Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto

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I think my main criticism though is that there were a lot of parts that could use more explanation and parts where they present a cool idea or part of an argument but don’t explain further. Death Panel has a listener-initiated reading group on disability justice and has become a “cult hit” in the art world. It’s an interesting history, but after the broad, internationalist lens of the first two-thirds, it feels out of place. This may be in part due to the somewhat niche nature of the academic community to which it is aimed.

I almost NEVER complain about jargon/book density but this one hit hard, I think bc even though I was familiar with the ideas and the people they cited (bc of the podcast) I still had a rough time. Heath Communism is not "well-behaved": It is not interested in sober consideration, dry pontifications. The ways that definitions of health and illness are used to ‘other’ people and widen divisions is examined extensively throughout the text and do provide some useful points for discussion. Parallels to what RWG describes in terms of prisons being a solution to both “surplus populations” and unmonetized land in the California of the 1990s. I haven't read anything this substantial in years — not since required reading in undergrad, to be honest.Also includes a really interesting + usable history of SPK, a socialist patient’s collective in 1970s West Germany. Here is deep wisdom to arm a struggle towards forms of human embodiment as yet undreamed-of; inspiration for a million insurgencies of communist health.

The view of the authors is that capitalism is a ‘parasite’ on health, unable to function unless it can control, codify and exploit both diagnosis and treatment. Simply put, Capitalism is a scourge on the health of human beings, which would seem to preclude its renunciation by just about everyone, right? However, this book is very academic and requires a good working knowledge of political theory and how that is applied in policy.Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant have been a lifeline for many during the COVID-19 pandemic through their Death Panel podcast, deconstructing the failed American response with a knife that cuts like truth. Almost every other sentence contained an argument or thing that I wanted to hear more about - I guess luckily about a fifth of the book is a bibliography.