roachboy

the idea that in a socialized health system "other people pay" is one that really encapsulates the effects of years and years of rightwing political/ideological domination and which demonstrates the claim that controlling how issues are framed is fundamental.

if for example you could argue that access to basic health care should be a fundamental human right--you know "life liberty pursuit of happiness" the inspirational memes dont really amount to much of anything if your health is not maintained: then the question could be whether we, as a society, as a social system able to generate very considerable wealth, find it morally and politically desirable to extend the benefits of that system to all in the form of basic health care. you could argue that such an extension of benefits to all would bring this society at the level of content into line with what it claims to be at the level of form. you could argue that such an extension would increase social solidarity, that it would benefit businesses, that it would benefit everyone except perhaps for the existing structures of student loan debt profiteering, the ama and the boards of privately run hospitals, and the shareholders of pharmceutical corporations. across the arguments that would be generated around what amounts to different conceptions of an ethical social order, the political issue of what kind of society do we want to be, do we want to live in, could be fought out.
conservative ideology in america is a fundamental obstacle to even posing these matters coherently
(1) because it effectively negates the idea that we--all of us--live in a society. following that tired old dysfunctional thatcherite logic, it replaces the notion of society with that of a bunch of individuals.
(2) it has persuaded folk that the state is some alien formation that persecutes, that obstructs the (fictional) well-functioning order of accumulated invdividuals. one effect of this ideological distortion is to remove the daily operation of the state from any association with democratic process. state policies are political policies: the redirecting of resources by the state is an effort to match that distribution with the "will of the people" as it expresses itself through electoral and interest group politics. the state can be seen as a mechanism whereby social decisions concerning the character of a desirable society are implemented.

conservative ideology is geared primarily around preventing coherent state action except in those areas that benefit directly the corporate interests that fund the conservative show (defense spending for example, which is n absurd squandering of social resources)....one of its central claims is that the state is already incoherent. the "demonstrations" of this claim rely on the false claim that society is just a bunch of individuals: you see this "logic" repeated over and over and over--in the setting up of fake symmteries (reverse discrimination for example, or questions of abstract "fairness" of tax rates)--these premises are important because if you buy them, conservative conclusions follow--that taxation is unfair because it requires more from those who benefit more from the existing social arrangement than it does from those who do not---when the same problem can be made to disappear from another angle: of course those who benefit SHOULD contribute more to the maintenance of the system that enables them to benefit BECAUSE they benefit from it. wealth is a SOCIAL fact, it presupposes the existence of a SOCIAL ORDER--it does not follow from abstract individual gumption, it is not a question of moral superiority--it is a function of particular distributions of SOCIAL ADVANTAGES and CONDITIONS.

3. the main issue then that conservative ideology as a whole eliminates from coherent discussion is the central fact of capitalism or any other socio-economic order: that it is a social system. that questions about capitalism are questions about the social system upon which it rests and which its logic produces and reproduces. that success owes its existence to a combination of social factors--educational advantages, capital access, networking, developing a business plan, etc etc etc--that individual actions are social actions, that a business is a social undertaking, that the relation of firms to consumers and other stakeholders are social relations.

it obscures the fact that questions concerning what kind of social order is desirable are fundamental questions. it tries to push back onto some abstract, ridiculous notion of morality what is in fact a matter of politics. and it is not like the corporate powers that pay for rightwing ideology in its present forms are not aware of how political these matters are: if they were unaware of this link, there would be no conservative ideology because no=-one would have funded its development, funded its systematization, funded the creation of a media appartus to disseminate it, funded its endless repetition.

within this ideological framework, it is extremely difficult to have a coherent public debate about fundamental questions: what kind of communities do we want to live in? are we to simply sit by and allow a system of highly centralized global production to redefine how we live where we live as if that redefinition was a natural fact? are we to have no say concerning what kind of communities we live in, whether they are to be functional or not? are we to be spectators of our own lives?
why should there not be universal health care?

why should all education not be free to all? if you care ANYTHING about the idea of meritocracy, it should follow DIRECTLY that all levels of education should be freely available to all and that wealth SHOULD NOT determine what kind of educational opportunities you have access to. in the united states, the central determinant of quality of education is class position. that is wrong. that is dysfunctional. that is the furthest possible remove from any illusion of democracy at the level of content.

why should kids have to acquire tens of thousands of dollars in debt to go to university? what are they paying for? why is 60-70% of the teaching labor pools within universities part time/adjunct? where the fuck is all the money going? why do university presidents have to make the salaries that they do? why are universities administrations as bloated as they are? universities should be seen as a public good. they should be free. funding should come from the public coffers. funding should be flat across localities at the elementary and secondary levels. the notion that the smartest get access to the best education should mean something. right now, it doesnt. i have spent many many years inside ivy league schools, and let me tell you that it is WEALTH not ability that determines the presence of the vast majority of the students in these schools. it is WEALTH not ability that determines the profiles of a significant majority of faculties. to claim otherwise is to smply not know what you are talking about, to look at the wrong things: this does not mean that this is 100% determinate in 100% of the cases, but in an overwhelming majority of the cases, it is--who has the social autonomy to deal with the financial pressures of graduate school, really? who has the financial resources to be able to deal with the 60-70% part time faculty hire rate? if you do not possess independent means, in such a context, very frequently you are fucked. why is there such an excessive production of phds? they are cheap labor. and 60-70% of them stay cheap labor. it is an unbelievable, idiotic squandering of resources and lives. why is that?
because in the united states, against everything the system claims to stand for, wealth enables access to better educational resources and these resources enable a better education and the profile of this obscene, ridiculous system repeats itself all the way through, repeating again in the internal labor markets that universities create and maintain for themselves, and again in the types of intellectual production faculties carry out. and there is NO REASON FOR IT, it stands in DIRECT CONTRADICTION of everything the united states claims it stands for as a society.

universal health care is tied to the costs of education: one major obstacle to implementing universal health care is the amount of debt people accumulate who go into med school. paying this debt back has an enormously coercive function in that it locks the perspectives of many who graduate from these schools into the existing income structure. but the practice of medicine does not presuppose access to great wealth, and nothing about its quality is guaranteed by the accumulation of great wealth.

the last ditch claim the right can make against this is "well, yer talking about socialism"---which is horseshit--we are talking about a coherent social system--this is not a coherent social system. two of the most fundamental aspects of that system----social reproduction and health maintenance---are organized in ways that have nothing to do with any of the principles this places claims as central. and the conservative response? run away. take the money and run, boys, things are getting hectic.

it is obscene.
it could change.
if it doesnt, it'll burn.
and it wont require some abstract "revolution" to burn it: it burn on its own, it will burn itself down as a social system.
of course, those who adequate exploit the system now wll get to watch it on tv from within their gated communities protected with private militias.
and it will all be blamed on those who are burning.
that's how it goes in conservativeland.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite