OK, unusually for me, I'm afraid you might be rather disappointed. It's quite a nerdy kind of talk, this one. And I'm going to, unusually for me, read quite a lot of it. So you may want to leave, but actually, it doesn't look as if you can, so that won't be embarrassing for me. I'm writing a book, trying to write a book, called Rules for the World Market. The thesis of the book is that what international organizations do, those that are concerned with the management or regulation of the global economy, they make rules for the world market. That doesn't mean to say they're prime movers. I'm going to say they come quite low down in terms of causality, but they all do that. It's my somewhat bold hypothesis. And I base this analysis exclusively on classical Marxism and under no account cite anything published after 1867, Capital Volume 1, which is really the main theme of the talk. And I'm going to try to give you sufficient information in the first half of the talk to convince you that there is no more contemporary document than Capital Volume 1. And in the second part, I'm going to really straight briefly what I think is a consistent project, increasingly shared by international organizations, IMF, World Bank, OECD in particular, UNDP, and others, from the 1940s, if you like, but certainly from the 1970s. I'm going to outline what I call the origins of the world market project at the OECD. I'm going to say if I have time, but I'm a little bit about the World Bank. But I've written a paper on that, if you want, after this to look at, you can do, on the World Development Report 2015. It's about behavioral economics. I call it Programming the Poor. And it speaks to a theme that is important for this presentation. How do the international organizations set about making rules for the world market by working as allies of states with the particular intention of offering them ways of managing and controlling and increasingly changing the attitudes and behaviors of their own population? Forget about World Bank. Speak up even louder. OK, maybe I'll move nearer the microphone. Maybe you think the World Bank lends money, the IMF manages global monetary relations, OECD, who knows what the OECD does. I'm going to try to persuade you that primarily they help states to develop their populations in ways that are conducive to the stability and continued expansion of global capitalism.  And all the people who can't hear go, what did he say? If you can hear me in the corner, can you say so? Can you hear me? You can. Ish. OK. I'll just have to shout. Right. So most of this is about Marx, actually. But I do intend to get to the contemporary stuff later. So here's five points that underline my approach. Starting point for an analysis of systemic change in the international system should not be the system of states, geopolitics, realism, whatever, but the world market. The world market is the starting point. Second, this text, by the way, I can circulate it if you like, so no worry with that. This does not mean that the logic of the world market in a classical Marxist sense has been dominant in the international system since its emergence, let alone from the beginning of time. Historical materialism we're talking about. Marx argued that the logic of capital began to take hold with the Industrial Revolution, late 1700s, early 1800s. And he said, and I agree, it would only assert itself fully when the world market was established on a genuinely global scale. What's the key for me to my approach? We are just now living that moment when the world market is operating on a genuinely global scale, only for the last 25 or 30 years. But the influx of labor from formerly state, command or socialist societies with other changes that you're familiar with around the developing world, only in the last 25 or 30 years can you say we have a world market in terms of exchange. We still do not have a world market in another very important sense. In other words, a market which is also characterized by capitalist relations of production, fully proletarianized workers. You probably have various figures. ILO, for example, reckons that two-thirds of the world's workers are still in the informal sector. To use the technical term from an appendix to capital volume one, they are not really subsumed to capital. So there's a long way to go in developing a global proletariat, but we can pretty much talk about a universal world market. So what is for sure, it says here, we are at a relatively early point of the development of capitalism on a global scale as it was theoretically conceived by Marx and Engels. Capitalism may collapse tomorrow. It may have collapsed this afternoon, unlikely, but it's possible. I'm talking about the theoretical vision that Marx and Engels had. Only when the global population that was deprived of the means of production was fully proletarianized and available for exploitation by capital to generate relative surplus value would you have completed the development of the bourgeois mode of production on a global scale? We are decades away from that, but it is now the agenda of the international organizations, specifically to develop the social relations of production on a global scale. So I don't think the international organizations do what the US wants or what the G7 want. I don't think they've ever done that, except in unusual circumstances. They want and they have wanted since the Second World War onwards to develop capitalism on a global scale, and I will be giving you some evidence for that from the OECD in the 1970s in case you think it might be a relative modern reason thing or even not true. So because we are now in the moment of the crystallization of the world market, the analysis of the development of social relations of production and of the world market in capital and elsewhere in the work of Marx and Engels is super relevant to understanding issues around the world and for understanding what is the logic of action of the international organizations that I want to talk about. Everyone knows, in inverted commas, everyone knows the quotation or the section from the manifesto of the Communist Party started in Manchester in 1847, finished in London in 1848, that leads up to the statement, you'll all know it, the bourgeoisie through its exploitation of the world market quote, compels all nations on pain of extinction to adopt the bourgeois mode of production. That's Marx and Engels under 30 years old. If you're not under 30 years old, don't worry, Marx and Engels were exceptional, but they produced, you think of, you know, you talk to students, maybe even you think yourselves about Marx and Engels, two old guys with beards, they were not. When they had this dramatic epiphany, if you like, understanding what the consequences of the industrial revolution would be, Engels was 24 years old, Marx was 26, don't worry, Marx had been a PhD student, he would never have finished his PhD, but it staggers me the brilliance of the intuition that they brought to this question. They talk in the critique of German ideology, this is mid-1840s, they say large-scale industry and with it universal competition quote, produced world history for the very first time insofar as it made all civilised nations and every individual member of them dependent for the satisfaction of their wants on the whole world. This is their sense of the world market. Go back and look at the extent of the world market at that time. We've kind of got used to it, but it's a staggering insight into the material dynamics of capitalist development. And just one more quote on this, and these are things I'm going to use in analysis in a bit. This is from 1849, wage, labour and capital. If we now picture to ourselves this feverish, simultaneous agitation on the whole world market, it would be comprehensible how the growth, accumulation and concentration of capital results in an uninterrupted division of labour, uninterrupted division of labour and in the application of new and perfecting of old machinery precipitately and on an ever more gigantic scale. The more productive capital grows, the more the division of labour and the application of machinery expands. Cutting to the very basic outline of this, Marx and Engels are thinking about the bourgeois mode of production. They're not thinking about some abstract growth type theory of the kind that Spence and others expose you to these days. They were thinking about the dynamics of specifically capitalist forms of production. Two concepts are really important for them, along with the world market, division of labour, uninterrupted and incessant technological revolution. Those are the two things that I'm going to say to understand what's going on across the world today. And I'll miss out a fair chunk here and I'll say let's move to capital volume one. Here's a quote from page 506. I just went to that bookshop down the road. What's it called? Dillon's Waterstones? They do not have a copy of capital volume one, which is a shame because mine has fallen apart. I went there especially to buy one. They've got a Marxist section it's about three feet across. It's terrible. So here's a quote. The means of communication and transport handed down from the period of manufacture soon became unbearable fetters on large-scale industry given the feverish velocity with which it produces its enormous extent, its constant flinging of capital and labour from one sphere of production into another and its newly created connections with the world market. That's what's happening today. The constant flinging of labour and capital from one sector of production to another on a global scale. It was only dimly possible to envisage that 180 years ago, but that's the analysis that you find in capital volume one. I want to draw your attention to two things beyond that. One, if you like, the contradiction between production and social reproduction in capital volume one and two, variation of labour. You may not recall reference to variation of labour in chapter 15 of capital volume one. It's fundamental to my analysis today and I'll come to it in a moment. So here's Marx again talking about the tendency of individual capitalists to over-exploit workers. Don't forget, this was Manchester in the 1840s. Five-year-old boys and girls working in silk and cotton manufacture in the mills. Dying of tuberculosis. Parents both obliged to go to work. Nurses or childminders, if you like, who sustained the children who were left at home by feeding them with opiates. Opium from turkey, diluted. I've forgotten the name of this wonderful liquid. And if you read the instructions on the bottle, it says, nought to ten days old, two drops. And it goes up by size of the child. So the kids were drugged on opium because the parents were at work and if they survived to the age of five, off they went into the factory where their lungs became contaminated and they died of tuberculosis. So Marx, obviously, does not subscribe to the male breadwinner model which only comes into being 50 years later, does notice as the key feature of the Industrial Revolution the willingness of capitalists like slave owners in the United States and Brazil in particular to work workers to death because it made sense for them to do so. So he says, by extending the working day, the unnatural extension of the working day, he says, shortens the life of the individual laborer. It was therefore seen in the interest of capital itself to move in the direction of a normal working day. But mill owners rejected the reforms that eventually came in with the factory acts. Why is that, he says? It is in the interest of capital itself that the labor force should reproduce itself. Day by day and generation by generation. However, quote, the same is not true for the individual capitalist. Our premoire, the deluge, is the watchword of every capitalist and every capitalist nation. Capital takes no account of the health and length of life of the worker unless society forces itself to do so. So there's a need for regulation by the state, you can say today, by international organizations because of the self-destructive contradictory characteristics built into bourgeois production by competition. So he says, it's not a matter of caprice. Capitalists can't say, oh, no, don't think I'll bother. Think I'll give my workers an easy time. They go out of business. They cease to exist as capitalists. Now, that's a prelude to what I want to draw your attention to in particular, Chapter 15 of Capital, Topic, The Most Immediate Effects of Machine Production on the Workup. And this takes us straight to the 21st century. In case you were wondering how long it would take us to get there. So he draws a set of integrated conclusions regarding large-scale industry and its impact upon the individual. Large-scale industry, he says, brings incessant technological revolutions as it pursues the uninterrupted division of labour and the application of new techniques to each step in the labour process. Quote, it's principle which is to view each process of production in and for itself and to resolve it into its constituent elements, division of labour, chop the task up into as many small pieces as possible without looking first