Alright, so the men's Australian Open Draw has officially come out and it is looking very very hard for the defending champion But let's start with the withdrawals from the men's side. Not too many on the couple on the men's side Only a couple we've got Monfice. He's pulled out. Matrizak has also pulled out. Opelka's pulled out Elkres is also pulled out Which was the biggest name on the men's side to pull out the number one in the world and Chilich has also pulled out in The last couple of days due to a knee injury. Alright, let's start at the top of the draw here with Rafa Nadal The number one seed of course 32 seeds in this one No one gets a buy in the first round and Rafa takes on Draper in the first round That is tough. That is really tough for Rafa Nadal winner of that match takes on either Nakashima or McDonald in the second round Then we've got Munar taking on qualifier winner of that match takes on either Ema or Nishioca the 31st seed in the second round Possible 31st versus 1st Nishioca Nadal third round then you've got Hashinov the 18th seed taken on Morales Winner of that match takes on either Baez or Kubla who's been in good form lately in that second round Then you've got Otto versus a qualifier winner of that match takes on either Altmaier or number 16 seed Tiafo in the second round Tiafo Rafa possible fourth round replay of the US Open from last year where Tiafo beat Nadal and upset him in that fourth round That's tough. That's very tough for Rafa in that fourth round if he gets that far like I said Draper's no cakewalk in the first Okay, let's get the next part of this draw because it gets even scarier Hercash number 10 seed takes on Martin as in the first round winner of that takes on either Senego or Borgus in the second round then you've got a qualifier taken on Daniel winner of that match takes on either Lyovic or the number 20 seed Shapovalov in the second round Then you've got Korda the 29th seed taken on Garin winner of that match takes on either a qualifier or Rindanish in the second round then you get the wild card Milman taken on Huzla winner of that match takes on either Giron the number seven seed Mevadev who's in the same quarter as Nadal in the second round there So possible third round between Korda and Mevadev possible fourth round between Shapo Medi between hercash Mevadev and of course the quarter finals could be Nadal versus Mevadev It could be Nadal versus Shapovalov again like last year It could be even be Korda versus Nadal which is no cakewalk either So very tricky section of the draw for Rafa Nadal. Alright, let's go next quarter of the draw We've got the number three seed City pass taking on Hallis in the first round winner of that takes on either a qualifier or Hitchikata in the second round then we've got Gricksport taken on Koli winner of that match takes on either a Vashka or the number 32 seed benders actual in the second round that we've got Moussetti the number 17 seed taken on Harris Winner of that takes on either Corja or Fucovic in the second round now Fucovic has done well in Australia in the past so maybe someone to watch out for then you got Echeverry taking on Barre winner of that match takes on either Edmund made a semi-final back five years ago I think he takes on Sinner the number 15 seed in the first round so Sinner City pass fourth round And I think they played fourth round last year if I'm not mistaken or maybe quarter finals last year either way That could be a really fun matchup. Unfortunately Sinner is a little a little hurt though He's a little under the weather injury wise So let's see if you can get through those first matches and then maybe set up that city pass fourth round All right next part of the draw here We've got the number 11 seed Nori taking on Van Aishe the Frenchman in the first round Winner of that takes on either Montero or Lesdien in the second then we've got you banks taken on Kwan Winner of that match takes on either Le Hedgeka or the number 21 seed Chorich That's a very fun first round matchup Then you got Serendolle the number 28 seed taking on Palla winner that match takes on either Mouté or the wild card Wu in the second round then we've got Molchan taking on Vavrenka That's a fun first round winner of that takes on either Pospasoul or the number six seed Felix Ozealia Seem Very fun matchup in the second round potentially between Felix and Vavrenka very very fun If we're gonna go for the fourth round matches, it could be Chorich versus Felix Ozealia Seem It could be Nori versus FAA and of course this section of the draw will take on the city pass part So quarter final between FAA and city pass possibly FAA and Sinner, city pass Chorich Or even city pass Nori in the quarter finals very fun matchups And of course this section of the draw will take on the rafter section in the semi-finals So maybe we get Nadal taking on city pass by ranking if that happens We could be getting Mehvedev city pass We could be getting Ozealia Seem versus Nadal or Mehvedev and a bunch of other matchups But man, it is a very top-heavy draw just like the ladies draw very very top-heavy Andre Rubelev the number 5 seed taking on Dominic team the wild card. That is wild That is a wild first round matchup We're gonna be watching that for sure Epic matchup to start the tournament Winner of that takes on either a qualifier or russivori in the second round Then we've got Galen taking on Shadi Winner of that match takes on either Bagnes or the number 25 seed Evans in the second round Then we've got the number 19 seed Kiryos taking on Sefulin Tough first round matchup there for Keegs Sefulin played well here this time last year Winner of that takes on either Gaskay or Umbair in the second round So Kiryos Umbair certified 5-setter as we've seen it many times over the last couple years Then you've got Kresi taking on Ramas Finoles Winner of that match takes on either Kriyanovic for the number 9 seed Runa in the second round So Runa versus Kiryos third round Kiryos Rubelev fourth round potentially Next part of the draw Pablo Kirinobusta at a 14 seed takes on Kashiin in the first round Winner of that takes on either a qualifier or Bonsi in the second Then you've got Izner versus Matarino Winner of that match takes on either another qualifier or the number 22 seed Diminor in the second round Diminor is going to nice draw there Then you've got the number 27 seed Dimitrov taking on Karatsov Which two years ago was a 5-setter at this event So that could be epic Winner of that match takes on either a qualifier or Jera in the second round Then we've got a qualifier taken on Dilian Winner of that takes on either Bayana or the number 4 seed Djokovic in the second round Djokovic Dimitrov third round Kirinobusta Djokovic fourth round but again I think Nolei likes his draw He's got a very good draw compared to Rafa for example Quarterfinal opponent potentially we've got Rubelev taking on Djokovic We could have Runa versus Djokovic in the quarterfinals or even Kiryos versus Djokovic In the quarterfinals Quarterfinals onwards are going to be tough for Nolei But he has got a good start to the week With those first couple opponents I would say are very winnable And the final section of the draw the final quarter we've got Fritz Number 8 seed taken on Basilashvili Winner of that takes on either Seng or Popperin in the second round Then we've