A matter of life and death (1952)

From the November 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

An article in the Manchester Guardian of 22nd September, 1952, reviewing the 1st volume of the Official Medical History of the Second World War, commences as follows:

“It is a curious irony of man’s social development that human life receives a kind of tenderness in war that it often fails to get in peace. As soon as a man becomes a soldier, or a civilian on whose work the fighting services depend, the State sets out to guard his life with all the resources it can command: instead of being merely of concern to himself and his family, the war-time citizen is recognised as an essential piece of the machinery of war, to be maintained in working order as efficiently and as long as possible, without regard for the cost of maintenance"

The writer then poses several questions: “But when medical science is used in war, does it thereby become a weapon of war? Should the results of wholly beneficial research be kept secret to prevent an enemy from profiting by them to protect the health of his own community? Should there be accepted priorities for saving life—should an elderly civilian, for instance, be allowed to die so that some drug can be available in greater quantity for treating factory workers? ”

Using penicillin as an example, it is stated that the decision was taken to restrict publication particularly on the chemical and production side so that the enemy should not be enabled to make penicillin and so hasten the recovery of his casualties. When supplies were limited medical officers were advised not to use penicillin for treatment of prisoners of war. “unless the medical officer was convinced that the prisoner would die or unless the M.O. had strong moral scruples.” As production of penicillin was regarded as an Allied War Secret this meant that allied prisoners of war who were wounded could not hope to receive treatment by penicillin.

To read that the right of a human being to receive the best treatment available to restore health should be subjected to such considerations as nationality and usefulness in the war machine does not surprise the socialist. On examining the world in which we live the socialist can find many examples in war and peace where humanitarian considerations are of secondary importance. The capitalist system is not a humanitarian society—it is a profit-making one and members of the working class will continue to have their lives saved or sacrificed just as the system demands.

The “complex consequences and sad dilemmas” which apparently confronted the medical profession during the war are just a small part of the many problems which exist to-day, and few readers will need to be reminded of these.

The solution to all these is in the hands of the workers—get rid of the capitalist system and its problems go with it.

Grace Wood

Back to health—or back to work (1949)

From the September 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent announcement from the United States of a new and remarkable cure for rheumatoid arthritis has caused widespread interest, particularly to those unfortunately afflicted with this painful disease. A substance called cortisone is the agent used to effect the cure and its results are reported to be extremely successful. The new discovery has been subjected io the most rigorous tests and investigations which, in the opinion of the medical experts, have established it beyond doubt as one of the most important steps forward made in this field for some years. The more enthusiastic have already been comparing it with the discovery of insulin in the treatment of diabetes.

Whilst on the subject, we cannot resist giving everybody the opportunity to join with us in admiration for the warmth and humanity displayed towards it by that pillar of the capitalist system, the Economist. Referring to the discovery in its issue of the 30th July, 1949, it dug right to the bottom of its great big heart to produce this fine humanitarian comment:—

“For once it is a case where the expense can be demonstrably justified by the restoration of useless cripples as working members of the community.”

Not a word about the sufferings of these “useless cripples"; not a word on the possibilities of their being relieved of years of pain if this discovery lives up to the claims for it. The main thing that commends itself to this noble periodical is the prospect of getting more able-bodied bodies on to the labour market, and linked with this, of course, a nice, large cut in the numbers of “unemployables,” and, even nicer, such a big saving to the national Exchequer. 

Stan Hampson

Material World: The closed world of billionaire power (2026)

The Material World column from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

You can’t throw a brick these days without hitting one… philanthropic billionaires. One of them has been in the capitalists’ news cycles: Bill Gates has been in the news recently not so much for the atrocious spyware-laden Windows 11 operating system, but for his business ties and friendship with serial child exploiter Jeffrey Epstein. Yet Gates is still treated by the media as a kind of global saviour. A benevolent technocrat. A trusted voice on health, population, food, and development.

Philanthropy or social currency of ‘soft power’

Gates’s relationship with Epstein reveals the closed world of billionaire power. According to recently released documents, Epstein first contacted Gates in 2013 to propose a ‘donor-advised fund’ that would serve as ‘cloud computing for the giving world’, a vehicle to attract ‘the most money any charity has ever had’. Over 18 months, Gates’s family office head and foundation general counsel engaged in extensive correspondence with the convicted sex offender about this charitable vehicle.

But here’s the thing: why did the world’s second wealthiest individual require introductions to wealthy donors from a registered sex offender? The answer lies in understanding that billionaire philanthropy operates not as charity but as a mechanism of class consolidation an exclusive club and you’re not in it. Where the extraction of surplus value is celebrated through tax advantages. Barry Josephson and Epstein revelling through criminal interactions. Bill’s conundrum: what to do about the poor.

And we know exactly what they discussed. In an email exchange, Epstein wrote to an associate: ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about that question that you asked Bill Gates ‘how do we get rid of poor people as a whole’ and I have an answer/ comment regarding that for you’ (from the document provided, dated 3 February, 2011, showing correspondence between Jeffrey Epstein and Barry Josephson). This is what they talk about on the island. This is what billionaire philanthropy really means.

The population … problem?

Gates believes that the problem isn’t over-extraction, capitalism or the profit motive. Greed or billionaires don’t concern him, instead he sees African birth-rates as a threat to global capitalist progress. He has stated in a TED talk that he wants to reduce global population by 15 percent.

The Gates Foundation’s 2024 budget totals $8.6 billion, with family planning separate from the $8.3 billion for ‘fertility management’. Gates pledged $100 billion for this on World Population Day, not International Women’s Day. Fertility management in the Gates Foundation has its own budget and targets: $150 million for 2024 and $143 million for 2025. Not through maternal care or with improving material conditions like clinics that could continue afterwards. The money does not flow from charity to women; it flows from tax sheltered wealth to pharmaceutical corporations.

The Depo-Provera scandal

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), backed by hundreds of billions, claims moral authority to influence the health, agriculture and family lives of millions across Africa and the global south. This is about Sayana Press, Pfizer’s injectable contraceptive, a reformulated version of Depo-Provera that was previously subject to over 2,000 brain tumour lawsuits in Florida. The UK and US government both subsidise the use of this drug.

A 2024 study in the British Medical Journal revealed that women using Depo-Provera face a 550 percent increased risk of developing intracranial meningiomas, AKA brain tumours, requiring invasive surgery, radiation, and often causing permanent neurological damage. Pfizer knew of these risks for decades while failing to warn patients. European and Canadian labels now carry meningioma warnings; the US label was only updated in December 2025 after litigation began.

The Maxwell precedent: intelligence and institutional power

Robert Maxwell, press tycoon, scam artist, and former Labour MP too knew how to create institutional power. He had intelligence contacts in Mossad and with the KGB and did work for British intelligence. He also hobnobbed with the queen, (prince) Charles, Thatcher, Mother Teresa, George Bush and so on. He was the go-to guy for dirt on the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

The Epstein-Gates nexus is modelled on these earlier networks of elite control. Epstein’s own operations, his ‘black book’ of contacts, his mysterious wealth, his lenient 2008 prosecution, suggest similar intelligence community protections. The ‘Lolita Express’ flight logs and island visitors represent not merely criminal activity but the mechanisms through which ruling-class loyalty is ensured through mutual incrimination.

The socialist alternative

Socialists do not oppose access to contraception, nor deny the importance of reproductive choice. On the contrary, we insist that women must be free from economic compulsion in deciding whether and when to have children. The Gates Foundation model, in which pharmaceutical corporations, backed by billionaire ‘donations’ and government co-funding, experiment on vulnerable populations, represents the antithesis of reproductive freedom.

True reproductive freedom requires the social ownership of pharmaceutical production, democratic control over healthcare priorities, and the elimination of economic coercion in all its forms. When contraceptives are developed through producer-controlled research, distributed through publicly accountable health systems, and provided as genuine choices rather than population control measures, then we will have achieved something worth calling family planning.

Until then, we must recognise billionaire philanthropy for what it is: the velvet glove of the ruling elite sanitising exploitation while the iron fist of king capital maintains its grip.

A.T.

Voice From The Back: Carpet sales (2004)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Carpet sales  

The designer and poet William Morris was a committed socialist who had to live with the irony that, although he wanted the abolition of the wages system, the only people who could afford his carpets, tapestries and furniture were the very rich. The following item in the Independent (6 October) illustrates this. “A William Morris carpet that cost £113 new in 1883 was bought for £193,760 in an auction at Sotheby’s in London yesterday. The flowered design, a synthesis of medieval and eastern motifs, was one of only two examples known with a cream and apricot background. It was made for a house in Holland Park, West London, measuring 17ft 5ins by 13ft 6ins.” £193,000 for a carpet – something to bear in mind when you are looking for a bargain at the January sales!

Embarrassed, moi?

“A giant oil company once headed by Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, used its British subsidiaries to flout American sanctions against Iran . . . Their exports – estimated to be worth more than £30m a year – have continued despite sanctions introduced by the US government nine years ago barring Americans from trading or ‘facilitating business’ with the Islamic state. The new findings will embarrass Cheney, President George W Bush’s running mate in next month’s elections. Cheney has described Iran as ‘one of the world’s most dangerous regimes’” (Times, 17 October). He “earned” $44m during his tenure at Haliburton, continues to collect deferred compensation of $150,000 a year and owns $18m in share options. The gap between political rhetoric and economic reality has never embarrassed hypocrites like Cheney.

Dying for work

A TV programme entitled ‘Britain’s Secret Shame’ (BBC, 3 November) illustrated the extent of corporate manslaughter in this country. It reported that about 250 workers die at work every year due to the negligence of their employers. Prosecutions rarely take place, convictions are even rarer, and then it is usually only smaller firms. Attempts to introduce legislation have all failed because the owning class warn the government that more stringent legislation would be too costly. Just another example of how inside capitalism profits are more important than the workers who produce them.

Dying for profit

“Britain’s largest drug company drew up a secret plan to double sales of the controversial anti-depressant Seroxat by marketing it as a cure for a raft of less serious mental conditions, the Observer can reveal today. The contents of the 250-page document have alarmed health campaigners who accuse the firm, GlaxoSmithKLine (GSK) of putting profits before therapeutic needs by attempting to broaden the market for the drug which has been linked to a series of suicides . . . Concerns about the addictive properties of Seroxat saw the government ban its prescription to people under the age of 18 last year. This followed a review which found children taking it were more likely to self-harm or commit suicide” (Observer, 7 November). It seems the company were attempting to move sales from $1 billion to $2billion by pushing it to people who were not clinically depressed. When there is money like this to be made even the “respectable” shareholders become murderous drug pushers.

Dying with poverty

Under the headline ‘Desperate plight of cancer sufferers living in poverty’ (Times, 9 November) reported as follows: “At least three quarters of the million Britons with cancer suffer from financial hardship brought on by the disease, including enforced job losses, discrimination and poor benefit allowances, according to research. A report by Macmillan Cancer Relief suggests that the disease costs patients hundreds of millions of pounds, for which they have little or no financial cover.” Needless to say this poverty only applies to the working class, as those capitalists unfortunate enough to suffer from the disease have at least the consolation that they will receive the best of care and that their families will not suffer financially.

Who cares?

Twenty years ago an explosion at the chemical factory in Bhopal in central India killed more than 15,000 people, and survivors are still trying to cope with the effects of this horrendous disaster. “Yesterday, half a million people who were in the path of the lethal cloud that spewed out of the chemical plant received a second compensation payment of £300 to £1,200” (Times, 13 November). This is in addition to a first payment of £500 per person from the company responsible Union Carbide. Dow Chemicals, who now own Union Carbide, refuse to clean up the site which still holds 25,000 tons of toxic waste. Another example of capitalism’s priorities. Make a couple of bucks, kill 15,000 and leave an area full of children who have difficulty breathing and are painfully dying, who cares? Socialists do.

Medical economics (1947)

From the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The religious racket has, been exploded by Socialists since the days of Marx; but the more scientific racket, the medical “business” has received little attention, in spite of the fact that it is now generally recognised as the strongest and most militant trade (or professional) union in the country.

Millions of pounds are daily spent on therapeutics (curing disease) but scarcely anything is spent in comparison on prophylactics (preventing disease), for the simple economic reason that it is far more profitable to pursue, therapeutics. If too much attention was devoted to prophylactics it might render therapeutics redundant by “killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.” Doctors and hospitals must have sick people, and millions of them, or go out of business.

The workings of the medical profession provide a wonderful example of the economic factor in determining events and culture. Perhaps in this respect it is even more clearly demonstrable than in the case of the spiritual counterpart in religion. In this country there are more doctors and hospitals per head of population than in most countries, and strange to say, there is also a vast and increasing number of sick or ailing people. The same is the case with dentists; in spite of the fact that they are to be seen everywhere, and in spite of the widespread use of the tooth brush and dentifrice, the state of the teeth of the average English person is appalling, when compared to those of many primitive tribes who have no dentists, no tooth brushes and no dentifrice. In fact it would appear superficially that the more dentists, and care of the teeth, the worse is the final result.

Strange to relate with all the efforts of the medical profession and all their scientific research, Cancer, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Nephritis, Rheumatism. Nervous Diseases, Occupational Neurosis, and a host of other complaints, continue to increase yearly, which clearly indicates that something is radically wrong somewhere.

Capitalism regulates, the channel in which medical money goes, and stipulates broadly how it shall be spent; “for the hand that pays the piper, calls the tune.” Surgeons who can get, (or extract from the patient), 100 guineas for a certain operation, are always lurking for possible clients ; and why not, for their success depends very largely upon how many they find. Would anybody pay a surgeon for saving them from an operation? They certainly would not be prepared to pay the same fees.

Drug manufacturers, and patent medicine vendors, make enormous profits on certain chemical preparations, and do not fail to take full advantage of the power of advertising through the medium of those who handle and prescribe the drugs. Only too often quite worthless and harmful drugs are applauded as having health-giving properties, and statements made about them which could never be justified.

The late Lord Trent (formerly Sir Jesse Boot), owner and controller of about 1,000 chemists shops which hears his name, was bed ridden with Rheumatism, and had to be wheeled about in a bath-chair for many years of his life before he died, whilst his shops sold dozens of different chemical preparations for alleviating rheumatism.

A lady who is quite a public figure, owns or used to own, a once much advertised slimming product, and yet she herself regularly tipped the scales at 18 stone. Just imagine this 18 stone of beautiful womanhood ; what about a shovelful of her own slimming mixture for breakfast? But business is business, especially in anything connected with medicine and health, so why worry?

Today certain drugs are making fortunes for the companies behind the medical profession. Just think of the amount of advertising the B.B.C. gives to Penicillin, Streptomycin and Pheno-barbitone. Almost every day the B.B.C. has to announce that some doctor has carelessly mislaid quantities of the latter, thus giving further free advertising to these drugs, incidentally, who says the B.B.C. don’t advertise?

