With the students back on the streets of central London this week, maybe it’s a good time to think deeper about these kinds of events, and what they can become.

What’s the point of any act of struggle? To make us stronger, to increase our power to live lives that are free, independent, joyful, creative. And to weaken the power of our enemies, our oppressors, those who try to keep us slaves, machines, passive worker-consumers.

We have very powerful forces against us. The repressive violence of the corporate state is just the most obvious one, with all its armies, cops, prisons, missiles, drones, CCTV cameras, tear gas, truncheons, boots and fists. But maybe even stronger is our own conditioning, the way we have been deeply trained into fear, submission, or a comfortable passivity. The only way to break that passivity is to act, to shatter familiar habits and norms: to rebel. Fighting these forces that enslave us is a continuing process involving many little revolts, and some big ones too.