Skip to main content

Industrial Apparatuses in Confrontation

From the series The struggle against coronavirus

According to the British analyst firm Airfinity, some 9.5 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines will be produced worldwide in 2021. This number is double the annual production of all types of vaccines in the pre-pandemic era (5 billion, excluding oral polio, travellers’ and military vaccines), and can be compared with the requirement of 11.5 billion to immunise two-thirds of the world’s population [Airfinity, March 8th]. The development of vaccines has been exceptionally rapid, but manufacturing them on a large scale has encountered difficulties and delays. In 2020, only 4% of the expected doses were in fact produced [ibidem].

Production is concentrated in a limited number of countries, largely interdependent due to supply chains that cross state borders and continents. The World Bank identifies, among the producing countries, a Covid-19 vaccine producers club of 13 countries that manufacture both the active ingredient and its components. This exclusive Vaccine Club is also awarded 60% of the total Advance Purchase Agreements (APAs) — the advance purchase of vaccines — with pharmaceutical companies [World Bank, The Covid-19 vaccine production club, March 2021].

The World Bank’s concern is that aggressive forms of vaccine nationalism , by limiting exports, are disrupting global supply chains. For its part, the World Health Organization (WHO) fears that in much of the world, such as in Africa, vaccines will not arrive until 2023 or 2024.

Crippled internationalism

In June last year, the Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), together with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the WHO, launched the COVAX programme. It covers 192 countries, with the aim of ensuring equitable global distribution of vaccines, initially providing two billion doses, two-thirds free of charge, to 92 lower-income countries. Donations were in short supply and, two months into the vaccination campaign, COVAX had still not been able to deliver a single dose to the poorest countries [Financial Times, February 13th]. Initially conceived as a single clearing house for vaccine orders around the world, from which all countries, rich and poor, would procure their doses, notes the City newspaper, the program almost immediately foundered in the race for bilateral deals between the richest nations and the vaccine companies, and the priority allocation to domestic needs practised by countries like the United States, the UK and, more recently, even India.

Limited production, coupled with the supply dispute that has arisen between the European Commission and pharmaceutical companies — in particular with the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca — has prompted several European leaders (and various scientific and political figures) to raise the issue of patents. The President of the European Council Charles Michel at the beginning of the year raised the possibility of the EU adopting ‘urgent measures’ — provided for in Article 122 of the Treaty — to impose ‘compulsory licensing’ on companies [Politico, February 3rd]. In fact, last December, the request made by some countries, including India and South Africa, for companies to waive patent exclusivity was rejected by the United States, the UK and the EU [The New York Times, December 25th].

The protection of intellectual property is regulated by the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The amendment, adopted at the Doha Conference in 2001 and subsequently clarified, provides for the right of a state, in the event of a national health emergency, to produce (or have a third-party produce) a drug without the permission of the company holding the patent on the product or its manufacturing process. In 2017, two-thirds of the WTO membership had ratified the amendment, making it operational.

The compulsory licence could facilitate the entry of new companies into the market, but it still leaves the problem of production capacity for high-technology medicines (such as new vaccines) unsolved.

A kind of ‘vaccine internationalism’ is called for by many. Its realization presupposes, however, the overcoming of barriers and conflicts, commercial and otherwise, between states, and of competition between economic groups; it involves the pooling of resources and productive capacity, the coordination and direction of the global production of vaccines and their distribution according to public needs worldwide. At the very least, it means stripping vaccines of their characteristics of a commodity, which is the form in which the products of human labour are presented in the capitalist social system.

The critics of neoliberalism and globalization stop at the threshold of criticizing the very foundations of the capitalist socio-economic formation. They instead lash out at the excessive power of the banks or the greed of the multinationals, etc., and cultivate the illusion that it is possible to eliminate some of these most odious, but inevitable, forms of capitalism in its imperialistic maturity. Lenin called this wishful thinking.

Production sites for Covid-19 vaccines in the EU and the UK.

