Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 43/46

Appendix 6. Extracts from
‘The Way Toward Health’ by Jane Roberts

If people become ill, it is quite fashionable to say that the immunity system has temporarily failed – yet the body itself knows that certain ‘dis-eases’ are healthy reactions. The body does not recognise diseases as diseases in usually understood terms. It regards all activity as experience, as a momentary condition of life, as a balancing situation.

It is … fashionable to say that men and women have conscious minds, subconscious minds and unconscious minds – but there is no such thing as an unconscious mind. The body consciousness is highly conscious. You are simply not conscious of it.

You might say [instead] that varying portions of your own consciousness operate at different speeds. Translations between one portion of consciousness and another go on constantly, so that information is translated from one ‘speed’ to another.

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Many psychiatrists and psychologists now realise that a disturbed client cannot be helped sufficiently unless the individual is considered along with his or her relationship to the family unit.

The same idea applies to physical illness as well. It is possible, however, to carry this idea even further, so that a person in poor health should be seen by the physician in relationship to the family and also in relationship to the environment.
Old-time family doctors understood the patient’s sensitivity to family members and to the environment, of course, and they often felt a lively sympathy and understanding that the practitioners of modern medicine often seem to have forgotten.

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Modern medical science largely considers the human body to be a kind of mechanical model, a sort of vehicle like a car that needs to be checked by a garage every so often.

As an automobile is put together at an assembly line, so the body is seen as a very efficient machine put together in nature’s ‘factory’. If all the parts are in their proper place, and functioning smoothly, then the machine should give as excellent a service as any well-running automobile – or so it seems.

All of the automobile’s parts, however, are alone responsible for its operations so long as it has a responsible driver. There are, however, hidden relationships that exist between various parts of the body – and the parts themselves are hardly mechanical. They change in every moment.

The heart is often described as a type of pump. With the latest developments in modern technology, there are all kinds of heart operations that can be performed, even the use of heart transplants. In many cases, even when hearts are repaired through medical technology, the same trouble reoccurs at a later date, or the patient recovers only to fall prey to a different, nearly fatal or fatal disease. This is not always the case by any means, but when such a person does recover fully, and maintains good health, it is because [their] beliefs, attitudes and feelings have changed for the better, and because the person ‘has a heart’ again; in other words because the patient himself has regained the will to live.

Many people who have heart trouble feel that they have ‘lost the heart’ for life. They may feel broken-hearted for many reasons. They may feel heartless, or imagine themselves to be so cold-hearted that they punish themselves literally by trying to lose their heart.

With many people having such difficulties, the addition of love in the environment may work far better than any heart operation. A new pet given to a bereaved individual has saved more people from needing heart operations than any physician. In other words, a ‘love transplant’ in the environment may work far better overall than a heart-transplant operation, or a bypass, or whatever; in such ways the heart is allowed to heal itself.

People have been taught to trust 275a picture of what is happening in their bodies, and cautioned not to trust their own feelings. Some public-service announcements stress the ‘fact’ that the individual can be gravely threatened by high blood pressure, for example, even though he or she feels in excellent health.

In many cases people exercise quite simply because they are afraid of what will happen if they do not. They may run to avoid heart disease, for example, whilst their own fear can help to promote the very eventuality they fear.

The body’s health is an expression of inner well-being. Poor health is an expression also, and it may serve many purposes. It goes without saying that some people become ill rather than change their activities and their environments. They may also become ill, of course, to force themselves to make such changes.

I do not mean to imply that exercise is detrimental to good health. It is true, however, that the reason you exercise is more important than the exercises that you do perform. The reason can promote your good health or actually impede it.

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The concept of survival of the fittest has had a considerable detrimental effect in many areas of human activity – particularly the realm of medical ideology and practice.

Politically as well as medically, such distortions have led to unfortunate conditions; the Aryan supremacy biological ideas fostered in the second world war, the concentration upon ‘the perfect body’, and other distortions. The idea of the ideal body has often been held up to the populace at large, and this often sets forth a stylised ‘perfect’ physique that actually could be matched by few individuals.

Any variations are frowned upon, and any birth defects considered in the most suspicious of lights. Some schools of thought then, have it that only the genetically superior should be allowed to reproduce, and there are scientists who believe that all defects can be eliminated through judicious genetic planning.

The handicapped are often given messages, even by the medical profession, that make them feel like misfits, unworthy to survive.

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Your ideas about yourself are, again vital in the larger context of a healthy lifetime. The condition of your heart is affected, for example, by your own feelings about it. If you consider yourself to be cold-hearted or heartless, those feelings will have a significant effect upon that physical organ. If you feel broken-hearted then you will also have that feeling reflected in one way or another in the physical organ itself.

…. each individual also has many options open. Everyone who feels broken-hearted does not necessarily die of heart failure for example. The subject of health cannot be considered in an isolated fashion … each person will try to fulfil their own unique abilities, and to ‘fill out’ the experience of life as fully as possible.

If an individual is hampered in that attempt strongly and persistently, then the dissatisfaction and frustration will be transformed into a lack of physical exuberance and vitality. There is always an unending reservoir of energy at the command of each person however, regardless of circumstances. …

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Thoughts and beliefs do indeed bring about physical alterations. They can even – and often do – change genetic message s.

There are diseases that people believe are inherited, carried from one generation to another by a faulty genetic communication. Obviously, many people with, for example, a genetic heritage of arthritis, do not come down with the disease themselves, while others indeed are so afflicted. The difference is one of belief.

The people who have accepted the suggestion uncritically that they will inherit such a malady do then seem to inherit it: they experience the symptoms. Actually the belief itself may have turned a healthy genetic message into an unhealthy one.

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…pain and suffering are also obviously vital, living sensations – and therefore are a part of the body’s repertoire of possible feelings and sensual experience. They are also a sign, therefore, of life’s vitality, and are in themselves often responsible for a return to health when they act as learning communications.

Many diseases are often health-promoting processes. Chicken pox, measles and other like diseases in childhood in their own way ‘naturally inoculate’ the body, so that it is able to handle other elements that are a part of the body and the body’s environment.

When civilised children are medically inoculated against such diseases … to an important extent the natural protective processes are impeded. Such children may not come down with the disease against which they are medically protected, then – but they may indeed therefore become ‘prey’ to other diseases later in life that would not otherwise have occurred.

I am not advising people to refuse to have their children vaccinated, since you now have to take vaccination into consideration because of its prominence in society. It is very possible however, that science itself will in time discover the unfortunate side effects of many such procedures, and begin to reevaluate the entire subject.

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… no person dies ahead of his or her time. The individual chooses the time of death. It is true however, that many cancers and conditions such as AIDS result because the immunity system has been so tampered with that the body has not been allowed to follow through with its own balancing act.

Again, however, no individual dies of cancer or AIDS, or any other condition, until they themselves have set the time.

…no consciousness considers death an end or a disaster, but views it instead as a means to the continuation of … existence.

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People with life-threatening diseases … often feel that further growth, development, or expansion are highly difficult, if not impossible to achieve at a certain point in their lives. Often there are complicated family relationships that the person does not know how to handle … In all cases, however, the need for value fulfilment, expression, and creativity are so important to life that when these are threatened, life itself is at least momentarily weakened. Innately, each person does realise that there is life after death, and in some instances such people realise that it is indeed time to move to another level of reality, to die and set out again with another brand new world.

Often, seriously ill people quite clearly recognise such feelings but they have been taught not to speak of them. The desire to die is considered cowardly, even evil, by some religions – and yet behind that desire lies all of the vitality of the will to life, which may already be seeking new avenues of expression and meaning.

There are those who come down with one serious disease – say heart trouble – who are cured through a heart transplant or other medical procedure, only to fall prey to another, seemingly unrelated disease, such as cancer. It would relieve the minds of family and friends, however if they understood that the individual involved did not ‘fall prey’ to the disease, and that he or she was not a victim in usual terms.

This does not mean that anyone consciously decides to get such-and-such a disease, but it does mean that some people instinctively realise that their own development does now demand another new framework of existence.

Much loneliness results when people who know they are going to die feel unable to communicate with loved ones for fear of hurting their feelings. Still other kinds of individuals will live long productive lives even while their physical mobility or health is most severely impaired. They will still feel that they had work to do, or that they were needed …

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Many cancer patients have martyr-like characteristics, often putting up with undesirable situations or conditions for years.

They feel powerless, unable to change, yet unwilling to stay in the same position. The most important point is to arouse such a person’s belief in his or her strength and power. In many instances these people shrug their shoulders, saying “What will happen, will happen,” but they do not physically struggle against their situation.

It is also vital that these patients are not overly medicated, for oftentimes the side effects of some cancer-eradicating drugs are dangerous in themselves. There has been some success with people who imagine that the cancer is instead some hated enemy or monster or foe, which is then banished with mental mock battles over a period of time. While the technique does have its advantages, it also pits one portion of the self against the other. It is much better to imagine say, the cancer cells being neutralised by some imaginary wand.

Doctors might suggest that a patient relax and then ask himself or herself what kind of inner fantasy would best serve the healing process. Instant images may come to mind at once, but if success is not achieved immediately, have the patient try again, for in almost all cases some inner picture will be perceived.

Behind the entire problem, however, is the fear of using one’s full power or energy. Cancer patients most usually feel an inner impatience as they sense their own need for future expansion and development, only to feel it thwarted.

Again, we cannot generalise overmuch, but many persons know quite well that they are not sure whether they want to live or die. The overabundance of cancer cells represents nevertheless the need for expression and expansion – the only arena left open – or so it would seem.

