This book changed the way I think about health, power, state capacity, extraction, social welfare, and resistance. Very helpful for thinking about surplus populations’ centrality to capitalist political economy *and* (ideally) anti-capitalist resistance. I almost NEVER complain about jargon/book density but this one hit hard, I think bc even though I was familiar with the ideas and the people they cited (bc of the podcast) I still had a rough time. From a fantastic tour of marxist disability studies, to an enlightening exploration of Madness and institutionalization, to a really fascinating history of SPK, Health Communism is a book I will be referring everyone I know to, and a book I can imagine teaching from in the future.

Almost every other sentence contained an argument or thing that I wanted to hear more about - I guess luckily about a fifth of the book is a bibliography. The political economy demands that we maintain our health to make our labor power fully available, lest we be marked and doomed as surplus.No one talks like Adler-Bolton and Vierkant do – those in public health and medicine are too deeply embedded in the status quo to even acknowledge the searing logic of their words. Adler-Bolton and Vierkant teach that our shared condition of vulnerability is ever ready to transform into our collective strength. This theme, as well as mention of the actions and failures of American AIDS activist groups in the 1980s, is explored throughout, and the authors’ admiration for the SPK is clearly stated. It loses one star because of the final third of the book, which focuses exclusively and in excruciating detail on one 1970s radical patient collective in West Germany.

It’s an interesting history, but after the broad, internationalist lens of the first two-thirds, it feels out of place.Simply put, Capitalism is a scourge on the health of human beings, which would seem to preclude its renunciation by just about everyone, right?

Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).It is an immensely useful tool for wrestling with the most urgent questions facing our movements in these terrifying times. The biggest industry is no longer that which produces weapons, computers, cars or interspace crafts. As an intro to some of these concepts though 10/10, and Bolton's writing style is extremely clear and persuasive.