Taking direct action

Engaging in direct action

Description

Taking action to change social circumstances, usually in an organized way.

Context

By putting our ideas into practice, taking control of our lives, and learning to trust and be trusted in the important heat of the moment, direct action can help us actually start building the new society in the shell of the old. Direct action is central to confidence, which is essential to creating the culture of resistance, which is at the core of the new society we are building totally independently of the existing capitalist order. Solidarity, the idea that only through co-operation in society can human beings be liberated and free, is given practical meaning in direct action.

Claim

Through every direct action, people demonstrate to themselves that they are not merely dispensable wage slaves, working class cannon fodder or beasts of burden with little intellect. They gain confidence in their abilities, gain a sense of their own worth, and in so doing become more acutely aware of their own oppression and the need for an alternative to capitalism.