Skip to main content

The Myth of Cooperation

From the series Vaccines and world contention

There are by now ten authorised vaccines already in use against SARSCoV-2, and there are 77 countries in which vaccinations are taking place. By mid-February, 173 million doses had been administered and the campaign is proceeding at an average rate of six million a day, calculated on the basis of last week’s figures. At this pace, it would take 5 years to vaccinate 75% of the world population with two doses [Bloomberg, February 15th].

More than half of the injections have been carried out in the United States, the UK, and the European Union which, together, account for 11% of the world population. In at least one third of the 77 surveyed countries, less than 1% of the population have received their first dose of the vaccine, and, in the rest of the world, vaccines have not yet arrived.

Imperialist globalisation

Individual states are pursuing autonomous solutions to a global problem. Epidemiologists believe that, while a vast proportion of the population is still susceptible to the virus in the next few months, the increase in the number of persons who have been vaccinated or who have acquired natural immunity thanks to infection will produce a selective pressure that will favour the spread of new variants. These new strains will be potentially more dangerous due to increased contagiousness and virulence [Financial Times, February 9th].

It is a question of timing and internatonal coordination. Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of The Lancet, writes that the response of govemments to COVID-19 represents the greatest political failure of Western democracies since the Second World War [The COVID-19 Catastrophe, 2020]. In his book, written in the ‘first phase’ of the pandemic, he examines the shortcomings of both the scientific community and the world leaderships, and the lessons learnt. Here we report only one of them: COVID-19 […] has also exposed our inability to cooperate, to coordinate and to act together, since national interests and rivalries have prevailed.

The need for a coordinated global effort that involves, most of all, the richest parts of the world, is highlighted by many experts and commentators. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, paying particular attention to the economic damage the pandemic has already caused, writes that no event since the second world war has better demonstrated the limits of national autonomy and that the costs of an inward-looking policy of health in one country are not just narrowly economic. In order to halt the virus and to allow the recovery of normal trade, world leaders must do ‘whatever it takes’ to finance accelerated production and distribution of vaccines — and, if necessary, reformulated vaccines — globally, regardless of the expense, which would be incomparably less than the $5,600 billion of extra fiscal expense borne by the advanced economies in order to respond to the pandemic [February 10th].

The appeals to international cooperation are justified, even if they betray the fear that the part of the world left to itself will also drag the richer economies into the abyss, We should observe, however, that the incapacity to organise a joint, unitary action on a global scale is not a ‘dysfunction’: competition and rivalry among the economic groups, and struggles among the imperialist states for the division of spheres of interest and areas of influence, are ‘physiological’ in the capitalist social system. Unification of the world market does not mean the humankind without frontiers and class divisions; globalism does not mean internationalism.

New arrivals

On January 25th, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) authorised a third vaccine, after those of BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna. Created by the University of Oxford, it was developed in collaboration with AstraZeneca and is already accepted in 27 other countries. AstraZeneca arose in 1999 out of the merger between the British company Zeneca and the Swedish company Astra, and is among the top ten Big Pharma companies with a $24.4 billion turnover and 70,000 employees; at the end of 2019 it was operating with 25 production sites in 16 countries. Before the pandemic it had a marginal presence in the world vaccines market.

The two-dose Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine uses the tried and tested ‘viral vector’ technique. This technology, we recall, utilises a genetically modified virus, which is incapable of replicating itself, to transmit the genetic instructions (a fraction of the viral DNA) to human cells for the production of coronavirus spike protein. This protein will become the target of the immune system. The ‘carrier’ virus is a chimpanzee adenovirus (which causes light infections in humans such as the common cold).

According to the results made known in the latest clinical tests, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine proved to be 82% effective with two doses at a distance of 12 weeks, significantly higher than with the previously observed six-week-intervalresults [The New York Times, February 319.

Political wars and trade wars

The EMA has conditionally authorised the distribution of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (pending further data from the company) for those over 18 years old. The Agency has not placed other age limits, but it has specified that there are not yet sufficient results in participants who are more than 55 years old. While this ‘recommendation’ has been adopted by other European regulatory bodies in Italy, France and Germany, the limit has been set for people who are 65 or older.

This is not the only ’stumbling block’ for Oxford/AstraZeneca. After the initial blunder regarding dosages and the intervals between the two injections, difficulties arose over respecting the delivery times of the doses promised to the European Union: these difficulties led to a commercial contention and a political clash with Britain over respecting the Brexit agreements to keep open the Irish borders.

The European Commission, under pressure from Germany, introduced controls on exports of vaccines produced in the Union in order to understand — said the German Health Minister Jens Spahn — whether the Union’s contracts with producers were being equally respected [Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 25th). The Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides specified that the EU wants to know exactly which doses have been produced by AstraZeneca and where exactly so far and if or to whom they have been delivered. [Financial Times, January 26th]. The EU’s ‘protectionism’ came under fire from other countries such as Canada and Japan, concerned about supplies from Europe.

The slowdown in supplies — not only on the part of AstraZeneca — led to accusations being levelled against the management of vaccine supplies on the part of the EU, which centralised their anticipated purchases on behalf of all of its member states. The European Commission, argues Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times, saw the pandemic as a great opportunity to expand EU powers, showing a degree of ‘incompetence’ in handling trade agreements (February 2nd).

Vaccines and vaccinations, slower in Europe than in Britain and the United States, are being brandished in the confrontation among the powers. The Economist is even blunter: if the European Union wants to find its competitive spirit, then a vaccination race is the perfect place. For a bloc with global pretensions […] there is more at stake than health. If a group including some of the world’s most successful societies cannot vaccinate their populations swiftly, then any pretensions that the EU is a potential superpower look ridiculous [January 23rd]. This argument could be extended to the USA, a scientific and technological superpower: this giant in the scientific field has not succeeded in exploiting its knowledge within national policies in order to respond to the pandemic, writes Horton [op. cit.].

Industrial battles

In any case, the Commission has taken a step forward in European integraton, towards the realisation of a Europe de la santé Europe of the healthcarel invoked by French President Emmanuel Macron as early as May of last year. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, defended the centralisation of purchases, adopted to protect the smaller states who have less negotiating power with vaccine companies, but she recognised she had underestimated production problems.

Productive capacity is the crucial point. Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca promised overall production of six billion doses this year. To make a comparison, the annual European production of fu shots (including Britain) is estimated by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) to be 1.7 billion doses, made in 27 production sites across 11 countries.

We have already observed that the strategic risk of dependence on foreign supplies in the health sector has been denounced for some time in Europe (and also in the USA). The EFPLA warns of the risk of a trade war in the new European rules: Moreover, given the global nature of vaccine supply lines, the proposal from the Commission might […] risk retaliatory measures from other regions, putting the supply of manufacturing matrials needed to produce COVID-19 vaccines and consumables related to the provision of those vaccines at risk. Retaliation measures could also extend the scope of the disruption to medicines and other products. [EFPLA, January 29th].

Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, stresses that the pandemic has increased the vulnerability of certain supply chains, and that the EU must create its own capacity in such key sectors as the pharmaceutical industry [Financial Times, May 6th]. On September 17th 2020 the European Parliament approved a resolution in which it asked the Commission to use the upcoming pharmaceutical strategy to [restore] the EU’s health independence and to increase the production of medicines and the level of innovation within the EU. Currently, 40% of the medicines on the market in the EU come from third countries [i.e., non-EU countries], while 60-80% of their active pharmaceutical ingredients are produced in China and India.

Global cooperation or global competition? The nation states are choosing ‘every man for himself’, and the Big Pharma groups are fighting for the carve-up of the world market.

Lotta Comunista, February 2021

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Socialism and Nationalism in the History of France

The collapse of French socialism at the outbreak of the First World War is considered by many historians to be the most significant case of its kind. We must go back in time to find its origins. The dramatic repression of the Paris Commune in 1871 was followed by a decade of shootings and the deportation of tens of thousands of revolutionary militants. Reactionary monarchical legitimism attributed the decline of France to the Revolution of 1789, but by then the nouvelles couches sociales , the new classes produced by capitalism, as Leon Gambetta defined them, demanded a politics free from economic, social and clerical ties. The Radical Party, a turning point of French politics, was its expression. The same taditional Catholic Judeophobia dating back to the Middle Ages — according to Michel Dreyfus’, research director at the CNRS in Paris, Anti-Semitism on the Left in France [Paris, 2009] — gradually transformed into the image of the Jews associated with money and modernity who des...
Read more

Uneven Development, Job Cuts, and the Crisis of Labour Under Global Capitalism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 16 Uneven development is a fundamental law of capitalism. We have a macroscopic expression of this in the changing balance of power between States: Atlantic decline and Asian rise are the key dynamics behind the political processes of this era, including wars caused by the crisis in the world order. But behind all this there is a differentiated economic trend, starting from companies and sectors: hence the differentiated conditions for wage earners. And this is the element to keep in mind for an effective defensive struggle. It’s only the beginning The electrical and digital restructuring imposed by global market competition affects various production sectors. The car industry is the most obvious, due to the familiarity of the companies and brands involved. We have already reported on the agreement reached before Christmas at Volkswagen, which can be summarised as a reduction of 35,000 employees by 2030. Die Zeit [De...
Read more

Militarised Scientists

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 13 From the series Atom and industrialisation of science “ The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers ” [Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto ). The Manhattan Project scientists In Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists , Robert Jungk [1913-1994] writes that the Manhattan Project was a labyrinth of winding paths and dead ends. Commenting on Jungk’s romanticised account of the first phase of the history of the atomic bomb, Edward Teller [1908-2003], often called the “father” of the H-bomb, wrote: “There is no mention of the futile efforts of the scientists in 1939 to awaken the interest of the military authorities in the atomic bomb. The reader does not learn about the dismay of scientists f...
Read more

Forces and Consequences of the New Strategic Phase

The new strategic phase in the world balance, with its new corresponding political cycles within powers, requires attention to the materialistic, historical and dialectical method of political analysis itself. The changing forces and basic trends need to be identified; we can make conjectures about the developments in single political battles, but the outcome of these battles will always require us to contemplate a plurality of solutions: some more probable. others less. but never Just a mechanical consequence of long-term economic movements. Many fixed points of the method of political analysis are usual tools in our Marxist elaboration, but this does not mean they must be taken for granted: it is of use to recall them, in relation to the new unknowns of the political battle. Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from t...
Read more

The Syrian Crisis Reveals the Limits of the Russian Power

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 5 When, in 2015, Moscow initiated direct military intervention in Syria against ISIS bases and in support of Bashar al-As-sad's regime, this was seen as a signal of Russia’s resurgence as a great power: it was its first deployment in a war zone outside the territory of the former USSR since its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. Singers of the resurrection Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, and currently one of the most fervent supporters of the war in Ukraine, wrote that this action “has strengthened Russia’s international position”, to the point of making 2015 “one of the most successful years in the history of Russian foreign policy” [Russia in Global Affairs, February 23, 2016). Dmitri Trenin, then head of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, which was later closed by the authorities in 2022, revisited this in his 2018 book What is Russia up to in the Middle East?, ...
Read more

1919-2019. One hundred years from the foundation of the Communist International

The Analysis of a Defeat From the special series 1919-2019. One hundred years from the foundation of the Communist International It was in Lenin’s legacy that the generation of the ’20s and ’30s could have found the theoretical tools to deal with the unprecedented Stalinist counter-revolution and execute an organised retreat for the world party. Socialism in one country? Lenin had already framed the essential characteristics of that issue in 1915: given that Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism , it could be assumed that the victory of socialism would be possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone . What that first unequivocally means is that either the socialist revolution is replicated internationally, or it is inevitably defeated. Moreover, since the revolution had begun in backwards Russia, in 1917 it was already predictable that the time given to this inception in one country would be very short. Of course, ext...
Read more

The Theoretical and Political Battles of Arrigo Cervetto I

From the introduction to Arrigo Cervetto’s Opere Scelte (“Selected Works”), soon to be published in Italy by Edizioni Lotta Comunista. I Arrigo Cervetto was the founder, theorist, and leader of Lotta Comunista. From his first involvement in the partisan war in 1943-44 until his death in February 1995, his more than 50 years of political activity can be summarised in around twenty key battles. It goes without saying that those struggles - aimed at the restoration and develop ment of Marxist theory on economics, politics, social change, and international relations - are the common thread running through this selection of his writings. His memoirs, Quaderni 198I82 (“Notebooks 1981-82”), provide an account of those battles up to 1980. First battle: the factory and the partisan war The son of emigrants to Argentina from Savona in Italy, Cervetto was born in Buenos Aires in April 1927, a circumstance that would later influence his thinking about international politics. His early for...
Read more

In the Depth of Our Class

The pandemic of the century is a storm that does not subside; it returns to its rampage after 40 million infections and more than a million official victims, perhaps two million according to estimates on the excess deaths. In the contention between powers, China stands as the winner: it seems to have tamed the virus, and industry and services are up and running; the USA and Europe, on the other hand, are moving towards a new wave of infections that casts yet more shadows on the economic cycle. Political structures and health systems are at the height of tension. In America, the elections have judged Donald Trump’s rash demagogy on the basis of the opposite reasons for containing the pandemic and the intolerance of small and large producers; in Europe the executives are attempting to steer between the surge in infections, increasingly stringent confinement measures and the threats of fiscal jacquerie in the tourism and catering sectors. Almost everywhere, in the Old Continent, governm...
Read more

Battle Over Times for European Rearmament

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Pages 1 and 2 In current Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, appeasement stands for cowardly and illusory pacification, as exemplified by the Munich Agreement of 1938, which conceded to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia without stopping the march towards world war. Were Shigeru Ishiba, Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, and Friedrich Merz really, as has been said, the Neville Chamberlains of the tariff war, accepting appeasement on the 15% tariff in an ignominious surrender to Donald Trump's blackmail? And has Trump really revealed himself in Anchorage, Alaska, to be an appeaser towards Vladimir Putin? Was it, finally, only the firmness of the Europeans at the Washington summit which convinced Trump to remain as one of the guarantors of Ukraine's security? The plague of television and social media diplomacy feeds on simplistic and propagandistic images, but also consumes and contradicts them at the pace of...
Read more

The Unstoppable Force: Capital’s Demand for Migrant Labour

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 16 “Before Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s prime minister, she pledged to cut immigration. Since she has been in government the number of non-EU work visas issued by Italy has increased”. This is how The Economist of April 26th summarises the schizophrenia of their politics; and this is not only true in Italy: “Net migration also surged in post-Brexit Britain”. The needs of the economic system do not coincide with the rhetoric of parliamentarism. And vice versa. Schizophrenia and imbalances in their politics Returning to Italy, the Bank of Italy has pointed out that by 2040, in just fifteen years, there will be a shortage of five million people of working age, which could lead to an estimated 11% contraction in GDP. This is why even Italy’s “sovereignist” government is preparing to widen the net of its Immigration Flow Decree. The latest update, approved on June 30th, provides for the entry of almost ...
Read more