Why Healthcare (and a lot of other things) Need to be "Socialized"

Why Healthcare (and a lot of other things) Need to be “Socialized”

 

This post is the second in a series about healthcare.

 

Part 1: Americans Claim to Hate "Socialized Medicine" - but they Actually Depend on It

***

 

This fact should not be controversial: 

 

Healthcare NEEDS to be “socialized” in order to work. Otherwise, you - whoever you are - will likely not receive healthcare when you need it. 

 

“The Market™” and its profit-seeking economic motive has never and will never create a system where the ill and injured get treatment when they need it. 

 

Throughout history - and particularly since modern science-based medicine was created - every single functional healthcare system has been “socialized” to some extent. 

 

Market forces create other things, namely non-universal care where the rich are treated and the poor are left to die. And also, medical charlatans and snake oil selling “treatment” to the poor, who have no other options. 

 

And if you think that somehow YOU will be lucky enough to get care while others die, well, I have a quarter century of legal experience to tell you that in fact you are likely one serious illness, one serious injury, or even just a certain number of years away from depending on socialized medicine. Without it, you will be left to die. 

 

And it isn’t just healthcare - a great many things are functional only because they were “socialized” - that is, created in large part by government funding and regulation, as part of the public sector. 

 

Let’s start with these facts:

 

There has NEVER been a successful universal healthcare system created by market forces.

 

There has NEVER been a successful universal education system created by market forces.

 

There has NEVER been a successful transportation infrastructure system (roads, rail, canals, ports, airports) created by market forces.

 

There has NEVER been a successful sanitation infrastructure system (sewers, water treatment) created by market forces. 

 

Every single one of these has been created because people agreed that the government would collect taxes from everyone - particularly those who could most afford it (the rich) - and build infrastructure that benefits everyone. 

 

Aka: the Public Sector, social infrastructure, “socialism.” 

 

There is a reason that the private sector, acting on market forces alone, has never, and will never build these things. 

 

That reason is that the benefits are “socialized” - that is, the benefits are for everyone, while the costs are “privatized” - they are borne by the person or company paying for the infrastructure. 

 

[Note: here in the US particularly, we instead have the opposite - many industries where the risk and cost is “socialized” - borne by everyone - while the profits are “privatized” - they go to rich individuals and corporations. A great example is the way that drugs are developed using significant public funding, but the drug companies retain the patents and the profits. This is one factor in why the US pays twice as much for healthcare. There are many other examples.]

 

When everyone benefits - particularly when it comes to necessities, things everyone needs - the private sector will never fund the improvements. To create this kind of infrastructure, public funding and regulation is needed, even if the specific services are provided by the private sector. 

 

You can literally look around the world and see that there are exactly zero countries in which “the market” created a universal healthcare system. None. At. All. Instead, you will see desperately poor countries and failed states in which “the market” provides care to the ultra-rich, leaving the poor to die. And even then, the “care” the ultra-rich receive typically involves flying to functional countries that have socialized medicine. 

 

Instead, you will see that functional healthcare systems are created by the public sector. Even here in the US, the most functional parts of the system are those created and funded by the public sector, while private insurance is increasingly unaffordable for most people without some degree of subsidy from the public sector.

 

Note as well in each of the examples I have given and will discuss, the specific people who benefit cannot pay directly for what they need. I cannot afford to build a water treatment plant, a rail system, or even a road. Children cannot afford to pay for education. 

 

And, for the most part, sick people cannot afford to pay for their care when they get sick.

 

What this means is that we need a system where people pay in during their working years, and everyone pays in proportion to their ability, so that when they do need these necessities, they are available. 

 

You can call this “socialism” if you like. Or you could call it “infrastructure” or “the public sector.”

 

***

 

Let’s look at a few of the examples I gave:

 

Transportation

 

The Roman Empire is often praised for its system of roads, which connected the vast distances, enabling trade, migration, and military transportation. One can argue that this idea is often stretched beyond its reality (the Roman roads would not stand up to modern vehicle traffic better than our modern roads, for example), what is true is that the road system was a marvel of infrastructure that greatly added to the wealth of Rome, and benefitted its population in many ways. 

 

Who built those roads? 

 

The Roman government built the roads, of course. 

 

Imagine what happens without the government building roads. Okay, you don’t even have to imagine. Take, for example, Sierra Leone, where the transportation infrastructure was all built to benefit colonialist powers, facilitating the quick and cheap removal of natural resources for transportation to Europe. 

 

This is precisely how profit-seeking builds things. To maximize profit, not benefit the population. And hence, third world countries around the globe have lacked true transportation infrastructure. 

 

You can also see this here in our modern United States. Why do we have the Interstate Highway system? The Federal Government taxed the rich and built it. Why do we have the Railroad system? The Federal Government subsidized it and granted land on which to build it. (That is a whole sordid story of grift and corruption - which is all too common where private industry stands to benefit from government contracts. But the infrastructure still benefits us today.) Likewise for all public transit systems. And indeed nearly all roads. Our tax dollars built them and maintains them. And we all benefit. 

 

The list will go on too: canals, airports, the air traffic control system - however you get where you are going, you will see government-created infrastructure that makes it all happen. 

