The parasitical capitalist class, usurps our life energy and then either denies us the resources to live healthily, safely and productively or metes it out, tiny drop by drop, only when they are forced to under threat of organized mobilization of the working class and deep pervasive social unrest to the degree that they can no longer function or do business as usual.If we enjoy any social benefits whatsoever,it is only because working people through the decades have fought through our mass organiztions for each and every social and public benefit, such as education, unemployment insurance, social security etc.It is the nature of capitalism to extract from the working class and give back only what they are forced to in order to keep the profits rolling in. Benevolence and care for the masses of working people who produce all the wealth is a contradiction in their system, it would reduce profits.
In Europe and Canada working people organized in trade unions and workers parties to fight back and take back what we produce in the form of social and public services. The gains for working people were immense and very concrete. Nowhere are these incredible gains for working people more obvious than in the area of health care.
Bottom line is that if workers are sick or dead then we cannot produce wealth. The capitalist system can and will tolerate, and in many cases does produce disease and disabilty among the working class, only to the degree it does not intefere in the productivity of workers. Here is the catch though. As long as there are enough healthy workers to create wealth for them they have no care or concern for the sick and disabled among us. As long as there are poor people whose social assistance benefits are below the minimum wage ,they can force working people into accepting lower and lower wages. As long as they can ensure that there is a built in number of unemployed workers , desperate and vulnerable,they will carry on business as usual-without a single care for the health and well being of workers.So the concessions extracted from these wealthy parasites and their political representatives by the organized working class were immense and a huge victory.
The US capitalist class takes this one step further. They have turned sickness and disability into an immense plundering and profit making industry. Healthy workers are more productive. Healthy mothers and children make it easier to reproduce a healthy working class to exploit. How do they work their way around this conundrum.
Brilliant idea-let's not only make workers pay for their own health, so they can produce more profit-lets make sure we create immense amounts of wealth for for profit health care insurers. Double blow to working people. In essence this is how it works, how they think, we will keep you just healthy enough to make sure you can produce wealth for them, but wait a minute now - if they can make money off you when you are sick - extract more of your labour, and funnel it into profit for insurance companies, they got it covered from all angles.
Then when the costs of providing health care eats into their profits these monstrous murderers deny care. They resrict care under all sorts of crafty evil provisions such as pre-existing conditions, denial of care whether care be tests or more complex medical and surgical procedures.
Obama's revised health care reform. Stripped to the bone, designed to fill the pockets of the for profit health care insurers, a further dive into the gutter for the Democrats and serious setback for the health and well being of American workers.
Perhaps the most disgusting part of all this is the cowardice and betrayal of the so called "leaders" of the trade unions. It is almost inconceivable that they will use their massive resources, siphoned out ofthe pockets of working people in broad daylight, to elect these political representatives of the parasitical capitalist class. These resources could have been used to unite workers across unions , mobilize working people to take to the streets , make coalitions with all public and private sector workers, to demand a health care system publicly funded and administered, universally accessible. Efforts on the part of trade union leadership to mobilize a genuine and serious struggle based on these demands and to fight to win these demands would go a long way to drive working people into the unions when they see how organized struggle wins victories.
We all the time talk about how to raise consciousness among working people ,how to raise a sense of entitlement among working people - that we are entitled not only to the wealth created by our labour, but to own it and collectively and democratically manage and distribute the social benefits of our labour.
As a Canadian nurse who began my career when the medicare was robust, when a publicly funded and administered, universally accessible single payer health care system was in full stride, not only did I rightly feel entitled to health care, saw the benefits of such a system but started from the consciousness of a collective consciousness of the rights of all to this most fundamental need and basic service and right-to be alive and to be healthy and I will will be damned if I do not carry the fight to maintain and expand this right and entitlement to my grave as a recipient and provider of public health care.
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