Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Section 1 Global health, definitions and descriptions
- Section 2 Global health ethics, responsibilities and justice: some central issues
- Section 3 Analyzing some reasons for poor health
- Section 4 Shaping the future
- 20 The Health Impact Fund: how to make new medicines accessible to all
- 21 Biotechnology and global health
- 22 Food security and global health
- 23 International taxation
- 24 Global health research: changing the agenda
- 25 Justice and research in developing countries
- 26 Values in global health governance
- 27 Poverty, distance and two dimensions of ethics
- 28 Teaching global health ethics
- 29 Towards a new common sense: the need for new paradigms of global health
- Index
- References
29 - Towards a new common sense: the need for new paradigms of global health
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Section 1 Global health, definitions and descriptions
- Section 2 Global health ethics, responsibilities and justice: some central issues
- Section 3 Analyzing some reasons for poor health
- Section 4 Shaping the future
- 20 The Health Impact Fund: how to make new medicines accessible to all
- 21 Biotechnology and global health
- 22 Food security and global health
- 23 International taxation
- 24 Global health research: changing the agenda
- 25 Justice and research in developing countries
- 26 Values in global health governance
- 27 Poverty, distance and two dimensions of ethics
- 28 Teaching global health ethics
- 29 Towards a new common sense: the need for new paradigms of global health
- Index
- References
Summary
Tax struggle is the oldest form of class struggle.
(Karl Marx, 1967, cited in O'Connor 1973, p. 10)Introduction
In our earlier chapter we outlined a reading of the present global conjuncture which we characterized as one of “organic crisis.” The term was meant to invoke a paradoxical situation, one pregnant with possibilities for alternative ways in which global health might be improved, yet nevertheless a situation in which new alternatives have yet to emerge, or indeed to be born.
We also noted how the broad-ranging nature of the organic crisis was characterized by a number of “morbid symptoms” such as deterioration in global health and global nutrition associated with the way in which capitalist social forces have come to determine increasingly not only whether we have access to useful and affordable health care, but also what we eat and whether we are actually able to eat. More broadly the deepening and extension of the power of capital – since capitalism is a system of power relations and power structures – has come to determine increasing aspects of social reproduction, our health and indeed the very means of survival for a large proportion of the inhabitants of the planet.
We noted therefore that the global organic crisis involves a global crisis of accumulation, the dominant governmental responses to that crisis which have so far been one-sided, lean in favor of financial interests and big corporations, and how capitalism in crisis and its mode of relentless accumulation intersect with deepening and long-term threats to our social and ecological reproduction.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Global Health and Global Health Ethics , pp. 329 - 332Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
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