Economic euthanasia - Robert Kurz

In the ideology of political economy, money is a sophisticated tool for the most
effective provision of material goods and social services to society; for that very
reason, it would be irrelevant in a truly economic sense, as it would not be
anything but a simple veil over real production and
distribution. Marx, however, showed that money, as the
self-valorization of capital, is a fetishistic end-in-itself,
and that it thus has priority over the satisfaction of
concrete needs. Real goods are only produced if they
serve this end-in-itself of the multiplication of money; if
they do not, their production ceases, even though their
production may be technically possible and despite the
fact that they constitute a vital necessity. This is
particularly evident in such domains as pensions and health care, which are not in
themselves direct means of capital valorization, but which must be financed from
wages and profits. On the purely material plane there are enough resources
available to provide the population with food and medical care, even though an
increasing proportion of the population is not part of the active labor force. Under
the dictates of the money fetish, however, this objective possibility becomes
unfinanceable.
The pension and health insurance systems are indirectly subordinated to the
dictates of abstract valorization. Under conditions of a budget crisis both are
economized. This means that they must be managed in accordance with
economic criteria in order to be capable of participating in financial flows. Even the
medical diagnosis has become a commodity, under the pressure of competition.
The goal is not the health and well-being of people, but the administration of drugs
to uphold productivity, on the one hand, and the management of illness, on the
other. The ideal person for the prevailing institutions would be an Olympic
performer at the workplace (in order to increase the national product), who should
be simultaneously defined as chronically ill (in order to fill the coffers of the health
system) and who voluntarily kicks the bucket when he reaches retirement age (in
order to not be a burden on capitalism).
It was medical science itself that paved the way for this splendid calculation. It was
indeed so advanced that more and more people were living long after retirement.
This is a significant example of the fact that competition compels a development of
the productive forces that is no longer compatible with the logic of capital. The
mute force of circumstances (Marx) thus engenders a tendency towards finding a
way to reverse these undeniable medical conquests. The production of artificial
poverty has a preventive effect. Thus, in Germany, the life expectancy of the
lowest-paid workers has fallen from 77.5 to 75.5 years since 2001. Those who are
unable to make enough money to survive, despite having worked hard at full time
jobs, reach their old age so exhausted that they can no longer successfully explore
the possibilities of medicine. Furthermore, they have less access to medical care,
which is available according to ones ability to pay. Now that the Greek hospitals
are practically bankrupt, the major pharmaceutical corporations are cutting off
their supplies of drugs for cancer, AIDS and hepatitis; and the supply of insulin was
also interrupted. This is not an exception to the rule, but the image of our future.
At least for the sick poor and the superfluous, for those who are not utilizable
from the capitalist point of view, all the experts will apply the lesson that King

Frederick of Prussia bellowed at his soldiers as they were fleeing the battlefield:
Dogs! Do you want to live forever?