I’m talking about the Marxist view of history and the deterministic beliefs included in it, not simply a view of history that recognizes that there are classes of people with conflicting interests. Sorry, it’s sorta unclear from what I said.

I’m feeling very pessimistic about reform now. If I had to venture to guess, we’re probably going to get a mandate and not a public option. Perhaps David, being a Mass. resident, can weigh in on how that’s working out up there. I can’t say I’m happy at all.

“Just having a public option that forces the companies to lower costs, gives the uninsured an option, and likely draws in most people from private insurers anyway”

That’s why we’re not going to get a serious public option, because those interests are better organized and committed to maximizing their profits.

It’s not really a theory of history or anything, it’s the reason why unions exist, it’s the reason why socialist organizations and labor parties the world over exist.

When the SEIU sends 100 lobbyists to Washington to campaign for a new safety regulation, that’s class struggle. Class struggle isn’t something that socialists create — it happens constantly. It’s the way governments and societies operate. This balance of forces between opposing interests obviously results in agreements and compromise, but that doesn’t mean that their wasn’t struggle.

Maybe I’m misinterpreting your point, and I would be glad to hear it, I’m just actually unaware of any theories that disavow that conflict occurs in society and yields change — that doesn’t seem all that different then contesting the existence of oxygen.

ISO has basically turned me into a liberal.

Any sort of legitimate reform of the healthcare system threatens the profits and power of the private insurance companies. They will never willingly accept reform that cuts into those interests. Because of that, it’s going to be necessary to take the industry head on and to engage in political struggle to establish even an effective public option short of full-blown single-payer. Single-payer is probably not politically attainable in the short term, but if you don’t organize for it and demand it forcefully regardless of the current balance of political forces, you’ll be forced to compromise for less than you would want to otherwise. Because single-payer advocates have not been successful in getting it onto the political agenda (largely because of resistance from politicians in the pocket of the insurance industry), any sort of “public option” that comes out of this process is going to watered down to the point that it doesn’t threaten the insurance companies at all. And Obama is already showing signs that he’s backing away from his previous support for a public option, as I pointed out above.

As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” And the demand for single-payer health insurance implies a struggle against the insurance companies. You don’t have to be a Marxist or a revolutionary to accept that reality.

Well you could have engaged me in this without the condescending “you dont understand, here let me enlighten you” stuff, but alright.

I, like many other historians, have another view of Marxism, mostly, in my opinion, as a convenient way of viewing history. It’s just not important to me to use this perspective so I just tend to avoid it, but I am aware that there’s a thing called class which does factor into any movement. Maybe I go to far in trying to separate the struggles of classes of people against other classes from the deterministic Marxist perspective which many socialists hold much stock in. I probably do. But I see it as an interesting lens through which to view history, not a blueprint for political success.

Of course, a lot of this is probably just my tendency to deflect any “revolutionary” talk, which stems from having to deal with ISO folks pretty regularly at school.

With regards to HC reform, unfortunately I think that the goodwill of the left has long been squandered by moderate and conservative Democrats who insist on writing as inoffensive a bill as possible. The worst example of this was the shutting out of the single-payer advocates by Max Baucus. That, I think, was a slap in the face to the left by the Democrats, and I doubt that fence can be mended. The best we can hope for now is a plan where a public option with lower costs is so attractive that everyone chooses it and eventually it turns into a sort of backdoor “medicare for all”.

It depends on what you see as the defining foundation of socialism. Would you deny that there have been non-Marxist socialist movements within the umbrella of what we would call “socialism”. There is such a thing as a reformist socialism, despite what some insist.

I’m not arguing whether a reformist socialist agenda is possible right now (though I see potential for something similar in the Progressive Caucus), but I would argue that a revolutionary perspective based on class struggle isn’t possible when class consciousness is so helter-skelter in the US (for example, among the conservative poor or the bootstrap-obsessed middle class).

If you don’t agree with that, I at least hope that you can respect why someone might be hesitant to dive into the class struggle perspective, no matter how many quotes from Marxist intellectuals and others you can cite about it being “everything”.

These are all class organizations that have been created and are wielded for the purpose of class warfare (very successfully at that). So mobilization from even the most timid of mainstream labor unions for meaningful health care reform is class warfare as well. It just happens to be that segments of the bourgeoisie stand to benefit from and support health care reform (shifting direct burden from employers onto the state).

Any reform we get is the manifestation of class struggle whether you want to acknowledge it or not. Any socialism that doesn’t not only acknowledge, but places paramount, class struggle cannot really be socialism and can at best I guess be considered liberal philanthropy.