The Cal students' heroic struggle is being watched all over the country. In Pittsburgh it has forced the mayor, Luke Ravenstahl, to retreat from his plan to tax tuition on the city's ten colleges and universities. This tax if implemented would have taken $15 million a year out of the students pockets. The mayor has postponed it for now but is still talking about it. This postponement has been described by Dave Gau, a student government board member of the University of Pittsburg as a "clear victory for the students." Thank you Cal. Students. There is strength in unity and mass struggle.
Refusal to take on the profit addicted sickness industrial industry defeats effort to reform health care.
Obama's efforts on so called health reform are, we need to be honest, already defeated. Working people will be lucky not to be worse off. The health care issue is instructive. There have been many efforts to bring in universal health care in the US. They have all been defeated. Even Truman wanted some kind of reform but could not get it done. Looking back he had this to say; "I've had some bitter disappointments as President, but the one that has troubled me most, in a personal way, has been the failure to defeat the organized opposition to a national compulsory health insurance program."
We now have the defeat of Obama's efforts. The Wall Street Journal, December 17th, 2009, wrote:"If President Obama's health care initiative fails, there is no longer a rationale for being a liberal in the United States. Everything else on liberalism's to-do list is footnotes." Capitalism is gleeful at their victory over Obama's efforts to reform health care.
We should look at this a little closer. Why is it that the US is the only advanced capitalist country in the world without universal health care? US capitalism has a monopoly over US politics through its two parties the Republicans and Democrats. Both these parties are dominated by, bought and paid for by, US capitalism. The working class has no mass political party of its own. This fact, that the US working class has no mass political party of its own is central to the fact that there is no universal health care system in the US. the balance of forces is much more on the side of capitalism than the working class because of this.
The Democrats have a liberal wing, that is a wing which seeks to nudge capitalism a wee bit every now and then to give a little more to working people. It is in this context and the context of the lack of a mass working class party that efforts to bring in universal health care have taken place. That is it is the liberals who believe in capitalism and who are terrified of mobilizing the working class against capitalism or even for major reforms who have been directing, if it can be called that, the movement for health care reform.
The decisive element in all the efforts to bring in universal health care in this country has been that the forces that said they were for it, the most left wing of the liberals, and also those in the trade union bureaucracy, were not prepared to take on the profit addicted sickness industrial complex. The efforts always started from the point of view that the ownership of the industry and the profits of these profit mad sectors could not be touched. This ownership and these profits were sacrosanct. So naturally if the obscene profits and the dictatorial ownership and control of the privately owned sickness industrial complex could not be touched then any change has to come from somewhere else. And this always ended up with proposals to take from one section of the working class and give to another or take from one section of the middle class and give to another and leave the profit driven sickness industry in charge with its profits intact.
Look at what happens when this approach is taken. We start off with majority agreement that all should have health care. Then because the Trumans, the Clintons, the Obamas, the union bureaucracies will not take on the obscenely wealthy and powerful privately owned and profit addicted sickness industrial industry these elements propose to take from one section of the working class to give to another, the old to the young, the employed to the unemployed and so on. This opens the door to and spurs on mass propaganda of divide and rule of the capitalists. Their media and their politicians spew out how bad health care for all would be, they have specific campaigns targeting specific sections of the population, they have divide and rule down to a fine art. In this campaign they have especially targeted and terrorized the elderly.
The result is now there to be seen. Support for health care reform is slumping. People do not know what it means or think it means they will be worse off. Obama, his regime and all the liberals and trade uion leaders who supported him are responsible for this. By refusing to go after the profit driven privately owned sickness industry they have allowed support for universal health care to be divided up and undermined. In the last analysis they are to blame.
There are a number of alternatives. Of course there is the alternative of the democratic socialist society within which the economy is democratically planned and in which the needs of all are met. But even short of this there is an alternative.
The union leaders have millions of members. The majority of the population have health problems and use the health care system regularly. The union leaders should break from the Democrats and launch a campaign for a universal health care system free at the point of use. This would take all pharmaceutical companies, all health insurance companies, all hospitals into public ownership and integrate them into a fully publicly owned free at the point of use non profit health care system. This would be paid for out of increased taxation of the rich, cutting military spending and if necessary a regular weekly contribution from every worker with a job.
This would take the profit out of health care. There should be no room for making profit out of peoples' bad health. This is a crime. And it does not work. The US spends a higher proportion of its gross domestic product on health care than other advanced industrial countries and yet has a higher proportion of its population with no health coverage. This is because of the huge amounts of money spent on administration of the health insurance companies etc. in the US compared with other countries where there are publicly owned health care sectors. The US sickness industry costs more as a percentage of gross national product and covers less of its population than publicly owned non profit health care industries in other advanced capitalist countries. This is because these other countries have privately owned profit driven industry.
Think about why you do not hear the publicly owned non profit alternative discussed. This is a viable option which exists in many other countries where there is coverage for all and at very high quality. The reason is simple. Capitalism controls the mass media and the mass political parties in this country and so censors this alternative. There is extreme censorship of this alternative. This alternative exists but it is not put forward because the right wing, the liberals and the trade union bureaucracy are committed to capitalism and to its preservation. There should be no profit made from health care. This should have been the starting point and should be the starting point of any health care reform. This means that the sickness industrial industry has to be taken out of private hands and put into public ownership under the control and management of the working class, patients and general population.
US military invasions and occupations in Middle East and Central Asia increasingly shaky.
It is not only on health that Obama is failing. In Afghanistan the troops are increasingly bogged down and it is now coming out that in the months running up to the recent Presidential elections in that country the electoral fraud was so bad that US diplomat Peter W. Galbraith raised the need to remove the outgoing President Karzai. Karzai, the corrupt ex oil company executive, was so enraged that the US buckled to him and rather than him being removed Galbraith left the country abruptly in September and was fired a few weeks later. Imagine the lack of support and confidence there is in this Karzai government, the government the NATO and US forces are propping up. This is the crook that the NATO forces are being asked to fight for, this is the crook that the new state apparatus is supposed to be built to support, this will not work.
In Iraq there is an increase in car bombings and suicide bombings and increased tension amongst the Kurds both inside Iraq and in Turkey. The Iraqi government which is supposed to be strong enough to take over the control of the state and allow the US troops to withdraw is increasingly in difficulties and its state apparatus increasingly in crisis. The country's President says that dozens of those involved in last weeks deadly car bombings in Baghdad were linked to the country's own state apparatus.
Then in Pakistan, supposedly a US ally, the state apparatus there is increasingly harassing US officials, denying or holding up passports, searching their vehicles. Pakistan officials said this resulted from "American arrogance and provocations." At the same time a Pakistani court struck down an amnesty for past alleged crimes of many in the present government. This can lead to a major crisis in the government. Pakistan, this state which is crucial to the wars of the US in the area and a nuclear state is increasingly destabilizing.
As this is going on Iran shows no signs of backing down to the attempted intimidation of the US and Israel. Yesterday it test fired a missile which has the capacity to reach Israel or Europe.
US Imperialism is not in good shape. Obama's period in power is going to be a rocky one. The consciousness of the US working class is going to be shaken up and forced to consider different alternatives and options. Socialist activists have to work to provide a mass alternative to capitalism.
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