Such a person must also contend with society’s unfortunate ideas about the disease in general, so that many cancer patients end up isolated or alone. As in almost all cases of disease however, if it were possible to have a kind of ‘thought transplant’ operation, the disease would quickly vanish.

Consciously you might want to express certain abilities, whilst unconsciously you are afraid of doing so.

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For all of life’s seeming misfortunes, development, fulfilment and accomplishment far outweigh death, diseases and disasters. Starting over can be done – by anyone in any situation, and it will bring about some beneficial effects regardless of previous conditions.

Behind all maladies, in the most basic manner lies the need for expression, and when people feel that their areas of growth are being curtailed, then they instigate actions meant to clear the road, so to speak.

Before health problems show up there is almost always a loss of self-respect or expression.

In the matter of the disease called AIDS, for example, you have groups of homosexuals, many ‘coming out of the closet’ for the first time, taking part in organisations that promote their cause, and suddenly faced by the suspicions and distrust of many other portions of the population.

The struggle to express themselves, and their own unique abilities and characteristics, drives them on, and yet is all too frequently thwarted by the ignorance and misunderstanding that surrounds them. You end up with something like a psychological contagion. The people involved begin to feel even more depressed as they struggle to combat the prejudice against them. Many of them almost hate themselves. For all their seeming bravado, they fear that they are indeed unnatural members of the species.

These beliefs break down the immunity system and bring about the symptoms so connected with the disease. AIDS is a social phenomenon to that extent, expressing the deep dissatisfactions, doubts and angers of a prejudiced-against segment of society.

Whatever physical changes occur, happen because the will to live is weakened. AIDS is a kind of biological protest, as if the homosexuals are saying: “You may as well kill us. We might be better off than the way you treat us now” …

The attitude of doctors and nurses towards the handling of such patients shows only too clearly not only their fear of the disease itself, but their fear of homosexuality, which has been considered evil and forbidden by many religions.

Yet AIDS can be acquired by those who are not homosexuals, but who have similar problems. It is a great error to segregate some individuals, like a modern colony of lepers.

Many other conditions that seem to be spread by viruses or contagions are also related to the problems of society in the same manner, and when these conditions are righted the diseases themselves largely vanish. It should be remembered that it is the beliefs and feelings of the patients that largely determine the effectiveness of any medical procedures, techniques or medications.

Unfortunately, the entire picture surrounding health and disease is a largely negative one, in which even preventative medicine can have severe drawbacks, since it often recommends drugs or techniques to attack a problem not only before the problem emerges, but simply in case it emerges.

Many of the public-health announcements routinely publicise the specific symptoms of various diseases, almost as if laying out maps of diseases for medical consumers to follow.

The body’s own healing processes are forever active however – which is why I so strongly advise them being relied upon along with whatever medical help seems appropriate. But the individual, even as a patient, must always have a choice, and the right to refuse any treatment being offered.

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You cannot divorce philosophy from life, for your thoughts and opinions give your life its meaning and impetus. There are some people who believe that life is meaningless, that it has no purpose, and that its multitudinous parts fell together through the workings of chance alone. Obviously I am speaking of scientific dogma, but such dogma is far more religious than scientific, for it also expects to be believed without proof, on faith alone.

All of life is seen as heading for extinction in any case. The entire concept of a soul, life after death, or even life from one generation to the next, becomes doubtful, to say the least. In such a philosophical world it would seem that man has no power at all.

… those concepts can have a hand in the development of would-be suicides, particularly of a young age, for they seem to effectively block a future.

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For centuries it was taken for granted that God was on the side of the strongest, richest nation. Surely, it seemed, if a country was poor or downtrodden, it was because God made it so.

Such ideas literally held people in chains, fostering slavery and other inhumane practices. The same unfortunately applies to Eastern concepts of nirvana and to the Christian idea of heaven.

There are many differences between the ideas of nirvana and heaven, but each has been used, not only to justify suffering, but also to teach people to seek pain.

Quite ordinary people often believe, then, that suffering itself is a way towards personal development and spiritual knowledge. In matters of health, such beliefs can have most unfortunate results. They are often responsible for needless sacrifices of physical organs in imprudent operations.

Some individuals become anxious and worried if they think they are too happy – for them it means they are not paying sufficiently for their sins. They may be threatened by some undeniable danger, until finally, in one way or another they seek out their own punishment once again – wondering all the time why they are so frequently besieged by poor health or disease.

This kind of syndrome can affect individuals, families, and to some extent entire nations. They mitigate directly against man’s health, survival and exuberance.

Constant fears about … catastrophes can also fall under this classification. 

This is true of individuals, but it also applies to many so-called survival groups, who congregate in one or another portion of the country.

Most such people expect a period of chaotic time, in which all laws are broken down. Another version stresses the economic area, foreseeing the collapse of the economy, anarchy, and other conditions that pit one individual against another.
Some use religious dogma and others rely upon scientific dogma to prove their cases …

Good mental or physical health can hardly flourish in such conditions.

Such ideas affect every level of life, from the most microscopic onward. It is not that plants understand your ideas in usual terms, but that they do indeed pick up your intent, and in the area of world survival, they have a stake.

I do not want to romanticise nonhuman life either, or to overestimate its resources, but nature also has its own ways – and in those ways it constantly works towards the survival of life in general. Nature may not bail you out, but it will always be there, adding its own vitality and strength to the overall good and health of the planet.

Communication flashes between viruses and microbes, and they can change in the wink of an eye. Once again then, ideas of the most optimistic nature are the biologically pertinent ones.

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This is a good place to bring up some extreme food practices, such as over-fasting and an obsession with so-called natural foods. I am not talking about a natural and healthy interest in the purity of foodstuffs, but of a worrisome overconcern.

Behind many such attitudes is the idea that the body itself is unworthy, and that starving it somehow cuts down on the appetites of the flesh. You usually end up with a flurry of different types of diets.

Some concentrate almost exclusively on protein, some on carbohydrates – particularly rice – but in any case the large natural range of foods and nutrients are cut out.

This keeps the body in a state of constant turmoil. Some people are so convinced, in fact, that eating is wrong that they diet until they become ravenously hungry, then overeat and force themselves to vomit up the residue.

Other people, in a well-meaning attempt to watch their weight, skip their breakfasts entirely – a very poor procedure.

It is far better to eat moderate amounts of food in all of the food ranges, and to consume smaller portions more often … four light meals a day will overall serve you very well.

These food ideas are important, since they are often passed on from parents to children, and parents often use food as a way of rewarding a child’s good behaviour, thus starting the youngster out towards the condition of overweight.

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If you do have health problems, it is much better to look for their reason in your immediate experience …

… try to understand that the particular dilemma of illness is not an event forced upon you by some other agency. Rather realise that to some extent or another your dilemma or your illness has been chosen by you …

If you realise that your beliefs form your experience, then you do have a very good chance of changing your beliefs, and hence your experience.

You can discover what your own reasons are for choosing the dilemma or illness by being very honest with yourself. There is no need to feel guilty since you meant very well as you made each choice – only the choices were built upon beliefs that were beliefs and not facts.

If you are in serious difficulties of any kind, it may at first seem inconceivable, unbelievable or even scandalous to imagine that your problems are caused by your beliefs. In fact, the opposite may appear to be true. You might have lost a series of jobs, and it may seem quite clear to you that you are not to blame in any of these circumstances.

You may be in the middle of one or several unsatisfactory relationships, none of which seem to be caused by you, while instead you believe you are an unwilling victim or participant. You may have a dangerous drug or alcohol problem, or you may be married to someone who does.

In most cases, even the most severe illnesses or complicated living conditions are caused by an attempt to grow, develop or expand in the face of difficulties that appear to be insurmountable to one degree or another.

An individual will appear to be striving for some goal that appears blocked, and hence he or she uses all available energy and strength to circumnavigate the blockage.

[In fact] the blockage is usually a belief which needs to be understood or removed rather than bypassed.

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You are not healthy … no matter how robust your physical condition, if your relationships are unhealthy, unsatisfying, frustrating or hard to achieve. Whatever your situation is, it is a good idea to ask yourself what you would do if you were free of it. An alcoholic’s wife might wish with all her heart that her husband would stop drinking – but if she suddenly asked herself what she would do, she might – surprisingly enough – feel a tinge of panic. On examination of her own thoughts and feelings, she might well discover that she was so frightened of not achieving her own goals that she actually encouraged her husband’s alcoholism, so that she would not have to face her own ‘failure’. Obviously this hypothetical situation is a quick example of what I mean, with no mention of the innumerable other beliefs and half-beliefs that would encircle the man’s and the woman’s relationship. 

Each person is so unique that it is obviously impossible for me to discuss all of the innumerable strands of belief that form human experience …. you may discover not just one you, but several you’s, so to speak, each pursuing certain purposes, and you may find out furthermore that some purposes cancel others out, whilst some are diametrically opposed to one another. Such cross-purposes, of course can lead to mental, spiritual, emotional and physical difficulties.

Large numbers of people do indeed live unsatisfactory lives, with many individuals seeking goals that are nearly unattainable because of the conglomeration of contradictory beliefs that vie for their attention. They are at cross-purposes with themselves.

Addendum: from ‘The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events’ – a Seth Book by Jane Roberts :

Many therefore “fall prey” to epidemics of one kind or another because they want to, though they might deny this quite vigorously.

