Policies of austerity – the response to the crisis of capitalism – are inflicting pain on millions and leading to real human suffering. We publish here two letters from Socialist Appeal supporters, who outline recent scientific research that show the devastating human cost of capitalism.
Policies of austerity – the response to the crisis of capitalism – are inflicting pain on millions and leading to real human suffering. We publish here two letters from Socialist Appeal supporters, who outline recent scientific research that show the devastating human cost of capitalism.
A new book details the human cost of capitalist crisis. “The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills” by economists David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu uses statistical analysis to discover the human effects of the recession. In a Guardian article, Stuckler describes the book as articulating “why austerity kills”.
In the U.S. five million people have lost access to healthcare because they have been made unemployed – and therefore lost their health insurance. In the UK, 10,000 families have been made homeless by the Tories’ bedroom tax. The Sunday Mirror recently highlighted the case of a grandmother who committed suicide as she was faced with the cut to her housing benefit and losing her home of 18 years.
In Greece – the centre of the austerity experiment – suicides have shot up by 60 per cent in a country with an historically low rate. HIV infection has also spiraled by 200 per cent as prevention budgets have been slashed. Another newspaper article reports on a deadly new drug – cut with battery acid and shampoo – which has become popular among Athens’ growing homeless population and young unemployed (youth unemployment now stands at 64 per cent). The Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh shows how the dark hand of capitalism reaches across continents, blighting lives the world over.
Stuckler and Basu come to reformist conclusions: they cite Iceland as an example of recovery without austerity. But, as has been pointed out elsewhere Iceland’s recovery has been managed in the interest of capital, where living standards have fallen by 30-40 per cent and billions of Icelandic kronur were spent in bailing out big business. Similarly, Germany’s status as a ‘stable’ economy has been bought at the expense of decades of wage restraint and labour market liberalisation.
Certainly the contradictions of world capitalism are being felt more sharply in some countries than others, but the answer is not some utopian “responsible” capitalism – which, even if it does “work” for a temporary period in Scandinavia and/or Germany, is not on the cards for the UK, Greece, Spain, Italy, the U.S., Bangladesh or the rest of the world. The statistics of Stuckler and Basu point to only one conclusion: that capitalism kills.
The only solution is a planned socialist economy based on human need not profit!
By Matt Wood
The New Scientist magazine carried an article recently, in its edition dated 13th April, with the title “Austerity’s Toxic Genetic Legacy”. In the article the author explains how the high stress levels caused by high unemployment and a falling standard of living, such as the working class are experiencing now, can cause serious illness. Not only that but long-term psychological stress can cause long-lasting changes in genes that trigger chronic inflammation.
The author also highlights a study that suggests that generations born during recessions have abnormally high rates of death. He points out the link between increases in mental health risks and heart attacks following job losses.
His data shows that suicides have soared since the financial crash, mental health disorders are through the roof. Perhaps the most horrific fact is that there has been a surge in HIV infections among intravenous drug users in Greece, and there is evidence to suggest that some people in Greece are deliberately infecting themselves with HIV in order to access healthcare otherwise unavailable due to budget cuts.
Socialist Appeal has always said that this present crisis of capitalism points out in a stark fashion that the choice facing society is that of Socialism or Barbarism. Barbarism can sometimes seem to be an exaggeration, and yet it seems the only fitting description of a system that forces people to infect themselves with HIV in order to access healthcare. The capitalist system is so rotten that it poisons the lives of future generations even before they are born through damaging genetic changes.
Only the transformation of society with a socialist programme can take us forward. To cling to capitalism is to condemn ours and future generations to barbarism and misery. Armed with the ideas and methods of Marxism we will be unstoppable in our efforts to build a better world, now and in the future.
By Ben Gliniecki