at the ability of the human hand to perform new processes brought into existence the whole modern science of technology. So anyone who says that Marx gave technology the causal force in social change, it's mistaken. It was the dynamics of capitalist competition that obliged individual capitalists to look for new technologies to out-compete their rivals. It's the dynamic of capitalist competition that leads to these incessant technological revolutions, uninterrupted division of labour. So he says, modern industry never views or treats the existing form of a production process as the definitive one. It continually transforms not only the technical basis of production but also, quote, the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process. And that leads him to talk effectively about global division of labour in services as well as to create the framework for understanding global division of labour incessant division of labour into small tasks the zero hours contract and the super skilled mobile worker of today. And he explicitly describes what we're familiar with only recently in labour in the global economy. He says, it thereby also revolutionizes the division of labour within society and incessantly throws masses of capital and of workers from one branch of production to another. Thus large scale industry by its very nature necessitates variation of labour the ability to do several different tasks, not just one. Fluidity of functions you can move from one seamlessly from one area of activity to another and the mobility of the worker in all directions. Variation of labour fluidity of functions and mobility of workers in all directions and he says, large scale industry makes the recognition of variation of labour and hence the fitness of the worker for a maximum number of different kinds of labour a matter of life and death and concludes still in chapter 15 this possibility of varying labour must become a general law of social production. Why have I spent so long talking about this? Because that was Marx's vision of the social consequences and the consequences for labour of the industrial revolution when the world market became complete. You didn't see it, didn't live to see it that is as good a characterization as you will find of global labour today and the compulsion to continually divide up labour into smaller and smaller tasks to search the globe not only for production anymore but for services from individual workers this is the epitome of contemporary global capitalism and it's derived from a materialist historical materialist analysis of the development of the world market under the compulsion of capitalist competition so I think it's very clever summing it up so far once underway the industrial revolution gave rise to a perpetual process of technological innovation driven by competition and the needs of capital in which the cheapness of the articles produced by the factory system and the revolution and the means of transport and communication it called for both demanded ever more new inventions and provided weapons for the conquest of foreign markets in which the impact on individuals were local effects of a world historical transformation and capital came to require a flexible worker available and equipped with the skills to take up different roles from one moment to another in accordance with constantly changing demands of production and if I could give you one quote and come straight to the Financial Times August 2015 here's the final quote that monstrosity the disposable working population this is the lumpen proletariat the disposable working population held in reserve in misery for the changing requirements of capitalist exploitation must be replaced by the individual who is absolutely available for the different kinds of labour required of them the partially developed individual who is merely the bearer of one specialised social function must be replaced by the totally developed individual for whom the different social functions are different at modes of activity they take up in turn well you can probably imagine for yourselves how immediately this relates to emerging forms of labour in the 21st century zero hours contracts but not only that consequential upon the well aware for 40 years of the global division of labour in terms of production change and so on now in services because of the technological revolutions around the internet and so on we have not only a global division of labour in services but breaking down of tasks into minute steps an scouring of the world for the appropriate workers I don't know how many of you work for Upwork or M-Turk or you know if you want to make a little bit of money pretending to be a psychology research subject you can get 0.01 cents for doing a survey for hard-pressed American PhD students on aspects of psychology you just go to Upwork and sign up to do so here's a quote from the Financial Times there's a very good series if you've got access to it called New World of Work 10 articles over the last couple of months platforms like Uber and Upwork US-based companies Silicon Valley all the kind of modern technology and so on represent, this could be Mark's speaking represent a new way to break jobs into piecemeal tasks and reach many more workers potentially affecting a wider range of work I've got lots of examples here's one you're familiar no doubt with this kind of stuff Derek Sanders he was quoted in one of these articles runs a UK children's drinks company called Immune his administration and logistics assistant is in Macedonia his sales professional in Poland his accountant works from the UK while Mr. Sanders himself lives between Prague and London but now he has taken on virtual staff we need to look at the article to see what that is outsourcing other parts of the business second example, Chris Ducker is a founder of virtual staff finder in the Philippines his business provides Filipino assistants think of Filipino workers abroad domestic sale is not anymore it's rivaling other centres of core centres and so on but also web developers graphic designers and bookkeepers so you can hire by the hour workers anywhere in the world there's a very good article in the same series about Ukraine apparently everyone in Ukraine works for these long distance internet based companies and here's a summary statement from the Financial Times Labour correspondent Sarah O'Connor last week 8th of October talking about the human cloud as a new way of getting work done and she says white collar jobs are chopped into hundreds of discreet projects or tasks then scattered worldwide into a virtual cloud of willing workers who could be anywhere in the world so long as they have an internet connection the framework from Marx I haven't talked about the labour theory of value simply the world market uninterrupted division of labour incessant technological revolution and how it produces the need for and therefore results in the skilled mobile fluid varied worker so this few this small section that I've quoted from two or three pages in capital volume one encapsulates precisely the driving logic of the world market from the point of view of workers and capitalists today okay so right that's half way through so now I will turn to international organisations so I don't want to give you the impression that international organisations there's a whole how many people are constructivists go on really no constructivists good constructivism is really very stupid if if it says as some extreme constructivists do like Mark Ply's book on great transformation stuff like that they say it's the ideas that give rise to changes in reality it's nonsense there's a very good sentence in German ideology where Mark says ideas have no history ideas change because underlying material circumstances change that's the law of history it's yeah I better not continue on that vein I can't finish my talk but of course ideas matter but they do not originate social change and if one starts working as I've done on international organisations more so other people who like the awful couple not a couple but they wrote a book Barnett and Finnemore apply a constructivist approach to world global governance fatal misleading, tendentious and utterly wrong so international organisations are really really important in global governance they can be considered if you like as moments in the history of the world market same way that Mark's is talking about the state as a moment in capital accumulation Mark's talks about the state in the Civil War in France as a coefficient of production they matter these organisations so you can describe states and international organisations equally as moments or coefficients of national or global production it's a big difference between them states are stuck with a territorial base which causes all kinds of complications and difficulties there are a lot of things to deal with you never get a pure form of politics they're always fighting, look at dear Mr Osborne and his friends, they don't know what to do things go wrong organisations don't have that problem they sit back and think so it's not surprising to me that it's international organisations that come out with what I call rules for the world market that's their job they were set up to do that they may get them wrong they certainly can't overcome the contradictions of global capitalism but they are super important and I'm going to just take one example which is going to be the OECD in the 1970s and 80s and I'm going to try to persuade you that consistently for the last 40 years not just the OECD, IMF, the World Bank or the other organisations even the ILO and the UNDP in their own way less so initially, more so today are working in a concerted manner to spread if you call it liberal ideas for me to spread the social relations of capitalist production so let's give you some evidence for this okay, so I'll skip this a little bit here I copied it from something I wrote a long time ago shaping the new world order the OECD has had a conscious project as you'll see from quotations I'm not making it up the stuff they say and think about in their headquarters in Paris so you've got lots of important people there if you read the statutes the articles of the OECD it is committed to promote policies design quote to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard of living in member countries financial stability thus to contribute to the development of the world economy to contribute to sound economic expansion in member as well as non-member countries so it has a global understandable in the context of the late 1940s it has a global sense of its responsibility and if you go to 1978 you find it's called the impact of newly industrializing countries on production and trade in manufacturers before Reagan and Thatcher after Pinochet before kind of western neoliberalism what does the general secretary of the OECD say in the forward this is to me a really important quotation because the logic of it is very clear and it's still true today for the advance of supporting and developing industrialization in the NICS the newly industrialized countries this is a term invented by the OECD in the 1970s they're the first people to talk about newly industrializing economies the benefits they say for the advance industrial countries these benefits take the form of cheaper goods for consumers a spur to increase productivity and reduced inflation at home and new and prosperous markets abroad for the newly industrialized countries they include higher investment productivity and real incomes and the foreign currency needed to help finance accelerated economic development for the point here is very simple both of those formulations in relation to the advanced countries and the developing countries center on increasing productivity invest in the developing world so productivity increases how does the industrialization of the developing world increase productivity in the developed world simple by facing developed countries with competition from areas where labor is cheaper and absolutely without wavering consistently through the 70s, 80s and 90s and into the 21st century OECD says every opportunity must be given to developing countries to become industrially productive exporting industrial goods why? the class strategy what's the logic? it's all explained in actually in the German ideology 1845 but in lots of OECD stuff as well country X let's call it South Korea produces industrial goods more cheaply than European and American producers they export those goods to European and American markets those countries have a choice they can protect themselves keep those manufacturers out or they can allow uncompetitive industries to close while a few producers invest themselves in becoming more competitive in order to compete in other words trade isn't just about exchange trade is about confronting high cost markets with the products from low cost markets in the early days of the industrial revolution that meant destroying textile production in South Asia in the 21st century it means destroying industrial production in the West and the OECD has never faltered in promoting it particularly because there's a whole lot of very