Production sites for Covid-19 vaccines in the EU and the UK. In some plants (highlighted in red) the biological active substance is produced, in others the final stages of production, such as bottling and packaging, are carried out. Some of the facilities belong to the company that owns the vaccine, while more than half belong to companies that work on behalf of third parties (CDMO, Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization). Four vaccines are licensed in the EU (BioNTech/Pfizer, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna and J&J); the others are under review by regulatory bodies (CureVac and Novavax) or are still undergoing clinical trials.

Sources: EDJNet — European Data Journalism Network, March 5th, European Commission; corporate communications.

Industrial powers in confrontation

Airfinity calculates that at the end of March the production of Covid-19 vaccines stood at 229 million doses in China, 164 in the US, 125 in India, 110 in the EU (three quarters of which are in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands), and 16 in the UK. China exported 48%, India 44% and the EU 42%. The USA and the UK have kept all of their doses for their domestic markets [Airfinity, March 24th].

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton believes the EU is winning the industrial battle: producing — he writes — over 200 million doses of vaccines, reaching current levels of production in the US, and the Union’s annual production capacity is expected to reach 3 billion doses by the end of the year. Breton also lays claim to the Union’s role as a top exporter worldwide. At least two-thirds of the 30 million doses administered in Britain were produced in Europe, and the UK depends on the EU for the second dose [European Commission, Beating COVID-19: Scale-up of vaccine production in Europe, April 8th].

Breton refers to 53 production sites for Covid-19 vaccines in Europe. 26% of the facilities are located in Germany. Together with the Netherlands and Belgium, the three countries host 40% of the sites, which in some cases produce more than one type of vaccine. In fact, at least thirty or so plants are owned by companies working on behalf of third parties (CDMO, Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization), of around ten nationalities, mostly German, Spanish and American.

The EU, writes Breton, is an industrial power that is and intends to remain a global player, rejecting vaccine nationalism. The European Commission has, however, since last January, made exports of vaccines subject to authorization. The EU, comments The Economist, is torn between its reputation as champion of open markets and the needs of internal supply [March 27th].

There is an ongoing struggle between the metropolises over health. The production capacity of vaccines, as well as the organisational efficiency in carrying out vaccination strategies — a precondition for a less or more rapid economic recovery — is a measure of the overall strength of states in the global competition.

Lotta Comunista, April 2021

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Europe Follows the USA and China in the Strategic Use of Space

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 9 From the series The war industry and European defence Next Spring SpaceX will be 20 years old. The company founded by Elon Musk has rapidly achieved a key role in international space activity. The first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket has recently been recovered, reconditioned and reused for the tenth time. SpaceX has already repeated this type of reflight 70 times or so; it allows for substantial savings when compared to the losses incurred in the first stages of a traditional rocket launch. It is for this reason that it is being considered as the standard for the future. According to NASA’s calculations, the average cost of launching a satellite into orbit has fluctuated around the level of $18,500 per kilogram for the whole period between 1970 and 2000. SpaceX has reduced this figure by seven times. Internet constellations In recent missions Falcon 9 rockets have put a total of 60 Starlink satellites ...
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

Science Against Time

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 14 From the series Industry and pharmaceuticals The surge in China’s biopharmaceutical industry over the last decade is part of its broader scientific and technological ascent and therefore deserves our attention. Such growth presents a challenge to other imperialist powers. The Biosecure Act’s intention, to reduce the ties between American and Chinese biotech firms, has been branded by The Economist as “old-fashioned protectionism”. The British weekly recognises, however, that the clash goes well beyond a trade war. The stakes are higher. In a lengthy cover story [“The rise of Chinese science”], it writes that “China is now a leading scientific power”. Just five years ago, this was still considered only a possibility. The current question is whether this is “welcome or worrying” [June 15th, 2024]. Unity and scission The viewpoint of that publication, an authoritative voice of one of the power-houses of imperia...
Read more

Chinese Rearmament Projects Itself in Asia

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 5 From the series Asian giants Trends in rearmament spending and comparisons of military equipment are increasingly set to dominate coverage of the contention between powers in the crisis in the world order . The military factor has entered the strategic debate, accompanied by a wealth of figures and technical details. The increase in military spending as a percentage of GDP represents a widespread sign of the rearmament cycle at this juncture, but spending alone cannot entirely explain the situation, given the qualitatively different natures of the arsenals being compared. Nor are comparisons between this or that type of weapon useful in themselves, because ultimately all weapons are only ever used in combination with the complex military means available to a power, either in alliance or in conflict with other powers in the system of States. Therefore, while it is difficult to assess the real significa...
Read more

India’s Weaknesses in the Global Spotlight

Farmers’ protests around New Delhi have been going on for four months now. A controversial intervention by the Supreme Court has suspended the implementation of the new agticultural laws, but has raised questions about the dynamics between the judiciary and the executive, and has failed to unblock the negotiations between government and peasant organisations. The assault by Sikh farmers on the Red Fort during the Republic Day parade as India was displaying its military might to the outside world — the Chinese Global Times maliciously noted — paradoxically widened the protest in the huge state of Uttar Pradesh. The Modi government has been trying to revive India’s image with the 2021 Union Budget: it announced one hundred privatisations and approved the increase to 75% of the limit on direct foreign investment in insurance companies. For The Indian Express ( IEX ) this is a sign of the commitment to push ahead with reforms despite the backlash from rural India. Also for The Economi...
Read more

Class Consciousness and Crisis in the World Order

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Pages 1 and 2 The consciousness of the proletariat “cannot be genuine class-consciousness, unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical, and political life; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata, and groups of the population”. If it concentrates exclusively “or even mainly” upon itself alone, the proletariat cannot be revolutionary, “for the self-knowledge of the working class is indissolubly bound up, not solely with a fully clear theoretical understanding or rather, not so much with the theoretical, as with the practical, understanding — of the relationships between all the various classes of modern society”. For this reason, the worker “must have a clear picture in ...
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

The Works of Marx and Engels and the Bolshevik Model

Internationalism Pages 12–13 In the autumn of 1895 Lenin commented on the death of Friedrich Engels: "After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world. […] In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others. And this will continue until the foundations of class struggle and of class domination – private property and anarchic social production – disappear. The interests of the proletariat demand the destruction of these foundations, and therefore the conscious class struggle of the organised workers must be directed against them. And every class strugg...
Read more

The Political Form at Last Discovered

From the special series 1871-2021. The 150 th anniversary of the Paris Commune The struggle, by now more than a hundred years old, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie encompasses the whole world. One hundred and fifty years ago, in March 1871, in a single city — Paris — and in a very short time span — 72 days — the assault on the sky attempted by the proletariat and ferociously repressed by a rising bourgeoisie resolved, in practice, fundamental theoretical issues of socialism that until that moment only had provisional solutions. In the Manifesto [1848], Marx and Engels had limited themselves to stating that the indispensable precondition for the communist revolution was the conquest of democracy , i.e., the conquest of the state machinery on the part of the proletariat. However, it remained to be seen whether and to what extent the dictatorship of the proletariat could avail itself of the bourgeois state machinery. Moreover, in the definition Lenin gives, Marx’s theo...
Read more

The Defeat in Afghanistan — a Watershed in the Cycle of Atlantic Decline

In crises and wars there are events which leave their mark on history because of how they make a decisive impact on the power contention, or because of how, almost like a chemical precipitate, they suddenly make deep trends that have been at work for some time coalesce. This is the case of the defeat of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, which is taking the shape of a real watershed in the cycle of Atlantic decline. For the moment, through various comments in the international press, it is possible to consider its consequences on three levels: America’s position as a power and the connection with its internal crisis; the repercussions on Atlantic relations and Europe’s dilemmas regarding its strategic autonomy; and the relationship between the Afghan crisis and power relations in Asia, especially as regards India’s role in the Indo-Pacific strategy. Repercussions in the United States Richard Haass is the president of the CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations; despite having ...
Read more