The Soviet space programme was the ultimate proof of what a planned economy can achieve when it is decoupled from the parasitic need for profit. In less than half a century, a nation that had been largely agrarian and illiterate broke the atmosphere. This was not the work of a few visionary individuals but the collective output of millions of workers, engineers, and scientists. Yuri Gagarin was the face of this achievement. His birth on 9 March 1934 and his death on 27 March 1968 bookended a period where the sky was treated as a common treasury for all of humanity. The Soviet project proved that science does not require the “incentive” of the market to reach the stars. It requires the collective will of the people.
Today, that horizon has been enclosed. The billionaire class has co-opted the very idea of space travel, turning it into a private playground and a new site for capital accumulation. When Donald Trump established the Space Force, he was not creating a wing for scientific discovery. He was creating a border patrol for the stars. This is not exploration. It is colonisation. The goal is no longer to understand the universe but to secure mineral rights and provide an escape hatch for the ultra-wealthy while the earth burns. The money being siphoned into these private rockets is stolen from the working class. It is capital that should be used to provide healthcare, housing, and a sustainable future on this planet.
We must recognise that the struggle for space is a continuation of the struggle for land on earth. The same logic that fences off public woods and criminalises movement is now being exported into orbit. A socialist space programme would return science to its rightful place: as a tool for the liberation of the working class. We do not need billionaire vanity projects or the militarisation of the vacuum. We need a collective reclamation of the stars, where the pursuit of knowledge is never again sacrificed for the sake of a private balance sheet.
@COLLECTED
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