Blood squirting (hypodermic injections of serum), is popular today because apart from their simplicity, and certain medical reasons, these, practises, are enormously profitable, both to doctors and the companies responsible for the serum preparation. An old horse, of little use for its traction power, might fetch about £10 in the cats’ meat market (although horse flesh has many other uses than for cats’ meat). If the horse is deliberately given a dose of a disease resembling smallpox or diphtheria, it can be made capable of producing many times its cats’ meat value by producing suitable serum, at wholesale prices.

The enormous amount of injections done during the war on soldiers—where the men lined up before the doctor who did one after the other just like shelling peas, till the needle got blunt and was thrown away— was not done for nothing, nor even without profit. Manufacturing chemists were reaping thousands out of it.

Medical research under capitalism has got itself into an absurd scientific entanglement. Shaw’s “Doctor’s Dilemma,” and Cronin’s “Citadel,” only touch on aspects of this contradictory muddle. After millions of pounds had been spent on Cancer research (and the figures for cancer mortality steadily rising), the medical profession were instrumental in causing the government to pass the Cancer Laws of 1939, to prevent anybody except a qualified medical man from treating cancer. It would appear that the large amount of criticism they were receiving at this, time had to be silenced, and freedom of action as well as freedom of criticism was debarred to the public.

It is not always those who have the biggest purses who receive the best treatment. Sometimes the more money you have the more operations and specialists’ fees, and subsequently a quicker route to the grave. This was the trouble with the one-time world famous film idol, Rudolph Valentino, who wasted his money on medical attention to no purpose. Doctors are specialists in the art of knowing how to bleed (financially) those who have too much (pecuniary) blood. Kings and presidents, Lords and business magnates have to watch their step where doctors are concerned, as do also the working class. Even Karl Marx was helped to an untimely grave before his life work was completed through advertised chemical dope. Engels observed when Marx was obviously dying, that his body was literally full of patent medicines.

It is regrettable that so many workers have little real interest in health matters, and consequently become such easy victims to medical frauds, and tyranny. Doctors thrive through the advertisements for medicines, cigarettes, alcoholic drinks, doped foods and the health-destroying habits that follow their use. Why should the medical profession endeavour to educate the workers on these topics, and lose them as potential clients as a result? Is there any wonder why the doctors and specialists confine their nomenclature to technical terms derived mostly from the. Latin: or Greek, and pharmaceutical abbreviations that few can understand. It is not easy either to climb into the profession nor to understand its workings; those in it see to that.

“It’s your blood they’re after.” The recent blood transfusion campaign, coming at a time when it is extremely difficult to obtain blood-making foods of the right nature, quality and quantity, is enough to make us sit back and do some thinking. Every day appeals are made on the radio that blood donors are urgently needed, and thousands have responded, to what they consider a humane cause.

At one time in capitalism’s youth, we were told that disease was due to too much blood. When the public were convinced of this doctrine a new line of business was established in removing this surplus. The barber-surgeons were brought into existence for the purpose of taking a pint of blood from all comers who were sick (plus of course a fee for services rendered). The fact that many people treated by these methods were suffering from anaemia and afterwards died, and many others through lack of antiseptic precautions became infected and succumbed, did not worry the barber-surgeons much. Today we can get our blood taken for nothing, and by the latest scientific methods. Tomorrow we might be paid for giving it, but that all depends on how many “blood blacklegs” there are, and also the degree of health consciousness of the masses. No longer is the theory held, “let us take some of your surplus blood and you will get health,” but rather, “let us give you some more blood and you will gain health, or have your life saved.” A curious biological reverse !

Of course there are thousands of street and industrial accidents today that need immediate supplies of blood. But this is not the whole story, there are also many hospital accidents, for modern surgeons, with the aid of anti-septic surgery and anaesthetics, regularly take risks that but a few decades ago they could, or would, never have taken. There is more surgery today than ever before, and there is going to be more tomorrow, especially if a third world war occurs. Consequently a blood donor campaign becomes necessary to capitalist society. Surgery is a very profitable department of science and those that are in it intend that it shall remain so. These strange changes in doctrine become practical politics to the high priests of the medical profession.

Capitalism has long ago converted the cow into a milk producing machine, and the hen into an egg producing apparatus; it now seeks to convert the worker into a blood producing factory, and this has got to be done on a restricted diet.

Horace Jarvis

Knock-out drops (1988)

From the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearly two million people in Britain are addicted to drugs prescribed for them by their doctors. But. unlike the 80,000 heroin addicts who are mostly young and male, most tranquilliser addicts are women and predominantly elderly. Pain, misery, addiction or even death have frequently been associated with legitimately prescribed drugs. In the United States 130,000 deaths occur each year from drugs prescribed by medical practitioners; in Britain nearly one in thirty hospital admissions are due to prescribed drugs and about 2,500 people each year approach the charity Action for Victims of Medical Accidents for help.

With hindsight, some of the mistakes with addictive drugs seem incredible; when heroine was extracted from morphine in 1874 it was hailed as the new "miracle drug" for the safe treatment of morphine and opium addiction because it was considered safe and non-addictive. And it was to take over fifty years before the Rolleston Report identified heroin addiction in 1926. More recently, methadone was used extensively between 1971-1978 to treat morphine addiction and as an analgaesic substitute for morphine but, being itself highly addictive, led to a further spread of addiction.

Psychotropic drugs, prescribed for anxiety and depression, alter the patient's moods or mental processes. These drugs are much more likely to be prescribed for women; and extensive study in Oxfordshire found that psychotropic drugs accounted for one-fifth of all prescriptions and that women received more than twice as many tranquillisers and anti-depressant drugs as men. (Skegg et al British Medical Journal, 1977). The frequency of tranquilliser prescriptions increases with age; women over 75 years of age receive more of these than any other group.

In part, the larger quantities of mood altering drugs prescribed for elderly women can be attributed to the higher incidence of dementia in old age and the fact that most of the more common causes of dementia affect women more than men. But the excessive numbers of prescriptions for tranquillisers are not entirely justified on medical grounds alone. In recent years the closure of substantial numbers of hospital beds has led to increasing numbers of mentally and physically infirm elderly people being "cared for" in the community.

Providing safe care for mentally infirm old people in their own homes causes considerable problems for relatives. All too often tranquillisers have to be used to control the old person's behaviour and. even if the drugs are not addictive, the quality of life for the person is impaired. Caring for a demented person in a family home can prove to be a nightmare. Family life disintegrates due to disturbed nights, incontinence, noisy, aggressive behaviour and the need for somebody to be in attendance at all times. For such families there is no respite: holidays and nights out cannot be taken together and friends are deterred from visiting.

For middle aged women, in particular, caring for an elderly mother causes considerable anxiety because the traditional caring role is reversed and the awareness of the possibility of helplessness and insecurity for themselves in the future becomes all to evident. In such situations the temptation to resort to the use (and often the abuse) of tranquillisers is difficult to resist. Indeed, members of the family providing care may take tranquillisers themselves to cope with the difficult social circumstances forced on them by the lack of provision for care of the elderly. But for both the dependent elderly and their, mainly, female carers, tranquillisers are used as substitutes for social remedies which are not forthcoming under capitalism because workers are viewed as economic units.

The Royal Commission on Population put into perspective the disadvantageous position of the elderly under capitalism:

The burden of maintaining the old does not consist in the money paid out as Old Age Pensions. It consists in the excess of the consumption by the old over their production. It is the fact that (with some exceptions) the old consume without producing which differentiates them from the active population which makes them a factor reducing the average standard of living in the community, (pi 13)

This view of the elderly as redundant economic units has led to inferior standards of accommodation in the majority of hospitals for the long-stay elderly and the mentally ill.