interesting stuff I haven't got time to quote on this particularly because in the 1970s crisis of the welfare state how are you going to overcome the crisis of the welfare state by forcing change in developed countries the OECD initially without support from governments but then with support from Thatcher and other neoliberals is very keen to expose western countries to competition in order to undermine trade unions destroy the power of labour investment and productive change and if you go now to the same series of the new world of work in one of the last of those articles there's a quotation from Steven Scarpetta who is the vice president or the labour president of the OECD and he says we need to stimulate as much as possible the development of these jobs on a global scale in order to boost innovation and investment but he says we do not want low pay low skills fighting for the bottom of the ladder we want to combine high levels of access to labour across the world with high levels of skills with high levels of productivity so if you look at the OECD today if you look at the multilateral development banks the same is true look at the UNCTAD certainly if you look at the World Bank and the IMF what are two of the strongest themes that they talk about first in the last two years all of those organisations advocating global production chains as it happens especially for Africa not surprising as a means of getting a foot on the ladder of industrialisation second they are promoting and somewhat surprisingly the formalisation of labour they are against they have not always been against they are against informal labour they want proper contracts social insurance why? because if you don't have those institutions of formal labour you don't have a labour market which boosts productivity very classical liberal approach from all of these organisations they share Adam Smith's belief that the two most important things to do this is the preface to volume one of the wealth of nations half a page at the beginning of the book what are the two things that governments need to do in order to make their nations wealthy one get as many people into the labour force as possible two make those workers as productive as possible that still is the approach of these international organisations they advise governments on social protection how can you change your social protection laws so that instead of stimulating universal welfare they act as a springboard to catch people who fall out of the labour market and propel them back into it how can you guarantee as far as possible that no individual with the potential to contribute to the global economy will fail to do so send girls to school obviously I'm sure we all agree sending girls to school making sure women have just as good opportunities in the labour market as men of course it's a thoroughly good thing but the World Bank didn't take it up in the 1990s just because it's a terribly good thing they took it up and they say so because quote feminism is smart economics there's the look around the world today I'm coming to a conclusion things I could have said that I haven't I might have time to say so in questions I've got one sentence to say about the World Bank increasingly these organisations are trying to encourage governments to adopt social policies economic policies that will change the attitudes and behaviour of their citizens to make them useful exploitable members of the population so for example a lot of stuff you read about quite right David Harvey Steven Gill talk about accumulation by dispossession primitive accumulation making workers available to capital making workers available to capital is important but it is no use unless you also make those workers exploitable by capital and an unskilled worker is not efficiently exploitable by capital so in conclusion I've written a paper about this as I said at the beginning it's called programming the poor why on earth would the World Bank devote its world development report 2015 to behavioural economics to these crazy no I shouldn't say crazy many of your excellent tutors probably do them what are they called random trials you know you get a whole bunch of African Ghanaian women and you say here's what you need to do your sister comes along and says I'm very sick I need to go to hospital and you give her money don't do that that is a very bad idea there's an article called rotten kin networks which is about how misguided citizens of the developing world would rather help their family in time of need than start a small business so they say here's what you need to do put a box on your mantelpiece that says money for my children to go to school do not touch and put your money in there and then if your sister comes around you can say sorry you know these things matter there's a crisis in Korea South Korea where traditionally children look after their parents because the parents now spend so much on their children's education they have no resources to support so the family based maybe a good thing maybe a bad thing but the family based system of care is collapsing so Korea needs to invent a new welfare system so the World Bank is right at the forefront in trying to shape the way that people behave there's another just one sentence and I'll come to an end they say do you know in where is it Kenya probably these guys you drive bicycle taxis don't know if you've ever tried riding a bicycle driving a bicycle taxi in Nairobi or somewhere but it's hot and you get very sweaty and it's not great they say these guys you know they know how much money they need to pay for the household stuff and when they've made that much money they start off home they don't say start off home they say they go home they stop work why don't they carry on working until six o'clock and get more money but it's obvious why but it's not the mentality that the World Bank wants to inculcate they're trying to create neoliberal citizens that's what the World Bank stuff is all about my concluding point is this this is not by chance and it's not because some very clever person they are very clever people it's not because some clever person in the OECD suddenly thought out of nothing I know let's get people in the developed and developing countries to be entrepreneurial it's the logic of capital and it's the logic of capital that was spelled out absolutely clearly and precisely in those sections of chapter volume one that I read out about half an hour ago so it's a material compulsion arising from the contradictions and the dynamics of the bourgeois mode of production but from the bourgeois perspective the OECD the World Bank and so on they understand it they know what they're doing and if I finish off with a reference to that World Bank article big mistake people make about the World Bank sure you don't when the World Bank says on its logo a world free of poverty they believe they mean it they don't mean it they just can't have a logo that says a fully exploitable global proletariat thanks very much Paul for that I think we have Alessandra just kind of put forward some ideas for a few minutes Alessandra is a lecturer in the department of development studies here at SOAS and the main focus of her research has been the political economy of the government sector in India and she looks at wider processes of globalisation and informalisation and around labour standards so Alessandra and then we'll open it up to the floor okay no applause, I feel weird to use the microphone actually I'm alive with my face if I shout enough you should be alright I have a fairly daunting task here luckily I come to this task having read the paper so which I suggest you actually do and also as someone that is also a big fan of volume one for perhaps different reasons that related to the methodology in the study of production and the what Marx called the abode of production I will just rather than trying to re-summarise main points I will just directly move to some of the areas that I find really provoking in the article that we are trying to generate debates because I think Paul actually raises a number of issues that are quite thought provoking at the same time one that can be quite controversial in Marxist theory itself the first is how the article and the talk actually starts an end in relation to a sort of hierarchy place in relation of the world market and the understanding and the relevance of the interstate system so the first question that I have for Paul in my view is to what extent are we to understand these two as not instead intertwined and especially when in relation to the interplace between capitalism and imperialism so in a sense why are we to just choose the world market as the primary framework while instead of course I would expect this world market to be very much influenced by the evolution of the interstate system so why do you think you have to make this choice directly at the very beginning of the paper which is a very strong choice the second point that I'd like to highlight and to see what Paul thinks of it's in relation to the choice of pitching the paper on international institutions in general well as a matter of fact we're talking about here OECD and the World Bank and perhaps there are similar issues that can be raised in relation to the fund so my question in this respect would be can we actually make a broader argument vis-à-vis the UN block or is instead a wider argument difficult considering what particularly lately has been the relations between different UN agencies themselves which has shown quite forcefully opposition internal to the block there was quite extraordinary in the last weeks a report from the special reporter on the World Bank and human rights actually and I'm quoting define the World Bank as a human rights free zone treating human rights as an infectious disease so this is the UN talking about the UN to just give you a sense so I think it would be interesting on the basis of what you put forward to try to address some of the issues in relation to how the international institutions might work or not work with one another the third point relates to something that comes out more in the paper than in the talk but still when we make the argument that this international institution and effectively creating the Mike's vision vis-à-vis the achievement of a world market are we saying this in a positive way or in a negative way so what are the political implications of these observations of how the rules of the game shaped by international institutions are shaping the world market and I'm asking this because this has been a long standing debate in Marxism particularly if you look at the work of Bill Warren in relation to the positive the potentially positive or like what Mike's called the civilizing mission of capital so are we still making an argument that organizing capital can be potentially good for organizing labor eventually or instead we can also in observing the making of these rules for the world market come up with a different political implication the final point that I'd like to make it's in relation to how we understand the formation of the world market as it looks like today particularly for someone that has just spent the majority of his research time so far looking at actual relations of production on the ground because there is a vision of the world market which is suggested here that is primarily centered on exchange and with the idea that instead the capitalist relations of production have not spread yet if you look at and so there is a particular understanding in my view of proletarianization that you're putting forward which perhaps is not the ones that some of us that observe these trends on the ground would necessarily abide to so that you do observe the coexistence when you look at global production networks of processes of formal as well as real subsumption of labor in simpler terms known factory work in parallel with factory works, your EPZ with your home-based workers and organized quite stably so I'm not sure a lens through productivity will explain the resilience of these practices so my question is do you still see proletarianization as eventually leading to necessarily a real process of real subsumption and again which would be the political implications of this observation thank you very much and I just pass the ball back to Paul should I answer? I'll be brief I can't answer some of these maybe this microphone better than that one actually I'll give a very brief answer to each of those excellent questions world market and system of states are they intertwined? historical materialism I've got a very simple mind I just think say people like Kalinikos and even Justin Rosenberg and other friends of mine who talk about geopolitics a lot I think it's a waste of time equally I think it's a waste of time to try to explain 19th century or 18th century politics in terms of capitalism if you take my I just believe what Marx and Engels said apologies I'm not very critical but they said look we are at the beginnings of something which will become global called the bourgeois mode of production and here's what it will look like if and when it is fully developed and my whole argument is it's only now