A Cure for Capitalism – The Covid‑19 Vaccines and the Economic Crisis
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It was reported in late December that the United States has administered only ten percent of the Covid‑19 vaccine doses it had promised by the end of the year. The federal government’s “Operation Warp Speed” program promised that 20 million doses would be administered by the end of the year, yet by December 28 only 2.1 million had been administered. No one seems to know the reason for this shortfall, which is sure to delay the effective control of the virus and cost thousands of lives.
This does not seem to trouble the hucksters who run the for‑profit medical industry, who are now enjoying the fruits of their “success” against the coronavirus. When the Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy was announced, causing its share price to shoot up, the company’s CEO sold $5.6 million in stock (more than workers make in their entire careers). The executives at Moderna, maker of another major Covid‑19 vaccine, have sold more than $100 million in their company’s stock this year. Stock prices for AstraZeneca increased more than 2 percent in the hours after its vaccine was approved for use in the United Kingdom. Even outside the pharmaceuticals industry, the owners of capital are looking forward to a day in the near future when the “normal” exploitation of labor can resume. The high price of short‑term stock futures indicates that the bourgeoisie is gambling on a fast return to profitability. For those with access to capital, are fortunes to be made even on the expectation of a post‑pandemic recovery.
In spite of the huge technological advances which made the coronavirus vaccine possible, the pandemic is just another classic crisis of capitalism: the bourgeoisie scramble for every dollar like rats on a sinking ship, then leave the proletariat to drown. Then they salvage the whole wreck and pick away at the scrap, and celebrate their great ingenuity for doing so. This is capitalism, normal, just like before.
As the bodies literally pile up, some confidence‑men have the nerve to claim that the rapid development of vaccines shows that capitalism is the best of all possible systems. An opinion piece in November 14’s New York Times (paper of record for the small bourgeoisie) claimed that the pandemic shows us “what is amazing about capitalism, and how the free market alone comes up short in solving enormous problems.” “Amazing” is one way of putting it – in the same way one would be amazed by the plague pits of the Black Death or the trenches of World War I. And the free market does indeed “come up short” – even bourgeois economists have recognized for a hundred years that truly free markets are a sad fantasy.
That particular piece is a love letter to state capitalism. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were developed by corporations with the support of massive state subsidies, which absorbed all of the financial risk. The author believes this is a perfect situation, which should be the pattern for capitalism going forward. As he puts it, “big business needs big government.” Very true, the capitalist system needs a bourgeois state to prop it up. The function of the capitalist state is to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie, whether it is protection from financial risk or from the proletarian revolution. But in the confused ideology of U.S. progressivism, which knows nothing of class or the real function of the state, the idea that “big business needs big government” might even be considered a socialist opinion. The solution to capitalism is more state support for the bourgeoisie – socialism indeed!
A more recent editorial in The Washington Post (Jeff Bezos’ pet project) took a more blasé attitude. The editors commented that further economic stimulus payments are unnecessary because “the economy has healed significantly and coronavirus vaccinations are underway.” The war is over, back to work!
The purpose here is not to take shots at a couple of newspaper articles, but to show the direction of bourgeois propaganda as we enter (hopefully) the later acts of the pandemic. The vaccine will be presented as a panacea, a cure not just for Covid‑19 but for all of capitalism’s failings – most obviously the hundreds of thousands who died in a pandemic caused by that system’s disregard for human life. First there will be a period of national mourning, where the dead will be eulogized as a loss for the nation and a wound to its pride. Then we will be told to forget all of that and be grateful for what we have: jobs (with lower wages than before), freedom (for those who can afford it), and wealth (which never touches the proletariat). This happened after the trauma of the world wars. That was the tragedy; here comes the farce.
Communism is the only cure for all the injuries that capitalism inflicts on the world. Just as the human body is cured of illness by eliminating a pathogen from it, the social body will be cured by the abolition of the bourgeois class and its state. We greet the new vaccines not because we want to return to “normal” capitalism, but because we wish to live to see our communist future.