 

Without “socialism,” you wouldn’t be able to walk out your front door without paying some rich fuck for the privilege of walking to your job or grocery store. After all, can you afford to build a road from your home to your workplace? 

 

Almost certainly not. What you need is a system in which we all pay for our transportation infrastructure, and we all can use. 

 

Sanitation

 

The other great accomplishments of the Roman Empire were the aqueducts and the sewers. And really, these remain amazing today. 

 

Without public infrastructure, the wealthy (and those upstream) would own all the water. Infrastructure both regulates water use and provides it to everyone, safe and clean. We fail to appreciate this all too often in our own time, and also fail to be concerned when a certain administration chooses not to regulate pollution of our water. 

 

Likewise, the big issue with clean water is keeping the shit out of it. (Literal shit, and the figurative shit of toxins.) 

 

And building sewers is something that really can only be done as public sector infrastructure. The cholera outbreak in London, which led to the giant sewer project - by the government - is a great case in point. 

 

If you leave things to the private sector and the profit motive, the rich might get toilets. Although history would indicate that rather than treating the sewage, they would just pipe it away to where the poor live. 

 

And, of necessity, the poor would shit in the streets. 

 

[Totally related: the most immediate reason that our unhoused population shits in the street is that we have an appalling lack of public toilets. As anyone who has ever had small children in an unfamiliar city can tell you. Businesses have become increasingly hostile to providing this service, because they bear the cost, while the public receives the benefit.] 

 

So, can you afford to build a water treatment plant? Sewer lines to it? Almost certainly not. What you need is a system that we all pay into, and all receive the benefits. 

 

Education

 

It is often difficult these days to remember that white Americans weren’t always hostile to public education. I could write a whole post on Segregation Academies, the homeschooling movement, and white panic about integrated schools. That is incontrovertible history that drives the present push for vouchers, private schools, and neighborhood segregation. 

 

But there is another history that is worth remembering. 

 

Education has always been a fraught subject. The ultra-wealthy would prefer to only educate their own children, preserving a permanent ruling class, and keeping the masses ignorant and illiterate - the better to exploit them. 

 

However, one of the truly admirable Christian movements of the 17th Century was the public education movement. 

 

In 1647, the Massachusetts legislature passed the delightfully named “Old Deluder Satan Act.” It was so named because of its preamble, that stated that one of the tools that old deluder, Satan, used to keep people mired in sin was to prevent them from reading the holy scriptures. 

 

To counter the schemes of the devil, therefore, the act required all towns of 50 or more families to create a public school, and towns of 100 families to create higher level schools as well. Thus, all the children would learn to read and write - and be able to read the Bible for themselves. 

 

Yep, it was the Puritans and other religious folk in New England that created our Public School system - and they should be proud of it. 

 

The fact of the matter is, we all benefit from an educated population. Our strides in science, math, medicine, art, literature, and so many more were made possible because we educated our kids. 

 

You can in fact predict the wealth and advancement of a nation by its literacy and education system. There is no more sure way for a nation to become innovative and prosperous. You must invest in future generations. 

 

But of course, this cannot happen without “socialism.” People living paycheck to paycheck cannot afford to pay for education. And the rich, if they are not forced to, will not pay for it voluntarily. (And, as I will discuss in a future post, all too many white people in this country are averse to paying to educate “those people’s” children.) 

 

Education requires that the government - aka taxpayers - pay so that everyone receives an education. Without that, you cannot have a functional universal education system. 

 

Were you able to pay $18,614 per year for your kindergarten when you were age five? If you are a parent, did you have this much available per child to educate your children? That’s more than a full-time job at the federal minimum wage, by the way. 

 

Do you really want to live in a country where most children go without an education? Or are you willing to put up with a bit of “socialism” so that everyone’s kids get educated? 

 

Healthcare

 

Nowhere, perhaps, is the need for “socialism” than in the area of healthcare. 

 

First, let me talk about a real problem: 

 

“Insurance” is the wrong term for our healthcare coverage system. And, what we need isn’t insurance per se, but healthcare infrastructure.

 

Insurance is a way of hedging risk. For example, I purchase term life insurance, which is essentially making a bet with my insurance company that I hope to lose. I bet them that I will die within a certain 20 year period, hoping I don’t. If I win, they pay my wife and kids a bunch of money. If I lose, I will have paid them annual premiums for 20 years and get nothing in return. 

 

That is what actual insurance is. 

 

Similarly, I make a bet with my auto and home insurance companies that I hope to lose. If I win, by getting in a collision or losing my house to fire, then they pay me. Otherwise, I pay them for the coverage. 

 

That’s how actual insurance works. It hedges the risk of a financially catastrophic event, such as a house burning down or a death of a parent of young children. 

 

Healthcare isn’t like that. 

 

We all need healthcare, and we need more as we age.

 

When I was a kid, I was sickly, and am alive now only because of antibiotics. (And probably because of vaccines as well.) But these were relatively low cost events. I joke that I am not athletic enough to have broken a bone. And it’s not entirely a joke. I am naturally cautious physically.

