ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that transitioning to post-capitalist health and healthcare arrangements depends on praxis: the relationship between theory and practice. A distinction between two types of reform helps to clarify a path toward meaningful change. While ‘reformist reforms’ effect limited improvements without changing underlying conditions based on concentrated wealth and political-economic power, ‘non-reformist reforms’ endeavor to fundamentally transform these conditions. The chapter makes the case for the latter as a means to stimulate the transition to post-capitalist health and healthcare arrangements, through detailing the logic and attraction of a ‘rinky-dink revolution’. This involves withholding consent to processes that capitalism needs to maintain itself and grow, plus several creatively constructive and destructive efforts in which millions of people – albeit, still a minority of the population – participate. In turn, the chapter examines how these twin processes are already leading to change throughout the world. On the one hand, communal organizations engage in creative construction by governing themselves, and acting to ensure the survival and well-being of their participants by solving the housing problem and food problem marking capitalism. On the other hand, creative destructions direct actions that slow down or stop the smooth functioning of capitalism, or involve diverting investments and tax payments into the post-capitalist solidarity political economy. These constitutive actions of a rinky-dink revolution are simple, safe, and available to anyone. Through them, we can realize the joy of stopping our consent to – and unwitting support for – a system that we know damages our health, well-being, and happiness, and that stifles our ability to give and receive humane, high-quality, and accessible healthcare.
