> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://redflag.org.au/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Workers can overthrow capitalism - URL: https://redflag.org.au/article/workers-can-overthrow-capitalism/ - Published: 2026-11-06T00:40:49.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-06T00:40:49.000Z - Description: A world run by workers has the potential to replace profit making with rational organisation: to go from a society in service of the wealthy to one that serves us all. Fulfilling this potential is not a straightforward task, but it is an important and necessary one. - Author: Priya T. - Tags: Unions and Workers, Revolts and Uprisings Human beings are the most cooperative species that have ever existed. The expectation that we will live socially, with other people to help and guide us, is built into our biology. Compare a human baby with, say, crocodiles, which are born with as many as 60 teeth and use them to break through their eggshell, fending for themselves from their earliest moments. Or baby horses, who can walk within an hour of birth. Human babies can’t so much as lift their own heads*.* Our evolutionary survival instinct is to *cry*, the single purpose of which is to *alert others* to needs or distress. This interdependence continues, in various ways, throughout our lives. The fact that humans are not designed to make it alone is why capitalism feels so deeply wrong to so many of us. It is not geared towards meeting people’s needs, and the values it promotes—individualism, competition and greed—run counter to the social and collective instincts that are crucial to our survival as a species. The enormous resources and technologies that capitalism brings into existence are not used to provide for people or distributed to meet need. Instead, they are bought and sold to generate wealth for the tiny minority who control them. This gap between how things are, and how they could and should be, is one of the features of the system that perpetually cause people to turn against it. And it is becoming increasingly obscene. At the same time as the super-rich are getting on commercial space flights—at $70 million a ticket—the majority of the world’s population have never set foot on a plane. While the ultra-wealthy pour resources into the pursuit of immortality *for themselves,* wasting millions on cryogenic chambers, organ replacement, blood transfusions and uploading themselves to the cloud, millions of children die from diarrhea-related illnesses every year, and 3.4 billion people live without proper sanitation. Twelve billionaires hold more wealth than half of humanity. Abundance exists, but it is hoarded away from the masses. The rich would like us to think they earned and therefore deserve this wealth; that they are compensated in proportion to what they contribute to society. Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart wrote a column expressing this view for the industry publication *Australian Resources and Investment* in 2012: “If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain; do something to make more money yourself—spend less time drinking, or smoking, or socialising, and more time working.” Leaving aside that Rinehart seems to spend heaps of time drinking and socialising, including at expensive Italian hotels with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, nobody really thinks that a mining executive works harder than a garbage truck driver or early childhood educator. But the reality is that on average Australian salaries, it would take these workers about 650,000 years of “more time working” to earn the $40 billion Rinehart is worth. The truth is that the ruling class amasses their wealth not by working harder than everyone else, but by getting *other people to work for them*. Wealth is “created” when the value of the products other people produce is greater than what they are paid by their bosses in wages. This is called exploitation, and it is the basis of capital accumulation. Without the labour of workers, bosses wouldn’t have profits or power. Workers do the work to produce what we all need, while the “work” bosses do is to protect their control over this process, make it more profitable and manage the profits. This control gives bosses the ability to shape the lives of millions if not billions of other people—they decide what is made, who gets it and what it sells for. The majority, on the other hand, are oppressed: they are denied control over their own activity, as well as what happens to the products of their labour and, by extension, how their society is organised. This oppression is a prerequisite for exploitation—workers are conditioned from birth into accepting their subordinate place in society, and are expected to accept it throughout their working lives. Whether this is unadulterated, as in tyrannical dictatorships, or sanitised, as in parliamentary democracies, the underlying reality is the same. Bosses exercise dictatorial authority in the workplace. And their interests inform government policy. The majority of us get little to no say over what happens in our communities, despite living there. Nobody asks residents if they want data centres plonked in their neighbourhoods, for example, or a McDonalds on every shopping strip. Unless collective action forces the outcome to be different, politicians and corporations get to do whatever they want because they hold economic and political power. Workers can’t just opt out of this system. To survive, most people need to earn a wage, or depend on someone who does. The prospect of a life where you can’t pay for things is so terrible, that for most people, most of the time, it is preferable to make peace with exploitation and the accompanying lack of control. If the alternative is poverty, it can feel preferable to follow the unfair rules bosses lay down; to “suck it up” when life is unsatisfying and “get over it” when the world makes you sick and sad, and shrinks your dreams. The fact that nearly half of young people in Australia, according to a 2025 Headspace survey, reported experiencing high or very high psychological distress, speaks to a society that is broken. The future is especially bleak if you’re young. Some life goals previous generations might have taken for granted, like owning a home and having a stable job, are increasingly