 

That said, in a careless moment as a kid, I came within a literal foot of being hit by a car. I’m sure I gave the driver a heart attack. (Figuratively speaking.) I’m glad he had good reflexes. A split second more and I would have landed in the hospital. Which would have been expensive. 

 

But overall, young people don’t need that much healthcare. Ongoing vaccines, checkups, and maybe a few injuries. They are fairly inexpensive to cover. 

 

As we get older, however, the risk of needing more expensive care grows. 

 

I am nearly 50, and already on some medications to treat family issues: high cholesterol from my dad’s side, and low thyroid from my mom’s. I am likely to need blood pressure medications eventually. And my eyesight is suffering from O.L.D. Syndrome. 

 

In the next decade, it is possible that, like my dad, I will have additional heart issues that require intervention. (It runs in the family for sure…) In the next two decades, this becomes even more likely. By the time I turn 80, if I am fortunate enough to live that long, I will be almost certain to have had more expensive issues. 

 

This is why, if left to the market, no insurer would cover 80 year olds. They would be left to die, because they don’t create profit.

 

But something to keep in mind: 

 

All of us could become “unhealthy” at any time.

 

Both personally and professionally, I have seen this happen. We are all temporarily healthy, and our bodies are fragile. Our health can disappear in an instant. 

 

Like my cousin-once-removed who was in a horrible auto accident and required surgeries and therapy to regain her ability to move. 

 

Like a friend who got colon cancer in his 30s. 

 

Like another friend who got ovarian cancer while she had teen kids. 

 

Like a friend’s kid who had a freak fall at home and spiral fractured her arm. 

 

Like the client who developed a serious autoimmune disease in their 20s. 

 

Like my mother-in-law who had her first stroke in her mid-40s. That’s younger than me. 

 

Like my father who needed a pacemaker in his 50s. 

 

Like my friend who gave birth to a disabled child, who needs and will always need ongoing (and expensive) care, surgeries, and other healthcare. 

 

Like my client who has long covid. 

 

Like so many of my clients who develop dementia as they age. 

 

Shit happens. None of us are “safe” from having an illness or injury that requires care. NONE OF US. 

 

Sick and injured people do not create profits for the insurance industry. 

 

Which is to say that the incentives are to find ways of denying you care when you need it. Any of us could find ourselves without the care we need, unless there are systems in place to guarantee that we do. 

 

How the “Free” Market would function:

 

Insurance companies make money by taking in as much as they can in premiums, and paying out as little as they can in claims. That is the basic economic reality. 

 

Now, imagine an unregulated market for health insurance. 

 

Companies would make money by charging healthy people premiums, and avoiding covering less healthy people. In practice, this means insurance companies want to have young customers without existing health issues. And they do not want older people, or those with existing conditions. 

 

See where this is going? Let’s say that insurance companies, like car insurance companies, renew on a yearly basis. As a healthy 20-year-old, of course they will cover you. But what if you get cancer? The next year, you are a known liability, so they drop you. Too bad. 

 

Okay, so maybe we need some regulation. If you get sick, your carrier cannot dump you. Let’s see if that works.

 

Well, the same market forces still exist, so, the company needs to make money. They need more young people. So they recruit them. But people get older, so gradually, the people covered need more and more care, causing premiums to rise. 

 

Well, the healthier people look around and see cheaper plans from another company, so they leave. This starts the “death spiral” where only sick people remain in the pool. 

 

Plus, as anyone who has worked in healthcare - or even paid attention a bit - knows, few people keep the exact same coverage all their lives. 

 

What if you lose your job, and thus lose your health coverage. Now, you have to buy on the market. Let’s say you are age 60, and have known heart disease. No insurance company will take you. That’s a fact. What do you do? Just agree to die of treatable disease?

 

Okay, so maybe we have to have more regulation: insurance companies must accept all applicants, and cover pre-existing conditions. 

 

That’s what the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) did. And it was a literal lifesaver for many of my clients after they lost their jobs. Naturally, eliminating this mandate has been a goal of the Republican Party since the ACA was enacted.

 

The other part of this, however, needs to be an individual mandate. Without younger and healthier people paying in, you get that death spiral. The young, healthy people look for cheaper insurance, leaving the older, sicker people behind, which means that companies have to raise prices to pay for it.

 

Unfortunately, Trump and the Republican Party eliminated the individual mandate effective 2019. With predictable results. More recently, they eliminated the subsidies for ACA plans for mid-income people (between 125% and 400% of the poverty level), which further fuels the death spiral in ACA plans starting next year. 

 

Okay, so what do we do now?

 

What we need for healthcare to work is some form of universal coverage - we guarantee that people can get care when they need it, even if they are old, or have preexisting conditions, or are otherwise a “bad risk” for profit-based coverage. 

 

We also need, in order to pay for it and avoid the death spiral, some way of having everyone pay in, at least what they can afford, so that we have a broad funding base. 

 

How on earth do we do that?

 

The answer is…..[drum roll please!]...

 

Socialized Medicine

 

Again, refer to my prior post for my inaccurate colloquial definition of "socialized medicine.” What I mean by that is the following:

Guaranteed issue - everyone gets care regardless of income, health, age, etc.

