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Health Communism
A searing analysis of health and illness under capitalism from hosts of the hit podcast “Death Panel”
In this fiery, theoretical tour-de-force, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant offer an overview of life and death under capitalism and argue for a new global left politics aimed at severing the ties between capital and one of its primary tools: health.
Written by co-hosts of the hit “Death Panel” podcast and longtime disability justice and healthcare activists Adler-Bolton and Vierkant, Health Communism first examines how capital has instrumentalized health, disability, madness, and illness to create a class seen as “surplus,” regarded as a fiscal and social burden. Demarcating the healthy from the surplus, the worker from the “unfit” to work, the authors argue, serves not only to undermine solidarity but to mark whole populations for extraction by the industries that have emerged to manage and contain this “surplus” population. Health Communism then looks to the grave threat capital poses to global public health, and at the rare movements around the world that have successfully challenged the extractive economy of health.
Ultimately, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant argue, we will not succeed in defeating capitalism until we sever health from capital. To do this will require a radical new politics of solidarity that centers the surplus, built on an understanding that we must not base the value of human life on one’s willingness or ability to be productive within the current political economy. Capital, it turns out, only fears health.
In this fiery, theoretical tour-de-force, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant offer an overview of life and death under capitalism and argue for a new global left politics aimed at severing the ties between capital and one of its primary tools: health.
Written by co-hosts of the hit “Death Panel” podcast and longtime disability justice and healthcare activists Adler-Bolton and Vierkant, Health Communism first examines how capital has instrumentalized health, disability, madness, and illness to create a class seen as “surplus,” regarded as a fiscal and social burden. Demarcating the healthy from the surplus, the worker from the “unfit” to work, the authors argue, serves not only to undermine solidarity but to mark whole populations for extraction by the industries that have emerged to manage and contain this “surplus” population. Health Communism then looks to the grave threat capital poses to global public health, and at the rare movements around the world that have successfully challenged the extractive economy of health.
Ultimately, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant argue, we will not succeed in defeating capitalism until we sever health from capital. To do this will require a radical new politics of solidarity that centers the surplus, built on an understanding that we must not base the value of human life on one’s willingness or ability to be productive within the current political economy. Capital, it turns out, only fears health.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published October 18, 2022
320 people are currently reading
7093 people want to read
About the author
Beatrice Adler-Bolton
1 book39 followersBeatrice is a disabled and chronically ill writer, artist, and independent scholar. She is the co-host of the Death Panel podcast about the political economy of health.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 193 reviews
October 13, 2024
So so sick (haha get it.. sick)
Very cool examination of the history of medicine and eugenics, nursing homes and labor’s relationship to health, psychiatry etc. the socialist patient kollectiv sooo cool
Very cool examination of the history of medicine and eugenics, nursing homes and labor’s relationship to health, psychiatry etc. the socialist patient kollectiv sooo cool
December 7, 2022
I loved it. Simple as that. You need to read this one.
September 27, 2022
A much needed radical examination of the political economy of health under capitalism. There are many critiques of the horrors generated by the system of "healthcare" under capitalism, but I'd never read one that takes those critiques to their logical conclusion: The struggle to separate health entirely from capital is an inherently revolutionary fight, and those considered "surplus" or "waste" within our system are the ones most logically situated to lead that struggle.
Avoiding the pitfalls of reformist nibbling away at the margins while leaving the core structures intact, Health Communism is a clear call for a complete overturning of the entire system. Since capitalism inherently produces mass death as part of its endless drive for maximum profit generation and concentration in private hands, nothing short of the end of capitalism and its replacement by a socialist society built by and for the most oppressed can be truly based around affirming life for all.
While it is not discussed in the book, I think we can see this struggle playing out especially in Cuba, where the revolution has produced the world's most egalitarian and liberatory healthcare system. In a society where the rule of capital has ended, despite the real scarcity imposed on the country by the US blockade, the Cuban people have prioritized a system that provides care to all, in their homes, in dialogue rather than direction, and with a truly internationalist orientation. Capitalist empire exports only domination and death. Socialism exports doctors and a promise of a better, truly free life.
Avoiding the pitfalls of reformist nibbling away at the margins while leaving the core structures intact, Health Communism is a clear call for a complete overturning of the entire system. Since capitalism inherently produces mass death as part of its endless drive for maximum profit generation and concentration in private hands, nothing short of the end of capitalism and its replacement by a socialist society built by and for the most oppressed can be truly based around affirming life for all.
While it is not discussed in the book, I think we can see this struggle playing out especially in Cuba, where the revolution has produced the world's most egalitarian and liberatory healthcare system. In a society where the rule of capital has ended, despite the real scarcity imposed on the country by the US blockade, the Cuban people have prioritized a system that provides care to all, in their homes, in dialogue rather than direction, and with a truly internationalist orientation. Capitalist empire exports only domination and death. Socialism exports doctors and a promise of a better, truly free life.
December 18, 2022
I think this book is trying to do too much. In just 184 pages it tries to construct a comprehensive theory of capitalism & health, complete with a corresponding political strategy framework, plus a ~50-page account of the SPK.
I definitely found some of the ideas in this book valuable and interesting, and the SPK history was particularly of interest, albeit a bit lacking in analysis, but I think the book was ultimately muddled by its scope, and its liberal use of jargon. Just when I expected a claim to be further elaborated, we were moving on to the next topic.
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! "Extractive abandonment" itself could have used more elaboration, or even its own volume.
Politically I agree with these authors but only partially--just showing my cards here, I think the book is too dismissive of reform struggles in healthcare, and its sharp divide between reform and revolution is, in my opinion, not warranted.
Definitely a book worth reading, but I found it frustrating for these reasons.
I definitely found some of the ideas in this book valuable and interesting, and the SPK history was particularly of interest, albeit a bit lacking in analysis, but I think the book was ultimately muddled by its scope, and its liberal use of jargon. Just when I expected a claim to be further elaborated, we were moving on to the next topic.
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! "Extractive abandonment" itself could have used more elaboration, or even its own volume.
Politically I agree with these authors but only partially--just showing my cards here, I think the book is too dismissive of reform struggles in healthcare, and its sharp divide between reform and revolution is, in my opinion, not warranted.
Definitely a book worth reading, but I found it frustrating for these reasons.
January 10, 2023
Worth all the hype and more. I've been listening to Bea and Artie on Death Panel for years now, and was cautiously optimistic about this book –– cautiously, because making a book and making a podcast are two different things, especially when you're speaking to a hugely varied audience (from PhD-getting types like me to the layperson).
My optimism was confirmed and then some, and rarely do I come across a book that has something new to teach every single person who picks it up, regardless of academic level or familiarity with the content. From a fantastic tour of marxist disability studies, to an enlightening exploration of Madness and institutionalization, to a really fascinating history of SPK, Health Communism is a book I will be referring everyone I know to, and a book I can imagine teaching from in the future. 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.
My optimism was confirmed and then some, and rarely do I come across a book that has something new to teach every single person who picks it up, regardless of academic level or familiarity with the content. From a fantastic tour of marxist disability studies, to an enlightening exploration of Madness and institutionalization, to a really fascinating history of SPK, Health Communism is a book I will be referring everyone I know to, and a book I can imagine teaching from in the future. 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.
February 28, 2023
Personally, I found the impact of this book’s arguments weakened by unnecessarily esoteric writing. I’m disappointed accessibility wasn’t more of a priority for the authors—both because I wanted to understand the authors’ views better and because this undermines what I assume is its goal of raising public consciousness.
This book’s strength to me is its histories. The history of ACT UP exposed me to a new critical perspective on the org and its methods (which I can attest from personal experience in disease advocacy are championed as wholly aspirational and uncomplicatedly good.)
This book’s strength to me is its histories. The history of ACT UP exposed me to a new critical perspective on the org and its methods (which I can attest from personal experience in disease advocacy are championed as wholly aspirational and uncomplicatedly good.)
February 2, 2023
Excellent content, only reason I'm lowering the rating a bit is because there's too much unnecessary jargon. Other than that, I loved it and it got me revved up to reimagine radical health access :)
December 31, 2022
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.
It gave me lots of input with regards to further readings I want to do, but if someone asked me what my takeaway was from this book specifically, I'd just gesture vaguely. I simply expected more from a book with a consciously "big" title like that (title-wise, it should probably rather be called "Illness Capitalism," though, because delineating the connections between illness/health and capitalism is more what it does than actually going deep into the idea of Health Communism).
Aside from that, a highly repetitive writing style is pretty much a pet peeve of mine.
It gave me lots of input with regards to further readings I want to do, but if someone asked me what my takeaway was from this book specifically, I'd just gesture vaguely. I simply expected more from a book with a consciously "big" title like that (title-wise, it should probably rather be called "Illness Capitalism," though, because delineating the connections between illness/health and capitalism is more what it does than actually going deep into the idea of Health Communism).
Aside from that, a highly repetitive writing style is pretty much a pet peeve of mine.
November 4, 2022
While I really do feel this text makes some really important contributions and YES to centring the surplus, I find it confounding that such an analysis particularly when coming from settler colonial US wouldn’t engage more with Indigenous thinkings and anti-colonial thought, along with Black Marxist texts and a bit more from disability justice—you know, texts that already centre the surplus? And that have a more nuanced analysis of what has constituted this surplus in settler colonial capitalist nation states? I’m over Marxist economic analyses that don’t also grapple in good faith with colonialism.
December 29, 2022
“… capital has both shaped heath and shaped itself around health. In the process, one of capital’s most critical vulnerabilities has been left in plain sight. It is therefore necessary to sever the ties between health and capital.”
If you’re wondering whether the text of a book with a title like “Health Communism” lives up to it, the answer is “yes.” In ways that I think a lot of the more radical left work I’ve read fails to, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant lay out consistently and convincingly their arguments behind not just why the system they take issue with (in this, health and healthcare as a function of capitalism) is deeply, horrifically flawed, but also paint a way out.
This is a book of huge ideas, presented largely succinctly. Where it really shines is when it is dismantling the various accepted “truths” of health and, later, going through the history of SPK.
This was a really startling worth that asks big questions that demand big responses. I hope enough people read it to get that message. Even if this is your first exposure to this line of thinking and it feels a little dry, I’d suggest you give it a shot.
If you’re wondering whether the text of a book with a title like “Health Communism” lives up to it, the answer is “yes.” In ways that I think a lot of the more radical left work I’ve read fails to, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant lay out consistently and convincingly their arguments behind not just why the system they take issue with (in this, health and healthcare as a function of capitalism) is deeply, horrifically flawed, but also paint a way out.
This is a book of huge ideas, presented largely succinctly. Where it really shines is when it is dismantling the various accepted “truths” of health and, later, going through the history of SPK.
This was a really startling worth that asks big questions that demand big responses. I hope enough people read it to get that message. Even if this is your first exposure to this line of thinking and it feels a little dry, I’d suggest you give it a shot.
April 27, 2023
This will be considered a landmark text in both Marxism and disability studies, and rightly so. It loses one star because of the final third of the book, which focuses exclusively and in excruciating detail on one 1970s radical patient collective in West Germany. It’s an interesting history, but after the broad, internationalist lens of the first two-thirds, it feels out of place.
May 1, 2023
A deep and comprehensive analysis of capitalism and health with a historically-grounded vision for collective emancipation. A few key concepts:
In what they call “extractive abandonment,” state-defined and state-delineated disability is part of multi-pronged process whereby elderly and disabled people are reclassified from people to commodity-bodies that can serve as (publicly subsidized) revenue streams for private healthcare companies, institutions, and other facilities. The state thereby underpins the creation of “capacities for profit,” to the detriment of individual health, which is quantified for these purposes. Parallels to what RWG describes in terms of prisons being a solution to both “surplus populations” and unmonetized land in the California of the 1990s.