The difficulty of attracting staff-in adequate numbers to work in poor conditions and inadequate facilities can lead to over-reliance on tranquillisers to control the patients as too few staff try to cope with relentlessly increasing numbers of admissions in the drive to make hospitals more "efficient" regardless of the social costs. And in private hospitals and nursing homes there is a greater temptation to resort to the use of tranquillisers to control disturbed elderly residents as trained nursing staff are reduced to a minimum in the drive to make profits.

Capitalist governments operate double standards when confronted with problems of drug abuse. In the past dangerous, addictive drugs have been sold abroad: human misery being an acceptable price to pay as long as profits are made. Drugs of doubtful therapeutic value but which have undesirable or even serious side-effects are produced and, where legislation prevents their use in this country, sold in countries which permit their use. Thus the addiction to tranquillisers and the misery that they cause, like addiction to tobacco and alcohol, only become the concern of the state when the efficiency of the workforce, and consequently profits, is threatened.

In 1987 only £500.000 was allocated to help tranquilliser addicts compared with £24.5 million for the much smaller group of heroin addicts. But. unlike heroin addiction, the use of tranquillisers is legitimate, respectable and widespread, with 14 million prescriptions being dispensed in Britain last year. The enormous profits which the drug industry makes has led to general practitioners being the targets of aggressive advertising campaigns to promote tranquillisers as a panacea for their patients' problems. But for patients who are prescribed benzodiazepine tranquillisers (Lorazepam; Oxazepam; Diazepam. Chlordiazepoxide) for periods of longer than four months physical dependency occurs even at therapeutic dose levels.

Withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, apprehension, tremor, insomnia, nausea and vomiting; in fact, many of the problems for which these drugs were prescribed in the first place.

Sexual dysfunction may be caused by both the phenothiazine group of drugs and the benzodiazepines. The phenothiazines, especially Phenergan, have been associated with cot deaths in infancy. The problems of toxicity and unpleasant side-effects of drugs arise because of the hasty and incomplete research carried out by pharmaceutical companies in their attempts to market their products ahead of their rivals. The continued demand for drugs to relieve anxiety is assured because competitiveness causes fear and insecurity. Capitalism's booms and slumps, wars, alienation at work and impoverishment in old age all generate anxiety for workers. And for women, the problems of isolation within the home for housewives or the stress of the "double shift" for working mothers leads to them consulting their doctors for the relief of tension more often than men.

Women's economic dependence on men (who themselves are economically insecure) has served capitalism's interests by providing future generations of workers within the conventional framework of the family.

Patrick Jenkin when he was Secretary of State for Social Services, stated.

I don't think that mothers have the same right to work as fathers. If the good Lord had intended us to have equal rights to go out to work, he wouldn't have created men and women. (Man Alive, October 1979)

The barriers placed in the way of working mothers by such attitudes; relegation to mostly part-time, unskilled, alienating work; low pay — women earned less than three-quarters of the average wages paid to men in 1982 — have all combined to place a greater emotional strain on women. The operation of factories around the clock to maximise profits leads to shift workers being forced to adopt unnatural life-styles. Insomnia causes some workers to resort to taking sleeping tablets to cope with this. Doctors are helpless to remedy the political causes of all these problems and offer tranquillisers to help patients cope with intolerable social circumstances.

Further abuses of tranquillisers occur in prisons where drugs are used to control prisoners who fail to "adjust" to their environment.

Undeniably, tranquillisers can be of value. Used carefully they can help to relieve distress. But it is the application of drugs under capitalism, which fails to heed the lessons of the past while the present is profitable, which is at fault. Medical advances, in common with all forms of technological advances, will be abused until the workers decide to place human needs before profits.

Carl Pinel

Running Commentary: Profit interfering (1982)

The Running Commentary column from the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Profit interfering

Sanofi, the pharmaceuticals division of the French Elf Aquitaine oil group, is suspending production of Interferon, the experimental drug used in cancer treatment. The reason they have given for this decision is that sales levels have been disappointing and there has been a steady build-up of stocks. Even the usefulness of trying to develop a treatment or even a cure for cancer cannot escape the law of all production under capitalism — that without the prospect of profit, production must cease.

Last year, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund collected about one million pounds in charity for further research into Interferon. In the same year, the governments of the world spent about the same amount every two minutes on the production of armaments.

Scientists investigating Interferon in different countries have not combined their research data, because the separate corporations who sponsor them each hope to monopolise the enormous profits which might become available if the formula were perfected.

Sales of food, electricity and many other goods and services have been "disappointing” lately, resulting in widespread cutbacks in production. In none of these cases is there a lack of demand, of real need. Last year, thirty million people starved to death. What is lacking is “effective” market demand, that is, needs backed up by money. As usual, the world profit system is failing to meet human needs.

Gay power

The gays of Britain should beware. They are about to be hounded and harassed with an intensity which will make the attention they receive from Chief Constable Anderton of Greater Manchester seem aloof and apathetic.

As W. H. Smith agree to a wholesale distribution of Gay News, an apparently startling — although actually obvious—fact emerges. Gay workers are more than a deviant, oppressed, discriminated-against minority. They are also a market. The new publisher of Gay News has been specific about this. Consulting a recent detailed survey (see what we mean about being hounded?) he puts “. . . the spending power of gay men and women conservatively at about £5,000 million. It's a virtually untapped market”.

Among the first to try to exploit this is a give-away newspaper, Capital Gay. which goes out through gay pubs, clubs and the like. In common with other free papers — which are usually local in their scope — Capital Gay is little more than advertisements garnished with a few news items. Of course, some gays may object to being treated as a separate market, with special appeals to their sexual preferences. They may prefer to be lumped in with all the other workers who trawl their depressed way through the sub-standard goods in their local supermarkets. But being a lucrative market may do more for gays than any amount of protest and propaganda. In a society which produces all its wealth as commodities, the market has the power to overwhelm the most maniacal police chief or other self-appointed guardian of public morals.

Perhaps this will be called progress. Anyone with an awareness of the structure of capitalist society, and of what this does to human beings, will know that discrimination against gays is another aspect of class-based humiliation. Sexual freedom, like all other freedoms, can be secure only in a social order based on common interests.

Asbestos awards

When considerations of human well-being, even of life and death, come directly into conflict with the needs of capital to accumulate profit, the latter generally wins. There are countless examples to demonstrate this. When such conflicts occur, the companies involved are curiously adept at evading the implications.

Two hundred and fifty insulation workers in Illinois are reported by doctors to have died or become seriously ill after working with brown asbestos, amosite, supplied by North American Asbestos. An American court found against the British parent company, Cape Industries, for having knowingly supplied an extremely dangerous substance without warning, and fined them for £32 million damages.

Cape will not pay this money, since the award is not enforceable in Britain, where they face many other such charges, having been named in 900 cases. In the American case, however, they took more elaborate precautions than ever to avoid having to pay money out of the profits made from those workers' deaths.

Cape’s parent company. Charter Consolidated, is the London associate of the Anglo-American Corporation of. South Africa, with mining interests in America. In January 1978, after paying out one million dollars in an asbestos case in Texas, Cape liquidated its North American Asbestos Corporation, which had also supplied the amosite used by the workers who died in Illinois.

But Cape continued to own shares in the Liechtenstein-based Associated Mineral Corporation, which supplied asbestos to Continental Products, who operated from the same Chicago address which had been used by the North American Asbestos Corporation. (Guardian, 6 July 1982; World in Action, Granada TV, 5 July 1982.)

A Pill For The Public (1938)

Book Review from the July 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

“ Patent Medicines,” by Professor A. J. Clark (Fact, May, 1938).