that we can talk about it being sufficiently developed that its logic imposes itself on virtually every society in the world so my answer to the question is they're increasingly intertwined the logic of the world markets if you like slowly colonizes every area of the world through these perfectly concrete material practices export of goods that bring a more advanced level of investment and division of labor in terms of social relations of capital backward areas and forces change so you'd be crazy to say that the world market shaped state politics and interstate relations 250 years ago but now it does shape that's why people talk about war in the south china sea they're crazy people there are also crazy people in the south china sea so who knows but there is no chance of any rational political leader today thinking that dropping bombs on rivals is a good way to advance your state in the world every country is totally you know all this they're obsessed now with doing well in the world market doing business indicators I went to a symposium in the Philippines where the minister of trade was saying we've gone up from 137th to 119th in the doing business ratings and this is a focal point it has to be as the world market begins to exert a real grip on a global scale states have to respond they can and they have responded by resisting it but as you know from south tourism around the world increasingly hard to resist now the system of states is much more shaped by the logic of the world market than it was before and states have to define themselves in relation to it they can try and resist it but they can't ignore it and every state faces dilemmas this country Britain should it stay in the EU or leave it should it drive workers further into poverty or should it not there's issues of accumulation no easy answers but the logic is increasingly just one that wasn't a very short answer sorry second one the UN system again increasingly the UN system is being drawn in to the hard IMF World Bank line multilateral banks obviously but they're different regional focuses they're part of the World Bank kind of system read it and see what you think my paper on the UNDP says since the turn of the century UNDP has been colonized by the World Bank literally the people they sent there from the World Bank who wrote recent World Human Development reports and in the 2012 report they acknowledge that there is no path to human development outside of the market they don't say just the market but to me they have been colonized by the World Bank and I need to see what they say but it's a trilogy the third party is yet to come but that's my argument there's still a difference UNCTAD, UNDP they're not clones of the World Bank but increasingly they're trying to negotiate the same there is no alternative kind of logic particular implications I don't know it's not a fair answer to say but it's a bit like gravity you know along came what was his name the guy Newton or gravity is that a good thing or a bad thing it was just a discovery Marx discovered the logic of the world market who knows what its implications will be who would have just go back 10 years look at the governments of China India Indonesia Malaysia who would have predicted the political forms of rule in those countries today they're going to develop nobody knows so obviously as human beings we need to care but there is no escaping the logic of the world market I'm kind of being ultra scientific and saying don't ask me about the ethical stuff will proletarianization continue inexorably until it's probably not but it's a wrong way to go and you put your finger on the key issue at the moment the key issue is the confrontation it's a bit like Totsky said about Russia in 1907 the history of the Russian Revolution if you go to the Philippines if you go to Ukraine if you go to all these areas educated young people with access to the internet can be working for Google or can be web designing things alongside not only the kind of kind of sweatshops that they've always had but the same sweatshops you can find easily in Manchester and in the United States in New York so it's this kind of cheek by jowl but I'm a classical Marxist and I do think the logic of development is on the side of proletarianization uninterrupted division of labour and technological revolution with what path and over what period of time and with what consequences I certainly don't know so thank you Paul okay so we'll open it out to questions just indicate to me yes if you can speak up actually I can speak loudly I love your talk there's someone in here who loves capitalism and thinks productivity and green growth are the answers and omitted the parts of your talk from their memory that were about Marx and things of capitalism as freedom and democracy and meritocracy and here's the OECD and the World Bank and the IMF for creating citizens and rules that are conducive to spreading that all over the globe and then they would say so what what's wrong with that how would you respond without quoting Marx because that would ruin your credibility to this person okay it's not me no no they do say so what yeah should we get a few questions that's my answer get some more a few questions yes you base your whole analysis on Marx's framework and their whole historical materialism that you referred to and I know you're critical about constructive approaches and those kind of things but I just want to share that I found the analysis extremely labor centric probably that's because that's the topic that you've selected but the possibility of counter movements on the ground the possibility that the state is not just always pliable and cannot afford to be impassant by it and there are a number of instances in the globe in the last couple of years especially for instance in India for example because it was completely deregulate it failed miserably and a lot of discourse an exchange of ideas on both sides before the conclusion so the question is is there a high degree of determinism in terms of the analysis and is it possible that there may be options that there may actually be resistance there may actually be counter movements on the ground and alternative ideas on this course stopping the inevitable consequence that you project which may work to some extent against your thesis sorry this is a bit optimistic but no thanks I have two questions one could you maybe elaborate a bit more on how these rules actually emerge how they actually develop and then in combination with that how do private rules, private regulation relate to this and then a second question as you talked about the OECD and the World Bank how does the new development bank by the BRICS countries okay, thank you other questions why don't we take one more go ahead I think there is one question raised by Alexander but whether we are seeing marxists in a positive or a negative life now you ended up by saying the World Bank has a job with us we want the world free of poverty but then their ultimate aim is to exploit workers but then considering the poverty of the world between poverty and exploitation then if you are talking about exploitation to what extent can we manage this can we link this back to the issue of inequality then what is the way out of this okay, thank you well in a way your question is the same as the first question there is a I'm going to quote marx again marx says in that pamphlet, 1849 basically says the only thing worse than being exploited by capital is not being exploited by capital because the whole point of the especially the early stuff remarks and angles is to say human ingenuity the capacity of individuals to find innovative ways of meeting their daily needs and so on is enormously creative and exciting and so on but it comes in a social system where the minority control the means of production and the majority are forced to work for then instead of being fulfilled they are alienated and they are working to enslave themselves to the logic of capital but I accept the argument it's not inconsistent with what seems like the opposite where you can say why for example when the Pew Research Center asks Europeans what do you reckon the economy will be like in five years time do you think it will be better or worse are you happy or unhappy with your circumstances they all say oh it's going to be worse and I'm very unhappy 17% crazy people think it's going to be better but maybe it will but there's a very low level of support for capitalism 83% say it's just great and there's endless numbers of documentaries you can watch and you can read stuff and you can talk to people and it's touching people say yeah I'm going to slave away in this factory and I'm going to work for 15-16 hours a day 7 days a week go home to my family Chinese New Year come back to work and my children are going to do better than me they're right so there's no denying you'd be crazy to deny the productivity the dynamic technological revolution inventions of stuff all the time they create absurd amounts of plenty but you all know equally it's badly distributed et cetera et cetera well I see Marx as a social scientist in other words explaining why this is then you can there's a whole bunch of people who say Marx abstained from moral judgment there's a whole lot more to deny that and say no he didn't but anyway I accept that the dynamic process of industrial transformation even if organized under private production and profit can still bring benefits to large numbers of people formally excluded from it I'd be crazy not to so yeah so if someone says so what what else is there that's present in Marx as well as present in people who like it but the liberals don't see the contradictions and a Marxist argument would be it's fatally flawed and it will develop in ways that Marx thought that when you had a genuinely global world market capitalism would collapse who knows we'll find out number two it is labour centric by analysis the relation between capital and labour is historically overwhelmingly by far the most important relationship determining world history there's no doubt about that so when Marx says world history there wasn't always world history it begins with the industrial revolution the only thing that unifies the global population is the division of the whole of it into two classes workers and so one of my complaints about otherwise excellent post structural social movement identity kind of politics the one identity that nobody cared about in the 1990s was the identity of the worker and it's by far the most important identity in the world for shaping people's lived experience not just proletarians but as you mentioned the class struggles in the Indian countryside the whole question of land titling and the suicides it's all if you like a concatenation you can be in what looks like but isn't a feudal primitive accumulation kind of confrontation alongside highly skilled world class pharmaceutical computing IT kind of stuff that's the reality of global labour today but I don't think it's limiting to take labour as a focus also I don't think it means that you have to say labour is going to lose the whole why would the OECD spend I could give you acres of pages of quotations pointing out to governments the fragility and the perils of the situation their countries are in you've got to change things you've got to face up to these problems otherwise you'll lose control of your population so they're acutely aware that things are balanced on a knife edge and of course people like myself no doubt you as well we like to see contestation and we're amused to see that when Jeremy Corbyn comes along the Tory press spends half its time saying he's a complete idiot and the other half responding to his complaints by introducing reforms to try to buy off genuine descent so contestation is built in the OECD side and the World Bank side I think you do need to understand these dynamics to make contestation work that's what I would say okay how do these rules emerge a a they just sit in rooms writing them out they meet lots of people they visit lots of countries really I mean say not to advertise myself but if you read the article attacking poverty attacking the poor which I wrote about 2002 it just goes through the successive world development reports and it shows how each one from 1990 up to 2001 respond in sequence to some of the problems facing global capitalism so these are people who if you like organic intellectuals they sit back they understand they know perfectly well capitalism is contested it's fragile it's not easy to keep it going and so they work at it how does that relate to private rules this is something that I need to work on more if you look at say Claire Cutler's work and the stuff on investment protection of investment I read a very good thesis by someone called I can't remember her name but it's very very good and this is a the global international law aspect of regulation it's just as important as what international organisations do but it regulates capital from the perspective of private sector if you like and protects it it doesn't necessarily increasingly maybe regulates labour relations as well but it's a complementary area that I do need to look at more