Inequality Under Capitalism

Inequality in the area of food and health under capitalism is egregious. With bad food, bad health and difficult-to- or no-access to health services, the poor, the low-income people pay the inequality. It’s a payment made with life, and by the subaltern classes.

“There have been huge gains in life expectancy worldwide,” the OECD finds, “but large disparities remain among socio-economic groups.…everywhere, the richest and the most educated are in better health: at age 30, people with the highest level of education could expect to live six years longer than people with the lowest level of education (53 years versus 47 years). Differences in life expectancy by education level are particularly large in Central European countries, especially among men.” 

The health-inequality comes from many factors that include differences in living and working conditions, and access to and quality of health care. Access to quality health care is influenced by financial and non-financial reasons. And, both – financial and non-financial reasons – are connected to politics of dominating classes, which are not identified by mainstream academia.

“In many OECD countries,” the report said, “large inequalities remain in self-rated health status across different socio-economic groups. These inequalities reflect differences in living and working conditions, as well as in behavioural factors … Poorly educated women are two to three times more likely to be overweight and obese than those with high levels of education. People in low-income households may also have more limited access to certain health services or use these services less for financial or non-financial reasons, notably certain preventive services.”
The power that defines living and working conditions is not identified although the differences are mentioned. The two conditions – living and working – are constructed by none else, but profit. The poor, the multitude is pressed into the conditions, part of competition, by capital.

Studies conducted in Australia, New Zealand and the US found that in many poorer neighborhoods healthy food is neither available nor accessible nor affordable.

Doesn’t it echo Engels? 

“The workers get what is too bad for the property-holding class. In the great towns of England everything may be had of the best, but it costs money; and the workmen … cannot afford much expense. … The potatoes which the workers buy are usually poor, the vegetables wilted, the cheese old and of poor quality, the bacon rancid, the meat lean, tough, taken from old, often diseased, cattle, or such as have died a natural death, and not fresh even then, often half decayed.” 

 (The Condition of the Working-class in England) 

(New Age, Dhaka, October 16, 2014, “Hunger stalks millions despite growth in food production, World Food Day today”) 

The inconsistent “picture” is not only from Bangladesh and from England. It’s in India, and it’s in Nepal and South Africa also. It’s the overall reality in the world system. 

Don’t the facts reaffirm the reality of inequality, and the demands the working people struggle for: affordable better food, affordable better health care, affordable better environment, safer life, affordable leisure-time? The inequality turns cruel if one compares this with profit-stories of health care and food industries.

The cited facts are fresh but the reality of inequality is old. It’s an old narration of the triumphal march of capital with its devastating power.

taken from much longer article by Farooque Chowdhury here