After two years of anxious speculation about the ramifications of Brexit for the healthcare sector, in late July this year the Health Secretary announced the NHS had begun stockpiling medicines and blood products, while commentators announce the grim possibility of a disintegration of the NHS. Contemporary healthcare provision is critically dependent on market-mediated access to international supplies of labour, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and research. If a process like Brexit, a negotiated reconfiguration of market relations between diplomatically allied nations, can so substantially puts that access in question, what does that mean for our conceptions of revolution?

 

History demonstrates that without the ability to meet a population’s needs, revolutionary sequences tend overwhelming towards two terminal points: the revolutionaries crushed by their opposition, or, in the face of growing shortages, militants imposing compliance by force, and in doing so condemning the revolution to failure. For our movements to stand any hope of a more favourable outcome,we need to find, from where we are now, ways to meet our needs and grow, while abolishing capital and producing communism. This session will explore already existing structures of autonomous healthcare, from free clinics and trans healthcare to Open Insulin laboratories, and ask about the practical measures we can undertake now, to make our world survivable in the long term.