got Shelton taking on Zhang Winner of that takes on either a qualifier or Kichmenovic The 26th seed in the second round Then we've got Schwartzman the 23rd seed taking on a qualifier Winner of that match takes on either JJ Wolf or Thompson in the second round That's a fun first round Then you've got Gophane versus a qualifier Winner of that match takes on either another qualifier Or Alexander Zverev the number 12 seed And Zverev's got a nice draw But unfortunately he's not 100% backed yet But we could have Fritz versus Zverev Fourth round opponent potentially If we're going by the seeds Kichmenovic also played well here last year In Djokovic's absence So maybe keep an eye on Kichmenovic as well He could play Zverev or maybe even go past Fritz In past Zverev and get to the quarterfinals But pretty open draw there I'd say obviously Fritz the favourite And the final section of the men's draw We've got Berettini number 13 seed taken on Andy Murray Okay, alright We'll watch that That's pretty epic Huge first round match and it gets bigger from there Because Kokonakis and Vanini Will play to play the winner of Murray versus Berettini So first second rounds there are going to be fun In that little section Two qualifiers are going to go at it Winner of that qualifier battle Will take on either Souza or the 24th seed Batista Ragu Then we've got Devadovic Fakina the 30th seed Taken on Bublik Winner of that takes on either a qualifier Or Paul in the second round Then we've got O'Connell taken on Brooksby Winner of that takes on either Machak Or the number two seed Casper Rude In the second round This bottom section is wide open You know Rude, he hasn't been great this year so far Been a little bit sketchy He lost last week in Auckland in an upset Berettini Murray, I mean that's epic Berettini could get through this section This could be the Berettini section If he can get through Murray And possibly Kokonakis And of course this section of the draw Will take on the Fritz section So we could get Rude versus Fritz If we're going to base it off ranking We could get Berettini versus Fritz as well Or we could get Zverev versus Berettini Which would be an epic quarterfinal Either way it's an open section I feel like we could get maybe a random player Out of this section But I'm thinking it might be Berettini Of course the semifinalists Between this section and the section above We could be getting Rude taking on Djokovic Based on the seeds Djokovic-Berettini Djokovic versus Fritz Maybe Djokovic versus Zverev If we're going to keep on putting Djokovic in the semi I think Djokovic You know Rubelev's also up there But I think Djokovic He loves it He's got to love this draw So there it is The Australian Open draw for 2023 for the men And like I said with the women's draw It's very top heavy That top section with the number one seed is Rafa Nadal Very very tough As it was tough for Shriontek as well But let me know down in the comments below If you're watching this later Who do you think is going to win the Australian Open? Do you think it is Djokovic's to lose now? Because even though he's injured He does have a pretty good draw And he avoided the big guns Being Medvedev in that quarter final And obviously Nadal until the final So he doesn't have to play those two very tough players Until the very last match I'm sticking with Djokovic I mean I can't not pick him Baratini is a dark horse But definitely Djokovic For me it's his to lose


Welcome back to Kids Fun Science. My name's Ken. Today's experiment is the Plastic Diskin Ring Apparatus Thermal Expansion Kit. As always, adult supervision is required. What you need for this experiment is the Diskin Ring Apparatus Kit, which you can find in the descriptions, two dishes, some ice and water. So I found this really cool experiment online and I put the description in the link where I got it. As you can see, it comes with a disc and a ring and they perfectly fit together, barely any gap. So this experiment really shows you the effects of thermal expansion on plastics. So what we have here is a dish on the left with hot tap water, actually microwaved just for a tad, and then I got some ice water. So we're gonna have to make a prediction. If we put the ring and submerge that into the hot water and the disc into the cold water, what's going to happen to each one of them if we place them there for one minute? Let's spend one minute and be very careful when removing it out of the hot water. Take the disc out and the ring and you're gonna be able to see that the disc contracted in the cold ice water while the ring expanded in the hot water, both because of thermal expansion, causing the gap in between the two pieces. That's pretty cool like that. That's pretty big gap as you saw from the beginning. So we're gonna continue from the first experiment. You can still see there's a gap from the first experiment right there. And so now we're gonna make a prediction. What's gonna happen if I put the ring and disc submerged in ice cold water for one minute? Go ahead and make your prediction. This is a really cool kit because it has multiple different exercises you can do where I'm only gonna do about three of them. We'll check back in about a minute. All right, so it's been one minute and we're going to remove the ring and the disc from the ice cold water. Remember the experiment before we had the ring in the hot water and the disc in the cold water and there was a gap in between. So we're gonna try to put these together to see and that's pretty impressive. There is no gap there. So both pieces contracted at the same rate in the cold water causing them to fit together without any gaps. That's pretty cool. So right back to square one where we started at. Kit comes also with a long rectangle piece right here. You can see it's flat and for experiment over three we make a prediction. What's gonna happen to the rectangle if we run hot water on one side of the plastic piece? So we're gonna make that prediction. See if you're right this time and we put it down and we can see the plastic arcs. That's pretty cool. So the plastic bends away from the hot water because the hot water causes the plastic on that side of the rectangle to expand but not the plastic on the other side of the rectangle. So we have the rectangle and it's still bent from the last experiment. So this time instead of hot water we're gonna run it under cold. So go ahead and make a prediction. What's gonna happen to the rectangle when I put cold water under it? So the cold water there. So we pull it out and we put it on the counter and we can see it's completely flat this time. So the cold water caused the previously expand plastic to contract back to its original size. Making the plastic flat again, pretty impressive. Overall this kit is really good. I love using it and we're able to reuse it over and over. I hope you enjoyed this video. Remember to click share if you liked it and thanks for watching. Okay, that video seems really interesting. Oh, and that video too. Um, I think I read subscribe button down below and.


If you can love your body unconditionally and just feel amazing about it all the time, like that's awesome. I have nothing against that. But most people can't. And so I think setting that as like the gold standard just makes a lot of people feel like they're failing on a whole new front.


Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA the Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. Preseason week number two is here. Brand new FIFA 23 rewards to grind for today and hopefully some brand new transfer player SBC. Since we didn't see any of those dropped yesterday, we now think we're gonna see them throughout this weekend with the start of the second week of this preseason promo. As you can see here, the week one reward since they signify this as week one, we have to of course think that brand new ones are coming today. I wanna talk about that potential a little bit. And of course, what everybody's really excited for, an Erling Holland, a Renato Sanchez, Antonio Rutiger and one more leaked transfer SBC or objective card that was talked about yesterday. So I wanna take a look at all that. Of course, look at the market, look at the SBC fodder, how those things could be moving today on this game as one of the last promo Fridays is upon us in FIFA 22. So if you're excited for a brand new preseason week today, hit the thumbs up and subscribe if you're new. Let's take a look first of all at our theory that we had yesterday in the video saying that if we didn't get anything on Thursday, then I was like, okay, we're probably gonna get them throughout the weekend. And yesterday, we literally had nothing besides the marquee matchups SBC. That was all the content that we had. It was a very quiet day yesterday on Thursday. Now also, what that does set the stage for is the release of these big three leaked transfer SBCs during the weekend. I don't expect to see every single one of these three today. We've gone over the leaks already, right? We have Renato Sanchez, we have Erling Holland and we also have Antonio Rutiger that have been leaked in the past couple of days. Renato was leaked first. So that makes me think this could be our headlining SBC today on Friday. I think for me it's a toss up between Renato and Holland. Both of these are big enough name, big enough hype players to be dropped as a headline main SBC for the start of a promo Friday, the second week of pre-season, right? So it's kind of a toss up for me between Holland and Renato Sanchez. I would be prepared for both or not both, but I would be prepared for either of these to drop today. I mean, technically there could be two of these transfer cards today on Friday, but we have four cards leaked in total now because we have Holland, Renato and Antonio Rutiger, but we have another one here in the mix, Diego Carlos. Now it does not say if any of these cards are objectives or SBCs, right? It's not signified in any of these leaks, I do believe, but if there's any of these that seem like an objective to me, it's this guy. And this could be an objective player that kind of replaces, if you will, the Lukaku that we have in objectives right now. This would be a really, really great card nonetheless. I'll know it's in objectives. Maybe a little bit less people would try and go for this card, but a Brazilian center back with these kind of stats would be absolutely incredible, even if we were to get a Rutiger SBC over the course of this weekend. So that's kind of what I'm seeing and what we talked about in last night's video as well is since we didn't get any SBCs yesterday, it really feels like these leaks were just setting the stage for this weekend on the game. So between Renato and Holland though, I do believe that we will get one of those SBCs today and that's gonna be, it's gonna mean there's gonna be hype in the SBC section kind of regardless, right? Last week on Friday, we had the showdown between Nunes and Ericsson and we had Lukaku in objectives. Then we had Lewandowski and Gravenberts released on Saturday and Sunday. I kind of think that's how the weekend is gonna go this weekend with maybe one or two moments players today, one in objectives, and then a couple more released throughout the weekend. That's kind of how I see things going today on Friday. So again, the real hype is with these transfer players, right? People have loved Lewandowski, Gravenberts and, Renato, Sanchez and Erling Holland are gonna bring a lot of hype with themselves dropping on the game today. And of course, one of those probably Carlos will be the objective. So let's say Renato or Erling drops today. What's kind of gonna happen? Well, of course, you're gonna think about SBC fodder and right now, like we have seen on a lot of Fridays recently, it's kind of the opposite of what you would usually expect to see. A lot of your fodder cards are back down. Now I'm gonna look at a card that's actually a transfer himself that a lot of people are wanting to get a transfer SBC. Gabrielle Jesus, right? This is a card that was above 3,000 coins during the week. He is now under 2K with marquee matchup supply. And pretty soon on Friday this morning, as I'm recording this video, there are gonna be people finishing their weekend league. People that grind to get nine or 11 wins like right away and just get it done super duper fast. They're gonna be opening packs with tradeable rewards. And there's gonna be a bit of supply for these 84s even early today on Friday as well. I think that fodder today is a W move before content. And that's kind of what was, it was gonna happen last week as well. But the whole, if you remember last week on Friday, the whole server issues happened and the game was down. Well, the game was down a little bit, but also EA sports didn't release content for like four hours on a Friday after the content drop. It was one of the weirdest promo Fridays ever. So we're really hoping that that is not an issue today. If it is, that would be a disgrace. But, you know, I think they're not gonna have any issues this Friday, they've got it worked out, content's been rolling like normal. Watch your low rated fodder though, 83s, 84 specifically, 85s even, and maybe some 86s, basically 86 and under. Watch these cards because if you do see an SBC release today, these guys like one of them, these guys like Pogba, these are cards that are gonna move regardless of whether a player SBC comes out today because also on Friday, we have the daily refresh of the 85x10 upgrade that still everybody does at least a couple of times a day, even though the cards in packs today are not changing. And that's one thing that a lot of people had a question about is, Nate, are the cards in packs today changing? Are they gonna put foot captains in packs? The answer to that is unfortunately no, because if you take a look at the home screen here, you can see that it mentions on one of these little information tiles that preseason batch one players are in packs again for seven more days. So it is very unfortunate that EA Sports is not changing anything about what is in packs today, but people are still gonna open those 85x10s. That's why I think it's a great idea to go through, stock your club with a little bit of fodder. Just take a look at some of these 83s, these 84s that just 1.5K is crazy, right? Oh, I have a player pick, nice. Like 1.5K for an 83, that was a nice player pick. It is really, really solid. That's a really, really great price. And even for 84s being like 3,000 coins, 85s being 4K, try to get some of these guys on bid as well if you're trying to stock your club. Great opportunities because some of these cards move a lot every day. Like I was saying about Gabriel Azuz, he is under 2,000 coins. I just got him for 1.5 and how much was he on Wednesday? Wednesday this dude was 3.1,000 coins and probably even on Tuesday, a little bit higher right after content. So I would expect kind of a movement like this today on Friday where you have fodder getting low before the content drop and then spiking right afterwards with the SBCs that do get released. Now talking about SBCs a little bit more, the only thing that would impact the fodder market today would be some sort of tradable supply and what chances do we have of even getting tradable supply? In my opinion, the only chance that we have is EA Sports dropping some one-off SBC that would give us some supply which there's no more token SBCs to be had. There's nothing along those lines. The only thing they might give us is remember how this last week they gave us that untradable and tradable 83 plus times five pack. There was a 50K version and a 70K version. If they were to refresh those today, potentially you could see some supply for the lower tier if people opened the tradable pack which they very well could. But I think those weren't even dropped on Friday. I think it was on like Saturday or something.  So I'm not really worried about supply today for fodder being an issue. I just imagine like every single day on FIFA, otherwise you're gonna have your fodder go up after 6pm content just because there's gonna be new SBCs to do and it's gonna be 85 times tens and other stuff that people are trying to get done and complete. But again, like I mentioned, if I had to take a stab at what player SBC we were gonna get today, I feel like it's gonna be Renato Sanchez. He was leaked first, but Erling Holland is also a really insane card. I don't know, it's a toss up between those two for me. And then Diego Carlson objective. That's my forecast, that's my prediction. But of course, we really don't know. We just know that those players are coming soon. So that's kind of that talk around the SBC section today. Other than that, I don't think anything else is really expiring. Like even your 82 plus player picks are still here. The shapeshifter player pick that's still here until tomorrow on Sunday, sorry, on Saturday.  