Subsidized to be affordable - for everyone.

Paid for by everyone at the rate they can pay.

 

This sure sounds a lot like….Universal Healthcare. And like programs such as Medicare. Or the various single-payer and other truly universal systems the rest of the first world uses.  

 

It’s pretty simple in concept: all of us pay taxes, at a rate that we can afford. Which means progressive taxation - the rich pay more and at higher rates. Our tax dollars are then used to fund healthcare for everyone. 

 

And remember, this literally works all around the world, in societies and cultures as different as Japan and Italy, Sweden and Botswana, Algeria and Cuba. 

 

Why is the United States so uniquely resistant to this? 

 

That will be (I hope) the subject of the next post in this series.

 

The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin

Source of book: I own this

 

I regret that I have been unable to acquire the Library of America edition of the complete Merwin, but it has become unobtanium. Fortunately paperback editions of some of his collections are still available. This is one of them. You can also find many of the poems at the Merwin Conservancy if you like. 

 

One of the benefits of our interconnected online world, for all its disadvantages, is the chance to connect with kindred spirits across the world. In one of those cases, a friend who moved from where I live to Florida met another person, who I met online through my friend. I then met another friend from that person, and we ended up getting together in person for hiking and backpacking, which we have done here and there over the last few years. And now, both are part of a poetry group we have started, complete with zoom meetings. 

 

One of the great things about this meeting has been being introduced to a number of modern poets that I have come to love. One of those is W. S. Merwin. 

My own poetry journey started very young, with my love for Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, and Robert Frost. I also read quite a few of the other poets from the 19th Century and prior, because these show up in old anthologies that you can get at a thrift store for pennies. 

 

Discovering the more modern poets came later for me, and friends have been helpful in that discovery process. There is so much out there, and only one lifetime to read. 

 

Merwin was, like many of my favorite moderns, an ecologist as well as a poet. There is a strong connection between the poetic temperament and a closeness to our planet and the living biosphere. 

 

The Shadow of Sirius is one of his later books, from 2008. It won the Pulitzer. 

 

The poems are modern in form, with no punctuation, little capitalization, and mostly free forms. There are a few that lean in the direction of tradition, but are not quite there. They don’t feel particularly experimental, however, just a familiar modern verse form that relies on the skill of the poet in arranging meaning and sounds to create the magic of poetry. 

 

Here are the poems that particularly spoke to me from this collection. 

 

The Nomad Flute

 

You that sang to me once sing to me now
let me hear your long lifted note
survive with me
the star is fading
I can think farther than that but I forget
do you hear me

do you still hear me
does your air
remember you
o breath of morning
night song morning song
I have with me
all that I do not know
I have lost none of it

but I know better now
than to ask you
where you learned that music
where any of it came from
once there were lions in China

I will listen until the flute stops
and the light is old again

 

Any of us who are wanderers and filled with wonder at the natural world will enjoy this and many of the other poems in this collection. 

 

This next one is a definite favorite. As a writer and thinker, I am fascinated by how words work, and how they communicate meaning, yet always imperfectly. 

 

Note

 

Remember how the naked soul
comes to language and at once knows
loss and distance and believing

then for a time it will not run
with its old freedom
like a light innocent of measure
but will hearken to how
one story becomes another
and will try to tell where
they have emerged from
and where they are heading
as though they were its own legend
running before the words and beyond them
naked and never looking back

through the noise of questions

 

Here is another one on that theme. 

 

From the Start

 

Who did I think was listening

when I wrote down the words

in pencil at the beginning

words for singing

to music I did not know

and people I did not know

would read them and stand to sing them

already knowing them

while they sing they have no name

 

Do you collect stones? Do you ever wander on the beach and pick up small smooth ones that catch your fancy? I certainly do. This next poem may resonate. 

 

Lament for a Stone

 

The bay where I found you faced the long light

of the west glowing under the could sky

 

there Columba as the story goes looked

back and could not see Ireland any more

 

therefore he could stay he made up his mind

in that slur of the sea on the shingle

 

shaped in a fan around the broad crescent

formed all of green pebbles found nowhere else

 

flecked with red held in blue depths and polished

smooth as water by rolling like water

 

along each other rocking as they were

rocking at his feet it is said that they

 

are proof against drowning and I saw you

had the shape of the long heart of a bird

 

and when I took you in my palm we flew

through the years hearing them rush under us

 

where have you flown now leaving me to hear

that sound alone without you in my hand

 

I am also given to walking at night on moonless nights - one particular hike at Pinnacles National Park is a treasured memory. I find that even the stars cast shadows. 

 

Night with No Moon

 

Now you are darker than I can believe

it is not wisdom that I have come to

 

with its denials and pure promises

but this absence that I cannot set down

 

still hearing when there is nothing to hear 

reaching into the blindness that was there

 

thinking to walk in the dark together

 

This next one feels very personal, and it reminds me of my feelings for my beloved. The form of this one is reminiscent of a Pantoum or even a Villanelle, although it is not so structured as either.

