The following is reposted from the blog “Notes from Underground”. Since it appeared, the death toll of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria has surpassed 33.000 and it is still mounting. The suffering is immense and the aid is slow in coming, in contrast to the bombs and artillery fire that have been raining down on this region for years now. Many if not most survivors have received no help whatsoever and can rely only on their mutual solidarity, building makeshift shelters in freezing temperatures. Many children are dying from hypothermia, the New York Times reported yesterday. In Syria, many die because Russian bombs have destroyed the hospitals in the territory that was controlled by the armies opposed to the Assad government. Up to 70 percent of Syria’s health care workers have fled the country, according to a report by BioMed Central. Meanwhile, hospitals in the government controlled territory lack medicine and equipment because of Western sanctions.
I’ve watched with horror and a growing anger the death toll in the aftermath of the 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria just a few days ago. The count stands at over 12,000 with numbers expected to rise. Commentators, politicians, and journalists wring their hands asking why? Insurance companies and businesses look to “acts of God.” (which says something about their God), but the truth is far simpler: Profit Kills
In 1999, Internationalist Perspective published an article in their journal called “Profit Kills.” It’s worth quoting the opening in full paragraph (and indeed reading the entire article):
| The engineer was interviewed amidst the rubble of the earthquake in Turkey. “How many of these buildings would still be standing if the proper materials would have been used in their construction?” the TV reporter asked. “All of them”, the engineer answered with a tired voice, “all of them”. Thousands were killed in Turkey and hundreds of thousands made homeless, not by an earthquake but by profit. The purpose of building houses in this society is not to shelter people. It is to make profit. If this can be done by providing people with a sturdy home, fine. If not, the cheapest materials are used to knock together houses that are doomed to crumble when the earth moves in Turkey or Taiwan, when a hurricane hits Florida or when rivers overflow in Mexico or China. The builders plead innocence. If they followed proper procedures, they say, their rates of profit would be so low that investors would shun them, and they could build no more houses and millions more would have to live in shanty towns. Would that be any worse? |
Almost a quarter century later, has anything changed? If anything, it’s worse. And it will continue unless it is stopped.
The likely tens of thousands dead; the survivors left with nothing; the communities beyond: all this suffering can be placed at capitalism’s door, at a system that for far, far too long has in “normal times” allowed so-called natural disaster like this to occur, and in less normal times plunged the world into war.
What’s needed is not better laws, better inspectors or better governments, but an uprooting of a system which prizes profit, the pursuit of value over human lives, over human existence. It may sound utopian, like a pipe-dream, but it can be done. The world can be transformed by working people; the working people who make up the vast majority of humanity. To do otherwise is to prepare for future tragedies.
Fischerzed, February 9