I meant to make a longer post about this, might do at some point, but I just need to point out… that at one point in history… in an era that’s technically considered “prehistory”, because no one had writing at this point, at the very beginning of something we can generously call cities…
A family of four could spend three weeks harvesting the grain that grew wild around them, and they would not have to do that again for an entire year. (As a note: this wild grain? literally could never stand up to modern crops, which have been selectively bred since then for yield and hardiness and etc.) They didn’t have to pay rent, because that wasn’t a thing yet. They didn’t have to pay for water, because water’s fucking WATER, everyone has a right to it. Three weeks of (admittedly hard, probably “leave your body aching” labor), and your family is fed for an entire year. Yeah, you definitely want to supplement that with gardening and buying some meat from your neighbor who raises goats, but your whole family can fully live on three weeks of work.
And we, in this day and age, where we can absolutely produce enough food to make sure no one goes hungry, act as if working yourself to death is a virtue, because our ancestors had it worse… Our oldest ancestors worked very little just to get by. The idea that you will always have to be at work constantly just to live… that’s new, and that’s absurd. Those ancient people I’m talking about, who could get a year’s worth of sustenance for a few weeks of work… they painted their walls with the most beautiful murals. All of them did, in every house we can reconstruct. They had free time and the ability to artistically improve their space, and they did that. In the oldest city we know of.
They didn’t have to work eight hours a day to live their lives. That’s entirely artificial, absurd, capitalistic bullshit. Humans were built to work as little as possible for maximum benefit to the individual and the group… and somehow that’s become warped into spending our lives working for the bare minimum so a few billionaires can live like god-kings. None of this is natural. None of it is inherent. This *can* be overturned and made into a new form that actually respects the humanity of the individual.
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings