ALB
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LT is not even a Trotskyist let alone a socialist. He is just a common or garden petty reformist.
The Trotskyist position on reforms is that their vanguard party should aim to get a mass following by putting forward unrealistic reform demands in the expectation that, when the masses realise that capitalism can’t grant these reforms, they will turn to to the vanguard party to lead them in a mass insurrection against the capitalist state.
In practice this does not work as workers realise that the demands are unrealistic (under capitalism to which they see no alternative) and don’t follow the vanguard. Or the Trotskyists themselves come to believe that the reforms are realisable and to concentrate on trying to get them, and so end up as leftwing reformists. Maybe this is what has happened to LT.
Anyway, the arguments he puts against campaigning for socialism are those of any old reformist, including those who seek merely to “humanise” capitalism or to “knock off its rough edges”.
In fact he is not even arguing for an improvement but only against things getting worse and saying that we should vote for a capitalist party to try to stop this — and accusing us of being “fascists” for not going along with him.
Our argument is about what socialists should do to further the cause of socialism, not what reformists should do to try to reform capitalism. Since we are socialists and he’s a reformist no wonder we are at cross purposes.
“Only the fascists want the ACA struck down. And there are many on this site. They want to see the working class suffer more than they already are. In other words, take what little they have and let them starve and die.”
Another example of absurd scaremongering (just to get people to vote for a reformist party and politician). It’s historically inaccurate too. Why would any government want that? A starving working class would not be able to produce the same amount of profits as a better fed one. Nor would it provide fit enough recruits to serve in the armed forces. In fact, historically this was why state health insurance schemes were introduced first in Germany under Bismarck and then in other countries.
Capitalism could not function properly with providing some health care coverage for workers, if only to get them back to producing profits again as quickly as possible as well as to make them more productive. The argument amongst politicians is not over whether there has to be some health care for workers but over how to pay for it.
The irony of this absurd claim is that the ACA was, if LT will recall, denounced by some of its opponents as “fascist”.
Yes, that had occurred to me BD. On looking closer I now see that the blue plaque next door is saying that Nancy Mitford, the one of the sisters who was a notorious fascist, did something there. Don’t tell LT.
By coincidence it’s today that the Supreme Court is beginning an oral hearing on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. In theory they could strike it down but they are not expected to do so. This seems to be another party political scare story.
It is not even clear that this is what the Republican Party really want. From today’s Guardian:
”Many conservative legal scholars have said the legal argument for dismantling the entire law is weak and during the Coney Barrett deliberations, several Republicans insisted the law would not be struck down. In October, the nation’s highest-ranking Republican after Trump, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said: “No one believes the supreme court is going to strike down the Affordable Care Act.”
We shall see.
For once LT has posted something relatively rational and seems to know what he is talking about. More detail than me anyway but we have never said scrap Obamacare any more than we have say scrap the NHS in Britain.
We recognise that some reforms can benefit workers at least for a while and a health service free to patients is one such reform. Obamacare of course doesn’t offer this but is about a subsidised private health care insurance for all but at least it is better than nothing. Needless to say both schemes are subject to the monetary cost considerations since they have to subsidised from taxes that in the end fall on capitalist profits.
I don’t think that Trump or the Republicans want to abolish subsidised health care in the US or scrap so-called Obamacare completely. They want to save costs by cutting the subsidies and making it pay its way more through increased premiums and reduced coverage. Just as have Conservative and Labour governments here over the years, introducing prescriptions charges and payment for dental services. That’s what you’d expect under capitalism since it exists for the benefit of the capitalist class not the working class.
LT supports some improvements to Obamacare to catch up with more efficient health care systems in Europe, Canada, etc. Good luck to him. We are not opposed to them. Workers should except whatever crumbs they are offered however meagre.
But rather than campaign for bigger crumbs they would be better advised to campaign for the whole bakery (and the fields where the wheat is grown, etc). That way there can be a completely free health service and one not subject to capitalist tax-saving considerations and pressures.
More on what individual states can do to expand those covered by subsidised health insurance:
https://ballotpedia.org/Healthcare_on_the_ballot
I didn’t know that this was possible but this is one thing where the USA is more formally democratic than many other countries. Of course voting for something is one thing, getting it implemented is another in the context of capitalism and its profit priorities.
According to John Prideaux, the US editor of the Economist, writing in today’s Times:
”Mr Biden pledged to patch up the health care law signed by Barak Obama in 2009, bringing America closer to the universal coverage that has long been the norm in other rich countries. That will not happen. His administration won’t actively undermine Obamacare, but the changes he can make will be marginal.”
He goes on to make the point that on health care the individual states “have a lot of latitude” and that, with regard to Obamacare,
”a number of Republican-leaning states took advantage of that law to cover more people (Utah, Idaho and Nebraska have all done so this year).”
Of course wars will continue as long as capitalism, so we can say that war is inevitable under capitalism. But the question was whether another world-wide war like the two in the last century was. To which the answer is not so clear.
The consensus wasn’t that a Third World War wasn’t possible but that it wasn’t likely which, I suppose, means that it wasn’t a “distinct” possibility. Let’s hope you’re wrong.
Are you sure? If you are referring to this it’s the other way round:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/254120/less-half-vote-socialist-president.aspx
So no need for us to soft-pedalling our opposition to all religion.
Also, it looks as if US soccer hooligans would chant “I’d rather be a Muslim than a Socialist”.
A lot of campaigning for socialism needed over there, then.
I don’t think we were “praising” Sanders for that, were we, or even attributing it to him? We were just noting that the word “socialism” was ceasing to be a dirty word in the US, especially amongst young people, and that this gave us a foot in the door to put over our case and what we mean by socialism.
We never accepted that Sanders was actually a socialist. He only claims to stand for what many Americans think exists in Sweden.
I know you think that if Sanders had won the Democratic Party nomination he’d now be the President-elect. But I don’t think the popularity of the word “socialism” has spread to the extent that someone calling themselves a socialist could be elected President!
Some Democrats don’t agree with AOC and her analysis. According to today’s Times of London, the party’s chief whip in the House of Representatives, Jaime Harrison, told the Andrew Marr show on the BBC yesterday:
“The issue of socialism and ‘defund the police’ was a big problem for Joe Biden in this election.”
Representative Abigail Spanberger is quoted as saying:
“We need not ever use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.”
I think we can agree with her on that. We don’t want members of the Democratic Party claiming to be socialists when they are only leftwing reformists.
Isn’t Turkey involved in all this? Articles like this one use words like “oil-rich”, “pipelines” and “geopolitical influence”:
