All Human life is priceless: we must not allow Tories to trade lives for GDP

.

“In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity.  Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity.”  Immanuel Kant. 

Right from the start of this pandemic crisis, two moral narratives have dominated.

In one, human life has infinite value and cannot be divided by measures of material wealth. In the other, human life has a dollar value as a column in an economist’s spreadsheet.

This distinction is not new.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant distinguished between two orders of value: price and dignity.  The two are held to be entirely incommensurate: “price” is finite purchase-value, measured in medias of exchange, while “dignity” is the infinite value of human beings (and other “ends-in-themselves”).

Once humans are marked with a ‘price’ they easily become the means by which others acquire the ends of their material desires. If we ascribe dignity to all human life, then this unbounded “gold standard” is wholly beyond price. 

If ‘price’ and ‘dignity’ are incommensurate, then it is immorality itself to propose “balancing” between economic productivity and the preservation of human life: no matter how large the economic sacrifice or how small (or infirm) the quantity (or quality) of lives. 

Even those of a utilitarian mindset, who are dubious about Kant’s distinction, must ask themselves: what finite value should one place on a human life?  If people are prepared to dismiss the notion of unbounded dignity, then they should at least be prepared to state, explicitly, how many lives are expendable, in order to “restore balance” to economic “business-as-usual”. 

But for the usual suspects, putting a ‘price’ on all life is a given, thus for them the economic costs of  “social distancing” are worse than the disease. For them, getting the economy moving again trumps any avoidance of mass human carnage.  

The Tories have been ashen faced about the interests of capital from the outset. You will hear much insidious propaganda soon which aims to cloak these base motives as societal concern.  

Hidden behind the insincere angst, they will say that while two weeks’ of partial economic shutdown were perhaps an acceptable price to pay for saving hundreds of thousand of lives…a month or more is not: especially if the “casualties” are elderly, infirm and “probably going to die fairly soon anyway”.

Taken at its crudest, most literal level (which, alas, is typical of those who spout such malign drivel), this is immorality at its purest and most toxic.

To be fair, though: not all of those clamouring for the relaxation or elimination of current shut-down measures are possessed of such crass and malignantly mercenary motives.  After all, capitalism being what it is, most of us are unable to survive indefinitely without employment and most businesses unable to endure a prolonged hiatus.

Government safety-nets can only be stretched so far. After a certain point, many individuals and businesses will be left in desperate penury: indeed, even in our ‘developed world’, millions lack an isolated place to “socially distance” anyway. 

As for the planet’s war-zones, refugee camps, slums, prisons, etc: medical care is poor, scarce, or unavailable; and “sheltering in place” is simply not an option for those surviving day-by-day who would starve if confined to their homes.

“Lockdown” provisions will need to be relaxed, at least to some degree, long before a vaccine, treatment or “herd immunity” is available. Every such relaxation, no matter how restricted and tentative, will mean more deaths.

The UK government is presiding over the worst outbreak of Covid-19 in Europe, enormous life and death  decisions lie ahead.

These decisions should not mean flicking economic on/off switches so as to balance capitalism against public sentiment. They should pivot around proportionate and morally literate actions that prioritise the infinite dignity of human life. 

Which path will the Tories take? Well a decade of Tory rule has shown what they value: and their response to Covid-19 has illuminated a eugenicist disregard for human life .

Only moral pressure might provide Tories with the values, and moral fibre that they so routinely lack. We must not allow them to shrug off avoidable deaths behind euphemisms like ‘underlying health conditions’. 

This article rightly argues that comparisons to Nazi Germany rarely make for good political debate, but then relates the chilling similarities between the Nazi’s T4 extermination program and how people with learning disabilities and other vulnerable people are being treated during this crisis.  

Thanks to the moral vacuity and serial incompetence of the Tories, a wholly avoidable pandemic now holds the UK to ransom. They love to boast about making ‘hard choices’, but now face some truly tough decisions.

Tories are incapable of moral leadership – so we will  have to explain to them how to walk between economic ruin and a moral abyss.

If we don’t force their hands, then we will certainly fall and this time will be remembered not only as national tragedy, but of infamy: the kind where future generations will ask ‘why didn’t the people of Britain stop that?’  

‘Why didn’t they speak out until it was too late?’ 

Dr Lite – 12/4/20

Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.

I am a home schooling parent on a low income – paying for the domain, web hosting and security entirely out of my own pocket.  

If you found this article useful and could spare us a few shillings to help keep our lights on, it would be very much appreciated.

Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.     

Click here to follow Sodium Haze on Facebook