It's Not You, It's Capitalism

[Music] Hey everyone! Welcome to the very first episode of World Gone Mad, the crisis of capitalism and mental health. [Music] I am so excited to finally be launching this podcast and embarking on this journey with all of you. For those of you who don't know who I am, my name is Jessica and I'm an activist, a Marxist, and a social worker based out of Toronto. I was inspired to create this podcast because I very much attribute my personal struggles with mental health to adversity rooted in social and economic conditions. And as a social worker and activist, I've witnessed how social and economic forces influence mental health at all levels from society as a whole to the community, family, and individual. So this is a topic that is really close to heart for me and something that I think is really important to thoroughly explore and analyze. Making the links between capitalism and declining mental health exposes the bankruptcy and rottenness of the capitalist system and points to a need for a radical alternative. It also counters the harmful stigmatizing approach that can come out of the mainstream, medical or disease model of understanding mental illness. And it also gives us more insight into our own psychological experiences. I believe that understanding and unpacking how the system we live under impacts our mental state and the perception of ourselves and others can help us work towards individual and collective healing and liberation. So the podcast is called World Gone Mad. I love me some double meanings and I chose this name because for me it speaks to the matting irrationality and brutality of the capitalist system as well as to the detrimental effect that that irrationality and brutality and the crisis of the system has on our mental health. It really can feel like the world has gone fucking mad and understandably that leaves so many struggling to cope mentally and emotionally with the weight of it all. In the first four months of 2020 alone, we have already seen Australia burn, the threat of war between the US and Iran, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic with all its social and economic implications, and now we are sitting on the brink of a new global depression. What a time to be alive, right? Inequality, poverty, unemployment, hunger, war, oppression, environmental destruction, state violence, and austerity are the norm all around the world. Crisis and instability are inherent to this system which is horror without end. And the conditions of life under this fucking health system erodes our mental well-being in so many ways that I'm going to be exploring in depth in all the episodes to come. Of course there is another side to this, right? Which is radicalization and struggle. I don't want to suggest that as your collective mental health suffers as a result of the crisis of the system that we all just become helpless or paralyzed in action. What we're seeing is a deep and growing questioning of the capitalist system around the world, and increasingly large and explosive social movements erupting all over the world as people seek out an alternative and take you the streets to fight back. But you still don't have to look very hard to see that there is a deep and pervasive social malaise characterizing the mood of society, alongside this radicalization, and it's getting worse as the crisis of the system deepens. Depression, anxiety, and suicide have surged to epidemic proportions in the past couple of decades. Even just a surface level look at millennial and Gen Z humor and mean culture shows the general mood of the younger generations today, right? They are rife with themes of despair, hopelessness, and not having the will to live. And sure, this might just be humor, but it's humor as a way to cope, so it tells us something about the general mood permeating society today. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, a staggering 30% of adolescents meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder alone. A study that analyzed data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in the States found that the rate of individuals reporting symptoms consistent with major depression increased 52% in adolescents between 2005 to 2017. And it increased 63% in young adults aged 18 to 25 years old between 2009 to 2017, so in under 10 years it increased 63%. Another study by the CDC showed that suicide rates for people aged 10 to 24 years old climbed by 56% in the 10 years between 2007 and 2017. These are absolutely skyrocketing increases in relatively short amounts of time. Of course, this varies country by country, but the Global Burden of Disease Project indicates that there are significant and increasing levels of mental illnesses globally. So this is very much a global phenomenon. I just don't have time, of course, to go over country by country right now. Now, the medical model alone cannot explain such sharp increases, in my opinion, to understand these significant increases we really need to look at the social context. What has been happening socially and economically while our mental health has been steadily declining? It's no surprise our standards of living have been declining. In a quality has risen dramatically and economic and social instability has increased. In North America, real wages have been stagnant since the 70s while the cost of living has risen enormously. So our purchasing power is declining and it's getting harder to get by. Student and household debt have gone up astronomically. In Canada, household debt is now 170% of household income. So people are literally drowning in debt. And any of you who live with a mountain of debt looming over you knows how absolutely suffocating it can be. It really does take a mental and emotional toll. Over half of Canadians and Americans in two of the richest countries in the world are living paycheck to paycheck. Rent is completely unaffordable in most major cities. Procarious work is the norm and social services and healthcare are being privatized and gutted and cut everywhere. On top of all all of this, we are witnessing large scale environmental destruction, the devastating impacts of climate change, ongoing wars and conflicts, continued state violence and police brutality, and continued systemic oppression. I could go on but a vibrator list and describe all the horrors and injustices of the capitalist system we would be here for days. But the point is there is absolutely no future for today's youth and workers under the capitalist system. And because of this, the notion of the impending collapse of civilization has made its way into popular discourse. Because it really can feel like the world is ending sometimes. I think this is especially true for folks who don't have a theoretical compass to explain why things are happening the way they are and what a pulse possible alternative is, which Marxism does for me and other anti-capitalist theories do for other folks. But without those theoretical compasses, it is no fucking wonder that young people especially would struggle with feelings of hopelessness and despair. Okay, so let's go a bit more in depth into how the kind of society we live in exerts a powerful influence on our mental health or lack thereof. In order to do so, we need to consider what is mental health. And then we need to look at what kind of society is it that we live in. Of course, we know it's capitalism, but. We need to take a close look at the defining features of the capitalist system and the prevalent conditions of life within it. From there we can start to get a deeper understanding of how our mental health is impacted and impeded by the capitalist system that we live in. So what is mental health? Or to put it another way, what does it mean or entail to be mentally well? This can be a slippery thing to pin down because it can look differently person to person. It's defined differently between cultures and it exists on a spectrum rather than being a static thing, right? It interacts with our environment. It might change and look differently depending on what stage of life we're in. So coming up with a universal or all-encompassing definition can be tricky. With that in mind, we'll use the World Health Organization's definition today. They define mental health as a state of psychological well-being in which the individual is able to fully realize their potential, maintain productive activities and fulfilling relationships, and cope with and spring back from adversity. Do any of you feel like you're able to reach your full potential under this system? Because I sure as fuck don't. It's also important to note that how we define mental health and mental illness, who is or is not well functioning and healthy, is heavily determined by the value system of the society that we live in. So under capitalism, when we speak of productivity, that's often meant the ability to work to produce a profit or to produce commodities for sale on the market. And those who don't meet that expectation for whatever reason are often pathologized. So we need to take these definitions with a grain of salt and a critical lens, right? For our purposes, I think we can speak of productivity in the sense of being able to carry out activity, any activity that is meaningful and satisfying to us, regardless of whether it is profit generating. So that's how I like to think about that term and concept. With that being said, the most common cited components of what make up mental health and well-being include the following. Self-realization, where individuals are able to express themselves and live out their potential, having a sense of autonomy and control over our lives, having a sense of purpose and meaning, the feeling of contributing to something bigger than yourself, having a sense of optimism and hope, the ability to cope with day-to-day stressors, problem-solve and overcome challenges, resiliency, which is the capacity to cope with and bounce back from crisis, social connection and meaningful relationships in particular are central, and having a positive perception of our quality of life in relation to the culture and value systems in which we live and in relation to our own goals and expectations. The World Health Organization also recognizes several social factors that are necessary for optimal mental health, and they include civil, political and economic rights, economic participation, which basically just means employment, as well as financial security, freedom from discrimination and violence, access to housing and nutrition, access to education and training, and rich community networks and services. Does any of this sound like the norm for the majority of people on this planet under capitalism? I don't think so. Let's look at the defining features of capitalism now. Capitalism first and foremost is a system or a motor production as a smart sis referred to it based around production for private profit, where the capitalist class, those who own the means of production, which are the factories, machinery, land, all that which is needed to produce both the necessities and enjoyment items of life. They exploit the labor of those who do not own our own means of production, the working class, and they appropriate the great majority of wealth generated by the working classes collective labor in the form of profits. Under capitalism then we have socialized production, where the majority of things produced are done so collectively involving the labor of the interconnected many. But the private appropriation of wealth generated from that collective labor into the hands of a tiny exploitative minority. So under capitalism things are not produced to meet the needs of humanity. And isn't that strange? That society is an organized primarily to meet the needs of society. Under capitalism production is organized around producing a profit for this tiny minority, who concentrate more and more of the wealth into their hands at