Daily Times

Falling sick can be a matter of chance, not of choice. The possibility of light afflictions even when they are succeeded by the “eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” is quite scary for human beings. In the selection of afflictions and enemies fortune does not favour the human but that does not mean they transcend class character. Certain diseases such as tuberculosis invariably fall into the category of a ‘class phenomenon’, and hence are conveniently tagged as pauper’s diseases. In developing countries, where socio-economic inequality surpasses all limits, despite the availability of treatment, this malady is still rife. In Pakistan, a country dwelled in by the ‘pure’ and ruled by the ‘pious’ where, save Praetorian guards, the state barely exists; for a humble majority death appears a far more convenient option than passing through the inferno of illness.

In the absence of an effective public healthcare system every ailment can potentially turn into a curse. For ordinary folk, the children of a lesser god, the commencement of a serious disease simply means the beginning of an era marred by protracted gloom and doom, an indefinite period of misery. The state of hospitals in the public domain is far from satisfactory, if not absolutely dismal, where the majority is treated as if it were a pariah. In the pre-civilised era, an epoch not very far off, lepers were purged to the wilderness of seclusion to die in misery. Times have changed and so have the customs yet history is repeating itself as tragedy albeit in a subtle manner. Treatment of some kind is available and not out rightly denied but how desperately it struggles to provide relief is incomprehensible. In a warfare state, the state’s priorities are always somewhere else. The human is left to suffer, reel and die not with disease alone but with a broken heart as well. Man becomes a class individual; his position and destiny are determined by the class that he belongs to. Nowhere else in the class divide are alienation and the commodity fetishism so evident than here, where shadows of Hades lurk all around the person afflicted by a pathology.

The more complicated the nature of the malady, the less likely are the chances of cure. The prognosis gets bleary with every passing day. The myth of savings meant for rainy days tends to explode swiftly as rain invariably becomes too devastating and its duration keeps prolonging. When sorrows come they come not as single spies but in battalions; inundated the family ends up facing both psychological and financial catastrophe. Not to be able to run with the hounds of expenditure creates a feeling of shame that culminates in guilt. Religion remains the only refuge. Prayer, a narcissistic wish, overtakes rationality. The bitterness of reality begins to tread on the path of metaphysics. Instead of the scrupulous care of the messiah who gradually ceases to be affordable, the mercy of divinity takes over the saddle of human rationality. The ‘promised reward’ in heaven becomes the only possible alternative to what is denied in the real world. From here on Nietzsche becomes relevant. “The entire counterfeit of transcendence and of the hereafter,” he says, “has grown up on the basis of an impoverished life.”

The market economy and religion both hit the human where it hurts the most. A calamity for one becomes an opportunity for the other. Akin to all commodities, human health — in fact human life — is up for sale. Money, the divine gospel, decides who is to be left out in the cold to petrify in the corridors of public hospitals and whose life is indispensable or at least too precious to be saved from the eventuality of death. The number of five-star hotels could be counted on one’s fingertips but the mushrooming of hospitals glittering with the dazzling lights of multiple stars have transcended one’s calculations. In the ocean of death these oasis of life (the expansive microcosms on this planet once belonged to the wretched of the earth) become the symbol of survival but for the very few. Why are some lives more important than others, why ‘select’ souls become more equals among unequals? For a person with a heart brimming with compassion “this riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” remains the point of reflection and not the Soviet union of yesteryear, which kept haunting Churchill and other merchants of war and death.

Is the privatisation of health not a holocaust of the majority organised by the market economy in broad daylight with legal backing, which treats the human being as a thing, a mere commodity? This is a declaration of war against humanity conducted without subtlety. This is ugly, much more hideous and absolutely unforgiveable since it is packaged under the guise of ‘cure’, a panacea to restore one’s health. Whose cure? The one who is treated or the one who treats or mistreats? ‘To be or not to be’ is the question for one, while for the other it is a matter of making hay while the sun shines. It is about attaining a high pedestal in society. This process of private appropriation culminates in accumulation of wealth. The realisation of every capital presupposes continuous repetition of this cycle or else it stagnates. The sole objective of life pivots around money; money becomes an embodiment of life. The money fetishism becomes the only bond through which human beings relate to each other. Once the flow of money begins to dictate human relations, every thought and goal becomes subservient to property relations. Man becomes an embodiment of capital, a thing, an alienated soul who recognises his fellow human beings through exchange value alone. Marx succinctly inquires: “[If it is] the bond of all bonds, can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation?”

(To be continued)

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com