As is to be expected, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant start with a basically Marxist analysis of disability. “Capitalism has defined health itself as a capacity to submit oneself to labor.” However, that is only a starting point. They zoom in on what capitalism deems the “surplus” populations more generally in order to draw out the concrete political economy constituting “health” under capitalism:
There’s so much to this book that I wouldn’t be able to cover it all in a little review, but it’s worth mentioning their analyses of carceral sanism, the ways that borders reinforce and reproduce the debt/eugenic framework, the imperialist nature of modern pharmacology, and the fascinating history of the Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv. Highly recommend!
In what they call “extractive abandonment,” state-defined and state-delineated disability is part of multi-pronged process whereby elderly and disabled people are reclassified from people to commodity-bodies that can serve as (publicly subsidized) revenue streams for private healthcare companies, institutions, and other facilities. The state thereby underpins the creation of “capacities for profit,” to the detriment of individual health, which is quantified for these purposes. Parallels to what RWG describes in terms of prisons being a solution to both “surplus populations” and unmonetized land in the California of the 1990s.
As is to be expected, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant start with a basically Marxist analysis of disability. “Capitalism has defined health itself as a capacity to submit oneself to labor.” However, that is only a starting point. They zoom in on what capitalism deems the “surplus” populations more generally in order to draw out the concrete political economy constituting “health” under capitalism:
The worker/surplus binary should be understood not just as a system for economic control but also as an idea that drives the many means of certification which have been repeatedly reproduced in legislation and diagnostic criteria designed to shield capitalism from caring for the poor. In separating out the incurable surplus from the curable surplus in order to reclaim the curable surplus for the industrial army, a basis and rationale for legal exclusion, extermination, and removal developed to justify the abandonment of surplus populations. Importantly, the reliance on a worker/surplus binary as a means of sorting the deserving from the undeserving establishes a concrete historical record offering de jury justification for organized state abandonment.
There’s so much to this book that I wouldn’t be able to cover it all in a little review, but it’s worth mentioning their analyses of carceral sanism, the ways that borders reinforce and reproduce the debt/eugenic framework, the imperialist nature of modern pharmacology, and the fascinating history of the Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv. Highly recommend!
March 16, 2023
TLDR: the ideas are good! Book itself is a bit of a slog.
I REALLY wanted to love this book but it was so dense and parts of it felt disjointed. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the thesis. I’m also an avid Death Panel listener so I was familiar with some of their arguments and had a lot of context, but parts of it were still hard to understand. I almost NEVER complain about jargon/book density but this one hit hard, I think bc even though I was familiar with the ideas and the people they cited (bc of the podcast) I still had a rough time.
I think my main criticism though is that there were a lot of parts that could use more explanation and parts where they present a cool idea or part of an argument but don’t explain further. It leaves the reader left wanting more. I was frustrated by the one chapter where they use Palestine as a case study but it’s tacked on at the end in a way that seemed rushed. Then they made half of one of the pages a block quote from an article. You can’t do that! Ya gotta comment/explain more.
I’m not exactly sure who the intended audience is—maybe someone with more academic background than me? The parts where they write a history of SPK were the easiest to understand and some of the best parts of the book. Wish there were better transitions between chapters and it was better integrated into the book as a whole.
You will look cool reading this book in public though bc the cover is so bold and beautiful.
I REALLY wanted to love this book but it was so dense and parts of it felt disjointed. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the thesis. I’m also an avid Death Panel listener so I was familiar with some of their arguments and had a lot of context, but parts of it were still hard to understand. I almost NEVER complain about jargon/book density but this one hit hard, I think bc even though I was familiar with the ideas and the people they cited (bc of the podcast) I still had a rough time.