because it's very very important and the development bank well the Chinese government will go back to the very first question from other time big mistakes that people make about capitalism this is a fault of critical IPE more than anything else critical IPE is a US product you maybe don't mess with it it's got a very short time horizon critical IPE starts in the 1960s post war boom it looks at the crisis of the welfare state neoliberalism that's a very short period of global capitalist history and it's very misleading to think I can remember most of you can't when people say one day every country will have a welfare state and we'll all be social democrats and it will be lovely in other words there's a fore shortening of understanding of capitalism as a global phenomenon there's a whole lot of what are they called people who accuse people like myself being euro centric they say oh you're always going on about capitalism it's very European you know it's not European at all capitalism is in its early stages when it's mature and fully developed it will be anything but European it might be Asian it might be global it's just a misunderstanding of capitalism as a global phenomenon as a western thing I come from Manchester and that is where the industrial revolution started a friend of mine says it was in the west riding of Yorkshire but he's mistaken that's just a historical fact it doesn't make capitalism western Marx was right capitalism is the first and only thing that if it develops to its full it will transform the whole world and we can already tell that when it does Europe will be a a blip, a footnote in global capitalist history so not surprisingly China sees itself as the next leader of the global capitalist economy and that's what its bank is about and so it's kind of geopolitically you might think it's different and people rant on about that quite a lot but it's just another step in the development of global capitalism should we take a few more questions? yeah? okay in terms of labor and technological development these are both internal dynamics of production so these are the tendencies which these developed are like independent or counter tendencies again this is the production however international organizations are complete like their structure their novelty approaches like globalization because this is now capitalist more organized in the form of farwa and then you and then there was a hand okay yeah I have four questions I answered two of them six things okay you talked a lot I guess you are you talked focused a lot on labor it was very labor centric as Hal pointed out and I was wondering and you were kind of arguing that if I got it right that kind of this development of the labor market creates the conditions for exploitation to okay for this for the expansion of capitalism to occur but you know as Marx himself pointed out there are other things that are really important like land transformation of material and I'm an ecological economist background myself so energy has a huge role and so I'm wondering in terms of the limits of capital expansion in the ecological economics to talk about how actually along with this continuous capitalist transformation of the world economy you also have a continuous increase of metabolic rate like increasing material consumption and that there are limits to this which can be you can see if there are limits to how much energy is available also limits to how much materials we can extract and so I'm wondering how you think even though theoretically capitalism can extend infinitely if you think things like the types of planetary limits that we have might have a role in limiting that extension and then a second kind of question that comes from that is I'm wondering you know also partly because of this that a lot of people tend to acknowledge like hasn't studied for example people tend to acknowledge that or try to look into how land and other kinds of things are actually increasingly more and more important so they say that peasants actually are having a growing role in contradiction to what Marx said where he said proletarians have the biggest role so I'm wondering how you think that the role of peasants in organizations like via Campesina the emergence of solidarity economy movements and the emergence of environmental justice movements how that might have a role in capitalism just before I bring the last person are there any other questions because this is the last time that Paul will come back any other okay so yeah and then yeah maybe you can answer your own question then and finally they explained quite clearly how these international organizations were formed after the Second World War forced the new imperialist order and surprisingly they didn't mention anything about imperialism in this true they worked US interest because if we look at the IMF for example they have quoted for the reforms but it has always been blocked by the US they do not want to rectify it and also when the WTO is kind of losing the US interest so-called losing it they are trying to establish something else like the TPP to kind of enforce it more according to the economic order so I'm not sure if you want to explain more about what's your view on this thank you okay I think I'll pick some questions and leave others but I'm happy for you to come back let me just preface this by saying that I've chosen to focus today specifically on new forms of labour and really because I wanted to share with you the acuity of that discussion in Chapter 15 of Capital about how the lumpen proletariat the kind of reserve army of labour in the fields or prospects has to be transformed and will be transformed as capitalist competition becomes global I'm not a great student of Marx myself I was reading this chapter for another reason and I came across this reference too variation of labour fluidity of functions mobility of the work in all directions and it really struck me I've just been reading about zero hours contracts nobody gets a job for life anymore and also about these new forms of labour and I'm sure there is something really important about this observation because it derives from an analysis of the logic of the world market so if you like I'm not saying oh well you know I'm a Marxist so this is like the bible I believe all this stuff I'm saying I surprised myself with when I come across this insight how can you 30 year old guy in Manchester whatever saying if the global economy develops under conditions of capitalist competition eventually proletarian class will dominate and it hasn't happened yet and that comes to your question and the survival of capitalism will only happen if it's transformed so the division of that chopping up of tasks into tiny bits and scouring the world for appropriate labour it's the ultimate competition for workers on a genuinely global scale made possible by technological revolutions that Marx can't even have dreamed of it's not like he's got in chapter 17 of capital there will be this thing called the internet and people will communicate instantly it's just the general principle of competition so this is where I'm starting from at the moment so let me kind of link each of these questions to that international organisations precisely because they stand aside from the production process they're not capitalists they don't represent existing forms of capital I'm a little bit fanciful maybe I say they represent the capital that is yet to be there's their vision of a highly competitive global economy when nobody stays on top for too long and there's always new forms of innovation and competition in unforeseen places and they want to drive that process of universal competition forward regardless of who wins so I disagree entirely with people who say the members of different countries on the IMF or the OECD represent their countries they don't the US dominate dictates what these organisations do they can't and the kind of stuff that people write to try to demonstrate it I find very unconvincing they don't have a microscopic take on things more important if you go to the post-war period of course it's true US leaders said we have got to rebuild global capitalism because they were terrified the alternative was global communism there was a definite the Marshall Plan it reflected US interests as they saw it at the time but the proper Marxist approach to take is to say they had no option but to drive the development of the global economy forward you can put that in liberal terms you can put it in class global terms but they had no option but to develop capitalism and neither Britain nor the US nor China can control or limit the development of global capitalism we're all victims I've got two characteristics given my age I wish I won't reveal exactly but still my lifetime in this country coincides with the welfare state so it's like living what I live and breathe I paid nothing for my education right the way through to a PhD they gave me money I had a positive balance in my bank account I paid for it when my daughters went to university but my family, my dad was a bus conductor we moved into public housing on my fifth birthday we've had free healthcare but it's a mistake to think just because that's my experience to think well the welfare state is the model for the world in the future it's history it's a atypical period in the development of global capitalism US, hegemony or supremacy as Steven Gill calls it same thing I disagree that the US dictates events in the global economy today some people would say the opposite but it won't last forever why would it Venice Holland, Britain, America China, Indonesia those it's a mistake to just be trapped in our personal experience and what the textbooks tell us so the international organisations do not promote discrete specific national interests except in so far as you can say it's in the interest of advanced capitalist countries to develop capitalism on a global scale but they can't process or stop it and they won't so I don't know if I quite was the answer the question you were asking to be answered is my account of these things staged no there's only one thing in history and that is the development of the world market that's it it's a one-off process that will last until the world market collapses so in that process the first revolution is a really fundamental turning point by far the most important event in world history the completion of the world market as we live and speak is the second most important event in world history the Cold War is totally unimportant it has no importance for the course of world history in the same way that the development of capitalism this global system all the people who thought 1990 was important because it was the end of the Cold War were mistaken it was important because it was the beginning of global capitalism and you can see that today already and at least that's what I think I should say so it's not stages every single country within that all-encompassing world history has a unique trajectory undetermined and unpredictable in advance all this I don't know if anyone reads Hall and Soskis you know what's it called varieties of capitalism I shouldn't be rude there are two varieties of capitalism this is complete nonsense there is one variety of capitalism or there are 218 varieties of capitalism there's one increasingly homogenous global process within which there are as many varieties of capitalism as there are countries in the world every country you look at this country look at any country you study it has a unique configuration in terms of social production in terms of all kinds of specific local phenomena all of them equally shaped by and responding to global capitalism in its own unique way what does a variety of capitalism approach do it destroys the logic of all those separate instances of capitalism and fabricates a false model whether it's coordinated or whether it's market whatever they call it those are two fictitious models that destroy the logic of the great variety of different examples around the world so there's no telling how countries develop within this system but I wouldn't say stages because it's just one history of global capitalism which is infinitely complex and varied and undetermined in its development my point on formalization of labour is a simple one really and I didn't explain it particularly well it just so happens ILO as well as the OECD the UNCTAD all these organizations they've concertedly been addressing the issue of the need for formalization of labour in recent years and my real question is why because it doesn't like one or two of the questioners it doesn't really make sense to me why are they so keen for labour to be formalized why do they want to get away from what has been the contribution of highly exploited informal labour around the world because informal labour is not productive it contributes to profit making it supports productive enterprises but it's not productive, innovative so there's no doubt they are definitely committed to the formalization of labour and it wasn't that I was saying that was a good thing but I was saying it's indicative of the approach they take to relentlessly developing the social relations of