30 April 1999
A new Ontario report has been released which indicates that heart disease in the city of Windsor is out of control. And, contrary to popular opinion, heart disease is higher amongst workers than corporate executives. Some have found the findings surprising.Why are rates so high amongst workers? The local newspaper, Windsor Star, interviewed one doctor who lamented that, because certain groups are poorer, less educated, they just don't make smart lifestyle choices.
Lifestyle changes, smart choices? The vein on my forehead was pulsing as I read on.
What he and many others in the medical profession suggest is that heart disease is our own fault. Change your lifestyle and you will be healthier. Just take time to relieve stress, exercise more, eat less fast food, less fattening foods, quit smoking.
Did they lose the point in all this? What about the injuries of class?
If you want to talk lifestyle, then let's talk about trying to make a living at the bottom end of the payscale, residing nearer those industries throwing carcinogens into the air you breathe, breathing chemical swill at the workplace, having no power, not having the time from work to see a doctor, much less have the money to buy needed but costly prescriptions.
Want to talk stress? How about having your life owned by the bank with a mortgage you're trying to pay wondering if your paycheque will make it through the week because you're trying to feed the family, clothe them, get the kids to and from school while dealing with a broken down vehicle which you are forced to drive because public transportation is inadequate because everybody is told they need a car, the stress and fear of unemployment.
Want to talk about diet? Let's talk about eating foods with higher fat content because they are cheaper when you're in a mad dash to get things done by a society that imposes time as money so that when you do get home the last thing on your mind is exercising, so you grab a smoke or a beer to relieve stress which in the end only enhances stress.
The problem isn't lifestyle. The problem is the type of society that causes the lifestyle. Isn't that obvious?
While the "professionals" may sometimes note class, occupational differences in regard to disease and injury, their analysis does not go beyond workers as "consumers" - the choices made by "smart" consumers as opposed to "less educated" ones.
This fits in well with the obfuscation which divides society into "producers" and "consumers", between "sellers" and "customers" and not the real division between workers and capitalists. We are taught that "free enterprise" is all about making sure consumers have a choice and if we only make the right choices, things would be better.
It's the same mindset that came up with the brilliant idea in A&P grocery stores to create little children sized shopping buggies with the flag "Future Customer". Train 'em while they're young.
As a socialist, I hold to the notion that if you want to make a real "consumer's choice" then you have to create a society where real needs are met.
Let's take a small example. I cannot believe that in a rational, sanely organised society, people would make a conscious choice to build a MacDonald's. Would people actually make a choice to produce a burger that pumps more grams of fat straight into your heart than a stick of butter? But base that society on the profit motive, and guess what happens.
Where would we be without the profit system? It would be a lot healthier individually as would society as a whole. Of course, it means getting rid of money, getting rid of working for a wage, people making democratic choices about what to produce and how to do it.
I have been told that this is a naive and utopian notion, but the naive bunkum is the belief that working for a wage, a society driven by profit is the natural order of things, cannot be changed and that this is the way it always has been and ever will be. History has shown that 200 to 400 years ago a small group of entrepreneurs drove our ancestors off their lands at bayonet point, deprived them of all property except their ability to work, starved them, beat them (in the process killing a goodly number) forcing them to work in factories and shops to work for this new thing called a "wage". Voila! The wage system and the working class was created! That's the way it happened in Europe, in Russia and still happening around the globe.
And it is the height of naivete to believe that the solutions to the
ravages of heart disease or any other illness can be dealt with as long as
the real causes of illness and disease in society remain unchallenged.