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A comrade in Australia has sent this from the Sydney Morning Herald of 14 April.
Anybody know who this Professor Doherty is? He seems to know the score:
[Quote] Nobel laureate and immunologist Professor Peter Doherty said the world needed to change its funding model for vaccine development.
“There is just not enough profit margin in it for pharma companies,” he said.
“They live by profits and the rules of capitalism. And capitalism has no interest in human beings other than as consumers.”
A bit comprehensive Robin but thanks. I looked up a few to see what Naomi Klein, Paul Mason and Militant had to say.
Klein thinks that this is another case of “disaster capitalism” and that Halliburton and the others will be given contracts to reconstruct the economy. Mason’s article had the promising title of “The coronavirus crisis shows we need an entirely new economic system” but he didn’t link it with his previous interesting views on “post capitalism” and only envisaged more state control. As for Militant, they “demanded” full wages not just 80 percent for those “furloughed” but not that the TUC call a general strike to enforce this.
Obviously a lockdown in countries with a large informal economy is going to deprive people of their only source of income.
Your favourite pope has understood this but what he proposes is not going to happen:
Socialism is a more realistic proposition !
Ozy , we’re on to this sort of thing but it’s Discord not Zoom. See here:
Saturday 2 May, a full day’s events on Discord to mark Mayday Under Lockdown
If you want an invite to join the Party server there email us at the usual address of spgb at worldsocialism.org
“Could it be that the writers of the Torygraph and the Spectacularly Boring are making the case for an end to lockdown because working class lives matter less than profit?“
Of course and it’s a bit surprising that a socialist should be echoing the propaganda of a business lobby whose objective is to get profit-making going again irrespective of the number of extra deaths this could and probably would mean.
For the moment the government seems to be fulfilling its duty to the capitalist class as a whole by looking after their long term overall interest (as opposed to giving into to sectional interests) ie putting longer term profit-making prospects ahead of immediate short term profits.
Of course as when a war occurs those who supply bombs, guns, tanks, uniforms etc prosper and profiteer (make extra profits) despite the government trying to stop itself getting ripped off. This is probably happening now with medical equipment and supplies. Normal under capitalism. That’s how private “entrepreneurs” are supposed to behave. They pursue their personal interest and the invisible hand ensures we all benefit. Pull the other one, Adam (Smith).
I was talking only about shopkeepers owning or running “convenience stores” not all small shopkeepers. But you’re right, barbers and beauty parlours are not so happy. The supermarkets have benefitted too of course, and not just from online sales.
Just been to my local corner shop and the price of one egg has gone up from 25p last week to 30p. Some small shopkeepers must love lockdown or, rather, closedown of non essential workplaces.
Where this sort of thing can lead (from yesterday’s Times):
“Death threats over 5G
Telecoms engineers have received death threats from people who falsely believe that the development of 5G technology is causing the spread of coronavirus. Andy Kerr, deputy general secretary of the Communications Workers Union, said that most of the engineers involved in the 120 cases of abuse were not even working on 5G. The threats follow a spate of arson attacks on masts.”
There is an upside to this in that it has forced the media (except one airhead presenter) to give space to refuting this mistaken view.
And aren’t you being a bit un-Marxist by using a 19thC term defining gig and uber workers as “petty-bourgeois” because they are legally and technically independent self-employed artisans and are protesting at the restrictions being imposed on their livelihoods
Probably but it wasn’t me that introduced the term (I don’t like the term because of the way Leninists, real and cartoon, bandy it about). I was trying to work out who he might have had in mind. It turns out that he wasn’t talking about a particular socio-economic group but of an “ideology” that can be held by anyone, even wage workers; which makes it an even more unhelpful term, like “middle class”.
Ironically one group that is benefiting economically from the lockdown is small shopkeepers. (Others are capitalist enterprises making extra profits from supplying medical equipment and supplies.)
“Politicians respond with panic ; what can we do,
Responsible epidemiologists say “fuck all”.
Not even that Swedish professor says that. His case is that a general lockdown isn’t necessary, but still protect the vulnerable. Even you weren’t planning to invite the over 60s to your measles party.
But would “the poor” be any better off if there wasn’t a lockdown? Or, come to think of it, are the “petty bourgeois” garden-owners better off with it? I wonder how many of the current 6 million unemployed in Britain have gardens? And it is the self-employed (the Marxian definition of “petty bourgeoisie”) who are complaining loudly about the loss of income and being ruined by the lockdown.
You are not saying, are you, that the workers of the so-called “First World” are “privileged and pampered” ?
In any event, the “poor” (in the popular sense) are only a section of the section of the working class (properly defined).
Blaming the rich for spreading the virus is populism and in the same category as blaming the Chinese for starting it.
See tonight on Discord for the talk this evening at 6.30 GMT from the comrade in Las Vegas even if it is the middle of the night for you.
p.s. Dave, do you want an invite to join so you can listen to the EC meeting on Sunday 3 May?
“Lockdowns are class-based more than we are willing to admit. If I was ungenerous, I could say it is the “middle-class” protecting themselves from the great unwashed poor.”
This would not only be ungenerous but unMarxist ! It would be to divide the working class into two sections and setting one section against the other.
It also introduces a rather novel class division — between those with gardens and those without one. There will be millions of people surprised to find themselves denounced as “middle class” just because they have a garden. The sort of thing you would expect from Ian Bone’s “Class War” rather than something we could say.
What you are pointing to is one of the perverse effects of a lockdown under capitalism, not a case for not having a lockdown to deal with a pandemic of an infectious disease — even under capitalism.
So that people here can get a flavour of some of the conspiracy theories circulating, here’s a email we’ve received at Head Office (from someone in fact who is a subscriber to the Socialist Standard):
“The Covid-19 lockdown is a global power grab – pure and simple. The incremental steps towards a new world order has taken a giant stride forward with no going back. Economies worldwide have been destroyed by governments during a period when deaths globally are at normal levels. As science journalist, Peter Andrews, states, “Covid-19’s meant to be a new Black Death, but in Britain no more people are dying than normal. What does this say about the virus?” As Dr John Lee, a recently retired NHS consultant and professor of pathology says, writing in the Spectator, ‘’We have yet to see any statistical evidence for excess deaths, in any part of the world’’. So what’s it all about? It’s a false flag emergency that has been opportunistically created to curtail civil liberties across the planet, to roll out the globalist agenda at a faster pace (see Agenda 30, World Government Summit, etc).”
As reported into today’s Times, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs. is calling for a gradual, step-by-step easing of restrictions to begin within two to three weeks, so as to enable the economy to recover more easily, adding nonchalantly :
“That inevitably will mean that there will be, at each time, more Coronavirus cases. And we just have to accept that.”
Talk about profit before people.
