But, to be fair, I don't go hungry. I don't freeze from lack of clothing. I don't work 'down the mines'. I don't work in any 'dark satanic mills'. Christ, during the academic year, I don't even work, but instead live off my parents. I don't have a thick 'working class' Dublin accent. I don't come from a Council estate. I'm not what the State would call 'disadvantaged', but does that make me ruling class? No.
Does that give me any clout with the governments of the world? No.
Does that mean that I have any control over any one else's life bar mine? No.
Does that mean that I am in real control over my life? Can I decide how I live it? No!
Does it mean that I will not have to work day in day out for the rest of my life to earn a wage, so as to live? No!
Does it mean that I am guaranteed a certain standard of living for the rest of my life? No!!
Does it mean that I am guaranteed a job? No!!!
Does it mean that I won't need a job? Most certainly not!!!!
For the rest of my life I will have to work for somebody else, selling them my ability to work, selling them my energy, so as they make a profit out of me, and so as that I can live. I say live with reservation, can I really call the life ahead of me 'living'?
If I get sick, the hospitals are to full to take me.
When I'm old and un-profitably, society will ignore me.
When I'm profitable and working, my boss will always try to make me work harder and longer. No matter how profitable I am, I will never be profitable enough. And, no matter how many hours I work, I'll have to commute across Dublin for a few more. And that's if I'm lucky, if I'm lucky enough to be able to get work in Dublin, if I'm lucky enough not to need to emigrate.
And all the while, all around the world there will be wars, all for profit, property, the State and Empire. And all around me people will be dying from the pollution in the air, the waste in the water, the pesticides in the vegetables we eat and the hormones in the meat. All there because, it isn't un-profitable to pollute and because, it is to cheapen our food in every sense of the word. The police will continue to suppress dissent, using whatever means necessary. The media will remain under the control of a few rich and powerful individuals.
The government will still do absolutely whatever is necessary to bring in the jobs. We will not have a sustainable transportation system. Hundreds will die every year on our roads, while roughly twice as many will take their own lives because the can't stick it. Drugs will still be ravaging our country and young people will have as little hope as the do today, locked up from playschool till we graduate in a variety of 'educational' institutes. Kept out of view and under control. Learning to obey, to be subservient, to do menial and pointless tasks without objecting, or to put it differently, 'developing a work ethic, and a respect for authority'.
And yet according to the media, the government and capitalist ideologues, all the above, this is my system, this is my society and this is my life, and I'm in control over it, I make all the decisions! According to them, this profit based system works for me!! Well, guess what it doesn't. And, no matter how 'middle class' I may be, I don't earn profit, I never had and never will. Why because I don't own any capital. So how the fuck is a profit-based social-system supposed to work for me? How can capitalism work for me when I have no fucking capital?
All I have is my ability to work, which I have to sell for a wage, to, err, well, live!!! And yet, according to the world's capitalist ideologues, I'm not working class; I'm 'middle class'. Well fuck the middle class; I'm not going to be in the middle of anything. I know where my interests lie, and that's with people like me, us people who in order to live have to sacrifice our productive capacities upon the alter of profit, allowing our very life to be devoured by our bosses.
I'm working class, and my interests are, always and everywhere, with the working class.