It’s time to unite against monopoly capitalism

On 25 March we’ll be hosting our Resisting Monopoly Capitalism conference. We are so excited to be gathering such a diverse range of international speakers, thinkers and representatives from global activist movements in one place.

There are extremely live struggles happening all over the world for fair access to food, healthcare and technology. Recognising our common cause makes us far more powerful, and far more likely to win.

We know that our world is dominated by extreme corporate power, which fuels unprecedented inequality and erodes democracy. But naming the specific problem as ‘monopoly capitalism’ shows us that these corporations have grown wealthy by monopolising the resources we need to live a dignified life, and helps bring people together to resist it.

The anti-monopoly movement as it currently exists is largely US and EU-focused. Not enough has been done to look at the global perspective. People in the poorest countries are the most affected by the forced competition between countries, but they’re also leading many of the charges of resistance against monopoly capitalism. We hope that this conference will help give shape to a burgeoning global movement, linking various struggles together through a shared understanding of their connectedness.

And it is possible to win. Our recent progress in campaigning against the Energy Charter Treaty shows that the system can be challenged. This campaign has been about more than just fighting the individual corporations who are seeking to block, and profit from, governments taking climate action – it’s about dismantling the mechanisms through which they’re able to do this. It’s about chipping away at the whole system that prioritises the rights of corporations over the rights of people and planet. It is in our power to fight back.

We must dismantle this system that incentivises greed and inequality, and amassing an ever greater share of the planet’s wealth and resources, with no thought for what is left over for others. We need a commons for medicine, we need food sovereignty, we need energy democracy and we need climate justice. Resisting monopoly capitalism is about fighting for a fundamental change to our global economic system, and a world that puts people before profit.