CHICAGO—Capitalism is a sick and sick-making system that at best allows the illusion of healthy choices for the working class. The Sweetened Beverage Tax in Chicago is a toxic choice for workers: either pay more for harmful sugary beverages or sacrifice what little health care remains available to you. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have been struggling with co-workers, patients, and friends to oppose both unhealthy foods and the choices presented by liberal bosses and politicians, winning our base closer to a communist vision of a truly healthy society.
The Sweetened Beverage Tax (penny-per-ounce) on juice and soda was proposed by liberal Democrat Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle to cover a $200 million dollar shortfall in the county’s budget for 2018 (Chicago Sun Times, 10/5). She was backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who piloted a similar scheme as New York City mayor. He’s contributed some $13 million to push the Chicago version of the tax (Chicago Daily Herald, 10/14).
Illustrating the infighting among competing capitalists, after only a few months the tax is on the verge of repeal, as the beverage bosses and various small business owners oppose it. They exploit the frustrations of the city’s workers, who already pay the nation’s highest sales tax of 10.25% (Fortune, 7/16/15), spinning the tax as a big-government mandate that denies “freedom of choice” – as though there were “freedom of choice” for affordable healthy foods.
Neither of these capitalist factions and their bottom lines can afford to care about workers’ health. Nor do their elected representatives. As one of Preckwinkle’s first acts in 2011, south side Oak Forest Hospital was closed, destroying lives. Meanwhile Bloomberg, crying crocodile tears for children suffering from sugar overload, unleashed the NYPD to “stop and frisk” hundreds of thousands of Black youth and immigrant workers. The beverage bosses only care about the how the tax cuts into their ability to market their profit-making poisons to working-class families.
With the tax’s repeal on December 1st, it’s virtually inevitable that the Cook County Health System of Chicago will resort to another round of layoffs and patient-service cuts to cover the $200 million dollar deficit. As with the Chicago Public Schools’ budget crisis, the workers will suffer the cutbacks while the politicians use billions in workers’ tax revenue to pay for their banking and real estate masters’ bond interest and other services. The pretense of winning working people to healthier lifestyles sinks into a cynical and destructive parody.
Communists in PLP know that only a mass international Party of millions, fighting for revolution to achieve an egalitarian society, can guarantee our optimal health as a class. Fighting for communism means that we abolish the profit motive that drives health care under capitalism, where decent care is available only if you can pay for it. It means replacing profit with comprehensive health care available to any worker who needs it, without cost to the individual, but rather borne by our class as a whole. Fighting for communism means that we struggle long-term with our fellow workers to win them away from unhealthy lifestyle habits that go with living in a divisive and competitive class society. Building the Party brings closer the day that all decisions affecting the masses, from food production to public health to minimizing destruction from natural disasters, will be made collectively, and based on science and our needs as workers.
The capitalist bosses want us to pick our poison: consume their unhealthy food that destroys our bodies, or pay a punishing tax in order to cover their latest budget crisis. PLP organizes with our working-class sisters and brothers to reject both! Join us to fight for a communist world and the health we truly need and deserve.