Why this blog?
The interconnectedness of many axes of oppression and class struggle has become increasingly apparent in recent years. Most obviously to me is: i) the disappearance of a mass disabling airborne pandemic right in front of our very eyes; ii) the unravelling of ecological collapse—more rapid and more intense than even the most pessimistic scientific predictions—and is being leaned into rather than evaded by capitalism; and iii) the escalation of the Palestinian genocide into a daily televised slaughter which despite nearly a year of non-violent protests around the world has yet to be slowed, never mind stopped (and in fact is actually picking up pace now that the same genocidal methods are being rolled out into Yemen and Lebanon and beyond).
Climate breakdown and imperial warfare are mostly acknowledged as important issues by the western Left (however we define that) but the pandemic is mostly now completely ignored in these same spaces; otherwise principled communists and anarchists who are mostly very aware of the role of capitalism in imperialism and war and racism and climate change often show complete apathy (if not antipathy) on things like disability struggles and eugenics. Similarly, prominent climate scientists who fail to reject the status quo of viral eugenics or even capitalism frustratedly question why people aren’t waking up to the very real and immediate consequences of climate collapse. Selective disavowal of problems we don’t want to think about creates pockets of apathy and inaction which capital needs to survive.
The contradictions of capitalism are indeed sharpening—but the ability of the proletariat to exploit these contradictions will be blunted if class consciousness is to be replaced with disavowal or worse disparagement of such important struggles. One can argue these feelings are a kind of human defence mechanism which frees people from feelings of hopelessness and discomfort at their own seemingly unavoidable complicity in systems of violence—but they are nevertheless reactionary and it should always be the job of the revolutionary proletariat to address these issues within itself and not succumb to them. No proletarian revolution which is prepared to abandon vulnerabilised people—at home or abroad—will ever achieve its supposed objective because such reactionary beliefs will seed contradictions that corrode its core aims (e.g. the liberation of only some is not universal liberation).
Finally, about me: I’m a disabled Marxist whose life is indefinitely on hold due to the ongoing pandemic: like millions of forgotten people, my health hasn’t given me the privilege of being able to ‘return to normal’ if that normal only consists of simply pretending that non-stop infection is acceptable. But also neither would I want to pretend at this point even if my body were suddenly able to move on.
I’ve no formal education in philosophy or history or anything in the humanities—I’m just from a socialist-ish working class family and only started reading more deeply into communism in 2020 and disability theory around 2022. My academic background is in evolutionary biology so I know a fair bit about immunity, host-parasite coevolution, and epidemiology—and I spend my day job working with data and statistics.
Which is all to say these posts aren’t intended to be exhaustive reviews of concepts or to lay out any kind of a fully-fledged manifesto; they’re simply intended as a launching off point. Neither is pulling from the academic literature meant to be in any way esoteric—I’m just hoping to bring some well-theorised but under-applied (to the pandemic especially) ideas to a wider audience of non-specialists like myself so we can add nuance to discourses on the left which can often be apathetic, if not outright reactionary, on certain issues like public health and disability.