 

Good Night

 

Sleep softly my old love

my beauty in the dark

night is a dream we have

as you know as you know

 

night is a dream you know

an old love in the dark

around you as you go

without end as you know

 

in the night where you go

sleep softly my old love

without end in the dark

in the love that you know

 

I find that poems with the theme of journeys, connection, longing, are ones I highlighted. Here is another. 

 

Into the Cloud

What do you have with you
now my small traveler
suddenly on the way
and all at once so far

on legs that never were
up to the life that you
led them and breathing with
the shortness breath comes to

my endless company
when you could come to me
you would stay close to me
until the day was done

o closest to my breath
if you are able to
please wait a while longer
on that side of the cloud

 

Here is another that was so good, I shared it on Facebook. A real gem.

 

Worn Words

The late poems are the ones
I turn to first now
following a hope that keeps
beckoning me
waiting somewhere in the lines
almost in plain sight

it is the late poems
that are made of words
that have come the whole way
they have been there

 

I do often find that the later poems written by my favorite poets are often the ones I return to. Thomas Hardy’s Winter Words, for example, is so good. 

 

Another one about words and meaning and the music of language

 

The Long and the Short of It

 

As long as we can believe anything

we believe in measure

we do it with the first breath we take

and the first sound we make

it is in each word we learn

and in each of them it means

what will come again and when

it is there in meal and in moon

and in meaning it is the meaning

it is the firmament and the furrow

turning at the end of the field

and the verse turning with its breath

it is in memory that keeps telling us

some of the old story about us

 

And another, which combines the love of words and the love of nature. 

 

What the Bridges Hear

 

Even the right words if ever

we come to them tell of something

the words never knew

celestia for starlight

or starlight for starlight

so at this moment there may be words

somewhere among the nebulae

for the two bridges cross the wide

rock-strewn river

part way around the bend from each other

in the winter sunlight

late in the afternoon more than half

a century ago with the sound

of the water rushing under them

and passing between them unvarying

and inaudible it is still there

so is the late sunlight

of that winter afternoon

although the winter has vanished

and the bridges are still reaching across

the wide sound of being there

 

This is another picture of a particular time, place, and mood that really resonates. 

 

Cold Spring Morning

 

At times it has seemed that when

I first came here it was an old self

I recognized in the silent walls

and the river far below

but the self has no age

as I knew even then and had known

for longer than I could remember

as the sky has no sky

except itself this white morning in May

with fog hiding the barns

that are empty now and hiding the mossed

limbs of gnarled walnut trees and the green

pastures unfurled along the slope

I know where they are and the birds

that are hidden in their own calls

in the cold morning

I was not born here I come and go

 

The next one is a profoundly philosophical musing, with a core truth. Everything is fleeting, and pleasure that can be forced to stay will become pain. 

 

One of the Butterflies

 

The trouble with pleasure is the timing

it can overtake me without warning

and be gone before I know it is here

it can stand facing me unrecognized

while I am remembering somewhere else

in another age or someone not seen

for years and never to be seen again

in this world and it seems I cherish

only now a joy I was not aware of

when it was here although it remains

out of reach and will not be caught or named

or called back and if I could make it stay

as I want to it would turn into pain

 

I’ll end with one more beautiful word picture. 

 

Falling

 

Long before daybreak

none of the birds yet awake

rain comes down with the sound

of a huge wind rushing

through the valley trees

it comes down around us

all at the same time

and beyond it there is nothing

it falls without hearing itself

without knowing

there is anyone here

without seeing where it is

or where it is going

like a moment of great

happiness of our own

that we cannot remember

coasting with the lights off

 

I will definitely have to find more Merwin collections for my library. The best would be that Library of America book - if anyone finds one lying around in a used book store…

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Source of book: I own this

 

This book was my selection for Banned Books Week this year. Yeah, it took a while. A bunch of other books to finish, plus 14 music gigs in the first two weeks of October. But, I eventually did get a rainy weekend to sit down and finish it. 

 

You can read my thoughts from over a decade ago (and a different political environment) on banned books week here. The list of official reads is here. 

 

The last several years have seen a resurgence in book bans and challenges - and in attacks on librarians, school teachers, and administrators who do not kowtow to the fundamentalist bigots. 

 

It is no accident that the books targeted tend to be written by certain kinds of authors. While the ostensible reason for bans is claimed to be “sexually explicit," this isn’t actually the case. Most have any sex occur “off screen” so to speak - it is referenced or implied, but not actually described.

 

Rather, the bans target books by and about minority groups. Books by non-white authors make up the largest group of banned books, particularly for books about history or politics. The next-largest is LGBTQ authors. Also significantly represented are female authors, and authors with disabilities. 

 

It isn’t difficult to see what is going on here. The white, male, cishet, religiously bigoted minority is flexing its power to silence voices that challenge that power. 

 

This has always been the driving force behind book bans: the fear of the ruling majority of losing power and influence. 

 

I was not sure what to expect in reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, honestly. I did know that it was the subject of important court cases on obscenity both here in the United States and in Britain. After all, I studied them in law school. This book was responsible for the most important legal standard when it comes to censorship: does the book have “redeeming social or literary value”? In this case, the court ruled that it in fact did, paving the way for the legalization of many other books of merit that had been banned because of sexual content. 

