Beatrice Webb

On 22 February 1883, Beatrice Webb penned the following entry in her diary: “A conflict has been going on within me. Shall I give myself up to Society, and make it my aim to succeed therein, or shall I only do so as far as duty calls me, keeping my private life much as it has been for the last nine months?” For all her intelligence, will power, assertiveness, and individualism, Beatrice Webb’s early diaries testify to the deep rift that runs through this future reformer’s life. The conflict she alludes to, between a public and a private life, is one of many dilemmas Beatrice faces in the pursuit of a social vocation. Often, it is a choice between reason and instinct, liberal and conservative political orientation, love and duty, dependence and independence. But she does not allow them to constrain her; rather, she seeks compromise. As an adolescent, Beatrice claims to have “shaken off the chains of the beautiful old faith” on her ascent to “something higher.” That higher level, as will become increasingly clear, is the calling to an active life in society.

Though Beatrice Webb was a woman with conflicting interests, what is more startling is her recognition of a choice. Despite her womanhood and the patriarchal norms of Victorian England, which she acknowledges in her diary, Beatrice is aware that she can either submit to the narrow world of the “angel in the house,” or assume the prominent role of a public intellectual. Her inclination towards the latter sphere – controlled predominantly by men – strikes many of her contemporaries as audacious and unbecoming of a woman. Indeed, how many could express the sentiment of the following entry from 15 February 1890, on her conversion to socialism: “I have become a socialist not because I believe it would ameliorate the conditions of the masses (though I think it would do so) but because I believe that only under communal ownership of the means of production can you arrive at the most perfect form of individual development, at the greatest stimulus to individual effort; in other words complete socialism is only consistent with absolute individualism. As such, some day, I shall stand on a barrel and preach it.”

For Beatrice, individualism is all-important in the transition from a monarchy to a socialist democracy. While the removal of sexual inequality was certainly a catalyst of her conversion, it became the vehicle for the more comprehensive cause of lifting the barriers to individual happiness. Whether socialism is even compatible with individual development, Beatrice never has to question. It is a given, and for her, eminently worth fighting for.

Health care reform

The recent passage of American health care reform, which has emboldened Democrats and infuriated Republicans (alternate camps don't seem to feel anything), is not revolutionary--falling short, as it does, of the public option--though it has set in motion a tremendous force which will not be realized until bolder, less compromising legislation is passed. This future legislation is, of course, universal health care, a utopian dream towards which we are either blissfully or recklessly drifting, according to whom you ask.

Many, presumably driven by post-Red Scare paranoia, fear the new bill will culminate in some form of socialism (though I sooner expect it will culminate in more half-baked definitions of socialism). Other naysayers bristle at what they believe is an overt government takeover, a state of intolerable federal intrusion into states rights, private enterprise, and private lives. They feel particularly zealous about "reclaiming" their country, as though it were hijacked. More subtle critics worry about the government's increasing deficit, its solvency, the expansion of the welfare state, and the future quality of health care under the new bill.

Just as the financial viability of this bill relies on variables, so must our long-term vision remain visionary, not conclusive. We can at least conceive that more people will live longer as a result of this legislation. Among the existential possibilities of a longer life without the anxiety over affordable health care is the opportunity for individual and political empowerment. As the most democratic social reform in recent decades, the bill has the power to level inequalities while curtailing the concentration of money and authority into few hands. In political theater, it may recast the dominant parties as, in the case of Democrats, legitimate agents of progressive change, and in the case of Republicans, poor swimmers in the new political tide. All of this, however, remains uncertain, so long as demagogues from each side continue to shun bypartisanship, and the reality of the dream remains dream-like.