Who Really Has An 'Enjoyable Life'?

 (This is an expanded post to a social media thread I created over the weekend. When I 'left' Twitter and joined Mastodon, I had planned to add the off-the-cuff threads to the blog to keep them for posterity (vanity?). But as I'm a 'lazy lefty', I lived up to that moniker and just didn't bother. I will try to remember this blog exists to post any more of these in future.)

We are told by those above us, that this 'society', including its social and economic organisations, is the best possible that has ever existed for humanity to thrive. Indeed most people - both those with power, and the normies (many who like to believe they have some themselves, while they regurgitate 'talking points' from those really with any power) - will say it should not be touched, other than minor alterations at its edges. But definitely not to overthrow them.

Included in that is the belief that these systems allow us the opportunity to 'enjoy life'. Yet that is not so. We all know this even if we choose to lie to ourselves that it is actually correct, because we refuse to dream let alone fight for a better world, because of the 'safety' we feel from this 'normality', no matter how much it, and those who actually have any power in it, ruin our lives and futures.

In these enforced, hierarchical structures under capitalism, most of us do not have or get the mere opportunity to have an 'enjoyable life'.

We might have fleeting moments of 'joy', yes, but most of our life is a daily grind of 'work' from point A (birth) to point B (death).

In practice, the only ones who do have them are the capitalist class. Those, who do nothing to create the wealth other than to be born with or get 'lucky' to have the capital, that then goes along with their status as the 'wealth creator' in this organisation of society.

The capitalist ends up extracting ever more money, and the destruction that goes along with it, from those who actually do the labour.

We were told over many decades now that first mechanisation, then automation, would bring never-ending growth and wealth, so that all humans - even those in the labour sector - would get more and more free time for a ever better life. Yet it's been the exact opposite. We have got the mechanisation and automation in business, indeed so widespread it threatens work security in many industries, and us spending more time 'working' for less relative wealth.

Because for the capitalist, no level of wealth will ever be enough.

So we are forced, under threat of starvation, homelessness and imprisonment, to work the same or greater productivity for ever-decreasing returns. The capitalist class made sure of that being decoupled many decades back. Yet we've allowed them to do it, as we watch them make ever more 'profit' through price-gouging and overinflation, whilst our pockets get lighter or our days working get longer.

And no amount of destruction of humans, or of the planet will be too much for them.

Because this economic system demands they strive for ever more profit, or they will lose their place and their businesses to someone else who accrues even more from the rest of us.

Anti-capitalism is the only long-term future for humanity, in whatever form is best. It's just whether it comes before or after fascism. Because fascism is the friend of conservatism and capital.

But that's all on you to decide. Me or you alone cannot overthrow the centuries of oppression. And for the majority of use (discounting those with power and influence through capital or the hierarchy), it's better that anti-capitalism 'revolution' comes first. But as it stands, the widespread apathy to the current, long-lasting situation we are facing personally and collectively (in the UK we're approaching 15 years of state-sanctioned austerity, to 'balance the debt' and to 'protect' the 'economy'), along with the lack of understanding of how the world is really being run - by the 1%, all solely for their purpose, desire and benefit - is making the actual eventual outcome obvious.