US Capitalism is Sick. The Working Class Must Euthenize It.

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 44, retired

Interesting response from the doctor in the above video. He talks of the profound “fear and insecurity in the general (US) population.” That something could go wrong in a public health system. What would one do if something does go wrong? It puts you in another strata in society the Dr. says.

 

This is true of all aspects of capitalist society, as I have said time and time again, never ending fear and insecurity keeps people on their toes and malleable. Fear of destitution, fear of foreigners, fear of our neighbors. As the doctor says, the result is people in the US are “so isolated, alienated, incapable of identifying with the commonwealth of their brothers and sisters and the rest of us in society.” This is not an accident as it leaves us unable to challenge the “monetized system of illness and death in our society.” It paralyzes us and we feel we can do nothing to change it as an individual.

 

This situation is the source of the sickness that permeates US society from top to bottom where people like a young man knocking on the wrong door or a woman in a car that turns on to the wrong driveway can get shot for doing so which is what happened the last few days. When people shoot each other over an argument about pizza and so on.

 

We cannot change this situation as individuals, the doctor is right. But we are not simply paralyzed by the seemingly insurmountable challenge this lays before our feet. There is a major obstacle to finding a solution and that is there is no alternative in US society.

 

The ideology of the US ruling class, the most aggressive and ruthless capitalist class on the planet dominates society. These conditions must be our own fault as an individual is responsible for our own condition, for our own destiny. This ideology reigns supreme.

 

That there is overwhelming support in US society for a national health system or medical care for all is understood. This was a major part of Bernie Sanders’ platform. Sanders was shut down not by the conservative pro-market forces on the so-called right, but by his own party and the leading figures in it. Hillary Clinton, Biden, Obama, Bloomberg, all ensured that Medicare For All never saw the light of day.

 

Sanders himself is to blame for not using the tremendous support he had on the ground and in particular among the youth for not breaking with the Democratic Party machine and forming a left political alternative. This would have transformed the situation and also strengthened the movement in the streets, schools and workplaces that he had awakened. He is not an innocent party here.

 

In addition, the heads of organized labor, an organization with some 14 million members are criminally negligent in their refusal to participate in such a development, instead supporting the Democratic Party and its Wall Street sponsors as they always do.

 

So the ideology of capital and the so-called free market dominates US society completely; it reigns unchallenged. This leaves a tragic vacuum when it comes to explaining events and forming some sort of alternative, an alternative to the selfish, narcissistic and individualistic ideology of the ruling class. And this ideology runs counter to the inherent nature of the working class that tends to collectivism, solidarity and class unity. We are gregarious collective animals and the ideology of capital is in reality alien to us, hostile to us. This situation lends to all sorts of failed alternatives and theories. Religious salvation and a plethora of competing sects and philosophies seeking an answer in some sort netherworld. Obsession with sex, appearance, and individual personal relations are promoted as the path to happiness.

Despite this, we rely on each other and care for each other in our daily lives especially in the workplace. The tremendous solidarity and humanity exhibited during the COVID pandemic is an example of what human nature is.

 

It is this absence of a clear, material explanation of how we got where we  are and how to proceed that will ensure the movement that will arise in response to this crisis will have its fair share of confusion, reaction and radicalism and extreme violence. But in the last analysis ideas have a material base and I believe history teaches us that when the working class moves in to struggle to resolve these crises, this powerful tendency to seek class allies come to the fore an tends to overcome the divisive tactics of racism sexism and nationalism etc. 

 

We are as I said collective creatures. When these movements develop we draw conclusions through them, we learn through the struggle to reform and make things better but when that door is closed we learn further the need to change the very structure of society, that we must throw out the old and build a new world. A global society, a democratic socialist system of production that produces for social need in harmony with the natural world not in opposition to it.