CLASS WAR SUPPLEMENT On the occasion of the Medicare for All Rallies (July 24, 2021)
THERE IS NO LEGISLATIVE PATH TO WIN QUALITY HEALTHCARE FOR ALL!
CLASS STRUGGLE AND A WORKERS GOVERNMENT CAN FORCE CHANGE!
Some call this era, the pending sixth mass extinction event, the anthropocene but it would be more aptly identified as the capitalocene; the inescapable terminal crisis of capitalism driven by the tendency of the rate of profit to fall has caught up with ruling capitalist classes internationally. Income and wealth inequality is not the source of the crisis, it is the consequence. Keynesian inputs pumping up demand is not sufficient to overcome the long term declining rate of profit. To secure profits big Capital must impose austerities and rape the environment, encroaching on habitat that triggers zoonotic disease outbreaks and pandemics (Ebola, MERS, COVID-19.)
The capitalist defines freedom as their right to own nature (the commons) and exploit labor; as a class they rely on “free market” ideologies and theories which employ various strategies including neoliberalism, privatizations, monetary interventions on the one side and Keynesian interventions on the other. The ruling class considers all the options from A to B; they swing between supply and demand adjustment strategies while thrashing in capitalism’s death throes hoping to grab a share of the surplus values–profits. But none of their strategies can chart a course to solve the deepening decay, crushing the working classes but not the big shareholder class!
The big capitalists, like pigs in space, burn fossil fuel for fun and profit accelerating the environmental catastrophe-floods, heat waves & droughts, fires and fire storms which devastate the lives of working people and farmers internationally. Bad air days, long the norm in New Delhi India and Beijing, are also pervasive in the west of North America as the annual fire seasons test lungs regularly. If there was ever a time we needed universal health care it is now. But it remains as distant as ever because the might of the working class has not been engaged.
It is incredible that all over the industrialized world, even including small under-industrialized countries like Costa Rica and especially Cuba, which has suffered under a strangling embargo enforced by the US government for 59 years, can provide free health care for all! In the US, while millions have gone uninsured, the largest increase in credit card debt is among people who have health insurance.
So where is the leadership?
What are the politicians and union leaders doing? We see the bought and paid for capitalist politicians and the union leadership walking hand in hand to keep the lid on the kettle. It is not for nothing that the Democratic Party is known as the graveyard of social movements. No sooner are folks out on the streets when the party corrals them back into the dead end of electoralism where they work hand in hand with the “progressive” capitalists to elect politicians who water down the porridge. The union leaders refuse to organize the unorganized, never initiate mass meetings and assemblies of the rank and file, and shrug their shoulders and whine about apathy instead of educating and preparing the membership for the type of class struggle militancy it takes to win! Students of labor history know that historic gains are won on the streets, on the picket lines and in united solidarity actions. Instead, the union tops play at being lobbyists competing with the well financed bosses’ lobbyists for the attention of “our friends” in the legislature. Without the real threat of an educated and growing militant union membership the politicians have no reason to listen to labor. The fix is in. The union tops keep the membership quiet and voting for the Democrats and the Democrats keep making promises they will never keep. Only by our own union militant action can the working class win health care and only by militant and sustained class struggle that establishes a workers government will we keep it!
Access to quality healthcare for the working class in the United States is leveraged against the fiduciary responsibility of CEO’s to maximize profits for shareholders of the industry. Insurance, bio-tech, hospital chains, skilled nursing facilities and big pharma all put their profits above your life. Capitalist enterprises are not required to provide healthcare to all employees and even the Affordable Care Act (Obama care) is not truly affordable. Out of pocket medical spending still puts families in the poor house. The capitalist class and their twin political parties the Democrats and Republican have shown they are both unwilling and incapable of providing adequate health care for the people. Even while Democrats in California state government have a supermajority they refuse to pass single payer or ensure health care for all! Why? Because both Democrats and Republicans are capitalist parties that share the task of running a capitalist government, which means imposing austerity and take-backs; the bosses cannot afford reforms despite the mega accumulation of the multi-billionaires. For working people to win we need a workers government led by a revolutionary workers party.
For-profit healthcare is a cherished profit center for the capitalist class. The bosses have the working masses trapped in a desperate struggle to survive perpetually increasing medical coverage costs. They love and want to keep their system because investors reap mega profits holding shares and buy politicians to keep it that way! This arrangement sucks the workers’ paychecks dry to ensure profits for the big shareholders. Unnecessary competition between firms, superfluous administrative, regulatory and litigation costs drive up base costs passed on to us, the clients. In other words, we pay these companies to fight for legislation to limit and deny care! Workers need our own political party and class struggle unions that fight for a socialist transitional program including Socialized Medicine to Ensure Quality Health Care For All! This means nationalization under workers control and without indemnification of capitalists.
Because the labor movement is tied to the capitalist Democratic Party, workers have no independent political voice. Workers are constrained by the union leadership’s commitment to the Democrats. The cross-class alliance (actually a popular front) with the bosses is one of the most powerful forces working to prevent us from acting independently as a class and initiating class struggle actions, such as indefinite strikes, workplace occupations, solidarity strikes to crush Taft Hartley and the Taylor Law that can lead to the formation of a fighting labor party and a worker’s government. Liberal posers like the Democratic Socialists of America and other “tax the rich–socialists” have no program to ignite the firestorm needed to make these gains.
We need an independent fighting workers labor party based on the unions and organizations of the oppressed and committed to building workers power. This is essential if we wish to win the fight for medical care for all and to ensure healthcare as a right. We need to socialize the medical and healthcare industry including Big Pharma, the insurance houses, hospitals, clinics, and medical schools and run them all under workers’ control. Only a worker’s government will be able to force these changes!
Communist Workers Group USA www.CWGUSA.org Labor Donated 07/24/2021
