This video shows Comrade Joti Brar of the CPGB-ML speaking at a meeting to mark the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, held in April 2018 in Saklatvala Hall, Southall.

In a whistlestop tour of some basic features of Marxism and Leninism, Joti outlines some of the features of Marx’s work and doctrine that make him of particular relevance to workers in struggle today. She explains how Lenin complemented and extended his work, in particular with concrete organisational theory, as well as by developing the tactics of the democratic and socialist revolutions.

Lenin also applied Marx’s work to the modern era, explaining the way capitalism develops towards monopoly, with the concentration of capital at one pole and the impoverishment of the vast masses of humanity at the other, dominating the entire world’s territory and markets, and constantly driving towards redivision and war.

It is this understanding of imperialism as a world system of exploitation and domination by a handful of rich billionaires and their state forces that allows us to understand why Marxists today should support the ‘bourgeois’ sovereign government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, which is leading the Syrian people’s struggle against destabilisation and overthrow by the US, Nato and EU imperialists and their regional and religious-fundamentalist proxies.

Joti points out that if workers can learn to apply the science of Marxism in practice, the ruling class will lose its ability to confuse them with lies and disinformation. Exposing the lie machine is the precondition for building a movement capable of opposing and sabotaging the war machine.

Defeat for the imperialists abroad is a vital step towards weakening them at home, bringing the day of a successful socialist revolution here in Britain a step closer.

Marxism Leninism when combined with mass, disciplined organisation is a tool for liberation in the hands of the working masses; we must cherish it and learn to use it.