AURORA, IL, February 15—Today, a 45 year-old Black worker Gary Martin, after learning he was fired, opened fire on supervisors and co-workers at Henry Pratt Co Warehouse in Aurora, a western suburb of Chicago. Martin killed five people before the cops gunned him down.
Martin’s fatal and inexcusable rampage is an extreme manifestation of the widespread alienation corroding the thoughts and actions of millions of workers worldwide who suffer under capitalism. As mass shootings become a more frequent occurrence, it becomes all the more essential to question and challenge the dehumanizing and unforgiving essence of the global profit system itself. The need for a revolutionary mass movement to crush capitalism and replace it with an egalitarian communist society is needed more than ever. Rather than relentless competition and the promotion of self-interest, workers uniting as a mass international Progressive Labor Party can build an egalitarian society where cooperation is the norm and where all workers’ social, physical, and emotional needs are met.
Violent system begets violence
Although mass shootings generate many headlines, the gun violence in the U.S. is in fact more insidious. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the year 2016 saw approximately 39,000 people die from gun-related injuries in the United States. Around 2 percent, or 456, of these deaths were from mass shootings. But the great majority—nearly 23,000—were the result of suicides (Vox, 2/19).What 23,000 suicide gun deaths in one year signifies is an acute sense of despair among significant portions of the working class. Based on studies from the same year by the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 16.2 million adults aged 18 or older reported having at least one major depressive episode. Of these 16.2 million, approximately 37 percent reported not receiving any type of treatment (nimh.nih.gov, 11/2017).
What’s more, the trend of mental illness shows a correlation with class; the higher the dispossession of workers under capitalism, the more likely to report higher rates of despair and drug and alcohol abuse than individuals and families with higher levels of income and wealth (Princeton University, 6/18/18). Because the system engenders and hinges on the alienation of workers, capitalism cannot solve the problem of mental illness and gun violence. A violent system begets violence. A sick system begets sick people.
Though the U.S. is by far one of the wealthiest countries, it inevitably fails millions of workers and their families in terms of mental and thereby physical wellness. Public and mental health services and resources are increasingly sparse, taking a backseat to the more profitable outlets in healthcare, such as pharmaceutical interventions.
Politicians’ hypocrisy on blast
As the details surrounded Martin’s massacre in Aurora emerged, a wide range of political figures and public officials jumped at the opportunity to make statements. Recently elected billionaire Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Illinois senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, and even US President Donald Trump all wanted to demonstrate to the working class how much they “care” about workers when tragedy strikes. Their hypocrisy practically knows no bounds.
These same capitalist politicians are the same class enemies that pass bills and resolutions that slash mental health resources, affordable housing, unemployment benefits, and jobs. They vote to authorize the bombing of our working-class brothers and sisters in other countries in order to defend US imperialism, and approve fascist border patrols and a massive deportation apparatus to detain and deport millions of immigrant workers. Martin’s violence, as despicable and destructive as it was, can hardly hold a candle to the crimes perpetrated daily by capitalist scum, on behalf of their system. They readily exploit domestic crises just like the Aurora massacre because it helps deflect attention and blame away from the inherent violence of capitalism, with its economic violence, racist police killings, inequality, and profit wars.
Building communism is good for your mental health
In contrast to loner individualism and alienation that are inevitable outcomes of a system based on competition and profit, more attention must be devoted to the positive emotional impacts generated in collective, revolutionary working-class struggle. It’s essential to understand our commonality as workers, who all stand to benefit from the destruction of capitalism and its replacement with an egalitarian communist society. Through our collective struggle the international working class can find the sense of purpose and connection so sorely lacking under this system. Mass shootings, depression and suicide as we know them are not inevitable social outcomes. It’s in our power to minimize their effects almost entirely, but only if we steel ourselves to overthrow the rotten profit system that breeds them.