Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto

Product Information

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. Com que escriuré una ressenya llarga més endavant de moment només dir que us el recomano molt i un petonet. The language used throughout is fairly dense and directed towards a particular audience, indeed some of the glowing reviews are provided by people quoted in the text.

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. The worker/surplus binary solidifies the idea that our lives under capitalism revolve around our work. Health Communism] is a new way to find the universal in the particular, which is the kind of thinking tool we are in desperate need of at the moment.It’s an interesting history, but after the broad, internationalist lens of the first two-thirds, it feels out of place.

Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here.

Despite how long this review is, I'm still only touching on a modicum of all 'Health Communism''s greatness. 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. Health Communism illustrates how people are viewed as fuel from which to extract profits through the medicalization and financialization of health outputs. The state thereby underpins the creation of “capacities for profit,” to the detriment of individual health, which is quantified for these purposes.

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.It is an immensely useful tool for wrestling with the most urgent questions facing our movements in these terrifying times. It makes a direct assault on the idea that health can survive under capitalism, where the sick are simply disposable, while the system making a killing along the way.