Look, healthcare could be very different & much better. Making the argument that anarchist ideas could radically improve healthcare should not be the trigger for knee-jerk attacks on the bringer of the news. I do happen to believe that waiting for reform to improve the NHS is a waste of time & I do believe that in time communities may well endeavour to put in place their own alternative schemes (yes, with doctors & clinics) and I would not condemn anyone for taking steps to look after themselves and their neighbours in such a fashion.The NHS is a monolithic, authoritarian, dinosaur. In some places the medicine is fantastic, in many others it does not come up to the standards of medicine delivered in other countries. To suggest that the kind of unhappiness experienced by both workers and patients in the NHS has always been inevitable is only to make an anarchist argument against vast unresponsive, undemocratic bureaucracies. We can do better than this, which is not the same as saying right let's wheel the beds out into the streets and take the folks of the dialysis machines right now!
No offence, but you don't seem to be saying anything of substance whatsoever. Nobody is saying that the NHS is their ideal healthcare system, just that it's better than what went before and it's something that working class people did have to struggle for. The state and capital never attacked friendly societies or the lifeboats, but they've been attacking the welfare state and recuperating as much of it as they can since it's inception, why do you think that is?
I have not advocated the things that you have accused me of arguing for Magnifico. I certainly did not write in favour of what existed beofre the NHS; I argued that there were alternative visions, ones which could have been drawn on but were not.
It is extraordinary to me that challenging the mighty myths of the NHS in anarchist circles should draw such fire - mostly ill-directed and not focused on what I have written; it's like I've walked into a Labour Party Conference.
Look, healthcare could be very different & much better. Making the argument that anarchist ideas could radically improve healthcare should not be the trigger for knee-jerk attacks on the bringer of the news. I do happen to believe that waiting for reform to improve the NHS is a waste of time & I do believe that in time communities may well endeavour to put in place their own alternative schemes (yes, with doctors & clinics) and I would not condemn anyone for taking steps to look after themselves and their neighbours in such a fashion.
The NHS is a monolithic, authoritarian, dinosaur. In some places the medicine is fantastic, in many others it does not come up to the standards of medicine delivered in other countries. To suggest that the kind of unhappiness experienced by both workers and patients in the NHS has always been inevitable is only to make an anarchist argument against vast unresponsive, undemocratic bureaucracies. We can do better than this, which is not the same as saying right let's wheel the beds out into the streets and take the folks of the dialysis machines right now!
No Joseph, Magnifico's attack is not the word! Nothing Magnifico wrote was new to the argument & his charges:
a) That I said that we should let the NHS be destroyed without a fight
&
b) ThatI said we should abandon the idea of a decent wage
neither undermine my argument - because they are false charges - nor address the question in hand.