Nothing is really expiring today. You still have one more day to complete Pogba. You still have one more day to complete Wynaldum. Though I guess the one that really does expire is the Foot 23 Warmup. So that's the next thing I wanna talk about though is what new FIFA 23 objectives will we have to grind today? Some of you guys are only playing this promo right now because you're like, I wanna get some FIFA 23 rewards for my next year account. And I do believe that between the weeks last year, like pre-season week one to week two, the pack rewards weren't that different. Now it does say on the pre-season website that it says each week we will see new challenges. So stay tuned for details about additional Foot 23 rewards that will be made available in the coming weeks of pre-season. Now again, this past week we had the three players packs and the two player packs that were both rare golds and the contracts. Now what kind of rewards would I like to see? I would like to see more of these. I think this is the best value reward as long as it doesn't take a lot of games to play, a lot of time to grind. Drop as many of these as you can e-sports because these three rare golds, like again, think about how few rare golds are in league one. If you can't grind every single one of these, if you don't have time to do all of these, try at least to do league one and Premier League because league one, there's so many few rare golds and Premier League, there's just a lot of cards that you might be able to fit in your team, especially thinking about the new chemistry system coming in FIFA 23. Those would be very good packs to have. And again, speaking of the chemistry system in 23 and the way it's gonna go down, I would love to see EA release one of the rewards that are containing and giving out position modifier, like a position modifier pack or a consumables pack that might seem like an L, but I'm telling you guys, from what I have seen and heard and even just reading the pitch notes that EA have put out, those position change modifiers, they're different in FIFA 23 than they have been in FIFA 22. There's only one card. If you see anything that gives those out, make sure you do those objectives because we are gonna need a lot of those next year for SBCs, for turning our squads around with the chemistry. People are gonna make mistakes and have to move players around all the time with their secondary positions. So I know that's way forward thinking, and you're like, Nate, why would I grind? If it's not too hard, and if they do give us this, make sure you go and get those consumable packs done if they're gonna contain position changes because those are gonna be very, very needed. And I can even tell you this from playing the beta. And I'm not supposed to say those words, but from playing that as well and just knowing how it looks, position changes are incredibly important to have a lot of in your ultimate team. So again, I just hope they give us some good packs. Like the three player packs, I don't mind at all. The two rare gold players packs, like those, I'm not a fan of those. Give us better player packs or give us just more contracts. We didn't have any coin boost to grind for last time, but I would imagine that the rewards they would be, again, redeemable through the two different methods they were this last week, right? Both kind of through objectives, but I guess one was technically through SBCs. The warm-up challenge, I think we'll get a new warm-up challenge today, right? It was called the warm-up challenge one, I guess, no, nevermind, it was challenge two and three, but I would assume that we get another warm-up challenge today for the second week and then another objective to give us some games to play to get some sort of packs and then also some FIFA 22 rewards at the same time. So those are the biggest two things today, the transfer SBCs and the FIFA 23 rewards, just make it semi-decent rewards and make it kind of worth our time-y sports and we will go ahead and absolutely get involved with some of that. So that's kind of what's going on today there. Like I mentioned, no new cards in packs today. It's just, it's kind of a weird one and it's a bummer still because so many people are like, Nate, how do I get the foot captain's cards? Really the only way to do that is to do the one of four footies batch, one, two, or three player pick and if you need three foot captain's cards to get Sala done or however many you need, what do you need of them? You need three of them. Then you have to do that SBC three times, which is pain, but unfortunately it's the only way that EA are helping us out right now in that regard. So unless EA have any surprises for us today, I'm not expecting that massive of a day of content. I'm just gonna be completely honest with you guys. It's really the hype's gonna come down to the rewards for 23 and the transfer players. Now also, regarding what transfer player were to drop today, if it's a Renato Sanchez, you're gonna really carefully wanna watch some of your elite tier midfielders and watch some of your PSG links as they could rise. But also if it's a Erling Holland today, then I would look at a guy like maybe a shapeshifter son, one of the only Premier League striker cards that still maintains some sort of value on the market right now and maybe some other Manchester City cards as well. Some of those Man City cards could be going up after a Holland drops. Some of these other striker cards in the Premier League, maybe even like a Tots Christiano Ronaldo, this shapeshifter son, those types of cards and other strikers could be dropping a little bit. Just like midfielders, if Renato Sanchez were to drop a guy like Marcelo or Sergio Ramos, two of the top shapeshifter midfielders that are still being used by a lot of people right now in this game, these types of players could be dropping today, depending upon what SBCs come out. So that's absolutely something to watch out for today. Now also there's one card that I look at right now and say, man, it's not looking good for this guy, whatever happens. And that's Etter Militao, because regardless of whether Rutiger has dropped this weekend at a good price or Diego Carlos, that would mean this Militao would have two different options to get replaced by a Brazilian center back via Diego Carlos or another Real Madrid center back in Rutiger. So I would be very careful with this card specifically. I wanted to kind of shout his card out in general because he has been up in price since he went out of packs at 130, 120,000 coins last week. He is now up to 170K. I'd be looking to take the cash in a card like that, especially with the leaks that we know are actually coming. So again, I'm not gonna take all your time here and make a super duper long video today about the Friday content because there's really not that much to talk about. We know what we're expecting. Drop us the transfer player, SBCs, EA Sports, make them good value and allow us to craft them up, drop some good FIFA 23 rewards and we'll call it a very good promo and a very happy Friday, I guess is what you could say. Although we would like to see things a little bit better with the cards in packs, we'll have to wait for next week for that one. But that's gonna be the video for today, lads. Let me know down in the comments what you're excited for the most today, whether it's the rewards, whether it's probably for the preseason transfer players. I'm excited for those. I wanna try some of those cards out. I think that's where most of the hype is for today, for sure. So let me know down in the comments. But if you enjoyed today's video and if you're excited for the promo today, hit the thumbs up and of course, subscribe if you're new. It has been Nathan Ford Account and I will catch you guys later. Peace out.


So I want to start with a conversation that Stalin had with an American journalist, a guy called Roy Howard, back in March 1936. I'm just going to read out, you know, what was said. The conversation kind of turned towards Soviet foreign policy. And this guy, Roy Howard asked, has the Soviet Union to any degree abandoned its plans and intentions for bringing about world revolution? Stalin replies, we never had such plans and intentions. Howard was a bit perplexed by this. He was like, you appreciate no doubt, Mr. Stalin, that much of the world has long entertained a very different impression. Stalin replies, this is the product of a misunderstanding. Howard says, a tragic misunderstanding. And Stalin replies, no, a comical one, or perhaps tragicomic. So, you know, we see right here that the Soviet Union has went from a stronghold of the international working class and a beacon for world revolution to a state led by narrow nationalists and great Russian chauvinists portraying revolutions every turn. And understanding why and how this took place is the task of this discussion. I think we should start with asking ourselves, why Marxists are internationalists in the first place. Now as Marxists, we believe that the fight for communism is international or it is nothing. And this isn't due to some, you know, romanticism or sentimentalism or a vague sense of solidarity, nor is it to do with the fact that we just, you know, love togetherness and diversity and so on. We are scientific socialists. We look at the developments that have already taken place under capitalism. Now, as Trotsky pointed out, in the era of imperialism, the two biggest barriers to the development of the productive forces are, can anyone guess, private property and the nation state. Excellent. Yeah, you'll do well in the quiz tonight, I'm sure. You know, the nation state is a barrier to the development of the productive forces and even the capitalists themselves are aware that the question that this poses, they try but ultimately fail to overcome these barriers through international trading and finance organizations like the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and so on and trading blocks like the EU.  A division of labor occurs on a world stage. Nations become linked together through trade and finance and you have supply chains that span across countries and even continents. And the imperialists vie for markets and spheres of influence, leading to bloody wars like World War I and World War II and so on, which have often plunged the world into a blood blast, sacrificing millions of workers and oppressed peoples in the process. And through all of this, all of this creation of a world market and world capitalism, a world working class is created as well with common interests, which must be fought for collectively. And the second international as well understood this. They understood that even actually for basic demands, like the eight hour working day, an international struggle is necessary. Hence why we have International Working Day, which was set up by the second international. And if that's the case for basic demands under capitalism, then internationalism is even more necessary in the task of establishing a new socialist society, which is a much greater task. So here we can see that internationalism is a part of the scientific program of Marxism. And it's not just an optional extra as some people treat it. And this is precisely why Marxists have always fought to establish international organizations from the first international through to the communist international and beyond in our own organization, the IMT. So next I want to move on to the Russian revolution and what the Russian revolution signifies. And instead of the socialist revolution commencing in the advanced capitalist countries like Britain and Germany, as Marx and Engels had anticipated, what we saw was that the chain of imperialism broke at its weakest link and actually quite a backwards country on the periphery of Europe. Now the Russian empire was an extremely backwards country. Despite having some pockets of quite advanced industry, it was very much a peasant based agrarian economy, where the majority of production had taken place in the same primitive ways as it had done for centuries essentially. The tasks of capitalist development had not been achieved and the cultural level was very low. You know, the overwhelming majority of the population were illiterate, for example. Now clearly Russia could not achieve socialism by itself. And this was something that was agreed upon by every single tendency within the Russian social democracy from even the most right-wing Mensheviks all the way through to the Bolsheviks. In fact, Russian Marxism itself was born out of a struggle against the Narodniks and their idea that Russia could just simply grow over to socialism by itself. This is where Russian Marxism was born essentially. And from 1905 onwards, Lenin understood that even a democratic regime led by the workers and the peasants, let alone a dictatorship of the proletariat and a socialist regime, could not survive without the aid of the working class in Europe and a socialist revolution in Europe. Now Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, which he began to put forward in the aftermath of the 1905 revolution, understood this process most clearly. He said that upon taking power, the working class must immediately play a leading role in forging a new society. And it must begin the tasks of transforming society along socialist lines. By, for example, nationalizing the banks and industry and taking steps to plan production and spreading the revolution internationally as well. And Lenin and Trotsky were, you know, they both understood that the Russian revolution could only be viewed as the firing shot of an international revolution, a beacon to the workers of Europe. And I will just say it as an aside that while Lenin and Trotsky did have slightly differing views up until 1917 on the question of permanent revolution and the tasks after the revolution, through the experience of 1917, Lenin came over to the position of Trotsky and they were firmly united on that. And that is, you know, proven by countless quotations from Lenin himself. I just wanted to make that very clear because Stalinists will often say the otherwise as we'll get on to. But this theory of permanent revolution was proven in practice by the experience of the October Revolution. You know, the workers seized power and they didn't institute capitalism. They immediately nationalized the commanding heights of the economy, instituted workers control, and so on. And, you know, 21 foreign armies invaded to crush the workers state and Russia was cut off from foreign trade through embargoes and so on. So you can see that, you know, the revolution from the get-go had the question of internationalism placed upon it, you know, from day one essentially. So the Bolsheviks therefore set up the communist international, you know, to accelerate the formation of mass communist parties ready to take power immediately. That was their perspective of the immediate seizure of power in the revolutionary wave that followed the end of World War One. This was dictated by, you know, the need to defend the Russian Revolution and to break its isolation. This was a life and death question for the Russian Revolution and the young workers state. And Lenin even said that without this internationalist policy, without creating the common turn and fermenting revolution abroad, the Russian Revolution would be reduced to an adventure. That's quite a, you know, a strong statement. And this is proven by countless other quotations from Lenin himself. He said in March 1918, so soon after they'd, you know, took power, he said that without a revolution in Germany, we shall perish. World imperialism cannot live side by side with a victorious, advancing socialist revolution. A month later, he said almost the same thing. We will perish if we are unable to hold out until we meet with the mighty support of the insurrectionary workers of other countries. Now the young workers state was in fact able to hold out, you know, and defeat the armies of intervention and stabilize itself. Importantly, with the assistance of the workers in Europe who, you know, campaigned to force the imperialists to withdraw. In fact, there were mutinies of the British and French soldiers who were invading Russia. And that was all part of the pressure of the working class upon the imperialists. But even when this small breathing space, this small equilibrium was won. Lenin said at the Third Congress of the common turn in 1921, that this equilibrium was extremely precarious and unstable and could not exist for any great length of time. And I'm sure comrades have heard, you know, that Lenin went so far as to say that he would sacrifice the Russian revolution in order to gain the victory of the German revolution. Such was his internationalism, right? This shows the unwavering internationalism of the Bolsheviks their willingness to subjugate the part to the whole and to take a long view of history above what was immediately, you know, quote-unquote pragmatic. And this view was absolutely consensus among all of the Bolsheviks, up until 1924, the likes of Bakharin, as Novyev, Kamenev, and even Stalin as well actually was, you know, he agreed with this. For example, in 1924, following Lenin's death, Stalin published a short pamphlet called Foundations of Leninism, which I've read. And I wouldn't recommend it, but also I would recommend it to get an idea of just how low Stalin's political level was. But anyway, he says, point blank, this is like a smoking gun right here, can the final victory of socialism in one country be attained without the joint efforts of the proletariat of several countries? No, this is impossible. But this was revised a mere few months later, a new addition was brought out, and the exact opposite was asserted that socialism in one country was in fact possible. And no explanation was really given for this whatsoever. So you might ask yourself, you know, how did Stalin manage to achieve this feat of theoretical innovation one, you know, bright morning in 1924? But I think to understand this, it's important to remind ourselves of the context in which this took place in the years following the Russian Revolution. Now, as I mentioned, after 1917, and inspired by the example of the Russian Revolution, there was a wave of revolutionary struggles across Europe in places like Germany, Bavaria, there was a worker's state right there in Hungary in 1919, they managed to set up a Soviet Republic, which was quite short lived.  But all of these revolutions, unfortunately, failed to seize power because of the lack of a mature Marxist leadership. And, you know, as we discussed in the, I think it was the previous session on the German Revolution, the German Revolution of 1923 failed due to the vacillation and the hesitation of the leadership of the German Communist Party under the guidance of people like Zanov, the urban Stalin, who were very conservative in their outlook and, you know, weren't really true, you know, didn't have a true grasp of the Marxist method, I would say. And this, the failure of this revolution kind of signaled the end of this revolutionary wave. And the USSR kind of realized that from this point on, they were kind of, you know, isolated for at least for the time being. So, yeah, the USSR was left isolated. It survived the civil war by the skin of its teeth. But its industry was laid to waste. The masses were exhausted by years and years of struggle. And they began to receive from politics. The Soviets began to be less attended and so on. People became a bit demoralized and people had to work long hours and they couldn't, therefore, participate in the governance of the economy and politics and so on. And in this context, the bureaucrats and the ex-Zarist functionaries who had weaseled their way into the state apparatus began to feel their strength. They began to go into the offensive. They wanted to defend the privileges and, you know, the positions that they had won on the back of the revolution. And around this time, there was a new policy carried out called the New Economic Policy, which was carried out to stabilize the economic situation in Russia. And this basically allowed for, you know, private markets to function under the strict guidance of the workers' state, under the strict limitations of the workers' state. But inadvertently, this did produce a small layer of small capitalists, net men, Lenin called them. I've always found that quite funny, the speculators and black marketeers and so on. And of course, rich peasants, Kulaks, who, you know, made quite a lot of money on the back of this policy. And the bureaucracy based themselves upon this petty bourgeois layer, this reactionary layer, who were chafing against the planned economy and they wanted to undermine it. And Lenin and Trotsky were aware of this growing bureaucratic danger and did begin a struggle against it, actually. I think there's some books in the well-read tent that deal with this question, Lenin's Fight Against the Bureaucracy. But when Lenin died in 1924, an accident does play a role here, of course, a power struggle opened up and the bureaucracy sort of came out of the shadows, so to speak, and flexed its muscles. And it was Stalin who placed himself at the head of this nascent bureaucracy that was feeling its strength. So the theory of socialism in one country suited the mood of the bureaucracy, who wanted plain sailing and an easy, comfortable existence and weren't interested in the storm and the struggle of revolution, of world revolution. And I think this layer in Soviet society can very easily be compared and contrasted with the reformist layer of bureaucracy in capitalist countries who also don't want to rock the boat too much. You can quite easily, I think, think of the Stalinist bureaucracy like, you know, a trade union bureaucracy but in power, essentially. And, you know, they too were steeped in empiricism, in gradualism, and narrow nationalism as well, as is the case with bureaucrats of all stripes. They saw themselves above all as realists and pragmatists. Now, a white Russian emigre called Petrov recalls the mood of this new layer of Soviet administrators at the time. One of them said, you know, responding to the question of whether, you know, we can build socialism in one country or not. He said, how is it possible that we in our own country cannot contrive to build a happy life? If Marx has it otherwise, that means that we are no Marxists. We are Russian Bolsheviks. That's what. So you can see the nationalism right there kind of creeping in. So as we can see, the theory of socialism in one country didn't produce this new turn in the Soviet Union. On the contrary, Stalin and his clique sort of merely give form to this already existing conservative mood. They tried to justify it to give it a pseudo-Marxist coating and to sort of present it as a new innovation in front of the eyes of the party masses and so on. And they didn't really believe in what they were saying as well. They were just putting forward any idea that would justify their opportunism. And as an aside, this is characteristic, I think, of all Stalinist quote unquote theory. It doesn't start with a scientific analysis of the real world, of events like Marxism does. Stalinist theory is always an attempt after the fact to justify the latest zigzag and the latest twists and turns of the bureaucracy. And therefore it's important not to get too sucked into the details of this or that theory and argument, but to look at the fundamental social interests which condition and drive these twists and turns. Now, I think the arguments that were put forward by the proponents of socialism among country are definitely worth looking at, despite what I've just said, because through that we can understand how these ideas stand in complete contradiction to genuine Marxism. So Stalin teamed up with a guy called Bakharin who at this point was on the right wing of the party. He was on the ultra-left of the party and then he went all the way to the right wing. He was a real, yeah, all over the place basically. And he was the most fervent defender of the new economic policy as well. And Bakharin and Stalin put forward this idea that the Soviet Union could build socialism on a pulpit technical basis.  What they're saying is that socialism can be built on the basis of scarcity of economic scarcity. And Stalin also complained that there is no need to inject the international factor into our socialist development. This is a far cry from the internationalism that we saw of Lenin and Trotsky. In 1926, in Pravda, Stalin wrote that the contradictions of Soviet society can be entirely overcome on the basis of the inner forces of our revolution. And to justify this madness, this turn in their policy, this leading clique, shamelessly, first of all, waged a war against Trotsky and Trotskyism. This is when Trotskyism was invented as a word, actually, as an obvious I think it was. But they also shamelessly cherry-picked and doctored isolated quotes from Lenin to try and justify this. They chose, I think, an unfinished text called On Cooperation, which is very good, actually. I would recommend reading it. But the point is that it wasn't a finished work. Many parts of it were in note format. Lenin didn't get time to finish it because unfortunately he died. But they seized upon isolated quotations in this text. They republished it and say, look, right there, Lenin says that socialism can be built in one country. That was never what Lenin meant. Lenin was just writing down notes. And moreover, this goes against the entire mountain of quotations and theories put forward by not just Lenin, but Marx, Engels, and everyone who agreed that socialism could not be built in one country. And what was essentially being put forward here by Stalin and Bakharin in the right wing was the idea of an autarchy. In other words, an economy entirely cut off from the rest of the world market and isolated bastion of socialism. Of course, it wasn't actually socialism at all. And this is a totally un-Marxist theory. Marxists have always understood that socialism must be built upon the most advanced productive forces available. It must be more advanced than even the most advanced capitalism is. Even an advanced capitalist country today, like the USA for example, which is replete with natural resources in a high technical level, could not achieve socialism in isolation due to its reliance upon the world market for importing the materials which it relies upon, the technology that it lacks. I mean, there are certain materials like, you know, rare earth elements, which are only present in certain parts of the world, which are essential to production, things like coltan and lithium and so on, and zinc. And yeah, and to export what it produces too much of as well. And we can see this with the crisis that was caused across loads of different industries back in 2020 when there was an acute shortage of microchips. Now, microchips are currently only produced in a handful of factories across the world, but they're vital to production. In fact, one factory in Taiwan is responsible for over half of the world's microchips. That gives you a taste of how interlinked the world market is, and how specialized it is as well, and how much different nations and industries rely upon one another. So the question we must ask ourselves is how can a more advanced social system be built on a lower technical basis? So Marxists progress really can only be understood as the development of the productive forces and little else more, really. How can a socialist society flourish without access to the world market? In this sense, otaki represents a step backwards from capitalism, actually. As Marx understudies said in the critique of the Gotha program, I think, on the basis of scarcity, all of the old crap will return inequality, privilege, oppression, abuse of state power, all of these things will rear their head once again, as they did in the Soviet Union. Socialism requires material superabundance, hopefully that is clear to everyone here. Now, at the time, Trotsky's left opposition were putting forward the idea that rapid industrialization was required to defend the Soviet Union. And this was entirely in line with what Lenin said at the 11th party congress, which was his last appearance before the party. He said that after the civil war, the USSR would face perhaps an even greater task. He said, this is a test which will be put to us by the Russian market and the international market, to which we are subordinate and from which we cannot escape. So Lenin's saying right there, we can't escape from the world market. We need to participate in it as a part of it. And as the left opposition pointed out as well, a forward tractor, which is cheaper and better than the Soviet equivalent, is just as dangerous as the threat of military intervention as it allows the pressure of capitalism to seep into the USSR and it will undermine the Soviet economy. The left opposition pointed out that actually the threat of cheap, well-made foreign commodities is actually even worse than the threat of military intervention because military intervention, it can only be used a few times and it requires the mobilization of mass opinion in the imperialist countries. But the pressure of the world market is brought down to back constantly upon the Soviet economy. But in response to this obvious need for rapid industrialization and raising the productive forces to defend the Soviet Union, Stalin and Bakharin basically said, don't worry about it, there's no rush. They actually mocked the left opposition for saying that we need to build hydroelectric dams and factories and so on. They were saying, let's just take it easy, let's just let all these rich peasants just continue farming the way they did and we'll just gradually build the economy up. There's no rush whatsoever. They put forward the idea that socialism can be built at a tortoise tempo. That's the words that Bakharin used and this is an idea that it equally is detached from reality as the ideas of autarchy are as well. The rate of development can't be arbitrarily decided by bureaucrats in the Kremlin as if there's just one big dial that they can just twist that goes from fast to slow to tortoise and then back up again. That's how a bureaucrat thinks by the way. They think that they can just control everything but obviously there's an objective logic to this. The rate of development was forced upon the USSR by the pressing need to compete with the rest of the capitalist world. So the Stalinists cooked up all sorts of lies and distortions in this time about what Trotsky stood for in this period and many of these are still repeated by the Stalinists to this day. They said, for example, that Trotsky underestimated the power of the USSR and thought that they should just basically give up essentially, show us over folks, let's just go home, we've tried, we failed, whatever. I hear that said quite a lot actually. It's a very kind of low-level interpretation, not what Trotsky said at all. Or at the same time, in complete contradiction to the other thing, they will say that Trotsky thought the only way forward was every country having a revolution at once. I'm sure everyone's heard of that before when people think of permanent revolution, right? Or they thought as well that Trotsky thought the USSR had to break its isolation by spreading the revolution by force at the end of a bayonet essentially. They're paying the Trotsky as this kind of red Napoleon because he was at the head of the Red Army and so on when of course actually it was Stalin who was the more perfect analogy with Napoleon, I would say. But all of these things are false, of course. They're complete distortions. This is what the left opposition actually put forward. They said that while helping the various communist parties around the world to seize power, the only way to protect the USSR was not hiding away from the world market but raising the productivity of the Soviet economy as fast as possible on the basis of the planned economy and with trade with the rest of the world. Now this completely disproves the idea, I think, that socialism in one country was pragmatic and realistic versus Trotsky's adventuristic and utopian theory of permanent revolution. In fact, the Stalinist was soon forced to adopt large parts of the left opposition's program. In the late 1920s, they abruptly ended the NEP and rapidly industrialized the country. This was done of course in a very bureaucratic, haphazard and very destructive way. But nonetheless, on the basis of letting the planned economy flourish relatively speaking, the potential of the Soviet Union was unleashed and was able to rival the United States in a very short space of time. But even this itself was not proof of the achievement of socialism as Stalin ridiculously proclaimed as early as 1935. And in fact, I think it was Khrushchev later on who claimed that we were like, you know, a few years away from communism, right?  Children were put in slave labor camps essentially and so on. This is their proof of socialism being achieved. Well, I want nothing to do with that. Thank you very much. Schesity very, very clearly still prevailed. The fruits of all of this development were not enjoyed equally, but were largely consumed by a swelling cast of bureaucrats who acted as parasites. And inequality was still very widespread, hence all of the oppression. Now a real socialist society which had actually achieved superabundance would allow complete political freedom because it would have demonstrated that its society was more advanced. People could agitate against it if they wanted to. No one's going to listen to them. Imagine if someone just came around today and just started saying, we should return to feudalism. They'd be laughed out of the shop, wouldn't they, right? So, you know, obviously socialism would mean much, much greater independence than we've seen not just in the USSR, but in even the most kind of liberal capitalist countries. You know, as Trotsky explained, it would take the removal of the bureaucracy and a full workers democracy which would break the isolation of the revolution for the full potential of the planned economy to be achieved and for the Soviet Union to grow over into socialism. Now, when Stalin set out with this new theory of socialism in one country, he had no idea where it would lead. He was proceeding on a very empirical basis one step at a time, as all bureaucrats do, I think. But socialism in one country carried with it its own objective logic. And in practice, this policy led to the gradual transformation of the communist international from a party of world revolution into a tool of the Kremlin foreign policy essentially. Now, we've already mentioned in the previous session the defeat of the 1923 German revolution and how this kind of strengthened the bureaucracy. This experience was repeated once again, I think, in 1926 in Britain and 1925-27 in China. Now, in both cases, the failure of these revolutionary struggles were down to the mystics flowing from the opportunist policies of the Stalinist leaders. In China, a mass movement of millions of workers and peasants had erupted. Workers had risen up in a number of cities and actually seized power essentially. The peasants were seizing land, as they had done in Russia just a few short years before. And the Communist Party of China was the only workers party. It had a dominating influence among the working class. And it could have easily taken power with the correct leadership. And yet despite the strength of the Chinese Communist Party, Stalin scandalously abandoned the Leninist policy of class independence by calling for the CCP to effectively dissolve itself into the Kuomintang, which was the party of the bourgeoisie. He even gave, as Ben mentioned yesterday, I think, he even gave Chiang Kai-shek, a capitalist general, a place on the Executive Committee of the Communist International, as an honorary member.  And mere months after that, Chiang Kai-shek massacred the Chinese working class in cold blood. He executed, enslaved, and imprisoned, you know, millions of people actually, in fact. And this set the classroom back, you know, many years actually in China. Similarly, in Britain, a general strike erupted, which ground the country to a halt. There was workers control in many cases in the big cities. And again, the British Communist Party, though it was quite small and inexperienced, it had quite a large influence over the trade union movement through the national minority movement, which was their kind of faction, their platform. The Communist International should and could have encouraged the British Communist Party to put forward a revolutionary line and warn its followers of the inevitable betrayals of reformism. But instead, the Communist International leaders cosied up to the reformist trade union leaders in Britain, sowing illusions in them, essentially, and handing them the authority of the Communist International. So when the reformist inevitably did betray, which Trotsky warned, the rank-and-file communists were demoralized, they were disoriented. And the Communist Party couldn't take the struggle further. And this revolutionary potential was completely squandered. And scandalously, the Soviet leaders of the Communist International, they didn't even break off their alliance with the scab reformist leaders for a whole year after their betrayals. The truth is, at this point, the Stalinists had abandoned all intentions of fermenting socialist revolution abroad. They started putting forward the idea of, instead of overthrowing the imperialists, of neutralizing the threat of the imperialists, so they're diluting that down a little bit. Not a little bit, quite a lot actually. And the logical conclusion of this is to abandon revolution together in favor of backroom deals and maneuvers above the heads of the working class, with the reformists on one hand, bourgeois governments on the other, whom the Stalinists in reality had more in common with than the working class. In effect, the policy of socialism in one country became the policy of socialism in no country at all. Now, Stalin didn't set out to betray the working class, but with each of these successive defeats abroad, the bureaucracy felt themselves increasingly strengthened at home because of the demoralization that was produced among the Soviet working class. Now, for example, in 1933, the Nazis came to power without a single shot being fired, despite there being 6 million communists in Germany, as well as 8 million social democrats, and an influence over a far greater number of people as well. The common turn effectively failed to lift a finger to prevent the rise of Hitler, and they even failed to draw any lessons from this failure whatsoever. And at this point, Trotsky understood that the common turn was a stinking corpse, it was a rotting corpse, thank you. And there was no hope of saving it whatsoever. At this point, essentially, a qualitative transformation had taken place. And from this point on, the policy of the communist international can only be described as a conscious betrayal of the working class, and actively fighting on the side of counter-revolution. Now, there are far too many examples to go into, hopefully we can go into them in the discussion. But one example I would like to touch upon, because it was recently in the centre pages of the socialist appeal paper, is the Spanish Revolution. Now, without going into too much depth, in the Spanish Revolution, the Stalinists were literally the leaders of the counter-revolution. They supported the bourgeois government against the workers, and the workers had armed themselves and seized control in Catalonia. The Stalinists disarmed the workers' militias, they arrested hundreds of revolutionaries, and they reversed the policy of workers' control of industry, and the collectivisation that the peasants had carried out as well. So right there, you can see a counter-revolutionary role played by the Stalinists. Now, in the run-up to World War II, the Stalinists tried to very opportunistically balance themselves between the German imperialists, the Nazis in other words, on one hand, and the so-called democratic allies in the West, like the United States and Britain and so on. And this forced the Communist Party across Europe and elsewhere to change their line on the war, not once, but twice in some cases. They had a change between supporting their own bourgeois, to supporting an end to the war, and then back to supporting their own ruling class again as well. And this confused and demoralised a lot of people in the process. In Britain, for example, in the space of three years, the Communist Party put forward three different positions on World War II.  And Trotsky summarises this in the following quote. The fundamental trait of Stalin's international policy in recent years has been this, that he trades in working-class movements, just as he trades in oil, manganese and other goods. In this statement, there is not one iota of exaggeration. He goes on. Stalin looks upon the sections of the common turn in various countries and upon the liberating struggles of oppressed nations as so much small change in deals with the imperialist powers. So much small change. That's the exact language, actually, that Lenin used when dealing with the imperialists in the period of the First World War, actually, which shows you just how much the Stalinists had generated at this point on an international stage. And yeah, this culminated in the Soviet Union essentially becoming a doormat for British and US imperialism. And as we said yesterday, Stalin unilaterally dissolved the Communist International in order to appease his British and American allies. Now, while the Communist parties came more and more under the control of the Soviet bureaucracy, there was another side to this process as well. It was quite a dialectical development, which actually saw the Communist parties gain greater independence, actually, from Moscow. They drifted further away from Moscow. Now, Trotsky perfectly predicted this as early as 1928, actually. He said that because of the theory of socialism in one country, the backbone of internationalism has been broken. He said, it will be the beginning of the disintegration of the common turn along the lines of social patriotism. So I'll give an example of this. In France, the Communist Party, I would say, in its early years had a very good track record on the colonial questions. Throughout the 1920s, its paper carried articles on the colonial struggles taking place in Algeria, Indochina, and so on. And it also took a correct stance on the national liberation struggle taken by the Moroccans against French and Spanish rule as well. So it had a good track record on that. But by the 1930s, when the Stalinist theory of socialism in one country had basically triumphed in the international, the French Communist Party scandalously came out in opposition to the national liberation struggle in Algeria. They said that a strong France was needed to fight fascism in Germany. It gets even worse than this. Now, after the war, its leader, Maurice Thauré, he said that he had nothing against French flyings remaining in Vietnam. Yeah, I know. And actually, the Communist Party leaders revised Marxism altogether by saying that the liberation of the colonies could only take place through the liberation of France itself. And for that reason, there should remain links between France and its colonies. Actually, they put forward, I think, the idea of a French union between Algeria and France essentially, which is a completely opportunist policy. And in Britain, of course, during World War II, we have the heinous spectacle of British communists marching with the Union Jack and singing God Save the Queen so as to appear as respectable true patriots to the liberals and the Tories that they were in popular France with. Now, we laugh at the Stalinists today for flying the Saint George's flag and calling for socialist patriotism and so on. But these ideas didn't fall from the sky. They aren't just mistakes. Thank you. They are a direct consequence of the Stalinism and the theory of socialism in one country. So as can be seen, the reformist, class-collaborationist policies of the Communist parties went hand in hand with their degeneration along the lines of social patriotism, reformism and nationalism go hand in hand. After all, if you've given up any perspective of internationalism and of world revolution, your main strategy then becomes making alliances with the capitalists and getting positions in national parliaments as well. So naturally, this is going to lead to nationalism and patriotism coming to the four, just as it did with the reformists in the second international as well. Because the ability to win gradual reforms depends on the strength of the national economy and the nation state itself, and so it becomes your business to defend the nation. And this gave rise to an array of national programs that were produced by the Communist parties. Suddenly there was no longer any international perspectives as we have or international programs, but a British wrote the socialism or a Polish wrote the socialism and so on. And in fact, the British Communist Party today still has this as its program. And internationalism is completely sidelined in their perspectives in place of forming an anti-monopoly alliance of all progressive forces, whatever that means. Now, this national reformist generation of the Communist parties eventually led to the Kremlin losing control over the Communist parties altogether. The effects of the Prague Spring in 1968, the rise of Maoism as well on a world stage, essentially led to the disintegration of this kind of Stalinist camp altogether. This also gave rise to the trend of Euro-Communism as well. From the late 1960s onwards, the Communist parties gravitated more and more in the direction of their own ruling classes and slavishly cringed before bourgeois public opinion, just as they had slavishly followed every single whim of the Kremlin bureaucracy before that. I'll give one example. The Italian Communist Party entered a coalition with the Christian Democrats, the main ruling class party at the time. They supported NATO against the Warsaw Pact, so they essentially supported NATO against the Soviet Union, which is incredible. And it eventually dissolved itself and became the Democratic Party, which is now actually one of the main capitalist parties in Italy. So just as Trotsky predicted, the common turn disintegrated along national reformist lines, and all of this can be traced back to the revision of Marxism, that was socialism in one country. Understanding this is vital to understanding the nature of Stalinism to this day. And there's more I'd like to say on that, but I haven't got enough time. I'm going to conclude just now. The theory of socialism in one country was the jumping off point for the Soviet bureaucracy, defending their distinct interests at home and abroad. This anti-Marxist theory was the firing shot in a war against Trotsky, the left opposition and Bolshevism itself. The narrow nationalism of the Soviet bureaucracy left a string of betrayals and defeats in its wake. But the bureaucratic rule of the Soviet Union ultimately offered no path forward. The USSR eventually collapsed under the weight of international isolation and the shortcomings of bureaucratic control. And one by one, China, Vietnam, Laos and maybe soon Cuba as well, which is going down the path of capitalist restoration, they've all restored capitalism. So the answer to the question of whether we can have socialism in one country can be found in the simple fact that there is not a single socialist country left to be found on this planet today, or even just a deformed working state for that matter. The Stalinists have failed to absorb any of the lessons of this experience. They can't give any explanation as to why any of this has happened. Their programs are still tainted with this same national narrowness. But today, the productive forces are even more interlinked than before. The world working class has never been bigger and more integrated. The reactionary fetter of the nation state is becoming ever, ever clearer as trade wars and fortified borders and interimperialist conflicts hold society back and cause untold chaos and destruction. The need for internationalism is inherent in the situation. We understand that task of socialism can only be solved on a world scale. That's why we organize as an international and look towards the lessons of previous internationals as well as we're doing today at this weekend at the summer camp. That's why we call out all examples of social patriotism and chauvinism in the labour movement. And that's also why we put forward the demand for a socialist federation of Europe, of the Middle East and of Latin America as well as a stepping stone towards a world socialist federation and a communist brotherhood of mankind. So I will end with the timeless rallying cry of the communist manifesto, which I think reminds us of the burning need for internationalism. Workers of the world unite.