production which is what they're about they never go around saying isn't it great we have sweatshops and people work for nothing and informal labourers are available they want to get rid of that for various reasons but the search for productivity productivity is the main one okay, planetary limits what can I all mean you tell me someone before mentioned capitalism and green growth in the same sentence I'm not so sure about that it's quite capable of destroying the plant no doubt about it there's not a lot of ecological stuff in Marx and Engels but Engels actually writes about deforestation and says the people who are chopping all these trees down are not intending to make the land barren and destroy it for the future but that will be the consequence of their actions because he was interested in science and all this kind of stuff there's no guarantee the logic of capitalism or the world market that it won't destroy the planet but people aren't stupid and just as Marx says basically Marx says when you need an invention to make more profit someone will invent it I don't know, Marx might have said if we look like destroying the planet people who profit from having a planet will do something about it they will fail but you know, LED lights instead of James Edison, what's his name? Thomas Edison the light bulb I think it's an indeterminate relationship and it's down in the end to the evolution of class struggle but I don't think there's any clear message about environmental ecology in Marx at all proletarians would have why do I talk about proletarians so much? Marx didn't say proletarians dominate he said in the end they will who knows, he could be wrong that's what I said at the beginning capitalism may not last another minute but we are at the beginning of global capitalism as Marx and Engels theorised it doesn't mean to say that we'll never get there hopefully we won't it's a long way off the kind of proletarian thing I must just finish on the ILO and imperialism very quickly I kind of like the ILO myself, you work on the ILO because they have that very nice Chilean leader I was in Chile in 1972 and I like the long white beard he was very good ILO definitely has a different perspective to the IMF and the World Bank but what I see is increasing conversions so if you look at the ILO decent work agenda different motives to the World Bank and all those guys but they are very keen also on the formalisation of labour for different reasons but they are and the decent work agenda is assimilable to the OECD World Bank formalisation of labour agenda and if push comes to shove ILO people will say you know we believe in increasing education productivity all that kind of stuff ILO as you probably know even maybe the World Bank it's full of artists who understand class struggle perfectly well but they've got a job so and you go back to the 1970s when Robert Cox was at the ILO and actually Cox to my disappointment missed a lot of the debate mentions it but it doesn't build on it much of the internationalisation of production that was going on with Latin American and African and Asian contributors in Geneva in the 1970s talking about specifically the internationalisation of production at the same time the OECD was but taking a different bottom up labour oriented kind of perspective so these organisations do reflect if you like global class positions and class struggle but increasingly the neoliberal line is becoming hegemonic okay so I don't know if people are agreeing with me or not but you're going to disagree with me now that's for certain I don't think imperialism is taught important in the present it's obviously a feature of past history imperialism it's a disease of a transition to global capitalism so I've got a paper which maybe you don't want to read from about five or six years ago when imperialism where I say the true imperialism now is the United Nations because it is driving global capitalism forward it's not driving forward one particular dominant national capital like the US or whatever it's wanting to make capitalism genuinely global so imperialism to me is an aspect of the prehistory of global capitalism I'll probably be shot for saying that but I'm not a hero of my dear friends but so those theorists like Elin Wood who is really her stuff is absolutely excellent David Harvey Leo Panitch and Co I just think they're wrong I think they grew up I did too when everyone talked about US imperialism you know not the most important thing every dominant power tries to be imperialistic while it's in control no doubt China will do the same is doing already that is not the logic of world history that's just stuff on the side and then just finally finally I think you said the UN reforms the IMF said increase your quotas, pay more money and the US refused that's not a sign the US controls the IMF the IMF has a global project it says we've got to give China more of a voice you guys have got to you know, accept these changes the fact is, since 2010 World Bank and IMF World Bank as well the reforms of the quota system cannot get through the US Congress and the US is isolated now especially in the World Bank over the quota reforms to me that says something very simple the project of the World Bank is the same as the project of the US government has the US government got the opportunity to block it to some extent yes, but not to a great extent but what's happened? the development bank Mr Obama is a great disappointment to everybody, but still saying, well Hillary Clinton isn't it terrible the way China's development bank please don't have anything to do with it David Cameron goes straight off to Beijing and signs up for it the United States has lost control, if it ever had any of the global system that makes it very dangerous it's not particularly evil any more than previous big powers, but it's an evil you know, look at the effects of US multi power in the last 40 years catastrophic but it does not have the power to dictate events in the management of global capitalism and it's been conspicuously on the losing side and who knows if the TTP who knows if they'll succeed I guess they won't so don't be afraid of the United States I don't mean individuals it might be American, it might not but the United States has the leading world power get it in perspective it's relative, it's temporary and it's all explicable because of pressures to which the United States is just as subject as anybody else why have wages, why have adult male full-time wages stagnated in the United States since 1970 why have they got more people on food stamps than most, certainly most European countries why is there such poverty alongside such enormous wealth not because there's some evil spirit behind it all because of the dynamics of global capitalism or contradictory consequences anyway, let's just stop here applause thanks very much Paul for that engaging talk and discussion two weeks from now not next Tuesday but the Tuesday after that the 10th of November we'll be meeting in here 5 o'clock for Al Campbell and he'll be speaking about updating Cuba's economic model, socialism and human development and also we're going to be in the SCR for drinks and nibbles so feel free to join us there thanks for coming thank you see you later


My name is Leanne Cooper, and I've been a WikiTree member for about four years. I've created this presentation series, called Welcome to WikiTree, to highlight some of the key features of WikiTree, and to share why it's such an important tool in my genealogy toolbox. All opinions expressed throughout the series are my own. WikiTree is a free online collaborative family tree. But what exactly is a collaborative family tree? And how does it differ from other online family trees? Those are the questions I'll be answering in this video. As this name implies, WikiTree is a wiki, which is a website that allows collaborative editing of its content by its users. You're probably most familiar with Wikipedia, where there's only one article on a particular topic, and everyone who has information to contribute on that topic contributes to the same article. Likewise, with a collaborative family tree, each individual ancestor should appear only once, and everyone who has information on that ancestor contributes to that ancestor's profile. A collaborative family tree is also known as a one-world tree or a global family tree, where we all have our own branches that connect to these common ancestors. WikiTree is not the only collaborative tree. Other examples are FamilySearch, WeRelate, and Genie. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses, but all work essentially the same way, which differs from other sites where you can build or upload your individual family tree, such as Ancestry, MyHeritage, or FindMyPast. Here's an illustration of how it works. On a site like Ancestry, I create my family tree. I'm a descendant of William and Agnes through their son Samuel. I also include information about Samuel's siblings, but I don't have their descendants flushed out. Of course, I have other ancestors in my tree as well, but for the purposes of this example, I'm just using this one line. Person 2 also creates a family tree on Ancestry. He's a descendant of Samuel's brother, Joseph. Likewise, Person 3 creates a tree. She's a descendant of Mary. Person 4 is also a descendant of Samuel, but she has no information on his siblings. And finally, Person 5 is another descendant of Mary. She knows Mary's father's name was William, but she doesn't know Mary's mother's name. All five of us have trees including the same family group, but we may each have some different information on the family members. On a collaborative family tree, I create a profile for each of the ancestors in my family tree and connect them together. When Person 2 comes along, instead of creating profiles for each of the people already there, he only creates profiles for Joseph's children and connects them to the existing tree and adds any information he has on the others to what I have already provided. Likewise with Person 3 and Person 4. Lucky Person 5 doesn't need to do anything but add himself to the tree as all of his ancestors already exist on the global tree. It's easy to see how we relate to the other living people on the tree as our links to our common ancestors are clear. So, what are the advantages of a collaborative family tree? First off, it gives us the ability to crowdsource information on our ancestors. Descendants of common ancestors may have access to different records. By working together, we can create a fuller picture of our ancestors' stories. Secondly, it's a great way to preserve our work. I've been working on my family history for many years now. Since I've shared the information I have on a collaborative tree, even if I were to stop working on my tree tomorrow, it would remain for others to access and to continue to build on without having to start from scratch. But most importantly, in my opinion, a collaborative family tree converges towards accuracy. Let me illustrate what I mean. Recall our five trees belonging to descendants of William and Agnes. Say one day I discover that Agnes' parents were Joseph and Mary, so I add this to my tree. Persons 2 and 3 see this, and they add the same information to their trees. Persons 4 and 5 do not. Over time, 10 more descendants of William and Agnes create trees, and they all add Joseph and Mary as Agnes' parents. But oops, I discover new information that rules out Joseph and Mary as parents of Agnes and determine that her parents were actually Richard and Anne. I update my tree. Being a collaborative sort, I contact other people with Agnes in their trees to share this new evidence. Person 2 changes his tree, but nobody else does. The errors persist, all because they copied erroneous information from my tree. New people coming along will see two trees with Richard and Anne as Agnes' parents and 11 with Joseph and Mary. Many will add Joseph and Mary as parents since that seems to be the theory with the most support, even though all of those people got their information from the same place, which was my family tree. On a collaborative family tree, on the other hand, since there's only one profile for Agnes, when her parents get added and then get changed, new people coming along only see the correct parents. So while on individual trees, errors get replicated, on a collaborative tree, the more people that work on the tree and importantly supply sources for any changes that they make, the more accurate the tree becomes. I hope this gives you a better understanding of collaborative family trees. In this presentation, I focused on collaborative trees in general, not on wiki tree in particular. For more information on wiki tree, check out the presentation Introduction to wiki tree, where I describe its key features and what's included on a wiki tree profile. I discuss pros and cons of wiki tree and I give some advice and tips for getting started. In other videos in this series, I talk about how privacy works on wiki tree and how we collaborate on wiki tree. If you have suggestions for other topics you'd like to see me address, please leave a comment. Hope to see you on wiki tree.


