ALB
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Yes, on closer examination, the Oxford vaccine does not seem to be what Boris and the British media have boostered ( or is it boastered? ) it to be. On the surface they seem to have cherry picked or manipulated the statistics. But I suppose they will clarify the position at some point.
In any event a 30 percent rate of failure to stop people developing the symptoms doesn’t seem that impressive, even though they are saying that the failure rate for the flu jab is higher at 40 to 50 percent.
Maybe there is someone out there (BD for instance) who can explain whether or not this is the right conclusion to draw from “70 percent effectiveness”.
Looking for something else at a debate in August 1905 between the Party and the SDF I noticed that the SDF speaker stated:
“He was an anti-vaccinist because he objected to having his child poisoned. This was not Socialism, but a question of human well-being.”
This suggests that, at that time, the antivax movement had leftwing support. I don’t know why. Something new imposed by the state?
The development of anti-Covid-19 vaccines in less than 9 months shows that society has the scientific knowledge and the technological capacity to solve a problem like this if enough resources are made available. This rarely happens under capitalism for something useful. It normally only happens in a military context such as the Manhattan project to develop a weapon of mass destruction.
Of course this was done in a capitalist context where money had to be used to mobilise the resources, with those with the resources having to be compensated for allowing them to be used. There was also competition with underhand means between different states and profit-seeking companies to develop a vaccine first and so get a bigger share of the market.
Mark Littlewood, the director-general of the mad-marketeer Institute of Economic Affairs, thinks this was the best way of doing it. Writing in the Times on 16 November he said of the scientific breakthrough;
”So striking is this success that this newspaper’s science editor, Tim Whipple, suggested to me last week that it might be appropriate for us all to stand at our doorsteps at 8pm each Thursday and give a round of applause to big, profit-making pharmaceutical companies.”
It is not clear whether Whipple had agreed beforehand to being exposed as a cynical fool. Littlewood also ignored the fact that the big, profit-making drug companies wouldn’t have responded so quickly if governments hadn’t guaranteed them in advance a market for their vaccine. And haven’t in other cases where has been no such guaranteed market.
In socialism it might have taken just as long and there might have been a place for different groups of scientists to work on different approaches, but with money and the profit motive it would have been organised more rationally.
To tell the truth it’s a change to see a government face down the Islamists instead of rolling over and trying to present criticism of Islam as a religion as “islamophobia”. The BBC even refers to its founder as “the Prophet Mohammed” even though he was only a religious leader, merchant and warlord. I bet they don’t do that in France.
I was going to mention that but you beat me to it. I suppose that if you think that the end of the world is nigh you might be prepared to risk losing where you live or getting a bad credit record (or alienating everybody).
I noticed that one of their leaders, Gail Bradbrook, is quoted as saying in today’s Times:
”One of things that has really held back change on the environment is this perception that it’s a ‘leftwing’ thing.”
By which I take it she means bringing “capitalism” into it. And why the Guardian didn’t quote her on that?
XR seems more like a cult than anything else.
Of course even if Bernie, Pocahontas, AOC and the whole squad were appointed to Biden’s cabinet that would made no difference as in the end capitalism’s economic law of profits first has to be accepted — and applied — by any capitalist government, no matter how well-meaning or sincere those who compose it might be. Actually, come to think of it, as they don’t understand how capitalism works, a government made up of that lot stand a good chance of making a mess of it.
Here is what Marx wrote in chapter 3 section 2c of volume 1 of Capital, alluding “here only to inconvertible paper money issued by the State and having compulsory circulation”:
”The State puts in circulation bits of paper on which their various denominations, say £1, £5, &c., are printed. In so far as they actually take the place of gold to the same amount, their movement is subject to the laws that regulate the currency of money itself. A law peculiar to the circulation of paper money can spring up only from the proportion in which that paper money represents gold. Such a law exists; stated simply, it is as follows: the issue of paper money must not exceed in amount the gold (or silver as the case may be) which would actually circulate if not replaced by symbols. Now the quantity of gold which the circulation can absorb, constantly fluctuates about a given level. Still, the mass of the circulating medium in a given country never sinks below a certain minimum easily ascertained by actual experience. The fact that this minimum mass continually undergoes changes in its constituent parts, or that the pieces of gold of which it consists are being constantly replaced by fresh ones, causes of course no change either in its amount or in the continuity of its circulation. It can therefore be replaced by paper symbols. If, on the other hand, all the conduits of circulation were to-day filled with paper money to the full extent of their capacity for absorbing money, they might to-morrow be overflowing in consequence of a fluctuation in the circulation of commodities. There would no longer be any standard. If the paper money exceed its proper limit, which is the amount in gold coins of the like denomination that can actually be current, it would, apart from the danger of falling into general disrepute, represent only that quantity of gold, which, in accordance with the laws of the circulation of commodities, is required, and is alone capable of being represented by paper. If the quantity of paper money issued be double what it ought to be, then, as a matter of fact, £1 would be the money-name not of 1/4 of an ounce, but of 1/8 of an ounce of gold. The effect would be the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as a standard of prices. Those values that were previously expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the price of £2.”
Here is Paul Mattick jnr’s reply;
https://brooklynrail.org/2020/11/field-notes/Inflation-Government-Policy-and-Profits-an-Exchange
First error is about Marx and the Quantity Theory of Money. He did indeed “roundly criticise” it where gold and/or a paper currency convertible on demand into a fixed amount of gold was the currency. He argued that it only applied when there was an inconvertible paper currenc
Paul Mattick is right that the prices of commodities can rise for all sorts of reasons other than a depreciation of the currency but this does not alter the argument that over-issuing an inconvertible paper currency does cause a rise in the general price level. Obviously, contrary to what he supposed to be the argument, this does not happen immediately it one go; it spreads throughout the economy as sellers have occasion to increase their prices.
Two contrasting headlines in today’s papers showing the government’s priorities;
”Four million public sector workers to have pay frozen.”
and
“Navy is big winner in Johnson’s £16bn defence spending spree.”
And they said they couldn’t afford to pay for free meals for deprived kids during half term,
Meanwhile, according to this, the old US military/foreign policy establishment is trying to postpone implementing Trump’s decision to quickly withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan (just as they now admit they did over Syria) until Biden takes over in the expectation that he won’t be so keen to do this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-54968200
So, whose the greater evil now?
Well, it wouldn’t be socialism since, in a socialist society where both the means of production and the products would be commonly owned (ie belong to no one or no group within society), why would there be a need to put a price on everything? You only need to that when a section only of society owns the means of production and needs to sell what is produced.
Perhaps today, given the enormous development of computing power since the days of Mises, Lerner, Lange and the others, it might be theoretically possible for a computer or network of computers to second guess the prices that the market would produce, but what would be the point?
To organise the production and distribution of goods and services, even under capitalism, there needs to be calculations in physical units (tonnes of steel, kilowatt hours of electricity, so many workers with a particular skill, etc). But, in order to calculate profits, capitalism needs to duplicate this “calculation in kind” with a calculation in money as a general unit of account. In socialism this duplication will be unnecessary. The calculation in a general unit of account is dropped and we calculate just in physical quantities.
This chapter from our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative sets out how a socialist society could organise the production and distribution of wealth without money:
