Who Can Afford Life?

What a truly dysfunctional society we have created that tells us that some lives are worth more than others. Only those that can afford a safe car, car seats, side-collision airbags, reinforced steel, etc., etc… “Larger, heavier cars with poor ratings may easily produce better results than smaller cars with good ratings” (safecarguide.com). But who can afford the heavier cars? For that matter, how many poor families in poor states like Montana—which happen to have very high traffic fatality rates—can afford a new car with basic safety features at all? Besides, even if you’re lucky to be in one of the safest small vehicles, you will still not survive a collision with Richie Rich’s Hummer.

What does a poor family choose to do as winter nears and they have to decide whether or not to buy much needed new tires to make their cars safer or to take their sick children to the doctor during flu season? The fact is money doesn’t go far enough and millions of American families are forced to make decisions that one should not be forced to make.

Health care is but one of many factors in the widening gap of haves and have nots. Fewer and fewer Americans can afford the best medical care. The rest are left to decide whether or not they should tough out preventable and curable illnesses. Disclaimers, caveats and loopholes make many group medical plans (HMOs, etc.) dangerously deceiving to unsuspecting and ignorant policyholders. In some cases, specific procedures that are necessary for survival are seen as “elective,” such as some organ transplant surgeries. Millions of Americans depend on their employee insurance to protect them and their families, yet are completely unaware of exactly what their insurance affords them. Besides, the out-of-pocket expenses make insurance a less-than-effective means for sound health care. Again, the “unaffordability” of health care determines that only a select group of people are worthy of care.

It is striking to think of the political platform of many American politicians and their supporters that claim to be against abortion, calling themselves “pro-life.” In many cases, these same politicians are the ones that are against socialized medicine—a system of medical care that nearly all of the first-world countries employ. Not coincidentally, first-world countries with socialized medicine have much better overall public health and health care. What on earth are we waiting for? A “pro-lifer” seems to be telling the world that they are “pro-life” only up until the point that the person is born, then afterwards…not so much!

Money buys one the means of production, influence, power, safe cars (that kill the people in the little cars), best lawyers, best education, best houses, best cars, best health care, best food, luxury items, best clothing, best vacations, and on and on…those without money, well…I guess you can join the rich man’s army and fight their wars.

The sickness of capitalism is further highlighted in “terminator seeds.” Terminator Technology, a brainchild of the monstrosity known as Monsanto, was designed as a means for restricting the natural process of seed regeneration, thereby forcing farmers to purchase their seeds each year from, you guessed it: Monsanto and Co. To me, very few modern business practices more eloquently express the incompatibility of a capitalist system and the natural order. A company thinks up a way to create an everlasting monopolistic dependency by modifying the most basic processes of life: life itself. The process creates seeds that are sterile so that they can not regenerate. Perhaps this is capitalism at its worst, but innumerable cases such as Monsanto abound, and they only serve to add more evidence of its “anti-life” by-products.

Capitalism cannot be reformed, nor would an informed and aware populace wish to reform it. Since the world is divided into a capitalist class and a working class, the work must be to continue to point out to the working class the absurdity and “anti-life” nature of capitalism. We must be made more and more aware of the oppressor. This work involves highlighting the fundamental disparity between capitalism and democracy. Theses two concepts have been too closely linked and they should be clearly demarcated through education.

The Wobblies, IWW, in Butte, Montana from 1905-1920 believed that the raising of the social consciousness and the overall education of the working class was a natural process of direct action. They believed that true revolutionaries would lead the revolution through direct action and the working class that participated in these actions were learning of the actual power, inherent rights and dignity they had when they acted.

Perhaps many once believed that the feudal system was inevitable, immutable and eternal. Yet a quick glance through history reminds us that there is a definite trend towards libertarian socialism. Long live the social revolution!