Scans_Daily

Yep.

What I was trying to get at is the way that HMOs act as collectives but they are economically based. They are essentially consumer unions that have been set up by bourgeoise entities to protect consumers from unregulated capitalism -- they're actually Nixon creations. I would be very curious to see what Marx thinks of them.

It's interesting to me that you've studied the history of Marxism but you're still using a bi-polar spectrum metaphor for politics. According to your positional strategy libertarianism is what, extremely right-wing?

Modern libertarianism, I should make that clear. I'm not at all sure that libertarian marxism, in the modern sense of either word, applying that well to the anarchists of the Haymarket Square riots. Although I like the allusion, that's not what I referred to. I was referring to a modern individual who like Marx and Ron Paul, and people like that certainly exist. I think it's short-sighted, myself, although I have some sympathies. They seem to be all for collectivism except when they are violently against it.

How "production" and "scarcity" apply to health care sounds intriguing to me. I wonder how a Marxist would make that work.

Perhaps I'm over-conflating Marxism and collectivism, that may be where I lost you. I associate Marx with collection and organization and do not trouble myself overmuch with his long-range predictions, which as you pointed out, were more or less wrong.

"Now, there were some people who disagreed with Marx already in his lifetime...."

Oh. Really. :)

It was at this point that I realized you were writing to a general audience and not to me.