I think my main criticism though is that there were a lot of parts that could use more explanation and parts where they present a cool idea or part of an argument but don’t explain further. It leaves the reader left wanting more. I was frustrated by the one chapter where they use Palestine as a case study but it’s tacked on at the end in a way that seemed rushed. Then they made half of one of the pages a block quote from an article. You can’t do that! Ya gotta comment/explain more.
I’m not exactly sure who the intended audience is—maybe someone with more academic background than me? The parts where they write a history of SPK were the easiest to understand and some of the best parts of the book. Wish there were better transitions between chapters and it was better integrated into the book as a whole.
You will look cool reading this book in public though bc the cover is so bold and beautiful.
January 17, 2024
insightful, fundamental reading for leftists. particularly enjoyed learning about the worker/surplus binary. my eyes are opening more and more and this text helped!!
May 6, 2024
currently pending substack post with all my thoughts.
shoutout to the Death Panel podcast for changing my life.
shoutout to the Death Panel podcast for changing my life.
May 24, 2025
3.5 stars.. Pretty good.. I found it kind of dragged in the latter half but the authors are totally correct. I agree with another reviewer who wrote that this book doesn’t actually treat what “health communism” is or would be, and a more apt title would be “illness capitalism”. But the analysis is good, though repetitive
January 1, 2023
Very helpful for thinking about surplus populations’ centrality to capitalist political economy *and* (ideally) anti-capitalist resistance. Also includes a really interesting + usable history of SPK, a socialist patient’s collective in 1970s West Germany.
Read
June 5, 2024I’m not going to even try to give this a rating because I listened to the audiobook, which was a terrible decision! Recipe for getting lost in jargon.
This is also probably not a fair criticism, but whenever I’m reading theory-based books like this (typically of a cause I support!), I’m reading it in the frame of arguments I can levy against my dad’s belief system lmao. And this book just jumps into the assumption that you’re already on their level. I would have appreciated a little more context and build up to their central argument.
This is also probably not a fair criticism, but whenever I’m reading theory-based books like this (typically of a cause I support!), I’m reading it in the frame of arguments I can levy against my dad’s belief system lmao. And this book just jumps into the assumption that you’re already on their level. I would have appreciated a little more context and build up to their central argument.
Read
October 18, 2024If we took even one (massive) step toward health communism in my lifetime I’d be happy
December 2, 2023
Brilliant brilliant brilliant!
More detailed review to come once I get my thoughts together..
More detailed review to come once I get my thoughts together..
March 27, 2025
y'all need to read this IMMEDIATELY !!!
May 18, 2023
This book was... whew! I haven't read anything this substantial in years — not since required reading in undergrad, to be honest. *Obviously* it's my own decision to rarely read political theory recreationally; however, my point is that the content of this book was enticing enough for someone like me, a lazier reader, to devour on my own accord (not just because it's on a syllabus).
Every page of 'Health Communism' is an absolute bar. If you don't own your copy, I recommend stocking up on sticky notes, because you'll be annotating like crazy — especially if you're like me and didn't really didn't think much about the political economy of health prior to the ongoing Covid pandemic.
I'll show some naivete and admit that I thought this book was going to be about socialized healthcare and health crises. It wasn't, really. It offered so much more; Adler-Bolton and Vierkant discuss everything: from the "biocertification" framework that serves as the basis for how the privatized welfare state stratifies the body politic to the ways U.S. (and other Global North) imperialism chokes the economic prospects of Global South nations through what I'd consider policing — thus forcing immiseration unto whole nations (there's a whole chapter on how health capitalism has shaped pharmacology).
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.S. healthcare); health as something to be insured; and the successes (and arguable mistakes) of ACT UP (the grassroots coalition fighting for a proper state response to the AIDS crisis).
An idea of the authors and their forebearers I particularly felt moved by was that of organized state abandonment, which we are all experiencing in real-time as Covid disables and murders millions while the U.S. government and public health institutions at large flip the proletariat the bird. "Abandonment" is an unsurprising throughline of health capitalism though — the book also discusses "extractive abandonment," which I won't go into here... but if you've seen the movie 'I Care A Lot,' or know anything about how Medicaid works in the U.S. you might glean what it means.
Most importantly, 'Health Communism' analyzes the unique relationship that health has with capital, and capital has with health. Any anti-capitalist can infer why it's important to do so, in general; but the book really shed light on how insidious and complex that relationship is, how others have tried to subvert systems bolstering that relationship, and how we need to think (and act) in order to truly sever it once and for all. Only in doing so can we achieve what the authors call health communism. What a dream!
Despite how long this review is, I'm still only touching on a modicum of all 'Health Communism''s greatness. With that said, I repeat: this book is intense in its delivery (no creative fluff, all facts), especially the first third. But your brain gets used to it, and the lengthy, fascinating historical anecdotes provide some relief amidst all the scholarly theory.
Every page of 'Health Communism' is an absolute bar. If you don't own your copy, I recommend stocking up on sticky notes, because you'll be annotating like crazy — especially if you're like me and didn't really didn't think much about the political economy of health prior to the ongoing Covid pandemic.
I'll show some naivete and admit that I thought this book was going to be about socialized healthcare and health crises. It wasn't, really. It offered so much more; Adler-Bolton and Vierkant discuss everything: from the "biocertification" framework that serves as the basis for how the privatized welfare state stratifies the body politic to the ways U.S. (and other Global North) imperialism chokes the economic prospects of Global South nations through what I'd consider policing — thus forcing immiseration unto whole nations (there's a whole chapter on how health capitalism has shaped pharmacology).
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.S. healthcare); health as something to be insured; and the successes (and arguable mistakes) of ACT UP (the grassroots coalition fighting for a proper state response to the AIDS crisis).
An idea of the authors and their forebearers I particularly felt moved by was that of organized state abandonment, which we are all experiencing in real-time as Covid disables and murders millions while the U.S. government and public health institutions at large flip the proletariat the bird. "Abandonment" is an unsurprising throughline of health capitalism though — the book also discusses "extractive abandonment," which I won't go into here... but if you've seen the movie 'I Care A Lot,' or know anything about how Medicaid works in the U.S. you might glean what it means.
Most importantly, 'Health Communism' analyzes the unique relationship that health has with capital, and capital has with health. Any anti-capitalist can infer why it's important to do so, in general; but the book really shed light on how insidious and complex that relationship is, how others have tried to subvert systems bolstering that relationship, and how we need to think (and act) in order to truly sever it once and for all. Only in doing so can we achieve what the authors call health communism. What a dream!
Despite how long this review is, I'm still only touching on a modicum of all 'Health Communism''s greatness. With that said, I repeat: this book is intense in its delivery (no creative fluff, all facts), especially the first third. But your brain gets used to it, and the lengthy, fascinating historical anecdotes provide some relief amidst all the scholarly theory.
June 5, 2023
This reads a bit like a primer on a ton of other things I now want to read about - I just think that the ideas and theory here were just too much to for such a short book. Almost every other sentence contained an argument or thing that I wanted to hear more about - I guess luckily about a fifth of the book is a bibliography. As an intro to some of these concepts though 10/10, and Bolton's writing style is extremely clear and persuasive. The part that hit the least for me was the history of SPK - because while the theory is solid and so recognizably true, everyone quoted from and involved with SPK just seemed annoying and/or unhinged, but that's how I tend to feel about most super lefty ~praxis groups~ lol.
I'm def not done with it and will probably go back and try to dive deeper into what resonated with me, so glad to have the resource. Some killer concepts:
Extractive abandonment, ie. it isn’t enough to separate out the deserving from the undeserving, those who can rehabilitate vs those who will “never contribute”, we of course have to make mONEY off the abandoned. Alder blows this all the way out to make a case for the extractive abandonment of entire countries by the west and it hiTs:
Also, the pharmacology section made me want to throw the book against a wall. The break down of the role global intellectual property rights and the myth of the preeminence of western R&D have on the rest of the world even having access at all to pharmaceuticals is infuriating.