out of reach. Meanwhile, the future of the planet is in jeopardy and no-one in power cares enough to act, and tech experts are warning that AI, already widely resented, may soon wipe out our species. It is perfectly rational for young people to feel panic or despair watching all this. Rational, too, for this reality to make someone want to barricade their school. Or throw a trash can through a window. Capitalism has brought the world to extremes of inequality and degraded the majority of people materially and morally. So is there hope? Yes, there is. Workers are not merely victims. At the same time as being exploited, oppressed and alienated, workers are cooperative, able to produce everything we need to survive, and potentially extremely powerful. And they don’t have a stake in the status quo. Billions of workers around the world are connected to each other through the labour process. Despite the ideology of individualism, workers are mutually dependent on each other, and, at a local and global level, are only able to produce the things we all need collectively. This means the ability to cooperate is built into working class life in a way it is not for bosses. And workers everywhere share not only the labour process, but also the antagonistic relationship with their bosses—bosses everywhere want workers to work harder for less to maximise profit, while workers want the opposite. In fact, it is *because* workers are structurally united in this way that the system requires division and repression. The ruling class have a variety of tools at their disposal to maintain their social position, from the brute force of police and soldiers, to spreading hateful ideologies like racism through the media or politics. They need scapegoats and enforcement mechanisms because fundamentally, the capitalists’ wealth and privilege rests upon workers accepting their exploitation, and not realising the common interest they share with other workers. These containment measures can only be so effective, because capitalism repeatedly gives workers reasons to rebel. Workers can be compelled to resist out of frustration with a steady erosion of their rights, by attacks on their wages or conditions, a significant shock to society like a war or economic crisis, or through disgust with the moral depravity of capitalism. And because the system has an integrated purpose—profit making—when workers get angry about one issue, it often leads them to question other aspects of the system too. When workers stand together and start to take action, it shatters the optical illusions that make capitalism seem all-powerful. Instead of spending their days checking off tasks set by capitalist managers, in times of struggle workers take collective control over their workplaces, and start consciously directing the labour they already do, using the skills and knowledge they already possess. Democracy is essential to these sorts of working-class rebellions. Workers can only exercise their power collectively, which means it is essential that all participants feel invested in the struggle. This means everyone needs a voice and a say, and disagreements have to be debated out until a collective decision can be reached that people are happy to stick to. Dictating to others weakens the unity workers draw their strength from. For this reason, and contrary to the stereotypes, revolutions involve a lot more talking and debate than they do violent uprising. This sort of collective organising often centres around places and activities where people ordinarily gather; schools and universities, neighbourhoods, and, crucially, workplaces. Importantly at work, talk can translate into action. Workers have the practical, hands on, down-to-earth skills to bridge the gap between how the world is and how it should be. Electricians, forklift operators, delivery drivers and supermarket workers can not only come up with a plan for moving resources around to get food on every table, they could make it happen. Workers could distribute resources for human need and not profit if they performed their labour collectively and consciously. To do this on a larger scale, workers also need wider organising and coordinating bodies, which means more talking and discussion. This is crucial to the process of revolution: to succeed, workers must create their own institutions for governing the economy and society, rooted in their collective power and able to coordinate the conscious, democratic organisation of labour. Bodies like these have been repeatedly created in workers’ revolutions throughout history. When workers start to organise on this scale, it is an acute challenge to the existing order. The state, with its wide reach and ability to intimidate through organised violence, is mobilised to force workers back into their place. A revolution therefore needs to defend itself from the old order at the same time as it creates a new one, which means dismantling the capitalist state. None of this is easy. The capitalist class is very sensitive to any challenge to its power, while workers are not used to exercising theirs. And action has to be taken quickly and decisively when struggles erupt—workers are much more prone to losing their nerve than the capitalist class. Having a large current of organised revolutionaries prior to massive struggles breaking out, with a clear idea of what is needed to overthrow capitalism and establish workers’ power, is an indispensable tool. Such organisation needs to be built before revolutions begin; it is too late to get organised once things start to move. This is why Socialist Alternative argues we need to be organised today, not because revolution is imminent, but because building our forces in the less explosive times is necessary. A world run by workers has the potential to replace profit making with rational organisation: to go from a society in service of the wealthy to one that serves us all. No more deprivation alongside excess; no more reducing human beings to cogs in a machine. If the majority had real control over their labour, and real control over society, life could be lived in a completely different way. The potential for an equal society—for socialism—already exists in capitalism, even if it is not always obvious. Fulfilling this potential is not a straightforward task, but it is an important and necessary one.