it is a reformist party, in which there is a struggle between two wings, at least one of which is turning back towards the ordinary Labourism, and one led by Zara Sultana, which is coming out with a lot more radical rhetoric. She's talked about nationalising the entire economy, breaking with NATO as an imperialist instrument and I think that there is a layer around around her who are open to our ideas. But right now, they're not prepared to join us because they see themselves as taking part in this larger party. So should we enter or not? This is a tactical question and therefore has to be highly concrete. It boils down to, can we gain, can we win more revolutionaries by becoming a part of this party or remaining outside? So we can't just think about what we might gain inside but what we would lose outside. And the position of our British comrades, which I agree with at this time, is that to lower or obscure or confuse our open communist banner towards the youth at this time, in order to participate in a fluctuation as basically as a faction within this party, would be a mistake. Instead, I think it's possible to win over people from your party from the outside with the right approach. You can apply a united front approach to people in other parties without having to join that party. Trotsky, use the expression of turning your political face to workers who support this party, to say, we think we need a revolutionary party. We support the programme you're fighting for, yeah, we support the programme you're fighting for, and point the way forward for the struggle. This is where we need to go to actually carry this out and demonstrate that we have a better idea of how to wage a struggle than Zara Sotana. And on that, Marco talked about when reformists come out with very radical phrases. There reaches a point where you can't just find an even more radical version of the demand that they're putting forward. When Zara Sotana says, I want to nationalize the entire economy. Do we say we need to nationalize the world economy? No, you have to draw the practical conclusions of what she's saying, because she has absolutely no practical plan as to how she would do that. And we can impress people and win people by showing concretely that we do intend to do that. The situation may change. Your party might disappear. It might survive and shift quite far to the left. Whatever happens, we're going to keep up a dialogue with these workers, but there is absolutely no reason for us to relinquish the position we have conquered with the open work. The last question was, should we pretend to be reformist? And it's a valid question. If we could become a party of 200,000 people through reformism and then turn around and nationalize the economy, that would obviously be good, didn't it? I can say that many Marxist or pseudomarchsist organizations have tried to do that exactly. And it's gone one of two ways. In the majority of cases, they've just disappeared. Because if you're competing with a large mass reformist organization with fundamentally the same program as that organization, why would anyone join you? Let's not forget that Syriza emerged from a split from the old Communist Party. But there is another outcome as well. In some cases, Marxist organizations who have adopted a former forms program have actually succeeded in becoming mass organizations. The disappointing thing is they have become mass reformist organizations, like the Workers' Party in Belgium. It was a Maoist sect. Now it's a mass reformist party. Is that an improvement from our point of view? Maybe. Maybe it's an improvement. Because of course, if you're recruiting people on the basis of reformism, then how are you going to build an organization of Marxist Caders? Let's fight for our higher tax rate. And by the way, here's all this Marxist theory you need to read. And you need to make $100 a month's subs to fund the campaign for the tax rate increase. And so on and so on. It doesn't work. The two things are in contradiction with one another. What we are trying to build is a Marxist Cader organization. There are plenty of reformist organizations around. And so the work we're doing is absolutely vital for the movement. And I would echo one thing that Marco said, we don't need to be in a hurry to find a reformist formation to orient to. If and when they appear, we mustn't be sectarian. We need to orient correctly and skillfully. But it's not necessarily a good thing for us if a mass reformist formation does come onto the scene. And it's effectively in competition with them. The point is in Canada and other countries, the field is completely open for us. Yes, we're OK. We can't become a mass organization overnight. That's fine. We're not trying to do that right now. We're trying to become an organization of 1,000, 2,000 revolutionary Caders, which we can do in the next period in the next couple of years. And so the conclusion that I want us to come to in this session is necessary to build now, openly, proudly, on a communist program. And I would appeal to you directly, if you aren't already in the ranks of the RCP and the Revolutionary Communist International, then now is the time to join and help us build that organization. And the last thing I want to say because the chair's looking comfortable. Understandably so. But I mentioned that the reformist fall into pessimism. Well, where does our optimism come from? I come to events like this and I see enthusiasm, optimism. When the rest of the movement is complaining about what the descent into fascism and so on. Are we mad? No. With the only people who see what really is, we stand for the most progressive class that has ever existed in history. It's the majority of the world's population. Billions of people are not just people. They're the people who make the whole world work. And what's more, this class is beginning to move. And these left reformist formations that we've been talking about, they are a symptom of that. They're a sign of the masses looking for something. The tide of history is turning in our direction, comrades. You need to know this, really know this, carry it with you, because there'll be a long road ahead, you know. There will be setbacks, there will be defeats in the class struggle, but there will be opportunities that you and I cannot imagine. Our party represents the future of humanity. And that future has never been closer. If we are ready, we will remake this world and make a world fit for human beings to live in. So comrades, let's go forward. Thank you.