I'm def not done with it and will probably go back and try to dive deeper into what resonated with me, so glad to have the resource. Some killer concepts:
Extractive abandonment, ie. it isn’t enough to separate out the deserving from the undeserving, those who can rehabilitate vs those who will “never contribute”, we of course have to make mONEY off the abandoned. Alder blows this all the way out to make a case for the extractive abandonment of entire countries by the west and it hiTs:
“The worker/surplus binary should be understood not just as a system for economic control but also as an idea that drives the many means of certification which have been repeatedly reproduced in legislation and diagnostic criteria designed to shield capitalism from caring for the poor. In separating out the incurable surplus from the curable surplus in order to reclaim the curable surplus for the industrial army, a basis and rationale for legal exclusion, extermination, and removal developed to justify the abandonment of surplus populations.”
“The worker/surplus binary solidifies the idea that our lives under capitalism revolve around our work. Our selves, our worthiness, our entire being and right to live revolve around making our labor power available to the ruling class. The political economy demands that we maintain our health to make our labor power fully available, lest we be marked and doomed as surplus. The surplus is then turned into raw fuel to extract profits, through rehabilitation, medicalization, and the financialization of health. 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.”
Also, the pharmacology section made me want to throw the book against a wall. The break down of the role global intellectual property rights and the myth of the preeminence of western R&D have on the rest of the world even having access at all to pharmaceuticals is infuriating.
“Only as recently as the mid-1990s, with the ratification of the TRIPS agreement, did a formal mechanism come into place whereby an international pharmaceutical company could protest drug production or development around the world and expect to see swift political, military, or economic action by the US and other imperial WTO members against the “offending” state … [and] … produced a “persistent threat of unilateral retaliation” for states that would ignore or reject international corporations’ patent rights.
These dynamics mark a finite barrier between wealthy “developed” nations and those consistently held underneath as vessels of extraction. It is a colonial process that marks entire states as surplus.”
March 8, 2024
The content is a full 5 stars. So good and so necessary but hidden among too much jargon. I didn't see too many other reviews complaining about this so maybe it's just me but I was infuriated at how hard it was to follow the argument. I wanted this to feel more accessible because of the importance of the message. Maybe I need to work on my listening comprehension and cut back on the fiction haha
October 9, 2022
“But capital cannot kill its host body, or it would have nowhere to reside, nothing to exploit, a barren universe. It is for this reason capital on fears health.
It is up to separate them.”
BEATRICE IS SPITTIN FR!!! absolutely one my top ten books of the year
It is up to separate them.”
BEATRICE IS SPITTIN FR!!! absolutely one my top ten books of the year
February 25, 2023
for the most part i agree with the authors, but i don’t think they flushed out a very coherent framework in this book. i would often find myself excited to learn more about an idea only to have it explained by a list of jargon (bio-this, bio-that, etc) that did not progress the argument any further.
October 13, 2022
Personally, I enjoyed this overview of various health systems and how they can and cannot work without our current (American) structures. However, this book is very academic and requires a good working knowledge of political theory and how that is applied in policy. It is succinct and to the point--making it an excellent resource for activists, theorists, and academics--but its threshold of foreknowledge keep it from being what I would classify as "pop politics" and widely accessible to the general public. A great read if you're interested in this topic, but not for light readers.
September 1, 2024
Plus: the concepts introduced and the history it dwelled into
But it does not develop any of the ideas, just when I got excited about something it moved on into something else
This is also more about illness-capitalism and the necessity to sever health from capital than properly about health communism…
But it does not develop any of the ideas, just when I got excited about something it moved on into something else
This is also more about illness-capitalism and the necessity to sever health from capital than properly about health communism…
January 18, 2023
Big ideas in this book. Important ideas. But it’s a very dense book, and reading it is like studying for one of my hardest college classes. So you’ve been warned …
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