by Daniel Lee
The tragedy at Sandy Hook last month has left a lasting
impression on the hearts and minds of the working class here in Oklahoma and
around the nation. The senseless killing of children and teachers by a mentally
disturbed young man is yet another chapter in the increasing pattern of savage
violence of the past few years. In this time of grief and sorrow, it is natural
to seek to make sense of the senseless, to look for answers to the problems
which are becoming endemic to our society. We, the Communist Party of Oklahoma,
offer our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims of this tragedy.
The Smoking Gun
This incident, and others like it, such as the murders in
Aurora Colorado, and Virginia Tech, shows us several problems, which we, as
Marxist-Leninists, see to be originating from the same source. First of all, there is the fact that the
perpetrators of these heinous crimes were severely mentally disturbed individuals,
whose conditions went untreated for many years, despite their parents’ futile
attempts to get help for their sons. Adam Lanzana’s mother fought the school
district to get help for her son’s Asperger's syndrome and other emotional
issues. James Holmes’ mother told police they had the right man when he was
captured and acknowledged his history of schizophrenic mental illness. Seung-Hui
Cho’s parents turned to a local church for help, after unsuccessfully attempting
to deal with his mental illness throughout childhood, but by the time he began
attending Virginia Tech, it was too late. Each instance shows the same failure
in our society – the failure to provide adequate mental healthcare for the
mentally ill, just as we fail to provide adequate healthcare for much of the
working class in our country.
A History of Neglect
Since the Kennedy administration, the government had
mandated that mental health care be made available on par with regular health
care for Federal employees in the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963
(which became available to low-income workers through Medicare after 1965). By
the Carter years, legislation was passed expanding and bringing much needed
reforms to the system under the Mental Health Systems Act in 1980 which made
federal funding a priority for homeless and impoverished citizens with mental
illness. However, the next year, Regan rescinded the act, and slashed funding
for mental health services, which continued to decline through the Bush and
Clinton years. More and more mentally ill people were institutionalized in the
prison system or became homeless. It was the next generation however which
showed a more disturbing trend – school shootings. The late 1980’s saw a
drastic rise in school shootings, but it was the Columbine massacre in
Littleton Colorado in 1999 which brought the epidemic to nationwide attention. Since that time, there have been over 25
incidents in schools alone. Other shootings to grab national headlines have included
the DC Beltway sniper (suffering from PTSD) and the Uni-bomber (schizophrenia).
The Real Problem:
Capitalism
The root of the problem lies within the core of our society.
The lack of proper physical and mental healthcare is symptomatic of a system
which shows no regard for people, only placing value on property and profit. Workers
in the capitalist system are made into automatons, producing endlessly without receiving
the fruits of their labors. When one of them breaks or is defective, they are
replaced by another, readily waiting to sell their own labors in order to
survive. Our capitalist society uses up and discards working people as trash –
and then is surprised when those pieces of discarded humanity fail to conform to society’s
rules. This symptom is called the theory
of alienation. As Marx put it,
“The propertied class and the class of the proletariat
present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease
and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its
own power, and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the
proletariat feels annihilated, this means that they cease to exist in
estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and in the reality of an
inhuman existence.” – Marx, The Holy
Family
Until we address the base problem of the alienation caused
by Capitalism, we will continue to have shocking incidents such as occurred at
Sandy Hook or Aurora. Gun control will not solve the problem – guns will
continue to be available, either legally or illegally, and if a gun is not
available, Oklahoma knows through painful experience how much damage household
items and a Ryder truck can cause. To cure society’s illness, we must destroy
the disease – Capitalism itself.
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