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Title: Illness and Capital
Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno
Date: August 27th 2020
Language: en
Topics: anti-psychiatry, coronavirus, illness, capital
Source: Retrieved on 27th August 2020 from https://325.nostate.net/2020/08/27/illness-and-capital-by-alfredo-m-bonanno/

Alfredo M. Bonanno

Illness and Capital

Illness, i.e.a faulty functioning of the organism, is not peculiar to

man. Animals also get ill, and even things can in their own way present

defects in functioning. The idea of illness as abnormality is the

classic one that was developed by medical science.

The response to illness, mainly thanks to the positivist ideology which

still dominates medicine today, is that of the cure, that is to say, an

external intervention chosen from specific practices, aimed at restoring

the conditions of a given idea of normality.

Yet it would be a mistake to think that the search for the causes of

illness has always run parallel to this scientific need to restore

normality. For centuries remedies did not go hand in hand with the study

of causes, which at times were absolutely fantastical. Remedies had

their own logic, especially when based on empirical knowledge of the

forces of nature.

In more recent times a critique of the sectarianism of science,

including medicine, has based itself on the idea of man’s totality: an

entity made up of various natural elements—intellectual, economic,

social, cultural, political and so on. It is in this new perspective

that the materialist and dialectical hypothesis of Marxism inserted

itself. The variously described totality of the new, real man no longer

divided up into the sectors that the old positivism had got us used to,

was again encapsulated in a one-way determinism by the Marxists. The

cause of illness was thus considered to be due exclusively to capitalism

which, by alienating man through work, exposed him to a distorted

relationship with nature and ‘normality’, the other side of illness.

In our opinion neither the positivist thesis that sees illness as being

due to a faulty functioning of the organism, nor the Marxist one that

sees everything as being due to the misdeeds of capitalism is

sufficient.

Things are a little more complicated than that.

Basically, we cannot say that there would no longer be such a thing as

illness in a liberated society. Nor can we say that in that happy event

illness would reduce itself to a simple weakening of some hypothetical

force that is still to be discovered. We think that illness is part of

the nature of man’s state of living in society, i.e. corresponds to a

certain price to be paid for correcting a little of nature’s optimal

conditions in order to obtain the artificiality necessary to build even

the freest of societies.

Certainly, the exponential growth of illness in a free society where

artificiality between individuals would be reduced to the strictly

indispensable, would not be comparable to that in a society based on

exploitation, such as the one in which we are living now. It follows

from this that the struggle against illness is an integral part of the

class conflict. Not so much because illness is caused by capital—which

would be a deterministic, therefore unacceptable, statement—but because

a freer society would be different. Even in its negativity it would be

closer to life, to being human. So illness would be an expression of our

humanity just as it is the expression of our terrifying inhumanity

today. This is why we have never agreed with the somewhat simplistic

thesis that could be summed up in the phrase “make illness a weapon”,

even though it is one that deserves respect, especially as far as mental

illness is concerned. It is not really possible to propose to the

patient a cure that is based exclusively on the struggle against the

class enemy. Here the simplification would be absurd. Illness also means

suffering, pain, confusion, uncertainty, doubt, solitude, and these

negative elements do not limit themselves to the body, but also attack

consciousness and the will. To draw up programmes of struggle on such a

basis would be quite unreal and terrifyingly inhuman.

But illness can become a weapon if one understands it both in its causes

and effects. It can be important for me to understand what the external

causes of my illness are: capitalists and exploiters, State and capital.

But that is not enough. I also need to clarify my relationship with my

illness, which might not only be suffering, pain and death. It might

also be a means by which to understand myself and others better, as well

as the reality that surrounds me and what needs to be done to transform

it, and also get a better grasp of revolutionary outlets. The mistakes

that have been made in the past on this subject come from lack of

clarity due to the Marxist interpretation. That was based on the claim

to establish a direct relationship between illness and capital. We think

today that this relationship should be indirect, i.e. by becoming aware

of illness, not of illness in general as a condition of abnormality, but

of my illness as a component of my life, an element of my normality.

And then, the struggle against this illness. Even if not all struggles

end in victory.