A-Infos (en) France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #305 - Industry, Pharmaceutical industry: how we can socialize it (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]

It is an essential sector for producing, in large quantities, screening tests and a molecule which would give results against the virus. It 
is also used, outside the context of an epidemic, to produce vaccines and medicines against chronic diseases for example. Leaving it in the 
hands of private interests is going towards new disasters. ---- It is because the pharmaceutical industry is subject to the law of profit 
that its production has been outsourced, notably to China and India, in order to lower wages and the conditions of control over medicines 
[1]. ---- India supplies 20  % of world demand. However, the Indian State decided, after detecting six cases of coronavirus, to restrict the 
export of 26 drugs (antibiotics, paracetamol, an antiviral ...) to secure its supply [2]. Drug supply chains have thus been considerably 
complicated, the liberal doctrine of just-in-time inventory management helping nothing.

But this does not date from the pandemic. In a decade, the stock shortages of drugs in France have multiplied by 12 [3]: anti-infectives, 
vaccines, treatments against epilepsy or Parkinson's, anticancer, today feared by chronic patients whose associations have signed a forum 
with scientists and CGT and Solidaires officials [4]. The relocation of the production of drugs in France or in Europe is currently under 
debate. But as long as this production remains subject to the law of profit, it will not be enough.

French companies will seek to maximize their profits through other means than offshoring: by focusing on profitable drugs, by managing 
just-in-time stocks, by changing the formulas for filing new patents [5], or by doing lobbying so that the most expensive treatments are 
reimbursed and therefore prescribed [6]. Sanofi is already taking advantage of the crisis by announcing the outsourcing of 6 of its 11 
European sites (ie more than 1,000 employees in France and 3,000 in Europe), supposedly to better combat shortages, actually to get rid of 
the less profitable drug producing sites [7].

Thirsty for profit, the giant Sanofi is chaining restructuring plans, especially in research, where 2,500 jobs have been cut in ten years.
© Peter Sondermann
What popular control means
Getting this industry out of the market by socializing it is therefore a matter of public health. Socializing does not simply mean 
requisitioning it during the crisis: in fact, reorganizing a largely outsourced production is not going to happen overnight.

Socializing does not mean nationalizing, in the sense that the state would become majority or even sole shareholder, but where one would 
remain within the framework of capitalist competition, imagining that the state in control, "  it will be less worse  ". We can see where 
the case of Air France can lead us, which the government plans to renationalise because the company is in difficulty ... by announcing that 
it will sell it once the crisis has passed - and probably after having injected a lot public money, which means socializing losses and 
privatizing profits !

Socializing, to start with, means expropriating the capitalists who own the companies in the sector. Without compensation it goes without 
saying. They have taken sufficient advantage of the arms and brains of their employees and lived on the back of Social Security. But 
socializing does not mean competition between self-managed companies, which would certainly lead to similar abuses.

The organization of work would be the responsibility of the workers, but the finality of research and production would be under popular 
control, through democratic planning. The population, through its representatives (dismissable and / or drawn by lot, representatives of 
patient associations) would decide, in consultation with the socialized sector, the priorities of research and production. An investment 
fund financed by social security contributions, on the social security model, would free this sector from the law of profit [8]. The 
usefulness of each profession [9], of each site and of its possible ecological conversion could thus be questioned.

Despite the fact that Sanofi scuttles its research sector and made a net profit of 2.8 billion euros in 2019, the group receives 150 million 
Research tax credits per year.
© Randy Monceaux
Do not stick to this sector
But ultimately, this reasoning can be applied to all companies. Whether we like it or not, it is essential. The whole economy is 
intertwined: pharmaceuticals depend on the supply of raw materials [10], machinery, logistics, etc. However, the socialization of part of 
the economy would necessarily result in retaliatory measures on the part of the capitalists: penalties from the European Union or customs 
barriers, up to the example of a coup d'etat as in Chile in 1973. One could imagine the transport employers refusing to deliver socialized 
companies, or that of chemicals refusing to deliver consumables, on the pretext of the disorder caused by socialization.

But this overlap is also international. Certain drugs require collaboration between countries, especially when a small number of patients 
are concerned. It will therefore be necessary to push for socialization across borders, and break the common dependence on private interests.

Socializing only part of the economy is not sufficiently coherent. But in the context of a pandemic that has opened the eyes of many people, 
one can gain a majority of ideas on the need to socialize the health sector and the pharmaceutical industry. An intermediate objective 
before going towards the general socialization of the means of production.

Grégoire (UCL Orléans)

© François Terrier

Validate

[1] A third of the medicines produced in India are non-compliant ( Le Monde, January 11, 2018).

[2] "  Covid-19: India restricts the export of 26 drugs and APIs  ", Industriepharma.fr, March 3, 2020.

[3] "  Coronavirus: the supply chain of medicines questioned  ", RFI, March 6, 2020.

[4] "  Shortage of vital medicines, tests and equipment: the call of personalities !  ", To find on the Mediapart blog of Pauline Ondeix, 
April 7, 2020.

[5] As was done with Levothyrox in 2017, which led to a wave of unwanted side effects in patients.

[6] Simon Gouin, "  Lobbying: how the pharmaceutical industry is storming the European institutions  ", Bastamag.net, May 24, 2019.

[7] "  The great bluff of the Sanofi group  ", L'Humanité, April 16, 2020.

[8] On this point, and in this context - socialization of a particular industrial sector outside the global revolution of the economy and 
society advocated by the UCL - our ideas can join those of Bernard Friot, "  La contribution, emancipation lever  ", Le Monde diplomatique, 
February 2012.

[9] We are thinking here of parasitic professions such as that of medical representative.

[10] It is for example the insufficient supply of reagents which today limits the production of screening tests. "  Reagents at the heart of 
the lack of tests  ", Liberation, March 29, 2020.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Industrie-pharmaceutique-comment-on-peut-la-socialiser
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