> And what's with this "little chance of success"?
> There's little chance of successfully organizing
> Wal-Mart any time in the next decade, but lots of
> resources are going into that. Polls show great
> potential support for single-payer. I know how
> huge the odds are against it, but it's far from
> hopeless.
I think that's definitely true -- even obvious. But what are you suggesting that people actually do, Doug? This is not an idle question. As I've been arguing here, the "fair-share" health care bills are an example of an offensive victory in a context of occasional defensive victories mixed with even worse defeats. This fact -- a fact that "overdetermines" the strategic choices of any progressive mass leader -- has been little-discussed in this thread (well, except by me, but you know I'm "angry" and catankerous and hard to deal with, so I might as well be ignored). Bush's current budget proposal has $36 billion in Medicare cuts over the next five years. Part of the reason that the "fair-share" bills have some juice is because state governors are worried that their Medicaid budgets are ballooning especially in the face of federal retrenchment; "fair-share" bills will mean that large employers pay more into the system, when the alternative is more cuts.
I am not sure what the hell you want. By my reading of what you've been saying, you want more unions to take formal positions in favor of single-payor -- sort of like the way all the 1199s have health care for all written right into their constitutions, perhaps? -- and in support of specific campaigns that you presumably admit have no chance of success in the short term. So let's say that unions actually do that. What then? Because this is about more than an abstract discussion of "walking and chewing gum at the same time." There are political decisions to be made about the allocation of limited -- and in the case of most unions, steadily shrinking -- resources. What should unions do, then? I see roughly two possibilities:
(1) Give their paper endorsements and maybe a few symbolic dollars to a nice, tiny left-wing "coalition" for single-payor, while in the meantime allocating the real money and effort to campaigns that offer the hope of winning something concrete -- or at least staving off disaster -- in the short- and medium-term, all the while hoping that these efforts will build the necessary political infrastructure for broader change leading to single-payor later.
(2) Pull back from campaigns like that, and instead invest more money and resources into a single-minded, militant single-payor campaign with no hope of short-term concrete victory, but which will pay off in the long run.
These are two distinct strategies, not an "either-or" as you characterize Nathan's arguments. You seem to be arguing for the second option, which is similar in character to Daniel DeLeon's diagrams of "the future socialist society," in that it is based on the idea that you build movements by getting together all the people who know what the solution is, and then proselytizing for that good idea. The first, messier option is the way things have happened in the real world throughout all history, perfecly without exception. In fact, let's take a case in point . . .
> Should someone have advised Rosa Parks that her
> movement had little chance of success too?
It is right and good that people should be inspired enough to invoke the names of movement heroes, but this historical analogy -- like all historical analogies, when used properly -- supports my side of this argument. It just so happens that I've been reading Taylor Branch's "Parting the Waters" (now a classic), which includes a messily detailed -- and therefore all the more inspiring -- retelling of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I'm sure most people here are familiar with the fact that Rosa Parks had two immediate predecessors as possible test cases, both of whom were rejected by E.D. Nixon and the other leaders as too compromised to be held up as martyrs (one was an unwed, pregnant teenager). Parks was secretary of the NAACP and was ready to take action, but it really did come as a surprise to people initially that she ended up being the one to be the test case. Anyway, the boycott was initially supposed to be a one-day thing; it streched out into a year. And the initial strategy of the Montgomery Improvement Association was to negotiate for an "improved" system of segregation on the buses (!), getting rid of a "buffer zone" and at least making sure that a certain number of seats would be reserved for blacks, etc. All of the leadership was of course in favor of getting rid of segregation as soon as possible, but only in hindsight does it look like that was inevitable; at the time, they had real doubts about how long people would hold out on the boycott, especially because of state harrassment of their car pools and other expenses (MLK ended up getting prosecuted for tax evasion several years later).
The initial demands of the movement were modest-sounding; only in the course of struggle did people push beyond the limits of what they initially thought could be accomplished. That's the way the world works.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories