Capitalism and the Epidemic of Allergies Hassan Abbasi
The global burden of asthma. Global Burden of Asthma, Chest 2006
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced in the summer of 2014 that 400 million people worldwide suffer from allergies and 300 million have asthma. Allergies are known as the fourth most common disease in the world and will soon rise to third place. In the United States, 17 million, Japan 3 million, India 15 million, France 4 million, and Sweden 700,000 people suffer from asthma. In Sweden, 9 out of 10 children and 7 out of 10 adults suffer from some form of allergy. Until a few decades ago, only a small percentage of urban residents suffered from allergies. For example, today half of children of childbearing age suffer from some form of allergy. While 30 years ago, this figure was only 3 percent for the same age group. The figure below shows the growth of this epidemic in the United States over the past ten years.
Figure 8 above shows the growth of allergies in the United States among different age groups over a decade. An allergy is an inflammation or irritation, a response that the body’s defence system mounts against a foreign substance on the skin or inside the body. This inflammation manifests itself in various forms, such as swelling, redness, warmth, itching, coughing, shortness of breath due to inflammation of the respiratory tract. Of course, the human body may react to various discomforts and discomforts, for example, the body’s defence system may produce antibodies against certain substances, but this is not yet an allergy. Allergy begins when this reaction appears as a symptom such as the one mentioned above. Allergy is one of the 40 types of inflammation in the body that science and researchers still do not have a good answer for the reasons for its occurrence and how it works. Various theories have been presented in this field. But all researchers agree on one thing, and that is the current urban lifestyle, especially after the Second Imperialist War, which has brought and spread the epidemic of this disease. In this article, I will discuss its real, social and class roots by mentioning various reasons and opinions. Until a few years ago, researchers believed that air pollution and the particles in it directly affect the body’s defence system and that this effect is reflected in inflammation and flare-ups. Urban air pollution affects the respiratory system. We are exposed to pollution from traffic, diesel smoke particles and ozone outdoors, and to pollution from light chemicals indoors, such as floor adhesives, chemicals in clothing, plastics, detergents, etc. Indoor air is 5 times more polluted than outdoor air, even though outdoor air also contains environmental pollutants and plant pollen. That environmental pollutants directly cause allergies was the dominant theory of the 1990s. But in the same decade, another hypothesis became popular, the hygiene hypothesis. This hypothesis, which now has many supporters among researchers, says that a cleaner and more hygienic life leads to less contact with bacteria and microorganisms, and this in turn prevents the body’s defence system from obtaining the necessary information about bacteria and other living organisms, and the lack of information causes the body’s defence system to be shocked and defenceless when confronted with allergens. This hypothesis was tested in mice that had no contact with bacteria in a laboratory in Lausanne by Dr Fergus Shanahan & Pr Ben Marshland. The mice were exposed to allergens and the results showed that these sterilized mice showed less sensitivity to allergens than normal mice. For this reason, researchers such as Graham Rook and his friends believe that living in glass bubbles and cities made of concrete separates humans from their natural environment, which is full of bacteria, parasites, and various microbes, and causes them to have no relationship with these tiny and often beneficial creatures. When exposed to allergens, the absence of these beneficial guests leaves the body defenceless. Because the scientific world has long believed that the presence of billions of microbes inside and on the skin completes the task of the body’s defence system. With that said, let’s get to the heart-wrenching story of the allergy epidemic. The human body is an environment and breeding ground for a variety of microorganisms. The bacterial colonies on your teeth, the billions of microbes on your skin, and the billions of bacteria that live in your intestines all have various and important functions on your skin and inside your body, some of which are known and many of which are still unknown. Therefore, the human body should be viewed as an ecosystem. Let’s start with the mouth. Today, caries is one of the greatest epidemics that has gripped humanity since the beginning of the development of capitalism. Our ancestors had healthy teeth that did not even need a toothbrush. This is shown by (Alan J. Cooper) and (Christina Warinner, Camilla Speller and Matthew J. Collins) in their research on human teeth in different eras, from hunter-gatherer humans to the present day. 67. These studies suggest that teeth were all healthy and well until changes and developments led to changes in the biology of the mouth. Normally, there are more than 100 million bacteria in each drop of saliva – a complete ecosystem with 700 different types of bacteria. So that all these bacteria draw a membrane or biofilm on the teeth that protects them from food. Of course, there are also harmful bacteria among them, and there is always a relentless battle between these two groups. The mouth produces acid when chewing food, and since the outer layer of the tooth is made of mineral materials, it dissolves and deteriorates due to the acid, and this is how various lesions and epidemics (the most important of which is caries) begin, which even lead to oral cancer. When the acid eats away these layers, harmful bacteria enter the holes and cavities created. But what happened that humans became afflicted with an epidemic of oral diseases, including caries. Comparing the effects of human dental bacteria throughout history reveals dramatic changes, especially since the 1850s, when sugar (such a product was known in its purest and most specific form before this date, but it was only after this date that its production became widespread and reached mass production) and flour were introduced. It is then that the bacteria in the mouth change, with the bad bacteria gaining more and more dominance, while the good bacteria decline. All of this is timed to coincide with the consumption of sugar, sweets, and processed foods. Bacteria thrive in an acidic environment while beneficial bacteria die in this environment, and thus the growth of capitalism reduces the beneficial microorganisms in the mouth and leads to epidemics of various diseases. The production of goods for the purpose of selling and gaining additional value has never had any regard for human health, so when this method of production creates various diseases by its own expansion, it has no sensitivity to the real challenge of these complications. On the contrary, it continues its trend and even creates new areas of production of goods such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, various types of mouthwashes, medicines, etc. from the chaotic market it has created under the guise of fighting new diseases.
Another center of beneficial bacteria in the body is the intestines. The number of bacteria present here is 10 times the number of cells in the human body. These bacteria are present in the intestines and are very important for human health. They are important for brain development, the body’s immune system and even our happiness and sadness. They also play a role in weight gain and loss, and they also control insulin resistance. In other words, they control complex mechanisms that humans have only just begun to study. When we take some antibiotics, the risk of contracting many diseases increases (Professors Thomas Borody, Phil Hugenholtz). Antibiotics kill off beneficial bacteria, allowing harmful bacteria to take over the gut. For example, when researchers change the gut bacteria of a patient with MS to normal, the patient recovers from this difficult disease, and even people with depression have improved by replacing beneficial gut bacteria. The types of gut bacteria in human groups are so diverse that researchers have not yet had the opportunity to name them. All of these studies point to one thing: modern life, along with the production and consumption of harmful products containing toxins and harmful substances, changes the body’s bacterial colony, and unfortunately, this also includes beneficial bacteria and microbes on the skin, in the hair, and in the mouth. This leads to a weakening of the body’s immune system and the occurrence of eczema, allergies, and various skin diseases. These things have been very rare so far, and some of them were unknown to humans until a few decades ago. Here, the balance between beneficial and harmful bacteria is the most important factor in a healthy human life. In an African village where life has not yet been contaminated by new products and a degraded environment, the intestinal bacteria of villagers are different from the intestinal bacteria of urban masses. Researchers are becoming more and more convinced of the conclusion that, in general, humans living in so-called “advanced” capitalist countries or even less developed ones have a different intestinal bacterial colony than humans of the past (meaning five or six decades ago). Everything screams that the occurrence and spread of diseases and the epidemic of allergies are very closely related to the degree of growth and expansion of capitalism. Some researchers believe that one of the reasons for the abundance of chronic diseases in countries where processed foods (ready-made foods, fast food, etc.) are consumed is these foods. When we eat, not only does our body digest food, but the microbes in our body also eat food, and in this way we maintain and nurture that unbalanced system that we have in our body, and this is something called background inflammation that causes disease.
The entire life of the capitalist system is a very small period compared to the history of human life, but during this short period of time, we have become human beings who, in the limited and cramped environment of cities, in skyscrapers, among smoke and fumes, experience the lives of miserable sufferers of hundreds of types of chemical diseases produced by this method of production. But the problem is not only this. Billions of our fellow workers work in an environment that is full of chemicals that are harmful to the body and beneficial bacteria. They also live in niches where animals are not willing to live, and instead of coming into contact with beneficial bacteria for the body, they come into contact with the most harmful types of microbes, which means that our entire ecosystem has changed from the inside out. Until now, it was thought that the body’s immune system alone fights diseases, but this is not the case. The body’s defence system is supported in this campaign by the beneficial microbes in the organism, and as the number of these beneficial bacteria decreases, the capacity of the defence system also decreases. The Amish people of America, who migrated there from Switzerland, still practice agriculture in the style of 100 years ago and do not use antibiotics or vaccines. They are 10 times less likely to develop allergies than the average American. American Amish children in a study tested for allergies showed only 8% of them, while Swiss Amish children showed 25% and Swiss children as a whole showed 40%. The result is that the further back in capitalist history we go, the lower the rates of allergies and asthma, and the lower the rates at the beginning.
In the first half of 1900, all researchers thought that microbes only caused the spread of diseases, and in 1901, after Pasteur and his research showed that bacteria in the environment were the cause of diseases, pharmaceutical companies scrambled to make the human body resistant to microbes with toxic substances, and this began a war against all microbes, both beneficial and harmful. An event that today also includes other microscopic organisms in the world of plants and food. Remember that a human baby in its early years establishes a mutual relationship with billions of bacteria around it, and each of us has more than 100 trillion bacteria inside our bodies that are responsible for our health. Just one gift of capitalism and its inevitability in relation to humans is the massacre of these beneficial bacteria. Just consider penicillin and antibiotics, which are useful to us but have caused us to live in a world of bacteria. A very important point needs to be made here. Perhaps many people will fall into the wrong mindset by bringing up this discussion and think that the killing of these bacteria is a compulsion of modern industry and industrial progress in general, and that its occurrence has no special connection with the mode of production and whether or not societies are capitalist!! Such an idea is fundamentally wrong, and therefore the core of our discussion is that the root of all forms of environmental pollution and the consequences of this pollution, including the massacre of beneficial bacteria, is, like all other evils of modern humanity, in the existence of capital. What industry and the industrialization of countries do to humans is an issue that starts and ends with the prevailing mode of production. Industrial progress could and should happen on a scale ten of times greater and more stunning than the current situation, but without any of the catastrophic environmental events of today.
If people in their anti-capitalist councils, with the unanimous vote of all their members and using all knowledge, techniques, scientific and informational achievements, think about and plan their work, production and social life processes, if they view everything from the perspective of the real needs of life and the greatest degree of physical and intellectual excellence, health, comfort and social welfare and make it a subject of planning, then they will explore what should be produced and what should not be produced and how much should be produced and everything from this angle. In this exploration, they will use all the achievements of human knowledge as weapons and ultimately, freely, autonomously, consciously and creatively, they will also eliminate the risk of any environmental problem. The opposite is true in capitalist society. Here, the starting point, return point, and end point of everything is capital and the ever more astronomical profitability of capital. The worker is merely a means of producing surplus value, a victim of this process, and his existence or non-existence is a function of the needs of this process. Let us not forget that the production of all kinds of diseases, while being a consequence of the rule of the wage slavery system, is also the effective opening of numerous areas of accumulation, valorisation, and unbridled profitability of capital. Each disease brings about a process, sometimes very complex, of treatment, and within each of these processes, hundreds of avenues open up for new capital investments in medicine, treatment, testing, and the like. The issue is not at all that capitalism deliberately plans to make people sick or die. The main point is that capital seeks profit and, to achieve this goal, it engages in every form of holocaust and ruthless massacre of humanity, just as it has devoted the largest areas to the production of all kinds of chemical, nuclear, microbial, cluster bombs, and weapons of mass destruction. In the production of drugs and any other goods, humanity does not tolerate any other kind. In the 19th century, the prescription of pharmaceutical companies was to make profits by further expanding the threat to people’s health and producing new pharmaceutical products. This is what capitalism has always done and continues to do today. In this way, by injecting allergens (either chemically produced or obtained from plants) into the patient, he becomes somewhat resistant to the allergen and reduces the body’s reaction to the allergen. Capitalism does not repair any form of destruction of human health but rather transforms it into a new way of making profit. Capitalism, through the production of cleaning products, pesticides, various chemicals, chemical additives to foods, factory production of food, and in general the creation of this type of life, not only destroys the human environment, but also all animals and living beings. In this regard, it also destroys beneficial microorganisms and creates conditions for various new diseases. Those who generally bear the bad consequences of these misfortunes are the workers because the rich have always been able to pay high prices for goods, decent housing in a safe place, clean air and various welfare and sanitary facilities. They have grown up with a good life and in a hygienic environment and have had access to all the quality products. On the contrary, workers, especially the poorer section, have never obtained any healthy food or proper livelihood necessities because they are unable to pay the high prices. Under the pressure of hunger, poverty and misery, they do not even pay attention to the pollution of their environment. Many of them do not know that their living environment causes various diseases. In every city we see shops with goods of different qualities and different prices. We see palaces, villas, modern houses and beyond them we see slums, shanty towns. The quality of food and food products of different sections of the working class or their place of residence is a function of the price of their labour. A price so small that in a large part of the world, at best, it is enough to last people from today to tomorrow. Capitalism not only deprives workers of food, clothing, housing, or schooling and medicine, it also uses what it obtains in the form of food, shelter, medicine, and a place to live as a tool to kill them.
The theory of cleanliness also has major challenges in this system, including the fact that in cities, at the same time as the epidemic of various allergies grows, other diseases are also rampant, and this does not fit with the science of epidemics. The human body of the city dweller loses the opportunity to learn to communicate with microbes. On the other hand, the reduction of microorganisms in cities, which is the basis of the theory of cleanliness, is not the cause of the occurrence and increase of allergies but is itself a consequence of the production and spread of chemicals, pesticides, and chemical additives to foods. Substances whose production and distribution have increased significantly, especially after the war. In addition, this theory does not apply to substances that independently cause allergies. For example, contact dermatitis, which is caused by direct contact of the allergen with the body and includes many elements and substances. (Nickel, gold, chrome, epoxies, acrylics, isocyanates, etc.) are substances that have generally increased and expanded in the production processes of capitalist relations over the past decades. These substances add thousands of workers worldwide to the huge number of allergy sufferers every day, but the bosses and managers of the production of goods containing them do not suffer from allergies because they do not come into contact with the substances. Three-quarters of all dyes and hair colours contain allergenic substances that cause eczema on the face, skin, head and neck of hairdressers. Fragrances also contain allergens. There are about 2,500 fragrance blends, each containing at least 100 different allergens, and these fragrance blends are used in cosmetics, detergents, cleaners, and other products. Nickel is the most common allergen. Among people in industrialized countries, including the 34 largest industrialized countries in the world (OECD), 10 to 15 percent of women in the 20 to 30 age group are allergic to nickel, and the percentage of men affected in these countries is slightly lower. Gold is next, with 5 to 10 percent of women suffering from gold allergy. Chromium (Cr), which has been increasingly used in various products since the 1800s (alloys, smooth metal surfaces, anti-rust paints, paints in general, wood preservatives, stainless and galvanized steel, and cement), and workers who work with these materials develop chromium allergy 68.
The same applies to nutrition as we said about contact allergies. This means that capitalists add antioxidants, antifungals, and antibacterials to food products to extend their shelf life, colouring agents to decorate the product and increase its sales, food additives, cosmetics, and dyes, all of which contribute to the spread of allergens. These technical additives to foods that increase the shelf life of the product can cause asthma or other allergies, but they also have another role, which is to destroy bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms, which in turn indirectly affect the human body’s defence system. For more information about these substances, see Appendix 3 at the end of this book, but it should be noted that this is the official list of registered substances that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) 69 has issued a license to register and use them in food production. Not only are new substances added to biocides every day, but their quantity is also increasing, thus adding to the mountain of allergens. A look at Figure 9 highlights this problem. In addition, capitalism, with the production and expansion of herbicides and pesticides produced after World War II, has learned Sudanese lessons for the production of these pesticides and chemical weapons.
Insects, rodents, weeds, fungi, bacteria, worms, parasites, and even spiders and birds are all creatures that are attacked by the toxins produced by agricultural and chemical companies. And this is one of the greatest attacks of capitalism on these tiny creatures of nature and the human body, which makes humans defenceless against allergy epidemics (for more information, see Appendix 4 at the end of this book). Apart from substances that are produced and distributed with the aim of killing and destroying microorganisms and microbes, there are about 10 million known chemicals in the world today. Of these, about 50 thousand are actively used in various products. And the majority of them have destructive effects on microorganisms and microbes. The Organization of the Largest Capitalist Countries (OECD) writes in its report on the production of chemicals in the world after 1950 that in 1950, about 7 million tons of chemicals were produced, and this figure reached 400 million tons in 2003. In its forecast, the OECD also announces an 85% growth figure by 2020. This capitalist institution shows in its studies that it has scientific information on only about 15% of these substances.
Figure 9: Allergens in consumer products between 1995 and 2010 in Sweden, according to statistics from the Swedish Product Registration Authority. Swedish Chemical Agency
Of the 14,000 chemical products in general use, about 3,800 (27% in 2010) contained one or more allergenic substances, compared to about 16% in 1995 (Figure 9). The amount of allergenic substances in consumer chemical products, according to figures from the Swedish Food Safety Authority, was 89 grams per person in 2010. In addition to the official substances, thousands of other substances are added to foods, both legally and illegally. It is important to note that these goods are not only used in the production of food, but also in the preparation of medicines, cosmetics, shampoos and soaps. All this must be considered in a situation where the purchasing power of the working class is only their daily wages, and therefore they acquire something that the owners of wealth are reluctant and perhaps even ashamed to consume. We all know that in all cities of Iran (and this is true in all societies) you can have the best of everything, but high-quality goods are inaccessible to the working class due to their high prices. One of the vital preoccupations of workers is their daily efforts to discover stores where shopping is possible at a lower price, but we know that the price of every item is determined in the market, and therefore, despite all their efforts, what is obtained is shoddy, second-hand, and near-perishable goods that are offered to workers. All of these make the workers’ bodies weak and susceptible to disease. So far, we have talked mostly about the general conditions and their destructive effects on human health, without considering class factors and without mentioning the very different degrees of vulnerability of different social classes to these conditions. It is clear that these vulnerabilities are multiplied a hundredfold in the case of the working class, given the low level of livelihood, poverty, and the unfavourable conditions in all aspects of health and treatment, housing, food, clothing, and the environment. This vulnerability increases tenfold when capital plunges into the abyss of crisis and sends the masses of workers into the wilderness of unemployment. Wages become lower and lower, the capitalist shifts the entire burden of the crisis onto the workers’ livelihoods, and a new phase of deepening poverty, misery, displacement, and hunger of the workers begins. Even in countries with low levels of social security, many workers are forced to apply for government benefits.
Capital Influx on the Health of Displaced and Migrant Workers
This topic seems a bit unrelated to the content of the article, but it is not completely irrelevant. It was stated above that the degree of vulnerability of people to the mountain of risks that capital throws at them is very closely related to their class position and living conditions. Workers are the most vulnerable people, and among workers there are layers whose level of vulnerability is indescribable. The question is, what can these classes do with this way of life that capital has imposed on them, in the face of the unruly wave of diseases that capital has once again inflicted on them? A look at begging across Europe in recent years presents us with a picture of what we really are. The number of beggars in Eastern European societies is increasing. They generally beg in the working-class neighbourhoods of southeastern European cities because only workers understand their living conditions and see their possible future fate in their eyes. However, the generosity of this section of the working class also includes a small number of beggars. Therefore, some of the hungry and necessarily the poorest workers, who, in addition to unemployment, are also subjected to racial and ethnic oppression, turn to Northern European countries and the outskirts of the cities of this region and join the very poorest strata of this society. In fact, these immigrants, like African immigrants to Europe, are fleeing from the pressure of poverty and lack of food, clothing, and housing, and not necessarily for work (because European countries are themselves full of unemployed people and, with double-digit unemployment rates, have no work for these immigrants). All of them are hoping that some of their comrades in these countries will extend a helping hand to them. But how strange that capitalism is profiting from the insistence of these cursed people, who have become humiliated, displaced, and captives of calamity. The system of wage slavery is an indescribable octopus, an octopus that has the worker for life and exploits him in the most horrific dimensions as long as the need for capital’s profitability demands it. When his labour power is not needed, he makes him unemployed and hungry and turns him into a beggar. But even here, he does not give up on him. He turns his begging into a field of capital accumulation and valorisation. He gathers a large number of them, puts hundreds and thousands of them under the yoke of his profit-seeking and inhumane rule and planning. He asks them to beg and give the largest share of this begging to the capitalist who owns his slaves! Here too, the beggar worker sells his labour to the capitalist who owns the beggar’s house in the begging sector. Out of every 10 rials he begs, he pays the largest share to the capital mafia!! The number of these workers is increasing day by day and in the near future they will probably constitute a large part of the entire global working class. The story began with the migration of millions of unemployed people from Latin America to North America, and today the unemployed and homeless people from Africa and Eastern Europe are migrating to Northern and Western Europe, and at the same time the unemployed and refugees from Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma and other parts of Asia have been added to them in Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. These people have the most pitiful living conditions. The workers of the world were supposed to join hands against capital, but they have not done so to this day, and the punishment for not doing so is that they come to each other with begging bowls and join hands!! This is the situation of a part of the working class. A sector whose labour force is begging and whose labour price is the most miserable tattered clothes, a cartoon sleeping on the side of the streets, and a morsel of food to keep from dying and continuing to beg. A sector that has lost even the desire to find work and sell its labour force. It thinks of no struggle, poses no danger to the bourgeoisie, disturbs no government, and apparently does not disturb the long sleep of its fossilized chains in the sediments of the capitalist order. A large mass of this section are African immigrants. Humans who are treated much worse than animals that can be bought and sold, and who are crammed onto the decks of wrecked ships, and whose migration is in turn a field of human slaughter by capital. The war of capital displaces them from their homes and places of work, poverty, homelessness, misery, and the burdens imposed by capital force them to flee. All their possessions are ruthlessly plundered by the capitalist who owns the barge, and halfway there they become even more ruthlessly preyed upon by the fish of the sea. The worst neighbourhoods of European cities are their home, and if they are very lucky, the worst and hardest jobs that no one is willing to do in exchange for the meagre wages that result from this risky journey. These, the product of the recent invasion of capitalism into the lives of the masses of Africa, teach the workers of Europe how to live a hard life with the minimum possible. European capitalists are not worried about these migrations because it hangs like a sword of Damocles over the head of the European working class, especially its lowest strata, who have never raised a demand higher than the minimum wage. This is while the situation of other workers is getting worse every day. The International Labor Organization (ILO) says in its new report published on May 19, 2015, “Three-quarters of the world’s workers are employed in non-permanent contracts, in informal jobs without a contract or in unpaid family activities.” According to a new report by the International Labor Organization, nearly 60 percent of workers and employees are employed without any type of contract. These people are either daily wage earners or working in family activities. Among those employed with a contract, according to the report, only about half (42 percent) have permanent contracts, while the other half work on temporary contracts. The organization acknowledges that capitalist governments are now looking to change the standard forms and definitions of employment to non-standard forms in some European countries. Another unfortunate phenomenon that the ILO points out is the increase in the number of women working part-time. The inequality in the income of those with permanent contracts compared to those with temporary contracts is another point mentioned in this report. The International Labor Organization writes in its report that only 52 percent of all workers worldwide have access to pension services. This percentage rises to 16 percent among those working under a so-called (freelance) contract. The emergence of new layers of workers is a frightening phenomenon in every respect. The Chinese migrant worker’s job is to separate all kinds of plastic containers. His life depends on the containers that others have thrown away. There are more than 250 million migrant workers in China. A significant portion of them form a new working class, engaged in garbage collection, and are found all over the world in every country. The living quarters of many migrant workers are small and very inadequate. These workers are paid very low wages and are not only not respected but also have no protection, no health center will let them in. They work seven days a week up to 14 hours a day and no contract is signed with them. Today, more than a million migrant workers are engaged in loading and unloading huge containers in various ports around the world. Another way of life for some migrant workers is to spend up to nine months of the year at sea, moving from port to port. The work on ships is repetitive and boring, with no variety or excitement. Many migrant workers in Thailand work in the construction sector. There is no mention of safety clothing. These workers wear hats for their own safety and wrap a cloth or undershirt around their face and mouth to protect themselves from dust and the sun as much as possible. However, in many cases, covering their faces is to conceal their identity. He is forced to live and work illegally in Thailand. By hiding their identity, they are able to quickly hide if problems arise. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers live and work in Germany, and many young people from Eastern European countries dream of living in Germany. The situation of the Iranian working class is even worse. According to the Central Bank of Iran, about a quarter of Iranian households have no one working, although they may have an income. Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) November 15, 2014, according to surveys conducted by the Central Bank of Iran, 24 percent of Iranian households have no employed person, 57 percent have one employed person, more than 15 percent have two employed persons, and about 3 percent have three or more employed persons. This is while the cost of living is increasing at a rate many times faster than that of those who have a salary. A representative of the Islamic Capital Councils Center says, “Based on official reports, while the minimum wage has been set at 398,000 Tomans since the beginning of this year, the average cost of a family is estimated to be more than 2.5 million Tomans.” The financial crisis in countries is forcing many young people to emigrate and work in difficult conditions. These workers are paid an average of three euros an hour. In return, they have to do strenuous construction work. This is despite the fact that the cost of living in Germany is very high. When parents leave for work in another country, many children are left alone in their own country. A quarter of Moldovan citizens work and live abroad. Parents communicate with their children only by phone and the Internet. Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe. Migrant workers have been living in Germany for decades. Workers from Turkey, Italy and other countries of the world came to Germany to work after the Second Imperialist War. The important industrial areas of West Germany were mostly built by these workers, and these immigrant workers have also become the place to live there. Yes, the life of the majority of the world’s working class is miserably deprived of the most essential necessities of life, and this unhealthy life, in an unhealthy environment, spreads to other sections of the working class that have hitherto enjoyed a better minimum (generally the working class of Europe and America). In general, capitalism is holding back the workers of the world and making their living conditions even more miserable. With this brief reference to the situation of the working class of the world and recounting the real conditions of their lives, it is time to add another result, and that is their living conditions, their physical condition and their health. The living conditions of the majority of the workers of the world are as we have explained, and these conditions only increase the number of diseases. The workers’ houses are built in places and from materials that no one else is willing to use except their own kind, and what is more, they are maintained in a worse manner. When capitalists are not satisfied with the appearance of their houses or are tired of them, they easily change them at the touch of a button, but the workers’ living quarters (if they have houses) are generally damp and unsanitary, without sufficient space, without ventilation, and made of harmful and disease-causing building materials. The workers’ family members always complain about the lack of space, and therefore, lack of oxygen and healthy air is their constant problem. The workers’ food not only does not satisfy the family’s stomach in terms of quantity, but especially in terms of quality, it is prepared from cheap and highly contaminated materials, so that the workers’ bodies are generally always vulnerable in terms of defence. All that we have said about harmful substances added to food is generally true of workers and their families because capitalists always use their power of choice to buy the best ingredients and controlled treats. Homelessness, lack of food, bad food, hunger, breathing polluted air, living in unsanitary neighbourhoods lead to the acceptance of all kinds of allergies. The figures mentioned at the beginning of this article about the increase and spread of allergies and asthma are only from capitalist societies that have organizations and research institutes for such cases, but it can be estimated that the working masses of the world who suffer from allergies are much more than the 800 million that the World Health Organization says, because the millions of workers of the world whose living conditions, work, helplessness and isolation were described in the previous lines are not in a condition to be counted, they have no clinics available, no government is responsible for them (and for this reason they abandon their country and place of residence and undertake risky migrations), and as a result, they are not registered anywhere, but this does not mean that they do not exist and their diseases and allergies do not exist. Meanwhile, the situation of the owners of capital, managers, private and state planners of capital never get worse. While the situation of the different layers of the working class is never stable, so that the fluctuations of life in each of the different layers of the working class may make their tomorrow like the unemployed and displaced workers, so that this entire class is always worried about its future. Worried that they might become unemployed tomorrow and how they would cope with the problems of food, clothing, health, and housing.