 

The other thing I knew about the book and the author was that they have been criticized by feminists. I mentioned these criticisms when I read the feminist classics, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, and Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin. I feel like I should re-read those sections now that I have read Lawrence. 

 

Whatever I was expecting, this book was quite different than that. 

 

In what ways? Well, first, the sex reminded me far more of female-oriented “bodice rippers” than the male-oriented banned books I have read. (Hello, The Tropic of Cancer and Ulysses, which tended to be more gross than titillating.) 

 

While the sex scenes did have a bit of an obsession with simultaneous orgasm from intercourse (which isn’t possible for most women), and there was a lot of focus on the phallus, the fact that female orgasm and female desire were centered as well seemed a bit feminist for 1928. 

 

I will add that one of the central themes of the book is the need for women to have sexual connection, to have an outlet beyond being just a “wife and mother,” a caretaker to male ambition. For Lady Chatterley (aka Connie), her husband Clifford is a gilded cage, someone who sees her as an ornament and a reflection of himself. She needs more. There is a lot of focus on Connie’s physical and emotional needs, which felt surprisingly progressive for the era. And that is more in line with, say, Kate Chopin, than with many other male authors of the time. 

 

The other thing that I was not expecting was how much this book is really about class, not sex. 

 

Lawrence grew up in a working-class home. His father was a coal miner, and his mother, although educated, because of her lower-class background, was reduced to needlework to support the family. 

 

Thus, he was very sensitive to the way that the higher classes look down on the lower, even when, as was the case for him, he was actually better educated, better read, and a far better writer than the stuck-up Lord Chatterleys of the world. 

 

For Connie to leave him for a working-class man rather similar to Lawrence is the greatest slap that Clifford can imagine. 

 

Finally, the book is strongly anti-industrial, seeing it as grinding and dehumanizing the workers, creating obscenely rich capitalists, polluting the earth, and destroying the beauty of the natural world. 

 

He was not wrong. 

 

Thus, there is a lot more to this book than its sexual content. 

 

I will also say that the writing is really good, the ideas thoughtful, and the ending a lot more positive than I expected. (Hey, how many books from the era dared a happy ending? Especially for a “loose” woman?) 

 

There are a number of strong points to the book. I think Lawrence captured the sense of alienation that class distinctions create for everyone, from Clifford, who cannot see those “below” him as equally human, to Mellors, who feels looked down upon despite his obvious intellectual gifts. The scandal of Connie’s rejection of the aristocrat for the commoner must have been every bit as scandalous at the time as the sexual content. Which is one reason I suspect that the book was banned for so long. There is nothing in here that is more graphic than The Canterbury Tales, after all. 

 

I also thought the general discussions of class, the industrial revolution, nature, and the needs of humans to connect to their own bodies were good. As I said, there is a lot more to this book than the sex, and the court decision nailed it in finding artistic and cultural merit in the book. 

 

I will also note that my own life experience has been somewhat similar to Lawrence’s in one sense. I was born to parents who did not have college degrees, descended from farmers who worked the land. I myself never got a real college education, being instead forced into the law school for the cult my parents were in. To the degree that I have a broad education - and I believe I do - it has been because I did it myself on my own time. Hence the name of this blog, by the way. 

 

So, I have experienced what Lawrence and his stand-in, Mellors, are a bit sore about: being looked down on for lacking the upper or upper-middle class background; at the same time as one’s former peers resent your upward mobility, calling you “stuck up” for knowing more. 

 

It is an interesting experience, and has been a factor in my difficulty with my birth family, as well as a source of discomfort with some of my legal peers who came from a higher social class than I did. 

 

The book resonated with me for that reason as well. 

 

For those who don’t know the basic plot, here is a quick summary. (Spoiler warning, but the book IS nearly 100 years old…) 

 

Connie is one of two daughters in a minor aristocratic family. She “marries up” by marrying Clifford, Lord Chatterley. 

 

Alas, he is badly injured in World War Two, which also claimed the other men in his family, and indeed a generation of men in Britain and the continent. He is left paralyzed from the waist down, and unable to get an erection. 

 

In compensation for his loss, he throws himself into a series of projects. First is the group of intellectual aristocratic men who discuss Big Ideas™ while Connie is expected to wait on them, and keep her own thoughts to herself. Then, he becomes a writer of popular but forgettable books, expecting Connie to be his secretary, amanuensis, and editor. Which she does. Finally, he decides to address the failing returns of the coal mine on his estate by attempting to find alternative uses. (And of course, by squeezing wages of his serfs workers.

 

All the while, he expects Connie to be his companion, his caretaker, his world. He tells himself that this is generosity on his part, but he really has no idea of her needs, desires, or inner life. And, of course, his physical inability to perform the sexual act leads to what Lawrence considers his “emasculization” - a reduction of his humanity to his intellect, devoid of either emotion or physicality. 

 

And it isn’t just Clifford - the author castigates an entire generation of Englishmen (and indeed humans) for the loss of sensuality, passion, and connection to the animal body. 

 

How much of this to truly accept is debatable. Simone de Beauvoir had a valid criticism that emphasis on physicality and the connection of essential humanity to the drives of the penis can be problematic. 

