“Be realistic, demand the impossible”. So went the slogan of the insurrectionary Parisian students in May 1968. It beautifully captured the mood of the time: the collective rejection of the stultifying parameters of capitalist normality and the boundless optimism that a better world was possible.

Moments like these, when collective action opens the eyes of masses of people to their own power, have disrupted the rhythm of the capitalist system since its very beginning. Through their own actions, people have come to realise that a society based on mass participatory democracy – a socialist society – is not simply a utopian dream but a credible alternative to the profit driven brutality of capitalism.

Such moments are a confirmation of Karl Marx’s argument that it is capitalism itself that creates the conditions for its own destruction. Marx argued that the bringing together of a mass working class, its concentration in urban centres and large interconnected workplaces, is an economic necessity for the capitalist class but also a source of extreme vulnerability.

Because workers collectively produce society’s wealth while the bosses reap all the profits, bosses are keenly aware that they are always just one wayward lunch room conversation away from industrial strife and potentially a generalised revolt. This is why they seek to divide and atomise workers at every opportunity.

But for those concerned about the atrocities of the capitalist system – the threat of nuclear warfare, the poverty and deprivation, the obscene concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority and the destruction of the planet – this is the key power we have on our side. The power of workers, when they take collective action, has the potential not only to challenge the powerful and win gains for the mass of people trampled down by the system, but to bring about a new form of social organisation.

Through struggle, workers begin to develop the organisation and know-how necessary for a society in which decisions are made and carried out democratically by the majority and in the interests of the majority. As Marx maintained, socialism is not a utopia, but the product of a capitalist society that through its own internal logic creates the social forces that can supersede it.

The ascendancy of Donald Trump has created turmoil. Confidence in the capitalist system and its representatives is precarious where it has not entirely collapsed. Democratic and workplace rights are under threat in such a way that is breaking up passivity and pushing people into action. In this context, ideas that once seemed distant from people’s lived experience can take on a new relevance.

This situation will demand not just individual opposition to the system but organisation: a means to distil the lessons of past struggles so as to better arm our side for the immediate fights and longer term battles.

The capitalist class expends considerable effort influencing what people think via the mass media, the workplace, the school system and popular culture. Our side needs its own ideas, and our own networks to distribute and popularise these ideas, and to encourage more people to take action and lead others.

This task is urgent and worth committing to.