The select committee set up by H.M. Government in 1914 to "consider and enquire into the question of the sale of patent and proprietary medicines” expressed the hope that the National Insurance Act would curtail the business in secret remedies. Their optimism has been far from justified, and the N.H.I. Act, having failed to put an end to illness, fanned the belief, already widespread, that health could be obtained from a bottle. A number of capitalists, more perspicacious than H.M. Commissioners, were well aware of this. They sank money in the production of patent medicines, and by one device or another encouraged the belief. The sick public, uninformed and receptive, swallowed thousands of panaceas from almost plain water to poisonous drugs, and paid well for the privilege. The proprietors, on the other hand, waxed prosperous.

Prof. A. J. Clark has set out the details in the Fact for May. Let us say here that the monograph is not written from a working-class angle, and that this entails a certain criticism, to which we shall allude later. But, subject to these limits, practically every aspect is covered in a simple and straightforward manner. We think that Prof. Clark might have detailed some of the huge profits made in the trade—for instance, Beecham’s Pills, Ltd., which markets many well-known proprietaries, such as Germolene, Iron Jelloids, Veno’s, Amami shampoos and the like, and has a capital of about two and a half million pounds, declared this year a profit of over £600,000 and a dividend of 85 per cent.

All sections of the community take patent medicines (the expression “Patent Medicine” only strictly applies to those registered under letters patent, of which there are actually very few). The volume of retail trade is, therefore, very large — possibly between £20 and £30 millions annually. The Government takes a rake-off in the shape of medicine stamp duty, which amounted in 1928-9 to one and one-third million pounds, since when it has declined by 44 per cent. Manufacturers found that by slightly altering the composition and printing on the package a pseudo-scientific formula, meaningless to the man in the street, they were legally exempt from paying the duty and pocketed the difference. We know of no case in which the price to the public was afterwards reduced. The law relating to patent medicines is, in fact, a confused jumble of statutes and regulations dating from 1787. It is still possible to use bogus testimonials from fictitious physicians, and perhaps even real physicians! There is a law of the most severe character against the supply of abortifacients; but under cover of wording which is well understood a loophole exists for the business to go on, a business for the most part in either useless or dangerous and always expensive drugs.

Various committees of enquiry have been set up, notably that of 1914, referred to above. Their report was devastating in its revelations and indictment of the patent medicine trade. “Naturally, however, it attracted no attention whatever at the time of its appearance and was allowed rapidly to pass out of print and is now very difficult to obtain. The reasons for its rapid disappearance are unknown” (page 29). The publications of certain analyses carried out by the British Medical Association vanished in an equally mysterious manner. The interests concerned were quite averse to anything being done, and it was pot until 1920 that a “Proprietary Measures Bill" based on the 1914 report, was introduced into the Lords, but “was allowed to perish for lack of Parliamentary facilities.” There' were further Acts in 1931 and 1936, both of which failed to become law. In 1936, however, the Government became alarmed at the decline in revenue, and a committee was set up to. consider this aspect alone. Their report, published in 1937, suggested a much wider basis of taxation, and “a Bill was promptly prepared in accordance with the recommendations of the select committee of 1937; it did not attempt any reform of the secret remedies fraud, but was simply designed to increase revenue by extending the scope of the incidence of the Medicine Duties. . . . The Bill perished chiefly because it proposed to tax cosmetics, a reasonable but highly unpopular proposal” (page 2$). As a matter of fact, there was much internal opposition to the bill, in particular from chemists, who would have lost certain privileges by its provisions and been placed on the same footing as grocers and other traders. No attempt whatever was made to protect the consumer at any stage.

Patent medicine proprietors are able to exercise a considerable pull over the Press, as the biggest single group of advertisers. One firm stated that it spent one-quarter million pounds in 1937 on publicity, largely in the Press. One of the effects of this expenditure is a virtual censorship of anything likely to endanger the patent medicine interests. Millions of people every year, who from malnutrition, bad housing, and overwork fall ill, succumb readily to the clever propaganda of the big advertising, often handled by firms which specialise in this work. And the more readily since the occasional exposures of danger and fraud rarely creep into the popular Press. These dangers and fraud are very real. A certain check is provided by recent poison regulations, but only this year 73 people in the U.S.A. were killed by a preparation before supplies were stopped. And there would have been no legal restriction on its sale in Great Britain. There is no account, of course, of those drugs which only kill if taken in time, or of the false inducement of security and hope. It is also certain that many workers afford patent remedies by cutting the purchase of vital necessities.

Prof. Clark suggests measures for dealing with the problem. It may be that for a variety of reasons a Government will one day be persuaded to frame new laws. They may even be operated. But the real trouble is that people are ill, and the problem one of preventing it—an impossibility while capitalism lasts. The patent medicine proprietors are in business for profit and indifferent to the harm and suffering they may inflict. Capitalist governments have already had 24 years since the first commission’s report to demonstrate their care for the working class. And the last Bill presented to the House was an attempt to increase revenue from the industry! Is it unlikely that any advantage to the workers from future enactments will only be incidental? There can be few grosser instances of the evil workings of the profit system than the patent medicine industry.

Kilner.

Voice From The Back: Child’s play (2003)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Child’s play

It sums up the madness of capitalism’s market system that at a time of falling stock exchange prices and the dismal results of fund market experts, we can learn of the following in the Observer, Business Section (25 May). “Despite falling equity prices, a group of schoolchildren from Oxfordshire put the professionals to shame by reaping a 140 percent profit from shares over seven months. The competition, sponsored by ProShare, shows you don’t have to pay through the nose for advice from experts earning six-figure salaries.” It also shows that we live in a mad house society.

Keep taking the tablets

The government’s medical advisers have agreed to hold an independent inquiry into the risks associated with the antidepressants known as SSRIs, or selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. This is the result of reports of suicides among patients taking the medication, as well as users describing nightmares, tremors and feelings of violence. These drugs have been widely prescribed for 10 years, so how come nothing has been done about it? “The Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority, which oversees drug safety, has been criticised for not holding a proper investigation into SSRIs. An earlier expert group had to be disbanded last year after it emerged that some members were shareholders in the companies involved.” The Observer (25 May) Perhaps the following sales figures would tend to colour the shareholders’ findings. The manufacturer Glaxo-Smith Kline has more than £100 million sales a year in the UK alone. What’s a few suicides to shareholders compared to those figures? Truly, capitalism is a sick society.

Band aids for poverty

Almost 20 years ago Bob Geldorf organised “Band Aid” concerts in London and Philadelphia to help the starving millions in Ethiopia. So what is happening in that country today? Local musicians are organising similar concerts to aid the starving. “Aid agencies estimate 14 million Ethiopians are at risk of starvation after the worst drought in nearly two decades. The United Nations said Ethiopia needs 1.5 million tonnes of food aid this year.” Herald (26 May) In 1984 Ethiopia was devastated by a famine which killed one million people. In 2003 we have 14 million at risk of starvation. So much for charity, so much for well-intentioned reformers. What we need is a complete transformation of society not an elastoplast on a gaping wound.

Body parts for sale

Inside capitalism even items that are not produced for sale take on the form of commodities. Thus a man’s honour or a woman’s body are bought and sold. Perhaps the nadir of this commodification is the sale of human body parts. “Organ harvesting for the black market is most prevalent in India, Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe. Kidneys, lungs, pieces of liver, even corneas, bones, tendons, heart valves and skin are all available for purchase. A donor will be paid about £1,500 for a kidney, but a “broker” can expect to make £150,000 for the same organ. An auction of a human kidney on eBay in February 2000 drew a bid of $100,000 before the company put a stop to it.” Times (27 May) CONTRASTS The following two quotations illustrate the strange values of capitalism. “6,ooo children a day die from unsafe water and sanitation – equivalent to 20 jumbo jets crashing every day – according to the UN.” Observer (1 June) Contrast that with the fashion writer Lucia Van Post in The Times (6 June) prattling on about designer handbags. “One I lust after is the Asprey “race companion” – and have done so ever since I first saw a prototype some two years ago. It is a slim pochette, made of lizard skin, with a clasp that makes a nice, crisp, closing sort of noise. It holds not only a purse and mirror, but also a tiny notebook and a pen – perfect. … Not cheap at £1,250, but delicious.” Does the “nice, crisp closing sound” drown out the sound of those 20 jumbo jet loads of childish death whimpers?

Gongs for the gormless

The fiftieth anniversary of the Coronation was marked by the usual nauseating sycophantic brown-nosing of the press and TV. There is one exception in the Independent (5 June) by John Walsh that we think is worth recording here, if only to assure future generations that the world was not completely insane in 2003. “Then Her Madge decided to give knighthoods to Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. Along with being a Duke and an Earl, they’re now Knight Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order. Don’t ask what feats of intrepid public service justified these glamorous rewards (getting the wife pregnant? Womanising on yachts? Playing a lot of golf? Going bald?), because answer is there none.”

Voice From The Back: Spaced out (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spaced out

The US multi-millionaire Dennis Tito returned to earth on 6 May after his trip on a Russian space flight. He paid about $20 million dollars for the privilege; well American capitalists have got to do something with the surplus value that they have extracted from the working class. The awful thing is that while he was away in space for a week the capital that he has invested in the exploitation of the working class made him even richer than he was when he left the planet earth. As he is estimated to have a fortune of $200 million at present that is bloody rich. If every capitalist in the world was given a one way ticket into space, it would make no difference to the wealth produced on this planet, it would of course cut the consumption of wealth quite considerably.

Is democracy ghastly?

The Trade Union movement, in one of its worst moves ever, assisted in the development of the Labour Party. The outcome of that decision is that former railway workers, coal miners and factory hands are calling themselves Lords, dining at the Savoy and discussing the merits of Bollinger ’57 champagne. And are the legions of present and former Labour MPs grateful for the soft living they procured with the help of the TUs? Not a bit of it.

“Teachers unions should end the “ghastly ritual” of their Easter Conferences because they turn off would-be recruits, the chairman of the Commons education committee said last night. Labour MP Barry Sheerman said he was dismayed by the behaviour of some delegates at the National Union of Teachers’ conference in Cardiff, who jeered and held up placards when education secretary, David Blunkett, addressed them.” Guardian 17 April.

Art for cash’s sake

The art world was excited by the re-emergence of a “lost” painting of Claude Monet entitled Haystacks, Last Rays of the Sun. It is a painting that has not been seen in public since 1895. It goes under the hammer at Southeby’s next month and is expected to fetch £5 million. So where has this masterpiece been for over a hundred years? In private hands, where its various owners have kept it safe from the prying eyes of the great unwashed. This is not an unusual fate for artistic works. The very rich, and quite often the very stupid, hoard them under lock and key, often not even looking at them for years on end. These are the people Wilde described as “knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing”. Inside a socialist society all works of art will be available for the public to enjoy, not for millionaires to store in vaults.

Strange bedfellows

The news from Scotland that the Socialist Workers Party will cease to exist and that its 272 members will transfer to the Scottish Socialist Party illustrates the complete lack of principles of both parties. The SSP stand for an independent Scotland, the SWP in the past have always ridiculed this as narrow nationalism. We predict that a battle for supremacy between these two Leninist factions will probably break out in the future. They have certain views in common though. They are opposed to the concept of a class-less, trade-less, money-less society and of course see themselves as the self-appointed leaders of a working class too stupid to get socialism for themselves for “five hundred years”. A plague on both their houses.

Slaughter of the innocents

Capitalism is an awful social system, the old, the infirm and the handicapped are particularly unfortunate recipients of its competitive uncaring nature, but a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund shows how terrible is the fate of many children inside capitalism:

“Two million children have been killed by conflict over the last 10 years; 12 million children have been made homeless; six million children have been injured or disabled. Of the world’s 40 million displaced, 20 million are children. Up to 10,000 children each year are killed by landmines” Observer, 6 May.

Situations vacant

From the majestic mountains and glens of Scotland we are delighted to inform our readers of the wonderful career opportunities that are available in Tony Blair’s modern, cool Britannia. “Grouse Beaters wanted. Male and female accommodation. Meals provided. Apply in writing to the Head-keeper, Corrybrough Estate, Tomatin, Inverness-shire IV13 7XY” Herald, 8 May. “Accommodation” AND “meals provided” – Wow! “Near Utopian conditions for the lower orders, your Lordship.” For how long are we going to let these arrogant swine get away with these insults?

Enlightened self-interest

When 39 drug firms dropped their case against South Africa importing cheaper anti-Aids drugs, it was hailed as a victory for humanity over profit. It wasn’t that simple though, because the firms had only bowed to public opinion when it seemed that the import of cheaper drugs into Africa seemed inevitable. The South African government have refused to provide retroviral drugs through the public health system despite this apparent victory. The London-based mining giant Anglo-American is now negotiating with an Indian pharmaceutical company to purchase cheap Aids drugs for its HIV-positive workers in South Africa. An altruistic gesture by big business? Not quite. “Businesses say the pandemic will have a devastating effect on the economy, and research has shown that providing workers with drugs is cheaper than paying for absenteeism, loss of productivity, hospital treatment, funerals, and replacing and retraining staff” Herald, 7 May.

Your good health (1985)

From the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

How healthy are you? Good health and fitness have recently become a very popular pursuit and stylised in fashionable culture and music. We are progressively bombarded with adverts for commodities to improve our bodies with "one calorie per can. nutrasweet drinks, jams with "40 per cent less sugar", low-fat spreads and vitamin-fortified. high fibre cereals. The wholemeal market has expanded from the odd loaf to a wide range of breads, pastas and even snack bars. What were once fringe groups like the advocates of Ginseng or jogging are now part of a much larger social group seeking improved health. Sports wear, including hi-tech trainers, track suits and designer-label tennis shirts, has become a theme in contemporary fashion. Good health and fitness are. of course, desirable objectives but the problem is that so many aspects of our lives today militate against their attainment.

For the privileged minority of men and women in capitalism the achievement of good health, if desired, is no problem. The consumption of first rate cuisine, a hygienic and comfortable environment, plenty of exercise in pools and on sunny beaches and a stress-free existence are conducive of putting you in good shape. For the majority of us, however, things are a lot more difficult. With careful planning and dedication a certain number of workers do become quite fit; people with a passion for active sport for instance. But generally workers cannot enjoy a life fit as a fiddle. Pursuing a clean bill of health in capitalism is like trying to swim against the flow of a river. How, then, is your health damaged by the society in which you live?

