Everyone’s like “when you stop being dirt poor you’ll start liking capitalism” and now that I’m actually able to survive and have some financial security I’m like, “nope still have long term memory and still want to Eat The Rich”
AKA: you don’t have to be the one suffering to want to end suffering
Also, you can have basic financial security and some nice things and still realise your life would be so much better if you and the people you care about weren’t forced to sell their labor every day to survive under a system that is murdering millions while rapidly making our world uninhabitable.
I feel even worse now that I have more means.
It means that more people are suffering for my life as it is now to be possible.
Unless you’re making a profit by selling the products of someone else’s labor, I think this isn’t true.
The idea that if you are making a living wage or more (and are thus a little less exploited than the rest of the workers) you are the one doing the exploiting or people are suffering for you, is bullshit. Your role as less exploited worker is designed to make you feel isolated from more exploited workers when in fact you’re still both forced to sell your labor to survive.
The truth is that any wealth you have is tiny and insignificant next to the vast uncountable wealth of the rich and focussing on what you do with that tiny amount of wealth is a diversion from the systems doing the real exploitation.
Workers aren’t dying because you want a smartphone, workers are dying because their boss decided that he could work them to death for maximum profit and the state decided to protect property rights and force people to choose between a deadly job and starvation.
As a less exploited worker you will be asked to be complicit in the oppression of more exploited workers – by being compliant, by voting right wing, by defending a system that rewards you more than others, by asking the more exploited to be less angry, etc – but don’t make the mistake of thinking that the system is working for you or that a single worker would suffer less if you were poor.
QueerAnarchism 