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

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

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

German Socialism in 1917

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 6 From the series Pages from the history of the worker’s movement  According to Arrigo Cervetto [ Opere , Vol. 7], “paracentrism” is “the biggest obstacle to the formation of the worldwide Bolshevik party”. The Spartacists at Zimmerwald and Kiental Cervetto was analysing Lenin’s battle against centrism for the creation of the Third International, a battle which saw him isolated at Zimmerwald. He wrote down one of Zinoviev’s quotations from Histoire du parti communiste russe . “We were in the minority at Zimmerwald [1915]. […] In the years 1915 and 1916, we were nothing but an insignificant minority”. “But what is more serious?” – observed Cervetto – “is that the Zimmerwald Spartacists also said they were opposed to us”. In the strategic perspective of the “two separate halves” of socialism – the political conditions in Russia and the economic, productive, and social conditions in Germany – “for ...
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

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

Political Battles of European Leninism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 1 Thirty years after the death of Arrigo Cervetto , we are publishing here the concluding passages of the introduction to his Opere Scelte (“Selected Works”) for the series Biblioteca Giovani (“Publications for young people”), soon to be published in Italian. The 1944-45 partisan war in Italy. The political battle within libertarian communism. The Korean War, and the watchword of “neither Washington nor Moscow”. The layoffs at the Ilva and Ansaldo factories, the political battle and trade union defence in the struggles of post-war restructuring. From 1953 onwards, the crisis of Stalinism, the 1956 Suez crisis, the Hungarian uprising, the 1957 Theses and the challenge of theory and strategy vis-à-vis the tendencies of unitary imperialism. The political struggle within Azione Comunista (“Communist Action”) and the Movimento della Sinistra Comunista (“Movement of the Communist Left”). From the 1950s to the early 1970s, t...
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

Bolsonaro Squeezed between Pandemic, Lula Card and Armed Forces

This article is taken from Intervenção Comunista — the journal of our Brazilian comrades We wrote in May last year that the ‘tropical Trump’ causes a perfect storm . This first quarter of the year seems to demonstrate this clearly: GDP decline (-4.1%) and increased unemployment (14.2%); an end to emergency aid and a delay in the resumption of a new, much leaner aid plan; a record number of deaths and Covid infections. With 2.7% of the world’s population, the country accounts for about 12% of Covid-19 deaths. In March alone, Brazil recorded an increase of about 33% in its daily deaths. The pandemic crisis, coupled with historical imbalances, is shaking up the dysfunctional government of Jair Bolsonaro, who has just appointed his fourth health minister in a year. Increased dependence on the Centrão The second half of Bolsonaro’s term began — for their politics — with the election of Arthur Lira (Progressive Party-Alagoas) as president of the Chamber of Deputies, and Rodrigo Pac...
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

Biden Plan and Global Minimum Tax

Recovery from the pandemic crisis — writes the IMF in April’s World Economic Outlook — is increasingly visible due to three factors: first, hundreds of millions of people are being vaccinated; second, companies and employees have somewhat adapted to the healthcare disaster; and finally governments especially the American have pledged massive government — extra fiscal support. Governmental fiscal interventions have reached $16,000 billion worldwide, have averted collapse of the economy that would have been three times worse, blocking the 2020 recession at a 3.3% drop, and have pushed the recovery rate to 6% in 2021. The overall recovery will be the outcome of a series of divergent recoveries . Only the United States, with a 6.4% growth rate, will exceed the GDP level predicted before the pandemic. The disparity regards healthcare first of all. High-income countries, representing 16% of global population, have already bought up half of the vaccine doses. The real estate, financial and ...
Read more