Medical health

In a society where money speaks louder than need it is not surprising that the provision of medical care for the majority is in such a sick state. If you can afford the £1,000 a day charged by private hospitals such as Harley Street's London Clinic there is no real cause for alarm. But the majority of people are not in this situation. Hospital services for the wealth-producers are being cut because of the economic recession: 

Guy's hospital has agreed to axe 300 jobs and close 63 beds by the autumn to cope with the financial crisis. . . General Medicine and surgery units will suffer most. Their outpatients will be cut by 30 per cent and they will lose 42 beds, including some in the chest and infectious disease wards., (Guardian, 1 July 1985)

Department of Health figures issued in March 1983 showed that more than 2.000 medical doctors had been rendered socially useless, suffering from the economic illness of unemployment. To aggravate the problem still further, many medical brains have been bribed by the military services to help them improve the techniques of bacteriological and bio-chemical warfare, which in turn has drawn away many more medical brains from treating patients to research and compose reports about the predictable effects of a nuclear war. One such report, issued after "nearly two years' hard work", was produced by a team of highly skilled consultants. general practitioners and professors. Its findings are not relaxing to read:

Delay in treatment would result in a high incidence of wound infection. Ruptured drainage and sewage systems together with the presence of decaying corpses and animal carcasses would increase enormously the hazards of infection. Major radioactivity would add the problems of radiation sickness to those already wounded. . . The psychogenic effects of such a disaster can only be conjectured. . . It is apparent that any schemes in existence would be completely inadequate to deal effectively with such a situation. (The Report of the British Medical Association Board of Science and Education Inquiry into the Medical Effects of Nuclear War)

In the relentless quest for profit, medical drug companies have often been found guilty of gross negligence or rank unscrupulousness. The leading Swiss company Ciba-Geigy has admitted that it placed unprotected Egyptian children in a field so that a crop-spraying airplane could douse them with the insecticide Galecron. The object was to test the children's urine for toxic levels of the liquid, which was subsequently linked with cancer. The biggest chemical conglomerate in Britain. ICI, has also admitted that it promoted an expensive and dangerous anabolic steroid as a wonder cure for malnourished children in Bangladesh. And these are probably no more the only culprits of such malpractice than Richard Nixon and Profumo are the only dishonest politicians of our time.

The environment

The commercial profit system operates worldwide and. because it puts a priority on the making of a profit for the few, all other interests — including those of the majority of people and our environment — are subordinated to this end. If it is cheaper, and therefore more profitable, to pollute the atmosphere rather than to safely dispose of toxic waste, then the atmosphere gets polluted. The National Wildlife Federation in America reported recently on the increasing problem of acid rain. Sulphur-dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants are damaging forests, fouling lakes and streams; in some parts of California fog is 2,000 times as acidic as natural fog and capable of burning the eyes and throat. More than 26 million tons of sulphur are emitted in the USA every year and the amount is increasing. Mr Kirk Willison, a spokesman for the Edison Electrical Institute, has opposed moves to ban such practices "because of the costs that pollution control would involve" (Daily Telegraph, 11 May 1984). Dangerous pesticides are often marketed with high pressure campaigns. with all sorts of dire results. DDT was withdrawn from the market last year but. as two investigators from Friends of the Earth recently discovered (posing as farmers). it is still possible to get this damaging substance from certain agrochemical suppliers. Chris Rose. FOE's countryside campaigner was reported in Farmers' Weekly as saying:

This was a question of cash on the counter and no questions asked. . . Allowing the sale of DDT is almost unbelievable negligence . . . obviously the company is keen on making a quick buck by flogging poisons even if they are banned.

Malnutrition

Not only do millions of people die from malnutrition each year (Oxfam has estimated the number of malnourishment-related deaths annually at 30,000.000) but millions more just "go hungry" or suffer the effects of an unhealthy diet. According to the United Nations International Emergency Children's Fund over 1,700 children die every sixty minutes (one every 2 seconds) from disease, malnutrition and war-caused disruption. This sort of sacrifice on the altar of profit also happens closer to home. Take one recent case. In August twin sisters aged 2½. died of malnutrition in Essex while their unemployed father was away from home, perhaps taking Norman Tebbit's advice, looking for work. The tragic twist to this particular story was the expertise of the unemployed father — he was a cook (Guardian, 3 August 1985). The social madness of such suffering is that, not only could we produce enough food for every human being to lead a healthy life (the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that using current farming methods the world could produce enough food for 33.000,000.000 people — seven times the world population) but that even today so much food and drink is produced but left to rot or be re-cycled because it cannot be sold at a profit.

Millions of litres of surplus Common Market wine, equivalent in its present distilled form to the contents of 16.000 Olympic swimming pools, should be converted into boiler fuel according to a House of Lords select committee report. (Guardian. 25 July 1985)

The Common Market's butter mountain recently reached a record level of 600,000 tonnes, adding to the gastronomic scenery of milk lakes and beef mountains. Despite the enormity of suffering from malnutrition it is still conventional wisdom for the "experts" and their journalistic echoes to refer to such food and drink as "surplus stock". The measuring rod of need in capitalism is. necessarily, not what people need but rather what the market can absorb. The Live Aid concerts earlier this year highlighted the unnecessary suffering of so many people but. clearly, the occasional well-intentioned handouts to the starving cannot solve a problem which is endemic in a society which dances to the tune of the cash register.

Employment

Employment is a euphemism for exploitation. Selling your energies to someone else or a company for your whole vital life, so that the hirer can get wealthy from your efforts, is not the formula for a healthy existence. When people work at home for their families or friends it is usually rewarding and pleasurable. But being constantly alienated from what your efforts produce for your employer is a depressing experience. In the context of employment work becomes nothing more than the reluctantly performed grind necessary to earn a living. Wherever you work — office, factory, school, hospital or mine — the conditions are usually less than extravagant, aimed at maximum productivity rather than your best health and safety. Every aspect of most working environments, including lighting, heating and cleanliness, are not what they could be. Over 1,500 people die every year as a result of their work and courts are always hearing cases of industrial accidents which could have been avoided but for unsafe but cost-saving conditions at work. The independent Office of Health Economics has reported how fear of losing their jobs is forcing more sick workers to work.

Unemployment

Enforced idleness and social uselessness takes an obvious toll, not only on its direct victims but also on their dependants. A government report at the beginning of this decade showed how unemployment leads to increased ill-health, psychological disturbance and alcoholism. Symptoms detailed in the report include depression accompanied by "insomnia, loss or gain of weight, suicidal thoughts, impulsive or violent outbursts and an increased use of alcohol or tobacco". Among physical symptoms are asthma, skin lesions, backaches and headaches. Perhaps not surprisingly, this report was not made universally accessible — only 200 copies were printed and put on sale at £6 each.

Drug abuse

In all sorts of ways the profit system offers bleak prospects for most workers. Either the routine drudge of boring work or the frustration and hopelessness of life on the dole. The pressures become the more unendurable during a deep recession, especially for the millions of young people with so much potential creativity and energy. In this sort of setting the escapism afforded by mood-altering drugs is likely to become more popular. with all the misery that is its consequence. The proliferation of the use of heroin and of solvent-abuse over the last few years is a measure of the deep dissatisfaction an increasing number of people are feeling about the sort of society they live in. The suicide rate is dramatic enough — there are on average about 12 suicide attempts every day — but for many others the regular use of these drugs means life that is almost like suicide. The statistics are not very reliable but a figure of 50,000 heroin addicts in Britain is sometimes quoted. Addressing the drug dealers, Thatcher has warned "We are after you” and Edward Gardner, chairman of a recent House of Commons all-party committee. advocated that drug dealers should be hung (while army recruitment officers have medals put around their necks). But this sort of policy cannot be successful because it seeks to tamper with the symptom of a social malady rather than its cause.

War

Wars are the extension of the economic quarrels of governments over new markets to exploit, new territories rich in mineral deposits. trade routes and strategic locations on the trade map. It is not "human nature" which impels young men (and now, in many armies, young women) to go out and murder complete strangers; it is usually conscription or the fomenting of hysterical jingoistic fervour against "the enemy", as was seen during the Falklands war. From Belfast to Beirut to Baghdad and in a score of other current wars people are being killed and maimed every day, with all the grief and despair for so many others that this leaves in its wake. It has been estimated that "The number of people around the world who are involved in wars of the old-fashioned, death producing kind comes, at a rough count, to about 701,600,000 . . . (Sunday Times, 21 March 1982). The emergency children's fund, Unicef, working in 112 countries, has a total annual income equivalent to about 4 hours of world spending on the war machines. Capitalism is not about caring for people and therefore cannot put a priority on health. One army general is paid more than five state enrolled nurses.