 

In any case, after an unsatisfying affair with a playwright, Michaelis, who seems fundamentally unconcerned with satisfying her sexually, Connie falls for the handsome, physical, and virile Oliver Mellors, a former soldier from a mining family who is now working as Clifford’s gamekeeper. 

 

After a number of passionate sex scenes (which are surprisingly well written for a guy - generally women are better at these, in my opinion), she becomes pregnant with his child. 

 

At the end, she has left Clifford (who has in turn divorced his long-estranged abusive wife), and there is the promise of a future together for them. Definitely scandalous. Perhaps even in our own time. 

 

As usual, I jotted down a bunch of lines that I thought were good. 

 

In this case, the opening is excellent, expressing the feeling after the great war, but which also resonates in our own era. 

 

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to life, no matter how many skies have fallen. 

 

In speaking of the early sexual experiences of Connie and her sister, the author comments on the way too many men are. By the way, this book is an excellent reminder that the first sexual revolution took place in the 1910s, not the 1960s. It was in the 10s and 20s that the massive shift in first sexual experiences for men occurred, changing from initiation with a sex worker to sex with a peer. Anyway, apparently young men haven’t changed much since. 

 

In the actual sex-thrill within the body, the sisters nearly succumbed to the strange male power. But quickly they recovered themselves, took the sex-thrill as a sensation, and remained free. Whereas the men, in gratitude to the women for the sex experience, let their souls go out to her. And afterwards looked rather as if they had lost a shilling and found sixpence. Connie’s man could be a bit sulky and Hilda’s a bit jeering. But that’s how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don’t have them they hate you because you won’t; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can’t be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may. 

 

I also loved this insight into the true “elites” like Clifford. Do not confuse them with who the MAGA sorts call “elite” - that is, educated, thoughtful, white collar sorts who had to earn their money rather than inherit it. The true elites are the obscenely rich, the born rich, who confuse wealth with substance, lucre with brains. (Think: Trump and Elon Musk…) These elites lack any actual breadth of experience and knowledge, mistaking their comfort within their own peer groups for actual cosmopolitanism. 

 

But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more “society,” was in his own way more provincial and more timid. He was at his ease in the narrow “great world,” that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was shy and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of the middle and lower classes, and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he was just a little bit frightened of middle and lower class humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralyzing way, conscious of his own defenselessness, though he had all the defense of privilege. Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day. 

 

Yes, a bit of this still going on today, perhaps? Later, Connie observes this more closely. 

 

But she could not help feeling how little connection he really had with people. The miners were, in a sense, his own men; but he saw them as objects rather than men, parts of the pit rather than parts of life, crude raw phenomena rather than human beings along with him. He was in some way afraid of them, he could not bear to have them look at him now he was lame. 

 

The intellectual group that Clifford surrounds himself with has some interesting views, some of which may well have been Lawrence’s own. For example, they talk about how sex has become weirdly a matter of public concern, rather than seen as a physical act, like “going to the privy.” It is the obsession with other people’s genitals and what they do with them that makes sex so fraught. 

 

One particularly strange conversation comes from Tommy Dukes, one of the group, who has no particular interest in sex. At least with women - whether Lawrence intended it or not, he comes off as pretty gay. 

 

“Yes, I feel something is wrong between men and women. A woman has no glamour for a man any more.” 

 

This eventually leads Clifford to suggest that Connie have an affair, so she can have the child which (he thinks) will make her happy. His reasoning is intellectual, not emotional, because he has buried his emotions so deeply. 

 

“It seems to me that it isn’t these little acts and little connections we make in our lives that matter so very much. They pass away, and where are they? Where….Where are the nows of yesteryear? … It’s what endures through one’s life that matters; my own life matters to me, in its long continuance and development. But what do the occasional connections matter? And the occasional sexual connections especially? If people don’t exaggerate them ridiculously, they pass like the mating of birds. And so they should. What does it matter? It’s the life-long companionship that matters. It’s the living together from day to day, not the sleeping together once or twice. You and I are married, no matter what happens to us. We have the habit of each other. And habit, to my thinking, is more vital than any occasional excitement.”

 

Clifford isn’t entirely wrong, of course. A long marriage is about a whole lot more than sex, and the day to day living together is really the meat of the connection. But he also completely misses what his wife craves and needs. And yes, sex is part of that. But also the sense of connection that he imagines they have, but really don’t, because he cannot truly see Connie as human. 

 

There are a number of interesting conversations about class, wealth, and politics. One interesting bit comes from Mrs. Bolton, who ends up becoming Clifford’s live-in nurse, and displacing Connie in his affections in a weird, quasi-sexual way. She has more common sense than he does, though, for sure. In this conversation, Clifford is worried that his workers might go communist. 

 

“Oh, you hear a few loud-mouthed ones. But they’re mostly women who’ve got into debt. The men take no notice. I don’t believe you’ll ever turn our Tevershall men into reds. They’re too decent for that. But the young ones blether sometimes. Not that they care for it really. They only want a bit of money in their pocket, to spend at the Welfare, or go gadding to Sheffield. That’s all they care. When they’ve got no money, they’ll listen to the reds spouting. But nobody believes in it, really.”

