Congratulations if you made it all the way to Belmont. You either helped to commemorate an act of working-class defiance – or unwittingly celebrated the power of the owners to dominate our lives via a legal system designed to preserve the holy of holies, the sacred right of private property!
There have been a few social changes in the last 125 years. The biggest have involved the concentration of real wealth (capital) in fewer and fewer hands and the spread of the capitalist system of production throughout the world, creating two really huge armed camps, a load of wannabe power merchants, and an ecological timebomb.
So what do we do if we are to have control of our lives and solve the problems that we face as workers?
First we need to acknowledge that the issues we face occur time and time again, they’re not accidental – they’re built into a system that’s driven by one thing alone, the profit motive. Things only get made when profits are expected. No profit, no production. No matter what people’s needs are.
And no amount of tinkering at the edges will remove the inherent instability from what is now a worldwide system.** Despite any cosmetic changes, and whatever national politicians claim, the last 200 years have shown that capitalism is uncontrollable, and increasingly dangerous.
And here’s the bonkers part – most workers believe that this state of affairs is somehow natural. It’s not, it’s been made by human beings. Money, markets, state borders are all historical constructs that we allow to restrict us, that we no longer need.
If we are ever going to have a stable, sustainable society, we have to make a new history where we take the world’s productive resources into common ownership, where we produce to meet people’s needs. Of necessity, this must be a wholly democratic society and, as private property is the basis of any social power, it will be non-hierarchical too.
This is a practical proposition – we have the productive resources to create a sustainable abundance of the things we need to lead fulfilling lives.
**A boring historical note for you – the organisers of the original trespass belonged to the SDF – an increasingly reformist, undemocratic organisation that expelled most of the people who would go on to create the SPGB, precisely because they put forwards this very idea.
Click here for a local socialist’s view: A kid from Deane
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