the expense of the rest of us, right? That wealth gap is widening as wealth is more highly concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. As I've mentioned economic crisis is also inherent to the capitalist system. And this is actually well known and accepted even among capitalist economists, although the causes are the topic of much debate. Flushing out the causes of economic crisis is beyond the purview of this podcast episode, but suffice it to say capitalism is a turbulent and unstable system that periodically enters into crisis, throwing millions of more people into unemployment and poverty at a time. Also that instability in turbulence is also a defining feature of life under capitalism. Unemployment poverty and oppression are also inherent to the system, which requires the stratification of the exploited in order to drive down wages and keep us divided and therefore conquered. So the conditions of life under capitalism for the vast majority are characterized by exploitation where the wealth we generate collectively is appropriated by the bosses privately. Competition where we are all pit against each other in the struggle to survive, competing for jobs, acceptance into higher education, for child care spots, for places to live, as well as for social status. By alienation, which means a strangement from the labor process, the products of our labor, and from ourselves and our infellow humans, coercion and violence permeates all aspects of life under capitalism for most people on the planet. The state, its laws, courts and police ultimately operate to protect capitalist property relations and serve the functions of control and repression. We see this in how poor working class and oppressed communities are policed, surveilled and criminalized, while the rich and powerful for the most part are above the law, right, because they wrote it. We see this when the oppressed fight back and are met with state persecution. Just recently in Canada, we saw the RCMP raids on unseated what Suez and Territory violently arresting peaceful land protectors and trampling on indigenous rights. The conditions of life under capitalism for many people on the planet are also characterized by imperialism and war, right? These are the result of the pursuit of profits and markets to exploit, as well as the competition between capitalist nation states. I would also argue that poverty, hunger and the constant threat of them that hangover heads are also forms of violence and coercion. So coercion and violence is a central aspect of life under capitalism and this is especially true for historically oppressed and marginalized groups. Human and discrimination also are a central character of life under capitalism for many people on the planet. They work to justify imperialism and colonization, right? They work to justify the subjugation of whole peoples and nations by the ruling class and in capitalist nations. They work to justify paying sectors of the working class less, causing us all to compete in a race to the bottom. And as I've mentioned, they work to keep us divided so that we don't unite against our common oppressor, the capitalist class. And finally, our lives under capitalism are also heavily shaped by capitalist ideology and culture that we're all socialized with. The capitalist class has to rely on ideology to keep us all in check. so much more of us than them that they couldn't keep us shackled and exploited through physical force alone. Marks explained long ago that the dominant ideas in society are those of the ruling class. So we are all socialized with these dominant norms and ideas that work to justify and reinforce the capitalist system and the relationships that define it. Things like individualism and competition are seen as natural and virtuous under capitalism and we are socialized with these messages, right? We are also socialized with entrenched gender norms which operate to reinforce the patriarchal family unit which is an economic unit that capitalism very much relies on. And we are also socialized with discriminatory ideas about different groups of people. These conditions of life all drastically distort in damage, how we relate to ourselves and others and has a profound impact on our consciousness and our mental health. Let's go back and look at how the defining features of life under capitalism that I just laid out would impact the commonly identified components of what makes up mental health. The first was self-realization where individuals can express themselves and live out their potential. How can we reach our full potential when the vast majority of us are forced to work jobs that have nothing to do with our interests, talents, abilities or even the needs of our communities and humanity as a whole? How can we reach our potential when education and training are inaccessible to so many people around the planet? Millions and millions of people cannot access education and training and are forced into the most back-breaking and menial labor. Millions of people are limited by poverty, unemployment and conversely by overwork and exhaustion. It's also hard to reach our potential when we spend all our time slaving away for the profits of somebody else or just to survive. How are people living with oppression, violence, persecution, conflict, environmental destruction and so on supposed to reach their full potential? So no, the conditions of life under capitalism are absolutely antithical to any of us really reaching our full potential. It's just a tragic waste of the potential of both the individual and of humanity as a whole. The next component was having a sense of autonomy and control over our lives. Under capitalism we don't have any real freedom or autonomy, at least within the narrow limits of the capitalist system. We either work or we go without. Those of us who rely on social assistance are put under surveillance and stripped of choice in autonomy in so many regards. Of course those of us who are cut