I am speaking particularly of epidemics that are less than deadly, though danger is involved. In your times, hospitals, you must realize, are important parts of the community. They provide a social as well as a medical service. Many people are simply lonely, or overworked. Some are rebelling against commonly held ideas of competition. Flu epidemics become social excuses for much needed rest, therefore, and serve as face-saving devices so that the individual can hide from themselves their inner difficulties. In a way, such epidemics provide their own kind of fellowship – giving common meeting grounds for those of disparate circumstances. The [epidemics] serve as accepted states of illness, in which people are given an excuse for the rest or quiet self-examination they desperately need but do not feel entitled to otherwise.

I do not mean to assign any hint of accusation against those so involved, but mainly to state some of the reasons for such behavior. If you do not trust your nature, then any illness or disposition will be interpreted as an onslaught against health. Your body faithfully reflects your inner psychological reality. The nature of your emotions means that in the course of a lifetime you will experience the full range of feelings. Your subjective state has variety. Sometimes sad or depressing thoughts provide a refreshing change of pace, leading you to periods of quiet reflection, and to a quieting of the body so that it rests.

Fears, sometimes even seemingly irrational ones, can serve to rouse the body if you have been too lethargic, or have been in a rut psychologically or physically. If you trusted your nature you would be able to trust such feelings, and following their own rhythms and routes they would change into others. Ideally even illnesses are a part of the body’s health, representing needed adjustments, and also following the needs of the subjective person at any given time.

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 60

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"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a Revolution!”

- Che Guevara

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Alain de Benoist addresses the rise of "illiberalism", from his speech to the 2019 colloquium of Institut Iliade:

The causes of the rise of illiberalism are evident, and in many regards connect with those that explain the success of populist parties today. Firstly they fit into the observation that liberal democracies nearly everywhere have transformed into financial oligarchies cut off from the people: ineffectiveness, powerlessness, corruption, parties transformed into simple machines to get elected, the reign of experts, shortsightedness, etc. Another observation is added to this, which is more serious: in liberal democracies, nations and peoples henceforth no longer have the means to defend their interests. What meaning can the sovereignty of the people actually have if governments no longer have the independence necessary to determine their major orientations in economic, financial, military matters or even foreign policy for themselves? Can they continue to impose juridical principles that, instead of promoting the cohesion of peoples and the perpetuation of their common values, lead to their dissolution?

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We have now on the one side production on socialistic lines altogether. We have distribution on individualistic lines. You can hardly say that even; but on the lines of just what the other side chooses to give, so to speak. We have on the one side the controlling class. They hold a monopoly. They have as a class power in controlling other men. Any individual or any body of men given supreme control over his fellow is almost certain to act unjustly. And no body of men ought to be trusted with uncontrolled power over their fellows. (Cheers.) I need not reason out how it is that a class has control of the sources of production — ownership of the land, and ownership of the people practically. (Hear, hear.) All that they aim at is producing for profit. The idea is will it pay well, will it fetch anything in the market, can I make anything in the market out of it. They do not care to think that they are producing for use — their leading idea is certainly not production for use.

The evil effects — and I aim dealing more with the moral side of the question — I think you will agree with me that our productive system is demoralising and degrading to the human family (Hear, hear.) Now take the commercial ethics of this life, and does it not develop the worst side of human nature? (Hear, hear.) It develops too much of that instinct which distinguishes the savage. The savage is noted for the exercise of cunning. It is a question of what he can take, and is not that one of the faculties developed in all forms of business. Scheming, cunning, lying, and dishonesty are associated with our commercial enterprise. We have fraud perpetrated by men of intelligence who ought and do know better. I take it that the human family is inherently good. I go against that old idea of always crediting our human frailties to original sin. (Cheers.) I say that humanity is inherently good if we only let it have a chance to exercise its goodness (Renewed cheers.)

There is in commercial life a system of ethics which will not stand setting up side by side with the Decalogue. You cannot get along sometimes without telling lies. Adulteration of goods is very common. The gospel of cheapness has such a hold upon people, and the pressure of competition so keen that if you are to make your way in the commercial world, as in other walks of life, you are forced, I insist, to give way if you are to succeed. To get on you must do as other people do — or you will go down. We have surrounded our commercial men in such an entanglement that they cannot be expected to do right. I do not look at what men should do, but what is reasonable to expect them to do under the circumstances in which they are placed. (Hear, hear.) I say that if we have a set of conditions under which it is impossible for men and women to do right we are responsible for them. We have the power to utterly change these conditions. We have control over the circumstances under which we live more than any other animal, therefore we are responsible for the conditions under which we live. Men are all struggling against each other. Men start in business and do not think about the market being already supplied by others who are only making a bare living. They think that if they can by advertising secure more custom that they are justified in doing it. What do they care for their fellows so long as they can get on? Get on is the essential submitted to us. If you do not get on you are a failure in society. These evils are produced by the system under which men deal with each other. The characters of the employers are influenced by it.

