The Visible Hand of Social Justice

While reading chapter 3 (Societal Determinants of Health) of the Global Health and Global Health Ethics book edited by Solomon Benatar and Gillian Brock, I came across an interesting quote which lead me to this compelling, political article (once again, ironic that it is not available for download publicly).

Prospects for Genuine Revival of Primary Health Care - Through the Visible Hand of Social Justice Rather than the Invisible Hand of the Market
by Alison Rosamund Katz
2010

The multiple crises of today—in energy, water, food, the environment, finance, science,information, and democracy—must be recognized as capitalist crises and
addressed as such.[...] In short, the invisible hand of the market must be replaced by the visible hand of social justice.

Katz goes on to describe the shortcomings of many of the current global health reports in denouncing the capitalist market structure as a major source of inequity. Not only that, but the author believes that we know better but that:

Huge propaganda efforts in what has been aptly termed “ethical cleansing” have been required to persuade people, against their better moral judgment, that even very large inequalities are not only inevitable but natural and acceptable. In fact, people have a very keen sense of what is fair and unfair and, when the connections are explained to them they are uncomfortable with the idea that their relative comforts are achieved through exploitation of others far away.

It occurred to me that the reason that the discrimination video about the knitted "Zero" made me feel uncomfortable was because it was so painfully true. We witness forms of discrimination daily but do not seek to confront them or even validate their experience, because this makes us feel awkward. To further this, she highlights one of the ways in which this is done:

As a final point, despite mountains of literature on environmental determinants of “intelligence,” the vast majority of people are viewed as intellectually weak and suited only to dull, repetitive work. A strict division of labor is essential to the capitalist system, and enormous efforts are devoted to maintaining an artificial division between intellectual and physical work, exaggerating differences between individuals in intellectual ability, assigning greater value to intellectual over all other activities, and above all, ensuring, through elitist educational systems, that intellectual potential is maximized among, and opportunities confined to, the privileged classes.