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

Cryptocurrencies, Tariffs, Oil and Spending in Trump’s Executive Orders

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 8 Douglas Irwin, economist and historian of American trade policy, writes for the Peterson Institute that the tariffs announced by Donald Trump, if implemented, would constitute a “historic event in the annals of US trade policy” and “one of the largest increases in trade taxes in US history. One has to go back almost a century to find tariff increases comparable”. Irwin limits himself to providing us with a historical dimension to the planned duties. But the bewilderment and turmoil created, especially among Washington’s allies, derives from the fact that the tariffs being brandished are accompanied by a hail of presidential decrees and declarations that mark a profound political discontinuity, both in the balance of internal institutional powers and in the balance of power between nations. The watershed was expected, but the speed and vehemence of the White House’s assaults are setting the scene for a change of era i...
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

Marx’s Logic

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 7 From the series Principles of Marxism The method of exposition in Marx’s economic analysis, which he summarised on various occasions, adopts the progression from the simplest to the most complex concepts. It is a method that, at first glance, appears to correspond to common sense — from easy to difficult — but which Marx explains by contradicting common sense. Common sense distorts knowledge, starting right from the elementary building blocks of the representation of reality, which requires scientific abstraction to understand. Opportunism will always set the prejudices of common sense against the science-party . Marx writes, introducing Volume I of Capital : “The value-form , whose fully developed shape is the money-form , is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of ...
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 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

States and Courts Counterbalance Trump

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 10 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism Donald Trump’s political agenda has been dictated by the tempo of the dozens of executive orders, memoranda, and proclamations he has signed, challenging international partners abroad, and Congress, the States of the Union, and the bureaucracy at home. The execution of some orders has already been temporarily suspended by federal judges, while the chaos caused by a memorandum led the administration itself to withdraw it. Other rulings are expected from the courts at the request of citizens, NGOs, and States. Furthermore, as James Politi of the Financial Times notes, “the result of his political success” in the elections is that Trump will have to satisfy “a much more diverse political coalition” than in his first term. Ross Douthat, a conservative commentator for The New York Times , also believes that “at least until the Democratic Party gets up off th...
Read more

The Drone War

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 13 From the series War industry and European defence The Economist provides an illustration of how the use of unmanned and remotely piloted systems in warfare is expanding. In Africa, 30 governments are equipped with UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), or drones. In 2024, they were deployed 484 times in local wars in thirteen different countries, twice as frequently as the previous year, causing 1,200 deaths. The most widely used drone on the continent is the TB2, produced by the Turkish company Baykar, which has seen a decade of extensive use in conflicts across Syria, Azerbaijan-Armenia, and Ukraine. LBA Systems and MALE drones At the Paris Air Show in mid-June, an agreement was signed to establish LBA Systems, a joint venture between Baykar and Leonardo. The aim is to produce the Akinci and TB3 drones, the latter of which will be capable of taking off from helicopter carrier decks. The aircraft wil...
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

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

Reckless Bets on Migrants in California

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 11 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism The tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on allies, partners and opponents of the United States have opened a phase of negotiations with the affected countries and caused reactions from some key States. The legal opposition from almost all areas of the US poses a test: whether States, courts, and Congress can influence trade policy and constrain the expansion of executive powers. Amid conflicting rulings, the tariffs have been reinstated – an outcome that, The New York Times remarks, has “left Washington, Wall Street, and much of the world trying to discern the future of US trade policy”. California’s dispute with the federal government has expanded to immigration policy and the domestic use of military force. The political, economic, and power struggles overlap with the electoral dimension. The establishment remains critical of or ...
Read more