Health Communism with Beatrice Adler-Bolton

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Jul 17, 2023

Guest: Beatrice Adler-Bolton, an expert in health under capitalism. Topics: Critique of health capitalism, struggle for universal healthcare, history of the asylum system, understanding madness as a political category, reclaiming language, threat of pharmaceutical companies, health capitalism, surplus populations, potential of health communism in leftist movements.

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ANECDOTE

Personal Path Into Health Politics

Beatrice became sick at 19 and found health status instantly reshaped her relationships and job security.
She describes being trapped having to pretend less sick to keep work, insurance, and access to care.

INSIGHT

Redefining The Surplus Population

The 'surplus population' includes people excluded from policies designed around normative workers.
Being surplus is socially constructed and policed by the state through certification and means testing.

INSIGHT

Surplus Is Economically Productive

Once certified as surplus, people are not mere 'waste' but fuel for profit via medicalization and surveillance.
The industry of certifying, treating, and financially exploiting surplus bodies generates significant profit and labor discipline.

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When we think of health under capitalism, it's easy to go straight to the fight for universal healthcare, and understandably — that battle is one of the most contentious and important in the ongoing class war between the mass of people and those who rule us, the capitalist class.

But it would be a mistake to think that that's where our battle ends, that there isn't an expanded struggle over the ways that health and sickness are even conceptualized under the capitalist ideological framework which shapes how we value ourselves and how we are either utilized or abandoned by this system.

In this episode, we'll take a deep dive into all of the different places where health overlaps with capitalism, with Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-host of the podcast Death Panel and co-author, along with Artie Vierkant, of Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto.

This conversation glides from Marxist economic analysis to healthcare policy to history and to some of the most foundational philosophical underpinnings of the political economy of health. Beatrice directs a striking blow against any perceived possibility of true health ever existing under capitalism, arguing that we must fight for our lives, literally, to bring forth the fall of capitalism and to build a new system that works for everyone — what she calls health communism.

Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art and to Fugazi for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns.

Further Resources:

Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto, by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant
Death Panel Podcast
Death Panel Medicare For All Week
Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition by Liat Ben-Moshe
Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health by Micha Frazer-Carroll

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