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4.31 AVERAGE
4.31 AVERAGE
I probably would’ve finished this in less than a week if the language wasn’t so painfully academic/jargony. My job deals with social determinants of health so the work and ideals laid out here are familiar to me (to a point). But there were a few paragraphs I had to read several times in order to process the jargon, only to realize I agreed with their point but could’ve said it more concisely.
If you’re into the academic aspects of disability justice and health equity, you’ll love this book. If you’re into the more hands-on aspects, you might still enjoy the book but it’ll be a bit of a heavier read for you.
If you’re into the academic aspects of disability justice and health equity, you’ll love this book. If you’re into the more hands-on aspects, you might still enjoy the book but it’ll be a bit of a heavier read for you.
Great ideas but ultimately a disappointing read.
It's been more than a week since I read it, but my memory is of a disjointed screed that fails at communicating an overarching theme or message.
The first section is somewhat difficult to read, with odd, overly academic language obscuring what is actually a pretty compelling idea: the unity of capitalism and the Western approach to "health" best exemplified by the idea of "extractive abandonment."
Approaches to health in the West and particularly the U.S. are based around the degree to which a person can work and contribute to the capitalist project. Get your legs blown off in Iraq? You become healthy again once you can be returned to productive use, both physically and mentally.
Those who do not return to work are pathologized as a "surplus population," forever a burden on society. But even those who do not work don't have NO value to the machine. Our authors explain how capitalism is able to make productive use of them as vessels for making money with things like long-term care.
The middle part seemed to be an internationalist call for resistance to the Western system. There were some good points about how things like pharmocology were part of the imperialist project.
The last part focuses on the history of the Socialist Patients' Collective in Western Germany, an attempt by patients to reimagine the system for their mental health care that sought to move beyond the capitalist vessel in which it was born.
The latter parts were kind of interesting but were probably fodder for their own work?
I'm not sure what happened here. I found parts of the book fascinating but it just didn't do enough for me and I'd have a hard time recommending it unless I got really into the weeds with somebody on one of these topics.
It's been more than a week since I read it, but my memory is of a disjointed screed that fails at communicating an overarching theme or message.
The first section is somewhat difficult to read, with odd, overly academic language obscuring what is actually a pretty compelling idea: the unity of capitalism and the Western approach to "health" best exemplified by the idea of "extractive abandonment."
Approaches to health in the West and particularly the U.S. are based around the degree to which a person can work and contribute to the capitalist project. Get your legs blown off in Iraq? You become healthy again once you can be returned to productive use, both physically and mentally.
Those who do not return to work are pathologized as a "surplus population," forever a burden on society. But even those who do not work don't have NO value to the machine. Our authors explain how capitalism is able to make productive use of them as vessels for making money with things like long-term care.
The middle part seemed to be an internationalist call for resistance to the Western system. There were some good points about how things like pharmocology were part of the imperialist project.
The last part focuses on the history of the Socialist Patients' Collective in Western Germany, an attempt by patients to reimagine the system for their mental health care that sought to move beyond the capitalist vessel in which it was born.
The latter parts were kind of interesting but were probably fodder for their own work?
I'm not sure what happened here. I found parts of the book fascinating but it just didn't do enough for me and I'd have a hard time recommending it unless I got really into the weeds with somebody on one of these topics.
informative
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This book absolutely shifted my perspective on health and healthcare under capitalism. While there's quite a bit of theoretical jargon that gets tossed around, the broadstrokes are comprehensible and I'm pretty sure I got the gist of what the theory meant. This book digs into the status of health under capitalism, how it's defined, who is excluded, and how it can be fixed. It takes a direct approach to these solutions, calling for massive systemic change rather than small policy changes by individual companies or governments. The more practical and important things I gathered from this book were the history of health communist movements and the
fast-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Health Communism is a manifesto of the "surplus" and for the separation of capitalism and health. The book delves into the radical actions of ACT UP in the US during the AIDS pandemic and the utterly feared revolutionary ideas of the Socialist Patient's Collective or SPK in West Germany. The notable concepts repeated throughout this book were essentially descendants of Engel's "social murder" and the British austerity era's "organized abandonment." The extractive abandonment of health capitalism introduces the reader to a whole another perspective of labor exploitation. People or even entire nations can be designated for deliberately sickening social determinants such as the lack of medicine and/or the lack of supplies for the purpose of profit extraction.
Health Communism argues that everyone is ill or unwell under the capitalist political and economical regime which aims to extract profit from people, break the workers, and then extract more from the broken workers. The many healthcare and treatment systems available today are mere tools to convert the surplus, the not working, the disabled, the old, the mad into what the SPK calls "sick-commodity" (Krankengut). The man-made construct of categorization and division of society is therefore, part of the capitalistic eugenics lens to churn out whatever is available within human bodies. Some workers are to be fixed as fast as possible and returned to their full industrial capacity. Some are deemed surplus (or the waste class) and then warehoused, imprisoned, put away from society, culled, or put up for health extraction until death.
Like any upstanding leftist manifestos, Health Communism calls for the centering of the surplus as equal human beings, the solidarity between the doctors and the patients, and the unity of the international working class against the sickening capitalist regimes. Sick-proletariat of the world unite! Without health for the human host, the parasitic capitalism cannot survive. By recognizing and acting upon the purgatory system of constantly breaking and mending workers, we can strike at the core of the extraction.
Health Communism argues that everyone is ill or unwell under the capitalist political and economical regime which aims to extract profit from people, break the workers, and then extract more from the broken workers. The many healthcare and treatment systems available today are mere tools to convert the surplus, the not working, the disabled, the old, the mad into what the SPK calls "sick-commodity" (Krankengut). The man-made construct of categorization and division of society is therefore, part of the capitalistic eugenics lens to churn out whatever is available within human bodies. Some workers are to be fixed as fast as possible and returned to their full industrial capacity. Some are deemed surplus (or the waste class) and then warehoused, imprisoned, put away from society, culled, or put up for health extraction until death.
Like any upstanding leftist manifestos, Health Communism calls for the centering of the surplus as equal human beings, the solidarity between the doctors and the patients, and the unity of the international working class against the sickening capitalist regimes. Sick-proletariat of the world unite! Without health for the human host, the parasitic capitalism cannot survive. By recognizing and acting upon the purgatory system of constantly breaking and mending workers, we can strike at the core of the extraction.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced