Dear progressive librarians, health promoters, and public healthers:
Next week is May Day, an international holiday to celebrate
workers' struggles against capitalism and the fight for communism.
While not all of you may be interested in fighting for revolutionary
change, I'd like to invite your consideration of these ideas and your
participation. The Progressive Labor Party will sponsor marches in DC,
Chicago, and LA. Please reply to me personally if you need more info or
directions.
The following newsletter article connects our struggle for public health
with May Day.
Public Health and May Day
Public health is going down the drain. In fact, all public welfare is
becoming a thing of the past, as Democrats and Republicans trip all over
each other to downsize "big" government to its bare essentials--i.e.
corporate welfare and war making capability. Tens and hundreds of
millions of dollars are taken away from welfare for the unemployed and
underemployed, and from public waters to keep the oil fields in the
control of Exxon, Mobil and Amoco.
But it isn't basically the choice of the Democrats and Republicans; they
are just doing what their campaign financiers are demanding. At the root
of it all, the basic conflict is between the titans of the
banks/corporations (the campaign financiers) and the rest of us ("the
public")--primarily the working class.
Public health requires resources, including people, and these require
money, in a capitalist system. But money spent on health does not benefit
banks or industrial corporations or transportation, communication, or
retail corporations, it only benefits the "consumers" of public health and
a few corporations which profit from delivering health care, such as HMOs
and hospitals. Therefore, from the cutbacks in health spending, it is
easy to tell where the power in the society lies.
As long as the power lies with the major corporations, and as long as
their goal is to maximize their profits, there will be less and less money
spent on public health. And as long as capitalism exists that is where
the power will lie, since those who control the wealth and sources of
wealth necessarily control the government.
At this moment in history, U.S. capitalists face increasing competition
from capitalists in Japan, Germany, Russia, and China. Since the Gulf War
6 years ago the U.S. rulers' stranglehold on Mideast oil has destabilized,
and they are being painted into the corner of all out war to save it.
Virtually every domestic move of the government is designed to free up
resources for this coming war (and to convince us that this war is in our
interest). That is why the destruction of public welfare is accelerating.
And it can indeed be said that world war is the biggest attack on public
health imaginable.
But what if the working class controlled the wealth and sources of wealth,
and what if there were no corporations? What if there were no profit
system anywhere in the world, but only a society based on human needs?
Then, and only then, could public health be made a priority, and then, and
only then, could there be adequate resources directed to guaranteeing a
healthy populace, and then, and only then, would all motivation for
competition and war be removed.
That is what communism is all about. Any struggle for public health whose
goal falls short of this transformation of society is doomed to failure in
both the short and long run. Why should we spend our energies and efforts
on a goal doomed to failure?
On May 3rd, the Progressive Labor Party is holding its annual May Day
March in Washington, among other places (Chicago and LA). The purpose of
this march is to gather together all those who see the goal of communism
as a definite, or even plausible, need. Thousands will march on the White
House, asserting our challenge to the seat of government power and the
corporate masters behind it, warning them of our determination to make
communism a reality in the not so distant future, and helping to convince
ourselves that there are thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions
who already see things in the same way, or can potentially be won to see
it that way.
Every year, participants in this March are moved farther toward acting to
achieve this inspiring goal by joining the Progressive Labor Party and by
strengthening our determining to build it into a working class party of
millions--in the U.S. and in every single country in the world. Join us
in the March this year, and see if this outlook doesn't begin to make more
and more sense to you.
MARCH ON MAYDAY
MAY 3
12 NOON
MALCOLM X PARK
16th and Euclid Streets, NW
Washington, DC
----------------------------------------------------
The following is REPRINTED from Reform Watch, student newsletter of the
GWUMC's Committee on Health Policy (with permission of author - me ;)
Revolution - Not Reform
The U.S. continues its struggle to improve our health care system. Could
Communism be the answer?
Many proposals to reform U.S. health care have been promoted. Missing
from these debates are several crucial questions. Can capitalism provide
decent public health and health care for all? What changes could we make
in order for public health and medicine to meet human needs rather than
capitalism's need for profits? To achieve real changes in the health of
the public requires a communist revolution that replaces a system based on
the polarization of wealth and poverty with one based on the needs of the
many.
In the 1930's, Dr. Norman Bethune, the Canadian cardiothoracic surgeon and
communist, said it better, "Behind all this horror (of poverty and war)
stands that terrible implacable god of business and blood whose name is
profit. Money demands its interest, its return will stop at nothing...to
satisfy its greed...Threaten a reduction on the profit of their (finance
capitalists') money and they become ruthless...There can be no permanent
peace in the world while they live. Such an organization of human society
as permits them to exist must be abolished. These men make the wounds".