 

As it becomes more clear, her point is that if Clifford makes sure his workers have a bit of spending money, they are unlikely to radicalize. Enough to feel comfortable, have a little fun, and so on. 

 

This is a lesson that our present oligarchs would do well to keep in mind. Grinding the faces of the poor leads to revolution. 

 

Lawrence is no fan of industrial capitalism for sure, or for the constant drive to make money. Throughout the book, he refers to the “bitch-goddess” of success. A bit sexist, perhaps, particularly since it is the men in the book that spend their time worshipping it. But the idea of the goddess-mistress, it is defensible. 

 

He realized now that the bitch-goddess of success had two main appetites: one for flattery, adulation, stroking and tickling such as writers and artists gave her; but the other a grimmer appetite for meat and bones. And the meat and bones for the bitch-goddess were provided by the men who made money in industry. 

 

I am definitely reminded of the tech-bros here just as much as celebrity culture. The two sides of the worship of the bitch-goddess of success. 

 

Another unexpected parallel to our own times in this book comes when Clifford shifts from his social circles to a withdrawal from human contact. 

 

Connie was a good deal alone now, fewer people came to Wragby. Clifford no longer wanted them. He had turned against even the cronies. He was queer. He preferred the radio, which he had installed at some expense, with a good deal of success at last….And he would sit alone for hours listening to the loud-speaker bellowing forth. It amazed and stunned Connie. But there he would sit, with a blank entranced expression on his face, like a person losing his mind, and listen, or seem to listen, to the unspeakable thing. 

 

I have seen this withdrawal from acquaintances, family, and clients, where so many withdraw into a Fox News bubble, or an internet bubble, losing sight of reality eventually. It really is a sad state of affairs. And no wonder Connie feels trapped and wants to find a way to actually live, rather than withdraw. 

 

Mellors too feels trapped to a degree. After rising into the middle class during his army days, on his own merits, he found himself out of place in civilian life, and frustrated with the pretense and focus on pretending not to care about the small things of life. I won’t quote it because it is too long, but the contrast between the “not caring about prices” of the middle class (or at least pretending not to care) and the fact that the working class has to care about those things is interesting. 

 

As the book goes on, what little decency Clifford may once have had is eroded by the need to make money. On a walk through the grounds, Connie is interested in the beauty of nature, while Clifford rattles on about why aristocracy is necessary. It sounds a lot like what the tech oligarchs say now. Basically, nothing changes…

 

Interestingly, he admits to Connie that “blood” (aka genetics) do not really matter. It is nurture. But to him, that is why the common people shouldn’t be educated. That isn’t their role.

 

“But when it comes to expressive or executive functioning, I believe there is a gulf and an absolute one, between the ruling and the serving classes. The two functions are opposed. And the function determines the individual.” 

 

Another telling scene comes when Clifford is reading some philosopher or another (the book doesn’t say who), who makes the claim that man is becoming more spiritual and less physical, and eventually will not even need a body. 

 

And yes, that sounds like Transhumanism way before its time. Who knew? There are a couple of good lines in this, from Connie, who not only understands the issues, but realizes that Clifford really does not. And, for the first time, she actually talks back to him. 

 

“What silly hocus-pocus! As if his little conceited consciousness could know what was happening as slowly as all that! It only means he’s a physical failure on the earth, so he wants to make the whole universe a physical failure. Priggish little impertinence!”

 

Clifford just doubles down, not realizing that his own wife would like a bit of a physical connection to someone, and indeed to the world itself. (Which is, after all, physical.) 

 

“Believe me, whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.” 

 

Just like the AI evangelists and the Transhumanists, Clifford is wrong here. Our guts aren’t going away. We cannot separate the body and the spirit - that’s really a gnostic heresy anyway. We are embodied, humans with minds and spirits that are fully integrated with the physical bodies we are. 

 

The last quote I want to feature is another totally unexpected one. It occurs when Connie writes from Venice that she is not coming back to Clifford, but will be leaving him. 

 

The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs. Bolton looked at it and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without learning something about that very unpleasant disease. 

 

Did Lawrence really say that? Did he really mention “male hysteria” - what we in our times dub “testeria”? Yes he did. 

 

And that is why I think this book is a lot more feminist than some feminists give it credit for. Far from accepting the patriarchal claim that men are naturally “less emotional,” Lawrence makes it clear that Clifford - and indeed the men of his generation - have merely suppressed their emotions, lived in denial, and set themselves up for unpleasant episodes of testeria. 

 

There really is so much in this book about that question: how do we live in harmony with our nature? How do we reclaim the physical and emotional in our humanity? How do we connect in every way with our fellow humans? How do we resist the dehumanization of industry and the endless quest for money and fame? 

 

So, yes, the sex scenes are somewhat graphic. But also they contain references to female pleasure, which is probably even more scandalous. The book, however, is about so much more than sex. It embraces the big questions of existence, and proposes answers that are more than merely intellectual, but emotional and even physical. 

 

It rightly deserves its reputation as a classic, and was a good choice for a book to challenge the belief that sex is incompatible with artistic and cultural merit.