If we let them, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant will teach the left how to really understand capitalism, at the cellular and somatic levels.

And yet, still so many people, and not even just those best-caparisoned by the system, continue to act as if it is the only system that could possibly work to provide what humans need to survive and thrive. In particular the claims around the political economy of health were generally not elaborated with a more in-depth analysis of the economy, which I think would have been really valuable-- I was sympathetic to these claims! Even so, they do not view social welfare as necessarily good when it must operate under a capitalist framework that seeks to provide the greatest ‘value for money’ by dehumanising the poor. Alongside social scientist Philip Rocco, they started the “Death Panel” podcast in 2018, a popular twice-weekly podcast on “struggles over healthcare, economic inequality, social justice, and the people, policies, and media narratives that stand in the way. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report.This has not only justified organized state abandonment and enforced the poverty of the poor, sick, elderly, working class, and disabled; it has tied the fundamental idea of the safety and survival of humanity to exploitation. This is a book you should read before you die, because the ideas synthesized by Adler-Bolton and Vierkant could save our collective lives. Some other concepts and historical items I was introduced to through this book include the underrated story of the radical left Socialist Patients Collective in West Germany (legendary as heck); the eugenicist history of psychiatry (and how it's pretty much an extension of the police state (see: carceral sanism, eugenics)); the necessity to think about health communism, as a theoretical framework, from an internationalist perspective (no, "nationalized" healthcare is not "one weird trick" to fixing the dumpster fire that is U. the achievement of such a concise yet cogent framework (aided by the fact that the past years have only confirmed its conclusion) is a marvel.

This theme, as well as mention of the actions and failures of American AIDS activist groups in the 1980s, is explored throughout, and the authors’ admiration for the SPK is clearly stated. No one talks like Adler-Bolton and Vierkant do - those in public health and medicine are too deeply embedded in the status quo to even acknowledge the searing logic of their words. The things that were most interesting about this book were unfortunately the things that were not even in this book - the bibliography and notes, the topics raised, and all-too-quickly dealt with. I read a lot of theory and thinking books, which I know are a huge turn-off for many people, even as they insist on involving themselves in serious discussions of politics and social change without truly understanding the foundations of the institutions they rail against. This seamless book fills an urgent void in leftist theories of illness…the achievement of such a concise yet cogent framework (aided by the fact that the past years have only confirmed its conclusion) is a marvel.If you have ever gone to work sick because you need the job to treat the sickness, you know the basic argument of Health Communism to be true: health under capitalism is an impossibility.

In Health Communism, [Adler-Bolton and Vierkant] show how members of the 'unproductive' surplus class are cast as burdens even as health capitalism sets up entire cottage industries (e. If you are a person living in the world, and you have/are a bodymind, this book is relevant to you, and it will have something important to share that you can bring to your communities. Com que escriuré una ressenya llarga més endavant de moment només dir que us el recomano molt i un petonet. It establishes that the supposed divide between workers and those deemed unable to work, and thereby contribute to the economy, is a false one due to capitalism’s need to extract some form of worth from every body.Very helpful for thinking about surplus populations’ centrality to capitalist political economy *and* (ideally) anti-capitalist resistance. assertions like “health is a fantasy” and “the sick are the central class that can bring about the fall of capitalism” (both stated in the conclusion) are divorced from both reality and basic marxist thought.