Capitalism - A society of fear

Britain is becoming a more fearful nation, with rising levels of anxiety and depression that are fuelling the economic crisis by undermining confidence, a report says today.More than one third of those questioned in a Mental Health Foundation survey said they felt more frightened than they used to, and more than three quarters said the world was a more frightening place than a decade ago.

Figures showing a 12 per cent rise in the rate of anxiety disorders in the UK between 1993 and 2007, equivalent to 800,000 more sufferers. More than 7 million people are living with anxiety problems.

The financial crisis is increasing levels of fear, with two-thirds of those surveyed reporting greater insecurity as a result. Anxiety UK, the largest anxiety disorders charity, reported a doubling of calls to its helpline in the first two months of the year.The most vulnerable are those who are single, divorced, poor, poorly educated, living in towns, on their own or as lone parents. Four times as many people live alone today than 50 years ago, but too few people seek help, with one in seven people with anxiety and depression receiving treatment.

Life is a treadmill, where worry and stress are an everyday part of existence, symptomatic of a world where we have no control and in which we feel isolated and estranged from a society that functions to make profit. Capitalism is organised from top to bottom by ordinary wage earners, who make all the goods we need to live and operate all the services we depend on. And yet it is the non-productive parasitic owning class who grow wealthy on our labour and live lives freed from material worries. For them luxuries and infinite choice, for us stress and worry. We spend a lifetime struggling to overcome hardships but unselfishly reward the owners with a life of opulence and plenty.

We have been instilled with slanted values, conventions and concepts continuously reinforced by education, religion, entertainment, advertising and the media that all prepare us for a life of class, profit and wage slavery. We accept authority without question and have assimilated a view that society is ‘good’ and ‘fixed’, a frame of mind that makes it very difficult to envisage change and an alternative society. So isn’t it time to break free of the deceptions, to acknowledge the reality and to join the struggle for socialism?