And there's also often a lot of confusion or a need for information when people are looking to hire a therapist. They're trying to find a therapist to help them with an anxiety problem and they're confronted with a wide array of letters and credentials and types of therapy and types of therapists and they get confused so I might be able to clarify some of this today. And then there's the whole are you trained or specialized in treating anxiety disorders?  You cannot automatically assume that anybody with any letters after their name has spent any time learning about the mechanics of anxiety disorders. And if you're listening to this podcast or watching this video, that's probably what you're most interested in.


On her fifth birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter looked down at the cake that her foster mother had baked for her and wished that her real parents had never died.  The man was shouting at the woman who wept and hugged herself tightly.  On her sixth birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter whimpered and covered her eyes as she heard her mother scream and wished that she had never made the wish that she had made last year. She blinked her eyes again and found herself back at the foster home. It was her fifth birthday again and her foster mother was waiting for her to blow out the candles. She did so. This time she decided to wish for a pony instead. On her second sixth birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter hugged her favorite stuffed pony and wished that she had 10,000 friends. She blinked and suddenly realized just how many people 10,000 really was. She wondered how she was going to find a cake big enough to feed them all.  She blinked again and she found herself back in her foster home, looking down at a small normal cake surrounded by her usual six so-called friends who really weren't. She blew out the candles a second time and this time decided to wish for a fairy princess dress upset. On her seventh birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter wore her favorite princess tiara and blew out the candles. Her favorite stuffed pony sat on top of her dresser in a place of honor but she'd outgrown carrying a stuffed animal everywhere she went. She didn't know what to wish for this time so she didn't. It was then that she saw the old man sitting at the foot of the table where no one should have been. He had thinning gray hair and he smiled as he got to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane. Come with me, he said. I think you're ready for your first lesson now. She took his hand and he took her away from the foster home and into a different world. On her eighth birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter learned about the ways. They're the places between places, teacher explained. They are how you get from the places that are to the places that could have been. When he said that, Seguro's Stefan's daughter realized exactly what he meant. She brushed her hand over the manhole in the middle of the Los Angeles intersection and climbed through into a place filled with books and learning. Happy birthday, the teacher said. Now, it's time to get you your library card. On her ninth birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter met the fox. Everyone always spoke of the fox in all capitals. She wasn't sure how or why this was or even how one could convey capitals in normal speech, but they did. The fox was a tall, beautiful woman with eyes like daggers and teeth like knives. She smiled at Seguro's Stefan's daughter and licked her lips with a cruel, carnal hunger. Seguro's Stefan's daughter wasn't afraid though. No one could harm her while they were in the library. The docents wouldn't let them. That wasn't true everywhere though.  Some people were very sad when they heard this had happened. You see, Ms. Midnight explained patiently, even though she wasn't a very nice person, she was the last fox. It's always sad when something disappears from this world. On her 10th birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter learned about mistakes. She had been looking up at the sky and wondered what it would look like if it were pink instead of blue. And then it was. In a panic, she tried to change it back to blue, but she could never get the color quite right. It was either too dark or too light, or it was too green or too purple or too bright or too dark. She was in tears by the time the teacher said things right again. She expected to get scolded for nearly messing up the sky forever, but the teacher was sympathetic. We all do things like that sometimes, he explained. The important thing is to learn how to say things right again. Some men in black suits came a few days later and they talked to the teacher at length. The teacher seemed upset by those visits and he murdered to himself a lot. But in the end, it seemed that things worked out. On her 11th birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter met the ukulele man. He came to the library with a briefcase and some papers, and although everyone else in the library didn't seem to like him, they left him alone. He sat down with her in one of the side rooms and he asked many questions and did many strange things, like asking her to pick up a pencil that he had knocked off the table himself or asking her very suddenly how many friends she had. Seguro's Stefan's daughter followed her teacher's advice and told the truth every time. She also picked up the pencil herself because the teacher had taught her that one should always try to be as ordinary as possible, whenever possible, because that caused less trouble for other people. The ukulele man seemed pleased by this. He had a talk with the teacher afterwards and told her that she was a phase 2, transitioning into 3 with little chance of a 4. Whatever that meant. He also claimed that she had been designated Response Level 1 and he patted her head and told her happy birthday. The teacher seemed very relieved once the ukulele man had left and he gave her a hug and then they had cake with all her friends. On her 12th birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter kissed a boy.   On her 15th birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter started to wonder if this sex thing people talked about was really worth it.  By her 17th birthday, Seguro's Stefan's daughter had grown bored of this sex thing and decided to try all of the other deadly sins in order to see if they were really as fun as people seem to think. She started with pride. Just before her 18th birthday, Segurosan's daughter had tried absolutely every single sin known to humanity and a few that had not yet been discovered and had grown bored of them all. She decided to try the virtues next starting with charity. By the time she was 19, even virtue had grown boring for her especially since it turned out to be a lot harder than expected. She could have waved her hand and done it easily but her teacher's lessons had driven home to her that something like that often caused more problems for the people who weren't like her than it was worth. So she decided to give up both virtue and vice and decided to try wisdom instead. At around 20 years of age, Segurosan's daughter had learned everything that was possible to know and started on the things that were impossible. She figured out the impossible shortly before she turned 21. She toasted the beginnings of research into the things that were not with her first drink as a legal adult. She was still wrestling with the things that were not when she turned 22, and 23, and 25, and 50, and 70, and 900, and 20,000, and 4 billion. And finally, when time itself had ceased to hold meaning for her, and a year was about as significant to her as the blink of an eye. It was only as the last proton in the universe decayed and nothing existed anymore but an endless expanse of nothingness that Segurosan's daughter finally reached the end of her searching and felt at peace. It was both the next instant and an endless number of eternities later that Segurosan's daughter got bored. What was the point of knowing everything and nothing if there was nothing to do with it anymore?  Here she decided she would start creating new everythings and new nothings to experience and learn about. She clapped her non-existent hands and brought reality back into existence. Time, which had long since stood still like a stopped clock, began once more. Symmetry was broken, dividing what had been pure balance into what is and what is not for a second, third, millionth, infinitive time. She closed her metaphorical eyes and opened them after a trillion aeons plus one year to find herself being pulled from warmth and darkness into a world of cold light. And that was how Segurosan's daughter spent her first birthday. End of file. To learn more about the SCP Foundation, subscribe to SCP Orientation today and turn the notification bell on so you don't miss any of our videos.


Alright guys here we go case number four of 2022 leaf in the game use sports 50 hits 50 names or randomize everything at the end to see who guess what Good luck everybody and thank you for joining case number four Hey guys OPG breaking next till 12 to go gotta get it filled up to keep the night rolling here A lot of hockey a lot of baseball. Let's get them filled up guys teams on inception or on sale There's random teams inception And a full case division style Let's go guys. Let's get them filled up I want to pull you guys some hits Get OPG 1999 a spot 1999 a spot chance at a lot of rookies a lot of rookies in this year's hockey class All right starting off with a david orteez dual jersey nine out of 50 Yeah, we pulled the mc david patch out of the 10 Uh, what else did we pull forget what we pulled yesterday honestly It's like 25 weeks ago now Randy johnson relic 404 got the seam right there Yeah, we had one case yesterday We had 10 cases the week before randy johnson jersey 404 Team utopia 10 of 45 eight-way relic here maddox killabrew A rod piazza bogs yastremski itchero kuru Team utopia 40 of 45 eight-way relic here we go you guys It's where the fun begins Yeah, well, it's a magic johnson jersey audio type at 32 or 35 magic johnson jersey auto I can't Put it down on the table too hard because then the surface of the card is gonna There we go just falls right out. Perfect. There we go. There we go magic jersey auto 32 or 35 and triple jersey jeter posada and williams 2 of 45 jeter posada williams Yeah, see easy. I could open this stuff all day. It has the auto every time All right, we got dual glove relic. It's anthony kim and kj choy five of eight Dual relic kim and choy five of eight george brett jersey five of five george brett jersey five of five six shooters five of nine uh alan houston so hard to read with this like crystal text mike dunleavy hito turcaloo um What was that Ben gordon, okay a metta world peace and anton and anton jameson five and nine six shooters five of nine I'm not reading those names again. It's impossible They put ben gordon on there. See what this product is like solving a puzzle Why is it always the autograph too? That's what I want to know. Why is it always like the card you want in the box? Yeah, I just Manhandle that sucker dual jersey montana and griffy seven of 25 I gotta give it the people's elbow next time. I think nasty five of five triple relic auto nullan ryan roger clemens and dwight gooden ryan clemens gooden triple relic auto five of five Good luck on that one.   We've got a killing in bop a jersey 20 of 30 of 20 of 25 actually in bop a jersey 20 of 25 Jersey card and mani ramirez 44 50 Nick I was breaking That was me That was me I was Right here We got team utopia eight-way relic five of nine whitey ford yogi bear up pete rose george brett berry bonds ken griffy jr Coworkin jr and ricky henderson I knew I put bonds on the thumbnail for a reason the goat Eight-way relic team utopia five of nine come on Let me see if I can do the little cry it It seems to work a little bit. I just don't want the car to fall. It's just like fall Come on gravity do your work Put the car to my hand. All right jersey auto alan iverson one of two the answer Looks different from his other autos And this is really cool. Dude. I don't know this is this got a Naomi Osaka auto three of four Naomi Osaka auto three of four Damn that is sick. That's going to the mag. I feel like upper deck has to get her in her product I think she has autos in Like goodwin or something like that I will say it is pretty cool. You can pull iverson auto you know socket auto back-to-back pretty fire That's what i'm saying nick I wonder if i'll get workers come from opening this If I get hurt Probably right Steph curry dual jersey 10 of 25 I mean she signs just like every other new baseball and basketball Player She signs like everyone else her age Steph curry 10 of 25 dual jersey Dude, that is really cool actually For real here Yeah Rowdy roddy piper relic four of five Rowdy roddy piper Yeah, i'm sure it's i'm sure it's match worn of yeah It says game use which would mean you know it was used in an event Rowdy piper four of five So we've gone from ai to osaka to rowdy piper Just wait so this next one's pretty this next one's actually fire Look at her right now Dude, this one's cool. Check this out you guys. Muhammad Ali Mike Tyson lary holmes and floyd paterson quad relic Ali Tyson holmes and paterson quad relic three of 12 What is going on here printing plate auto one-of-one Naomi Osaka Dude Black printing plate one-of-one auto Naomi Osaka Damn, we're hitting some we're hitting some heat in this one Wrong size sleeve and shack jersey auto two of nine. He's standing right behind me. He's watching me Shack jersey auto two of nine We're only four boxes in also we're We got a ways to go here two osakas shack diesel Illuminati shack This is the last time i'm saying that word tonight. Oh, they'll come after me Yeah, shack only assigns a little bit here and there with leaf. You'll sound like the big stuff. I think Got a bob lemon jersey six of 50 the case hit Uh, I don't I don't know there's not really a case hit in this. It could it could be better.  It's funny Obviously all great though 36 and 45 legendary locker room six-way relic. Yeah, you got the Dortmund Bellingham and holland Vinny is three out and then yeah, the other ones are current teams still Or I mean bellingham stole dormant not for long, but it's still there.   That'd be pretty fire carl pretty fire stadium relic don mattingly number seven of nine Yankee stadium relic don mattingly seven of nine Shohei otani rookie ticket It's a ticket relic otani from his rookie season there 2018 and legendary locker room six-way jersey card griffy thomas ichiro piazza mattingly and henderson Legendary locker room 17 of 20 Got bob lemon and herb score three of five dual relic lemon and score dual relic three of five 65 dollars spot in the spring and dual jersey auto barry sanders tony dorsett seven of 15 sanders dorsett dual auto seven of 15 Good luck on that one 11 to go on opg Breaking next got to get it filled up keep going everybody Try to get it filled up Okay. Oh, oh this one is just reversed That's fun. That lid just came right off. Okay Every time No, no, no two boxes open the same in this Keep me on my toes. Robert levin dalsky one of three on the patch card Levin dalsky patch one of three A craig and nettles captain jersey three of four craig nettles jersey three of four Grand salami six number 11 of 20 thomas williams winfield buehner berks and cano Some names right there grand salami six 11 to 20 Buehner and erks on there ticket auto on soto ticket relic auto on soto I don't think ever shame The last time I pulled one of those was uh two seconds ago First time too. I think nice soto ticket auto and hakeem elisha won jersey auto nine of 15 Hakeem elisha won jersey auto nine of 15 From ours. What's up, man? Larry bird jersey 18 of 40 Bill madlock jersey five of five The patch bill madlock patch five of five Really freaking cool This is actually pretty wild four of five the legendary 200 James harden sergey fedorov namar jr. Kirby puckett terrell owens bob lily martin bro door laundry tag there and a dave winfield That is uh quite the assembly of names Hardin fedorov namar puckett owens lily bro door and winfield four five That is sick The bro door laundry tag too pretty wild might be the only time we ever see uh James harden and uh sergey fedorov on the same card next to each other And namar right right beneath him too Triple jersey. That's a cool one random champions dunkin parker jenobley Seven of nine Dunkin parker jenobley triple jersey seven of nine That's awesome, man. And whoo Rick flair auto five of eight Rick flair five of eight on the auto. Good luck on this one tend to go on opeachy dual jersey denis rodman 20 of 30 Dennis rodman dual jersey 20 of 30 The cathedral stadium relic mickey mantel six of nine yankee stadium relic mickey mantel six of nine sports lore four 15 of 25 quad relic Ted williams mohammed ali is that a glove palei with two colors And jack nicholas That is Really sick that is a that's an ali glove or like a or like a boot maybe Probably not trunks probably not a robe Ted williams mohammed ali palei two color And jack nicholas that is freaking awesome, dude Good luck on that one you guys I would assume that's a glove a glove which would be outrageous printing plate auto Larry legends Larry bird playing printing plate auto 101 And the goose is loose goose gossage jersey auto three of 12 goose gossage duty Him and revera signatures are so similar They're like the exact same signature just a different name Look the same about the same size and everything goose gossage jersey auto three of 12 the goose is loose Yeah, this has been I think the best case overall Um since we started opening this though It's crazy Opeachy next guys get it filled up here down to 10 a minute ago Jersey card Scotty pipping to 20 Scotty no tipping pipping 19 to 20 You gotta gotta do it. He doesn't tip. He's cheap Stadium relic yogi bearer four of six This yogi stadium relic four of six The legendary 208 way relic yogi bearer kg clemens oj simpson The army or yogur david beckham. I'm just listing any names at this point. It sounds like Greg luganis and john stockton. They're just spitting names out athletes just Athlete word vomit right there yogi bearer kevin garnett roger clemens oj simpson yarmere yogur david beckham Greg luganis and john stockton Yes, yes, Greg luganis They even got swimming we got swimming now you guys We did it We're on our way to getting all 75 sports that are currently played in the world Leaf will just be like they'll spin the wheel and then like there we go. That's what we're doing It might be a speedo patch. Who knows Might be a banana hammock patch It's like the first time I think I've ever said that on stream Dude, they'll get anybody they'll get anybody in this They might have dylan in there next year That's a dude donny's gonna be in there golf club donny That's uh, sam sneed and gene sarazen's I say sarazen sneed and sarazen dual jersey 25 out of 40 and auto of stef curry Number 28 of 30 stef curry auto 28 of 30 Yeah, exactly draw names out of a hat Same reaction I had oh they got luganis on that one No way It's fun though. I will say that it is fun Why not right? Okay, all it's random time. Good luck everybody. That was I would I would for sure. I think it's the best one we've opened so far overall We may have had bigger hits so far, but I think top to bottom that that's the best case we've opened Well, then Good luck. There's so many different things to hit in this 50 names 50 hits randomize and both same amount of times put inside by side as you gets what Six and two right here. It's eight times on both Name's first eight times One two three four five six seven and eight Namql down to jake s eight times on the hits One two three four five six seven and eight Rowdy roddy piper down to shack All the names dude, I love it. This is awesome. Hold up.