Morning Comrades and welcome back to your patreon-only dispatches for this week. As always, thank you for your continued support of this work. As mentioned a number of times before I have reduced the monthly subscription fee to 5USD and that has taken effect immediately.
My physical health has taken a few semi-severe knocks these past few days, a sprained hand, a rather nasty work-related cut on the same hand as well as usual bullshit that comes with having worked manually for most of the past 20 or so years and with that came the to be expected downward spiral in regards to my mental health. I know, in the abstract, I am the first to say and try to believe that ones productivity under Capitalism should never be related to ones Mental Health, but even I cannot shake the grip this tool of psychological terror has on us on the best of days.
The trained ability to self-reflect, nevertheless, leaves for interesting questions, more for our collective benefit and despite being upset/angry/sad, a part of my brain remains analytical - a superficial oxymoron but it actually makes sense. With that, today’s dispatch will deal with the question of Mental Health, what it is, who defined it, what it means within the Marxist thought system and then some. It’s a fascinating field, predominately due to its contradictions, as Marxist Theory is rooted in both an “Antipsychiatry” and Materialism, which, in my understanding can contradict and yet compliment one another.
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