On the workers’ side the evils are, perhaps, more felt. We have on their side enforced idleness and poverty. Poverty with all its wretched surroundings — the most degrading thing in all the world. We have unworthy dealings, and all the discontent engendered thereby. Always crushing downwards — the man losing all self-respect as he goes. How can you expect a man to stand against the influences surrounding him. The strong stand for a time, but we have no right to put the weak in a position that will compel them to go down. We have the evils of ignorance amongst those less fortunate than ourselves in not knowing right from wrong. We have coarseness, lack of refinement, even brutality. You cannot expect the working classes — especially those who are crushed most low — to be so polished and nice as those who have nothing else to do but study how to be polished and nice. These evils are directly attributable to that condition of society which it has set up to be over itself.

The weaker men and the women suffer. Women undoubtedly suffer most. At one time it was the boast of the Anglo-Saxon race — in the ages of chivalry — that they would defend their women. To-day our sisters are shut out and degraded to the lowest of all depths, even to prostitution. Those who know most about that say that there is not one in a thousand of them who ever chose that life. They have been driven to it — driven to it for want of bread. I am charging this to the social system we have set up. It is physically and morally degrading to the human race. (Hear, hear.)
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from "The Ethics Of New Unionism", a speech delivered for the Australian Socialist League in 12 June, 1892 by William Guthrie Spence, trade unionist and labour politician who was instrumental in founding the Australian Workers' Union

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When Marx died, Engels said at his graveside, “Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time.”

The revolutionary Wilhelm Liebknecht responded:

“True. He was the most hated, but he was also the most loved. Most hated by the oppressors and exploiters of the people; best loved by the oppressed and exploited, as far as they are conscious of their situation.”

Our job today is make the oppressed and exploited conscious of their situation, and armed with scientific socialism, to win socialism in Canada and around the globe.

Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

We have a world to win!

"Arm The Proletariat And Seize The Means Of Production"

Karl Marx
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****Important article exposing the idpol lies that prostitution is compatible with socialism****

ressourcesprostitution / 2017/02/13

Marx and prostitution

by Saliha Boussedra*

https://ressourcesprostitution.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/marx-and-prostitution/?fbclid=IwAR2H4dZEqzRBqG9bhO2YbXPnzhvVpxBSmTNI_neWdlnuq-hpC1ftp0IGZwY

Contrary to some pro decrim advocates, who defend prostitution as legal work compatible with Marx’s philosophy, an analysis of his writings shows that to him, there is no emancipation in prostitution.

Regulation advocates hold that a prostitute’s activity should be officially recognised, so as to be integrated into the general system of work, whether this work is performed by a salaried employee or independently. Some of these movements recognise prostitution as unfulfilling work, while asserting it to not be worse than other types of manual labour. These ‘regulators’’ reasoning amounts to the claim that the only difference between these two types of work is that one is legally recognised while the other is not. They also appeal to the Marxist analysis of salaried workers in order to claim that prostitution should be legally recognised so that prostitutes can improve the conditions of their work.

Concrete work, abstract work

Attributing a regulatory position to Marx stems in reality from a number of misunderstandings as to the Marxist conception of work. First, Regulation advocates overlook the historical determination of capitalist production, as well as the dual nature of work in general. When Marx conceives of work from an anthropological point of view, the individuals’s productive activity cannot be separated from the means of their work (tools and materials), nor from its products. This dimension, defined as “concrete work,” holds for all societies across history. However, Marx highlights a second dimension, specific to the capitalist mode of production: “abstract work.” This dimension reduces work to a single production of exchange-value, independently of the activity, of means of production and concrete products. As the Regulation advocates do not take these distinctions into account, it is only by exploiting this idea of “abstract work” that they are able consider prostitution as work.

With their perspective determined by our current mode of production, those who favour regulation project the capitalist point of view onto numerous social and human relations. As such, through their undeclared use of the Marxist concept of “abstract work,” the Regulation advocates end up promoting the commodification of vast swaths of productive human activities not yet monopolised by capitalism. By claiming a legal extension of abstract work so as to include prostitution, those who favour regulation promote nothing less than the management and regulation of sexual activity by the market. In this battle, the concern for rights and legality constitutes for capitalism an important stage on the way towards obtaining successful exploitation.

