More than 350 students, academics and workers attended lectures on the Asian economic meltdown and the global economic crisis of capitalism, delivered by Nick Beams, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in Austrlia, over the past month.

Beams spoke at seven Australian universities, the most extensive lecture tour ever conducted on Australian campuses by the SEP, with engagements in Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, Brisbane and Armidale.

Students who attended the lectures included many from the Asia-Pacific region and from a range of disciplines—engineering and mathematics, as well as economics, law, the arts and social sciences. Workers and youth also attended the lectures, which were open to the general public.

Each lecture was followed by extensive discussion on the political and social implications of the world economic crisis, and ranged over such issues as the nature of the nation-state system, the 1917 Russian Revolution and its destruction by Stalinism, and the role of bourgeois nationalism and social democracy.

Here we publish the lecture in PDF format. Note: if you do not have Adobe Acrobat, you will need to download it to view the file.