******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
> > Modified title: More Social perspectives on COVID-19. follows: Re COVID-19 > Social and Political Analyses - New Politics > Last week & week before, there were a 3-4 messages on COVID that seemed unduly skeptical to me. Since then I'm glad the tide shifted on this list. Here is another 'corrective' piece, which is however now much less needed. However it also has some perspectives that are different from other recent ones. <http://ml-today.com/2020/03/17/how-should-marxists-view-the-covid-19-pandemic-of-2019-2020/> http://ml-today.com/2020/03/17/how-should-marxists-view-the-covid-19-pandemic-of-2019-2020/ The first largest third of this piece reprises some key medical literature; the last third has some material from the Financial Times with chimes well with Patrick Bond's alert yesterday on oil prices - targeting the expensive shale extraction methods of the USA. In the start of the piece is this small section on the relationship of health reforms to capitalist society: "Throughout this, Marxists may recall how Friedrich Engels wrote about infectious diseases: “Capitalist rule cannot allow itself the pleasure of creating epidemic diseases among the working class with impunity; the consequences fall back on it and the angel of death rages in its ranks as ruthlessly as in the ranks of the workers.” In about 1980, a Marxist history of medicine concluded that there were three fundamental reasons that a ruling class provided health care benefits for its working classes: “The motives which drive a class society to the establishment and maintenance of an institutionalised system of health care are: Firstly to ensure good health for the ruling class itself; sanitary reforms often followed the spread of epidemics from over-crowded slums to the quarters inhabited by the well-to-do; Secondly, to ensure a minimum of health for the working class in order to maximize its capacity to produce profit for the ruling class; at particular junctures this becomes especially important – for example, in time of war when there is a need for cannon fodder from the working class; Thirdly, to avert social unrest among the working class – unrest presenting the threat of social revolution which would sweep away the class society itself. As that wily gentlemen of the upper classes, Joseph Chamberlain expressed it bluntly: “What ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys?.. What insurance will wealth find it to its advantage to provide?” Cheers Hari Kumar ________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