Materialist sexual activity and abstract work

Defining abstract work, Marx writes, “We may disregard the determined character of productive activity and thus the useful nature of work; it remains nevertheless a consumption of the human capacity for work. Dressmaking and weaving, while qualitatively distinct as productive activities, are by turns a productive consumption of cerebral material, of muscle, of nerve, of hand, etc., and thus are, in this sense, both examples of human work,” (Capital, book 1). It is this “etc.” that those who favour regulation think could include sexual activity in the Marxist conception of abstract work. Yet this extension is, to put it lightly, cavalier; had Marx, this great theorist of work, intended to include the commercial use of the intimate parts of the body, he certainly wouldn’t have left it implicit in an “etc.”
If we specifically consider the question of prostitution, we affirm that prostitutory activity – of all the types of “human work” Marx addresses – is the sole activity where what is sold is in fact sold nowhere else, in no other work. If the worker does “rent their body’ to the capitalist (with their muscles, their nerves, their brain, etc.), the prostitute, on the contrary, is the only one to authorise access to intimate body parts, which are on the contrary never included in the sale of work capacity for all of the workers discussed by Marx. Prostitution is as a result the only activity where the rental of the individual’s body includes one, or several body parts that are formally excluded from such transactions practically everywhere. We observe here then how, and in what absolutely specific way prostitution radically departs from the whole of “human work” discussed by Marx in the first book of Capital.

Prostitution and lumpenproletariat

In addition, those who favour regulation neglect to mention that Marx had explicitly spoken about prostitution. If it is true that in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx still seems to be searching for a position on the prostitution question, later and up until at least the first book of Capital, we discern the consistency of Marx’s stance on this matter. Whether in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, or in The Classes Struggles in France, or in the first book of Capital, we note that prostitution is systematically placed beside what Marx calls the “lumpenproletariat.”

According to Marx, this category is constituted of the impoverished proletariat and others fallen into misery, who had abandoned class warfare and ceased to resist. According to Marx, it was historically constituted as the enemy of the proletariat, although it in part originates therein. The lumpenproletariat is generally composed of “a mass completely distinct from the industrial proletariat, a nursery of thieves and of all sorts of criminals, living off of society’s waste, individuals without a chosen profession, drifters, people without vows and without home, differing according to the degree of culture in every nation, never belying the character of scoundrels,” (The Class Struggles in France). If prostitutes are in this category, we might retain then that, first, prostitution is not placed in a “positive” class of work, in that the work does not constitute an achievement for humans; and secondly, that it is distinct from the proletariat. In these conditions, it does not even fit the definition of a “negative” type of work, as it exists under the auspices of capitalism (in other words work paid with capital). This means that, even if Marx recognises forms of prostitution paid for with capital and falling under the category of “productive work” – as is the case in the “brothels” evoked by Marx as an example in Theories of Surplus Value – he nevertheless does not integrate it into the realm of work.

Indeed, even in the first book of Capital, when Marx describes the fringes of workers, those most dominated, he speaks about the “lowest fallen” but does not include there the category of prostitute. It is doubtless useful to attentively read this excerpt from Class Warfare in France: “From the days of the court to the dim café, the same prostitution reproduced itself, the same shameless fraud, the same thirst to enrich oneself, not by production but by the filching of others’ existing wealth.” Marx evokes here a thirst to enrich oneself not by way of production but by the thievery, fraud, etc., that is characteristic of the upper class as of the lumpenproletariat. However, one cannot say that the prostitute “steals” from the client, nor that the client “steals” from the prostitute. In this case what motivates Marx’s classification?

There are several possible ways to approach this question. I will only propose one: prostitution is an issue that occupied Marx throughout his work, while always remaining on the margins. It is possible to understand that the prostitute, like the criminal, is for Marx the lowest degree to which capitalism reduces human life. If prostitution can be envisioned from a capitalist point of view as criminal activity (the latter Marx, in Theories of Surplus Value, says it is a “producer” in the sense that it grants work to the judge, the locksmith, the criminologist, the scientist, etc.), these being activities where the individual has finally accepted the degree to which capitalism wants to reduce him, by dispossessing him not only of objective conditions that allow him to work, as is the case for the proletarian, but also of all the elements that form the basis for his “humanity.” The individual of the lumpenproletariat is in a way a person who has “ceded” their humanity, who has given up on the fight and on the resistance which constitute, for Marx, the productive activity, “this rude, but fortifying school of work,” (The Holy Family). This is a person who is ready to sell all of themselves, and finds themselves in “the situation of the lone and ruined proletarian, the last degree to which the proletarian falls when they have ceased to resist to the bourgeoisie’s pressure,” (German Ideology). From this we can understand that there is not, according to Marx, any emancipatory perspective to prostitution, which constitutes on the contrary a radical loss of the link attaching this “living organism” to their share of resistance and of humanity.

Marx is perfectly conscious of the violence in the relations of domination exercised over prostitutes women. He writes: “Prostitution is a relation where it is not only the prostitute who is degraded, but also the john, whose ignominy is all the greater,” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844). If to Marx prostitution falls under the category of the lumpenproletariat and not that of the proletariat, this is not a condemnation of prostitutes but on the contrary a condemnation of  harmful work to women and a call for their emancipation from a situation to which they have been reduced. This emancipation of women should notably be brought about by the worldwide abolition of prostitution, which will be accompanied by social measures as well as by a full recognition of women in the social world of work.

