The fight against injustice has never gone away, it is part and parcel of the exploitative system of capitalism. Throughout the years people have struggled, organised and fought bitter battles, demanding a fair and just society for all. In Glasgow, we can go back to 1787, the Calton Weavers strike where the weavers of that area organised to fight the continuing erosion of their living standards, and in the usual attempt at repression, the powers that be were responsible for the deaths of at least six strikers. 1915, the Glasgow Rent strike, a fight to stop the landlords from squeezing the last drop of sustenance from their tenants. Since then nothing has really changed, we are still fighting the continuing erosion of our living standards, the bedroom tax, zero hour contracts, workfare slave labour and sanctions, the removal of disability allowance from the most vulnerable in our society, and a continuing erosion of wages and working conditions.
Centuries of bitter struggles just to keep some semblance of decency, while the employing class get richer and richer. Surely by now we should have realised that the system doesn't work in our favour, it can't be modified to work for the benefit of all our people, it has to be scrapped, shoved in the dustbin of history, relegated to the category of man's greatest folly. It has to be replaced by a system that sees to the needs of all our people, a system based on co-operation, mutual aid and sustainability, free from the corrosive motive of profit. We have to do it ourselves, by organising within our communities mechanisms that circumvent the existing capitalist structures. The help wont come from those already in power, they are doing just fine and are loathed to change anything. The system will only crumble and die when we decide we have had enough, of this endless exploitation and bitter struggle.
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