1 December 2018
One million dead from suicide,
drug overdoses since 2007
This year’s report on
mortality rates released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
reveal that the American working class is confronting an unprecedented social,
economic, health and psychological crisis.
The CDC’s findings show a
staggering increase in the indices of social misery in just one year, from 2016
to 2017:
Life expectancy dropped from
78.7 to 78.6 years, the third consecutive year-by-year decline.
The age-adjusted death rate
increased 0.4 percent, from 728.8 deaths per 100,000 people to 731.9 per
100,000 (including a 2.9 percent increase among young people aged 25-34).
Drug overdose deaths increased
9.6 percent (including a 45 percent increase in deaths from fentanyl). Drug
overdose is the leading cause of death for those under 55.
Suicide rates increased in
2017 by 3.7 percent, from 13.5 per 100,000 to 14.0 per 100,000.
The report’s historical
figures quantify the devastating impact on the working class of the financial
crash of 2007-2008 and its aftermath.
From 2007 to 2017, suicide
deaths rose from 34,598 to 47,173, a 36.3 percent increase.
Drug overdose deaths nearly doubled,
rising 95.0 percent, from 36,010 in 2007 to 70,237 in 2017.
The total dead from suicide
and drug overdose since 2007 alone is 954,365 people—equivalent to the
population of America’s 10th largest city. This is more than the total number
of US soldiers killed in all of America’s wars, excluding the civil war. With
2018 nearly complete, the total dead has now likely crossed one million people.
The response of the political
establishment to the report is entirely predictable: an article or two in the major
newspapers, a quick segment on the evening news, and maybe a tweet from a
handful of politicians.
But everyone knows that
nothing will be done. The stock prices of the corporations peddling pills to
disabled veterans and injured workers will continue to rise. By tomorrow, the
CDC reports will be long forgotten, buried beneath the ruling class’s
anti-Russia and anti-China campaigns, #MeToo hysteria, and demands for internet
censorship.
The cause of the deaths of
100,000 people per year from social misery is not a great mystery. It is the
product of the capitalist system and the intended result of policies of
deindustrialization and social counterrevolution carried out for more than four
decades by both the Democrats and Republicans, in collaboration with the trade
unions.
This is a widely recognized
fact among medical professionals.
A 2018 study published by
the American Journal of Public Health titled “Opioid Crisis: No Easy
Fix to its Social and Economic Determinants” blames “a multi-decade rise in
income inequality and economic shocks stemming from deindustrialization and
social safety net cuts” for growing differences in life expectancy between the
rich and the poor.
In particular, the study notes
the devastating impact of the massive wealth transfer carried out by the Obama
administration after the 2008 financial crash. “The 2008 financial crisis along
with austerity measures and other neo-liberal policies have further eroded
physical and mental well-being,” the report states.
While the banks and
corporations received trillions in bailouts, millions of workers lost their
homes, their jobs and their sense of dignity and purpose.
Last Monday, when General
Motors announced that it was closing five auto plants and laying off 15,000
workers in the US and Canada, its stock soared nearly 7 percent. For the
company’s affluent shareholders—including the bureaucracy of the United Auto Workers
union (UAW)—this news means longer and more exclusive vacations, new and more
expensive cars and homes, and plenty of jewelry and champagne for the holidays.
But for autoworkers, their
families and the millions of residents of the impacted areas, it means
desperation, drug addiction and death.
Those cities impacted by the
GM plant closures—including Detroit and its Warren, Michigan suburb, White
Marsh, Maryland and Lordstown, Ohio—are already among the most horribly
affected by the opioid crisis after decades of cuts to jobs, wages and social
services. The difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest 25
percent is already 6.7 years in Youngstown, Ohio, near Lordstown. In metro
Detroit the difference is 8.2 years.
GM’s move was hailed by the
corporate press. The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post (owned
respectively by the multibillionaires Rupert Murdoch and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos)
praised the decision as a stroke of genius. Automotive News named
company CEO Mary Barra “Industry Leader of the Year.”
The duplicitous and staged
anger among a relative handful of Democrats, Republicans and UAW officials to
GM’s move is totally fraudulent. All those politicians and union bureaucrats who
are pounding the podium with one hand are accepting company payoffs with the
other.
GM gave billionaire CEO Donald
Trump $25,000 for his 2016 presidential run and he reciprocated with massive
tax cuts for corporations and the rich. That same year, GM gave more money to
Bernie Sanders ($33,000) than to any other senator.
In 2018, GM contributed to the
campaigns of a majority of those elected to the House and Senate, in
equal parts Democratic and Republican.
As for the UAW, this
organization of bribe-takers and company agents is responsible for decades of
concessions, which have transformed auto towns like Dayton, Toledo and Kokomo
from relatively comfortable communities to epicenters of the opioid crisis. In
return, the union bosses have been well compensated. A growing list of current
and former UAW officials is under federal investigation for accepting bribes
from GM, Fiat-Chrysler and Ford in exchange for helping the companies increase
exploitation and cut labor costs.
Under capitalism, the working
class is entirely excluded from the decision-making process. The political
establishment makes nothing available to help the victims of factory closures
and deindustrialization, leaving them to die.
Instead of meeting the needs
of the working class, the ruling class pockets the wealth created by workers
and allocates trillions of dollars to the military and intelligence agencies so
that they can implement through military force the demands of the banks and
corporations.
The Trump administration cut
more than $200 million from health programs to help pay the cost of locking up
14,000 working-class children from Central America, whose only “crime” was to
flee their impoverished homelands in search of a better life.
In September, the Department
of Health and Human Services announced that it was transferring $16.7 million
from the CDC, $9.8 million from Medicare and Medicaid, $87.3 million from the
National Institute of Health and $80 million from refugee care to establish
internment camps for immigrant children. And Trump wants workers to believe
that immigrants—and not the government and corporations—are to blame for plant
shutdowns and cuts to wages and social programs!
The CDC reports provide a
quantitative expression of the immense social anger and desperation that have
built up in the working class, for which there has been no progressive outlet.
The decades-long suppression of the class struggle imposed by the trade unions
has forced workers to channel their anger inward, and in their isolation, many
are taking self-destructive measures.
But this long period of
one-sided class war is coming to a close. This year, which has seen a major
increase in strike activity, is only the beginning of a new period that will be
marked by increasingly powerful strikes and protests in the US and
internationally.
Workers must build their own
organizations—rank-and-file committees—to unite and coordinate their struggles
across industries and national boundaries. In this way, workers can harness
their collective social dissatisfaction and channel it in a political direction
in the struggle against capitalism and for socialism. By unleashing their
immense social power, workers will storm the commanding heights of the
capitalist system and free up trillions of dollars to meet the urgent needs of
the human race.
Eric London
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