If children made up a part of workers in the 19th century, some societies chose not to wait until the recognition of children’s rights: they chose on the contrary to simply withdraw children from the labour market. A ban on children’s work and work “harmful to women”: this is the position Marx defended in an interview with the Chicago Tribune in December 1878. If we were able to abolish children’s work without the need for a labour law, it is more than ever time that our societies and our fight arrives at the same result with regard to prostitution.

*Saliha Boussedra is a PHD candidate in Political Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg, France.

Many thanks to Sarah Myers who translated from French into English for us!

This article is also available in Spanish here and also here

There is also a version in Portuguese here.

Article original : http://projet.pcf.fr/93934

Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 42/46

Appendix 5. From ‘Doctor-Patient Communication:

A Review’

Jennifer Fong Ha, MBBS (Hons) Dip Surg Anat and Nancy Longnecker, PhD, The Ochsner Journal, Ochsner Clinic Foundation, Spring 2010

“The patient will never care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

Terry Canale in his American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Vice Presidential Address

Much patient dissatisfaction and many complaints are due to breakdown in the doctor-patient relationship. However, many doctors tend to overestimate their ability in communication.

Basic communication skills in isolation are insufficient to create and sustain a successful therapeutic doctor-patient relationship, which consists of shared perceptions and feelings regarding the nature of the problem, goals of treatment, and psychosocial support.

Studies on doctor-patient communication have demonstrated patient discontent even when many doctors considered the communication adequate or even excellent. Doctors tend to overestimate their abilities in communication. Tongue et al reported that 75% of the orthopedic surgeons surveyed believed that they communicated satisfactorily with their patients, but only 21% of the patients reported satisfactory communication with their doctors. Patient surveys have consistently shown that they want better communication with their doctors.

A more patient-centered encounter results in better patient as well as doctor satisfaction. Satisfied patients are less likely to lodge formal complaints or initiate malpractice complaints. Satisfied patients are advantageous for doctors in terms of greater job satisfaction, less work-related stress, and reduced burnout.

It has been observed that communication skills tend to decline as medical students progress through their medical education, and over time doctors in training tend to lose their focus on holistic patient care. Furthermore, the emotional and physical brutality of medical training, particularly during internship and residency, suppresses empathy, substitutes techniques and procedures for talk, and may even result in derision of patients.

Good communication skills practiced by doctors allowed patients to perceive themselves as a full participant during discussions relating to their health. This subjective experience that influences patient biology is the “biology of self-confidence” described by Sobel, which emphasized the critical role of patients' perception in their healing process.

There are reported observations of doctors avoiding discussion of the emotional and social impact of patients' problems because it distressed them when they could not handle these issues or they did not have the time to do so adequately. This situation negatively affected doctors emotionally and tended to increase patients' distress. This avoidance behavior may result in patients being unwilling to disclose problems, which could delay and adversely impact their recovery.

Physicians have been found to discourage patients from voicing their concerns and expectations as well as requests for more information. This negative influence of the doctors' behavior and the resultant nature of the doctor-patient communication deterred patients from asserting their need for information and explanations. Patients can feel disempowered and may be unable to achieve their health goals. Lack of sufficient explanation results in poor patient understanding, and a lack of consensus between doctor and patient may lead to therapeutic failure.

Today, patients have recognized that they are not passive recipients and are able to resist the power and expert authority that society grants doctors. They can implicitly and explicitly resist the monologue of information transfer from doctors by actively reconstructing expert information to assert their own perspectives, integrate with their knowledge of their own bodies and experiences, as well as the social realities of their lives. Being attentive to social relationships and contexts will ensure that this information is received, and most importantly, acted on.

…inequality, social relations, and structural constraints may be the most influential factors in health care.

Attentive listening skills, empathy, and use of open-ended questions are some examples of skillful communication.

Important factors include understanding patients' perspectives, sharing information, and patients' knowledge and expectations. Miscommunication has serious implications, as it may hinder patients' understanding, expectations of treatment, or involvement in treatment planning. In addition, miscommunication decreases patient satisfaction with medical care, level of hopefulness, and subsequent psychological adjustment.

…patients often regard their doctors as one of their most important sources of psychological support. Empathy is one of the most powerful ways of providing this support to reduce patients' feelings of isolation and validating their feelings or thoughts as normal and to be expected.

In addition to minimizing avoidance behavior, which prevents patients from expressing opinions, effective doctor-patient communication should involve productive conversation, which involves understanding of both parties' perspectives, by shifting from a perspective that is rigidly certain of one's belief to a more exploratory approach that strives to understand the situation from another perspective.

Good doctor-patient communication is a mechanism used to gain an understanding of patients' social context, expectations, and experience.

Doctor-patient communication is a major component of the process of health care. Doctors are in a unique position of respect and power. Hippocrates suggested that doctors may influence patients' health.