--- On Fri, 6/5/09, Itamar Shtull-Trauring <itamar at itamarst.org> wrote:
> From: Itamar Shtull-Trauring <itamar at itamarst.org>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Baucus to Meet with Single-Payer Advocates
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Friday, June 5, 2009, 8:30 AM
> On Thu, 2009-06-04 at 17:47 -0700,
> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> > As to the single payer - a while ago I mentioned the
> issue of the cost
> > of the current (employer provided system) as an
> obstacle to business
> > profitability to Dr. Vincente Navarro of JHU (he was
> on Clinton's
> > health care task force). My argument was that
> business should support
> > universal health care as a way of externalizing their
> cost. He
> > disagreed. In his view, the capitalists did not
> mind bearing that
> > cost because it accorded them control of labor.
>
> Last week the Economist cited some economist (I can't look
> up the exact
> reference now) who believed that most businesses didn't
> care about the
> cost of health care since it had been effectively
> externalized to
> workers via pay cuts; this was cited as one of the major
> reasons for pay
> stagnation over past few decades in the US.
>
> If my math is correct (GDP * 0.07 / number of employed),
> that means that
> those extra 7% of GDP US spends on healthcare (compared to
> other
> developed countries) would've meant about $7000 of extra
> income per
> worker every year.
>
[WS:] This supports the argument that Navarro made - that employers viewed health care as a labor control measure rather than a cost saving measure. I find this argument very appealing, albeit very difficult to prove. This is not the stuff that gets recorded in economic or social data.
As to the argument proposed by shag et al. demonstrating that social pressure did result in alleviating discrimination against ethnic minorities and women - I am not questioning that, but even if true that does not make my state-focused argument wrong. We need to distinguish between social programs that directly threaten vital interest of capitalists as class (or its substantial part) and those that do not. The former can be accomplished by applying enough popular pressure - the latter need much more than that: a revolution or at least support of key political institutions, including the state.
Programs aiming at elimination of racism or sexism did not threaten vital interests of the capitalist class, even if some individual capitalists might have been adversely affected by them. The opposite can be argued, namely that racism and sexism undermined the legitimacy of capitalist rule, especially in the era of the Communist challenge to that rule. That is why these programs could pass "by popular demand" alone - or even with some tacit support of the capitalist class. OTOH, some argue that even in those situations, government support was vital to the success of these movements.
However, programs such as universal health care or legislation that is favorable for labor unions threaten vital interests of capitalists as a class - it crowds them out of some most profitable market niches or limits their control of the means of production. Consequently, they will fiercely oppose such programs - an popular demand is simply not enough to overcome that opposition. One needs power that will break the backbone of the capitalist opposition, and only government can do that.
Wojtek