off from the means of production or are unemployed have their choices extremely limited. The vast majority of us are shackled to economic necessity under capitalism. For those of us who do work we have little say over that process. How things are produced in exchange are not up to us. Our needs and the needs of our families and communities are systematically subjugated to the stock market, the job market and to the interests of our bosses, landlords and creditors. Typically we have no genuine say in the direction or fate of our lives. This is true even of the so called democratic countries. Politicians and governments regularly betray their campaign promises and governments regularly tramples on people's rights all around the world. There's no real accountability when they do so. We're just told that we have to wait for the next election several years down the line. And just consider indigenous peoples around the world and the autonomy they have been robbed of through continued colonialism. There are so many ways that the working class, the oppressed and indigenous folks have been stripped of real genuine autonomy. Many decisions that impact our day to day lives, our futures and the fate of all life on the planet are made in boardrooms or at $10,000 a plate dinners. The next component was having a sense of purpose and meaning. It can be hard to foster a sense of purpose when the majority of your life is spent working for someone else's profits at a job that you hate or when it's spent working just to survive. Rather than fostering your own abilities, passions and contributing meaningfully to the needs of your family and community and humanity at large. It can be hard to have a sense of meaning and purpose when we have so little autonomy and say over our day to day lives and over the fate of humanity in the planet. The conditions of life under this system leave so many people feeling alienated and lacking a sense of meaning with devastating impacts to mental health. The next component was a sense of optimism and hope. As I've already touched on, it can be really hard to be optimistic and hopeful when the future capitalism offers us is so damn bleak. Millennials entered the workforce during or in the aftermath of the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the 2008 financial crash, saddled with debt and stuck with most precarious low benefit work. Our generation and those that followed after have never been able to achieve the financial stability of our parents and grandparents. So the conditions of life are getting worse with each generation. Gen Z and alpha have known nothing but social and economic crisis and many of us now are now living through the second major global recession in our lifetime. Like I've said, all life on the planet is threatened by environmental catastrophe spurred by the profit motive. So there really is no future as long as this system persists. The next component was social connection and meaningful relationships, which is absolutely integral to mental wellbeing because we are social creatures. But capitalism engenders isolation and impedes meaningful connection in so many ways. It pits us against each other in competition and divides us through oppression and discrimination. It isolates us by overworkiness and exhaustingness. It can be really hard to foster meaningful connections and relationships when you are so exhausted from balancing the pressures of life under capitalism. For that reason, millennials are said to be the loneliest generation of the world. The younger generations have less friends than any generation before us. Some also impede meaningful relationships and social connections through austerity and cuts to social funding because these are road public spaces and community programs that would otherwise be fostering community. The profit motive uses marketing to get us all to compare ourselves to each other and compete for superficial status as well, which erodes our ability to form meaningful and deep social connections. Moving on to the social prerequisites for optimal mental health, civil political and economic rights. As I've mentioned, the capitalist class and the state tramples on our rights at every turn. It's also important to note that the rights that we do have were never handed over willingly by the capitalist class or the state we had to fight on the streets and on the picket lines for those rights, which I think tells us something about the structure of the system and how it's not meant to benefit the vast majority of us, the fact that we have to fight tooth and nail and put our lives on the line for even the most basic rights. But even the rights that we do have, the capitalist class will and has taken them away whenever they're an inconvenience to them. The norm all around the world has been to criminalize strikes and protests when they arise and really threaten the profits of the ruling class or the economy. The next component was economic participation and security. As I've mentioned, unemployment and poverty are widening, precarious work is the new norm, millions upon millions of people block any kind of financial security whatsoever and live in abject poverty. The rest of us also have to struggle paycheck to paycheck and drown in debt just to goodbye. Freedom from discrimination and violence. As a inherently exploitative system, capitalism must rely on violence, right? There is no capitalism without violence, and there's also no capitalism without discrimination, because as I've mentioned, it serves a crucial role to the capitalist system in dividing the exploited masses. Access to housing and nutrition, as well as access to education and training. I don't think I need to go into a lot of depth on how these conditions are not being met under capitalism for hundreds of millions of people. So it's pretty dire comparing the conditions of life under capitalism with the conditions that are needed for optimal mental well-being, right? They just don't line