Getting healthy

Socialists cannot object to workers trying to get as fit and healthy as they can. but it cannot be denied that the sort of society we live in makes this a very difficult task. Class-divided society, the rat-race, is a squalid struggle for most people and only with its abolition can we seriously begin to take pleasure in individually and socially enjoying robust good health. If music is the food of love, knowledge is the food of desirable social change. The socialist case contains no artificial flavourings or election promises, just wholesome food for thought. Bon appetit.

Gary Jay

The National Health Service (1948)

From the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

On July 5th, 1948, an ever-benevolent Labour Government bestowed yet another of its infinite blessings on the working-class of this country— this time in the guise of the National Health Service.

Doubtless on that happy day many working class wives and mothers, whilst in the process of scraping together a few meagre rations to sustain their families through their day of wage-labour, thought with deep thankfulness that now they and their children, as well as their husbands, could have as many bottles of stomach mixture as they liked without having to pay for it!

Much controversy raged amongst the workers as to whether or not this new Act was a good thing, but as to how many penetrated to the root of the matter—that is a different story.

Did it really seem to you, Mrs. Wage-Slave, as you sat (if you were lucky) for approximately three hours in that most fertile of all bacteria-breeding laboratories —the doctor’s waiting-room, that the fact that now you could obtain your tins of health salts and your packets of cotton-wool without passing cash over the chemist’s counter was a blessing that would make life more full and abundant for you? Can this National Health Service supply you with the means of preventing your husband's stomach trouble—your own nervous condition and your children’s chest complaints? Is it going to give you an abundance of the right kinds of food— a home that isn’t damp—and a set of conditions that will make the weird disease that you euphemistically term “nerves,” things of the past? You know that this is not the case and no-one would pretend that it was, but of what real use is the attempted cure without the prevention?

One point that you might raise is that now the managing director of your firm is, even more than in the past, helping to pay for your own particular dope. You may also think that you are paying for his, should he care to take advantage of the fact. But he won’t, knowing that by a little extra payment far more interest will be taken in his aches and pains than in yours.

The consumption of allegedly therapeutic medicine in this country is still steadily increasing. Consider only the numbers of B.B.C. announcements relating to lost drugs, usually of the sedative type. These are an everyday occurrence now, and are treated with as much contempt as the weather forecast. The laws governing the supply of these drugs may be enforced more strictly, as indeed they have been recently, but nothing can alter the fact that increasing numbers of people are having to rely more and more on artificial aid to bring a few hours of rest and relief from the harassing life inflicted on them by the present system.

Neither has the sale of patent medicines diminished. With blind faith in advertisement the working class still buy their weekly supply of pills and liniment, and with scorn and disbelief born of superior knowledge through experience, vehemently support their own pet brand of bilgewater, even when told it is so much rubbish.

Many people might say that in faith lies the basis of healing. Possibly, but it will take more than faith to battle with the conditions that impel us to resort to these palliatives. Within the framework of our present society there can be no cure for the illness that besets us. A broken leg can be mended but the countless complaints that take what little enjoyment we might have from our lives are part and parcel of the present set-up and can only be abolished along with the entire system.

Only under Socialism can every individual achieve a healthily working mind and body. Under a system where production for profit is a thing of the past, when the innumerable good things are freely available to all, health bills and kindred reforms will be relegated to a museum of forgotten capitalist paraphernalia to be puzzled over by the generations that will be born under Socialism.

Think then upon the deeper implications of the National Health Service before you accept it as a necessary part of your lives. No reform can ever solve your problems. Do not blindly dismiss it as a good or a bad thing but none the less inevitable. Nothing is inevitable, unless you choose to make it so. Think of what life is, compared to what it could be—to what, indeed, it will be when you and millions like you have awakened to the understanding of what Socialism is and have united to work for its achievement. 

D. M.

The National Health Service (1949)

From the November 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science into its paid wage-labourers."

Thus wrote Marx in the Communist Manifesto 101 years ago; it is still just as up to date now as when written. The doctors in those days was a wage-labourer as to-day, in spite of the fact that many looked upon him as a minor capitalist. The doctor was dependant for his livelihood upon the sale of his labour power, his ability to work, to give advice, to dispense, to diagnose, to operate and to heal. For these services he received his rewards whether he worked as a private physician, or whether he sold his services to a local municipal council, or worked for a hospital or institution.

The National Health Service of the Labour Party has not changed the doctor’s economic relationship to society one iota, except that it should have made it plainly visible to the doctors themselves that they are members of the working class, whose wages can by Government decree be drastically reduced.

When the Labour Party decided to inaugurate the National Health Service, which means in effect the Nationalisation of medicine, Bevan approached the doctors to ascertain what the average General Practitioner was earning. The representatives of the doctors were not a little concerned with such a question, knowing that some form of nationalisation was in the air. If they plugged for high wages (or salaries) by stating they were earning let us say £3,000 to £4,000 a year, their income tax returns could easily be investigated; and if it were discovered that they were paying income tax on, let us say £1,000, the ministry would know at once what was happening. The long and protracted negotiations between the Minister of Health and the medical profession were not a little due to this awkward position which the doctors very reluctantly had to face. In the struggle the Labour Party won, and Bevan triumphantly proclaimed to the doctors that the State would pay them a salary commensurable with that which they were earning, that is what the doctors said they were earning. That being done, they became pafd wage labourers of the State, Civil Servants of a type.

It is quite well known that every doctor formerly lost a large percentage of his fees by bad debts. Although doctors have the legal privilege to sue for unpaid fees, very rarely did any doctor take advantage of such facilities of the law. If Doctor Brown sued poor old Mrs. Jones (who let us say was bedridden and poverty stricken), his name would be mud in the district, and his fellow-practitioners would soon scoop up his practice. Under the National Health Scheme, since the Government collected the cash in weekly instalments that everybody must pay, a guarantee could be given to the doctors that there would be no loss of fees. This did not appear to enthuse the doctors who sulked and acted as if they were getting a raw deal. Is it possible that they were taking cash and forgetting (it is easy enough) to record it for His Majesty’s Inspectors of Inland Revenue?

The net result of all this is that many of the doctors are not very interested in the National Health Service, which has been witnessed by thousands who have consulted doctors under the new plan. For the nationalised physician it means more work for less fees, hence the reason why they have discussed the possibility of mass resignation at an early date.

Another economic aspect of the National Health Service must not be overlooked. Since its introduction a year ago, the value of the shares in all the drug companies has increased and record profits have been made. At the recent shareholders’ meeting of the Boots Drug Stores, the chairman declared that “they had had a record year with profits over £600,000 and that had they had more staff to cope with orders, they would have done a great deal better.” It is, therefore, no accident that the National Health Insurance has been introduced. In actual fact it is no insurance at all from the workers aspect, but a national disease treating scheme, whose real function it is to get workers back to work as soon as possible. It means that the big problem of absentee-ism has been tacked nationally. No longer can a worker offer an excuse that he was ill and could not get a doctor or afford treatment. If the Health Insurance insures anything, it insures that the worker is got back to work in double quick time! Strange is it not that this peculiar service has been introduced at terrific costs in time and labour, by a political party which has been shouting itself hoarse to get increased production! The net result is lower wages for workers by compelling them to pay insurances, lower salaries and more work for doctors, and larger profits for the big drug houses.

Thus does the Labour Party in but another field not only carry on the task of running capitalism in the interests of the real ruling class (the capitalists) as we have consistently claimed, but does it more efficiently and effectively than previous capitalist Governments.

Horace Jarvis