To Bethune, it wasn't microorganisms or risky individual behaviors that
primarily caused disease. It was capitalism, a social system based on
socioeconomic class, inequalities, and profit that generated the
differential burdens of disease and suffering. Even today's medical
literature acknowledges these root causes of disease. A BMJ (British
Medical Journal) editorial states that "...what matters in determining
mortality and health in a society is...how evenly wealth is distributed.
The more equally wealth is distributed the better the health of that
society".
Economic Inequalities
The disparities in wealth are increasing. Lester Thurow, dean of MIT's
business school, documents the crisis of capitalism. He describes the
"surging inequality" in income as the average Fortune 500 CEO's pay
increased to 157 times the pay of the average production worker. Between
1973 and 1994, real wages (adjusted for inflation) declined by 19 percent
for non-supervisory workers, and Thurow predicts real wages will fall
below 1950 levels by 2000. For blacks, women, and immigrant workers, the
wage differences are greater. During the late 1980's and early 1990's,
corporate profits reached record levels as corporations downsized and
eliminated 2.5 million U.S. jobs. Such downsizing increases the number of
workers without health insurance, estimated to rise to 45.6 million people
by 2002.
These disparities in wealth and the discrimination against people of
color, women, and immigrants produce consequences beyond decreased access
to medical care. They also limit options for healthy decisions, create
economic insecurity, generate a climate of oppression and fear and
increase mortality rates. Capitalism requires racism in order to generate
increased profits through lower wages and poorer services and to divide
groups of workers.
In addition, social and economic pressures affect public health workers
and clinicians. Managed care companies attempt to restrict clinicians
from choosing the best medical services for their patients and from seeing
patients who cannot pay. For-profit hospitals emphasize profitable
investment over the public goods of health services to the poor, medical
education, and research. Government policies eliminate public health
services to immigrant workers and benefits for welfare recipients.
Physician-assisted suicide, argued on the grounds of providing patient
autonomy and comfort, can become a cost-effective strategy to eliminate
treatment. These policies contradict the professional codes of ethics
that health care workers embrace.
What can we do to overcome these conditions and inequalities? Millions of
people have fought for social change. During the 1930's, a massive
communist-led movement of workers won major reforms, such as union
recognition, social security, disability and unemployment insurance. The
U.S. ruling class was terrified that revolution would spread from the
newly formed Soviet Union to the United States. They conceded these
reforms to head off another communist revolution in order to protect their
system.
During the 1960's, a mass movement of civil rights and anti-poverty forces
won significant social reforms, including improved community health
services, Medicare, Medicaid, fair housing, and voting rights. As a
result, health status indicators for maternal-child and cardiovascular
health dramatically improved.
Unfortunately, these reforms, as well as the rest of the safety net, are
being fundamentally destroyed because workers do not hold power. The
corporate leaders and the politicians that they own are not willing to
sacrifice any more profit to maintain healthy conditions or accessible
health care for the working class. Instead of struggling to reform
capitalism, we need to replace it with an egalitarian communist system.
An egalitarian communist system run by the working class is distinguished
by: (1) the elimination of a wage structure which divides workers by
pointless variations in income; (2) the eradication of racism and the
concept of "race", a social construct created to divide people by
superficial qualities; (3) equality of power and opportunities between
men and women; (4) the opportunity for people to make valued contributions
to society based on their interests and abilities; (5) environmental
conditions as well as medical services to protect health; and (6) the
primacy of social responsibility over individual responsibility for
healthy behaviors (such as the elimination of the tobacco industry).
While attempts to establish working class-led governments in the Soviet
Union and China failed many decades ago, we can learn from their mistakes
and organize for change. This will happen only when millions decide not
to live under capitalism and have the courage and will to fight to change
it. Students and health workers can organize within our associations, such
as the American Public Health Association, Student National Medical
Association, American Medical Women's Association, Physicians for Social
Responsibility, and others. We can convince our colleagues and classmates
to resist the attacks on health care and to support workers' struggles for
healthier conditions. Without changing the system, our efforts will be
fruitless.
As Dr. Bethune said to the Canadian Medical Society, "The best form of
providing health protection would be to change the economic system which
produces ill health...The protection of the people's health should be
recognized by the Government as its primary obligation and duty...Let us
take the profit...out of medicine...Let us redefine medical ethics-not as
a code of professional etiquette between doctors, but as a code of
fundamental morality and justice between medicine and the people."
Karyn L. Pomerantz
Himmelfarb Library, GWUMC
2300 I St., NW
Washington, DC 20037
202/994-2976 301/513-0765 (h)
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