up. So in my view, the global mental health crisis that we're facing is ultimately the result of the discrepancy between human need, both physical and emotional, and the conditions of life under capitalism. Mental factors are one of the greatest predictors of mental illness, and there is a considerable body of research demonstrating the link between adverse life events and social inequality with mental illness. There is also a large body of evidence that shows that the distribution of mental illness increases along with economic disadvantage. In the words of the World Health Organization, which is hardly a radical anti-capitalist institution, the pattern of social distribution of common mental disorders is observed as a social class gradient. So mental health is absolutely a class question. The factors that are most shown to increase the incidence of mental illness are all social and economic issues. Exposure to violence, chronic physical ill health, which we know is heavily determined by social and economic factors. Low levels of educational attainment, exposure to conflict and natural disasters, stressful working environments, income inequality, food insecurity, hunger, unemployment, exposure to toxins, lack of housing, overcrowding, poor sanitization, and urbanization. Belonning to groups that experience oppression and discrimination is also a major predictor. And unemployment and poor quality employment are particularly strong risk factors for mental illness. Our recent report from the Institute of Health Equity on Health Impacts of Economic Downturns found evidence that closely linked job loss and symptoms of depression and anxiety. And it also demonstrated that these impacts are particularly clear for the long term unemployed. There is also a significant body of research that indicates that unemployment significantly increases rates of suicide. So what is the link between social and economic status with mental health and mental illness? It's fairly straightforward, in my opinion. Our social and economic status will contribute to the level, frequency, and duration of stressful experiences in our lives, as well as the extent to which those stressors are buffered by social supports and economic resources. Those lower on the social hierarchy are more likely to experience less favorable economic, social, and environmental conditions throughout life, and therefore have more constant exposure to stressors. And they will also have access to fewer buffers and supports to deal with the exposure to those stressful circumstances. Analysis of exposure over the life course to both advantage and disadvantage shows that these negative and positive factors and processes accumulate over time and exert a powerful influence over our apigenetical, psychological, physiological, and behavioral attributes. Living under constant strain, stress, and trauma that are endemic to capitalism has a powerful impact on all the interconnected internal systems and structures that comprise the totality of our mental and emotional experience, including our genetics, our nervous system, limbic system, and neurotransmitter regulation, our cognitive processing, and how we make sense of the world. As well as our physiology and physical health, which is very impacted by psychological distress and vice versa. These interconnected systems can be so significantly impacted or impaired as a result of constant exposure to the stressors and pressures of life under capitalism, that the results can be persistent and extreme mental and emotional distress or difficulty that significantly impedes our ability to cope and function in our day-to-day lives. I would argue that a bulk of mental health challenges that we experience are our brains very natural responses to an irrational and brutal system that doesn't meet our needs and actually systematically threatens our sense of security and safety. So much about the input we receive from our environment and social world tells our brain that we're not safe, not secure, and not in control. Because we often aren't, right? Our security and safety are systematically threatened on your capitalism. And this understandably sets off a lot of alarm bells and puts us into a state of extreme distress. This system also profits off of our shame, guilt, and feelings of unworthiness and in so many different ways. And it sends us these negative messages through multiple avenues, which over time can also really distort our perception and relationship of into ourselves and others. As I've mentioned, the capitalist system inflicts coercion and violence on us in multiple ways. And this leads to many different kinds of trauma at all levels, historically, intergenerational level and the community and interpersonal levels. So trauma is also a widespread experience of life under capitalism. In a future episode, I'm going to be looking closely at the conditions of life under capitalism and how they generate many different kinds of trauma. So to simplify the fuck out of it, the toxicity of our system and economic reality can cause our internal systems and functioning to become dysregulated, right? Causing us to enter into states of unbearable mental and emotional distress. When I argue for a social explanation for understanding mental health and mental illness, I'm not saying that there isn't a biological component or even a strong biological component because everything that we think feel or do involves chemical changes in our brains. The point is that our social worlds and our environments profoundly shape both our biological and cognitive processes. You can simply cannot understand the individual and their mental health as separate from their social world and therefore the capitalist system that we live in. Even our genetic expression can be heavily influenced by the environment and the social circumstances and life events that we, our parents and their parents are and we're exposed to. Certainly, understanding how and which biological processes impact our mental health is important and useful, but it's far from the full story. If we really want to address the epidemic levels of mental health challenges that are on their rise globally, we have to understand and tackle the social roots. In another episode, I'll be looking more closely at the limitations of the biomedical or disease approach to understanding mental illness. But for now, I'll just highlight that one of the main problems with the disease model for me and even certain cognitive models is that they individualize what are largely social problems, telling us that mental illness represents an abnormal or flawed response to our environments instead of meaningfully exploring and questioning those environments and how they cause us such extreme mental and emotional distress. The bottom line for me, if it isn't already clear, is that a society based on exploitation and oppression is simply not conducive to mental, emotional, or physical well-being, and ultimately, a sick, unjust, and violent society makes us unwell. We cannot thrive in a society that is organized in such a way that is antithetical to human thriving. That doesn't mean that there is nothing we can do to strive for better individual and collective mental health in the here and now. We absolutely must fight for preventative measures such as a living wage, affordable housing, universal healthcare, and fully publicly funded post-secondary education, as well as social supports and community programs. So for the material conditions that are prerequisite for good collective mental health, and we do this through the class struggle. We can and must fight for more funding for mental health services and universal access to mental health supports and therapy, which should be accessible to all. There are many therapeutic methods and practices that can help us overcome mental health challenges and achieve increased mental and emotional well-being in the here and now, even as we still love under capitalism. We can promote approaches to mental health and healing that emphasize the importance of collective healing and social justice. Sometime down the line, I will be doing an episode on mental health practices for coping and healing as we live in and resist capitalism. So stay tuned for that. Meds must also be free and accessible to all, and to accomplish this, we need to expropriate big pharma to remove the profit mode of entirely from pharmaceuticals. We also need research into pharmaceuticals to be done in the interest of human need and not profit because under capitalism there are a lot of problems with the way drugs are prescribed. And perhaps most importantly, we can look out for one another, foster strong communities and meaningful connections to counter the isolation that capitalism engenders and to buffer the stressors of life under capitalism. We must talk openly about mental health challenges and illness and their social roots in order to destigmatize it and take the shame and guilt away. And also to place the blame where it's deserved, right, off the individual and onto the sick capitalist system and all those who uphold it. We can practice self and community care to the best of our abilities within the social and economic limitations of the system. And like I said, I'll be doing some episodes on what that actually looks like. But therein lies the problem is that we'll always be limited by the economic and social reality of the system. We'll always be fighting against those limits unless we are prepared to break with the logic of the system and conceive of and fight for an entirely different mode and organization of life. Ultimately, as long as we live in a world where our needs are not met and where we are coerced, exploited and oppressed, our collective mental health will suffer and decline as the crisis of the system deepens. Friends and comrades, this has revolutionary conclusions. It points to the need to radically transform society and organize it for the collective good, right? The fact that capitalism makes us sick tells us that we need to radically transform society. I envision a world where all of our physical, mental and spiritual needs are met where we can all pursue our passions, express ourselves and foster our talents and abilities. Where we are bonded by solidarity and community instead of being pit against each other in the cut throat struggle to survive, where we can all flourish and realize both our individual and collective potential. I know that such a world is possible. There is more than enough wealth and resources on this planet for every last person to have a high quality standard of living where all their physical and psychological needs are fulfilled and exceeded. When the working class and oppressor organized on a mass basis, we can transform society to work in the interest of the majority. That is where I draw my hope and optimism from. That is how I counter the hopelessness and despair that the capitalist system engenders. It's one of the reasons why I think that a political analysis, particularly an anti-capitalist and Marxist analysis, is really important to mental health. Both in terms of understanding why it is that we suffer to the extent that we do, as well as taking that blame and shaming guilt off ourselves and putting it onto the system. And also because it points the way forward to how we can massively increase our collective mental health. It actually gives us a genuine and meaningful long-lasting solution, which is social transformation. I'll just wrap up by saying, if your feeling scared, confused, anxious, overwhelmed, sad, or unable to cope, it's not you, babe, it's capitalism and its days on this planet are numbered. That brings us to the end of today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you want to hear more, please smash that subscribe button and tune in next month for discussion on capitalist alienation and its impacts on our mental health. Love and solidarity to all. Goodbye.