A Point of View 1

transportation costs inherent in servicing rural communities, and the fact that urban populations present a more lucrative market to would be providers. Who can forget the cherry picking practices of bus companies during the deregulating Thatcher years ( which persist in many major urban conurbations; for example, Manchester ) when buses arrived in two or threes on the more popular ( and shorter ) urban routes whilst rural services were cut back. Needless to say, the financial reckoning behind such developments would never arise in a society dedicated to meeting needs, instead of maximising profit. A year or so ago, there was much media interest in the subject of fake, or counterfeit, products; Channel Four’s alarming series titled ‘The Fake Trade’ being a case in point. Its not so much the fake Prada handbags or Rolex watches that concerns me: although the faking of such luxury items obviously hits the ‘legitimate’ manufacturers and allegedly promotes gun crime and terrorism, consumer surveys have, in fact, shown that many, and in some countries – the USA, of all places, for example – most people are not averse to purchasing some types of fake items; an activity which has even acquired a fashionable frisson. However, what really must appal most of us is the counterfeiting of certain sorts of items; medicines being a prime example. The statistics beggar belief: It is estimated that something like one million Africans die each year through purchasing counterfeit medicines. Let us be clear what is happening here: Tablets, capsules, ampoules, and so on, convincingly packaged but deliberately containing little or nothing of therapeutic value, are sold by traders, or sometimes unwittingly by ‘respectable’ outlets, to people – the vast majority of whom are crushingly poor – who go away hoping that the diseases affecting them or their loved ones can at last be tackled. But, of course, nothing of the sort happens, and these poor souls deteriorate. In the case of antibiotics, having just some but not enough, can also be dangerous because it can induce resistance (and incidentally lead to stronger strains of bacteria). With a disease like malaria, the resulting delay in receiving effective medication can be critical. No wonder that a fifth of the one million annual deaths caused by malaria around the world can be attributed directly to the consumption of counterfeit anti-malarial medication. In the developing world, the incidence of fake medicines varies from 10% to 50% and higher in some countries. But this is not just a problem in the developing world: In Russia, it is thought that 10% of medicines are fake, and here in the UK, fake anti-statins, for example, have recently infiltrated the supply chains. Here truly, we catch a glimpse of the dark heart of capitalism; its untrammeled greed and disregard for all else. One of the contributors to the above-mentioned Channel Four programme opined that capitalism really needed to be restrained and managed or anarchy and chaos would ensue. But this is to miss the point: Capitalism, like a rabid dog with an insatiable desire to sink its teeth into someone, can certainly be leashed (or, to put it differently, we can certainly attempt to save capitalism from itself). But, even with the most rigorous restraints, it would still seek to minimize costs and maximize profits. Those other shortcomings I mentioned earlier – shoddy production, built-in obsolescence, and so on – are really all of a piece with counterfeit manufacture: One might want to think rather in terms of a ‘continuum of dysfunctionality’ here. Moreover, those companies or countries who attempt to act relatively responsibly and with due regard to the environment and their workers will find themselves disadvantaged in the barbaric world of commerce; somewhat as the British slave-owner lobby in the 19c argued that liberating slaves would give the dastardly French a commercial advantage. What is particularly ironic about the situation with counterfeit production is that the main culprit being fingered is none other than that worker’s paradise, the ‘People’s’ (sic) Republic of China. Here we find capitalism in a truly fascistic mould; there can be no obfuscating the point. That China should present itself as a ‘communist state’; an Orwellian fiction that tends to be ignored or half-heartedly questioned by capitalism’s hacks in the ‘free world’ (again, sic) for cynical reasons no doubt; amounts to butchering reason. It is estimated that something like 15–20% of products made in China are counterfeit, and China is a major provider of fake medicines – notwithstanding some lackadaisical official attempts to stem the production of these. Chinese workers are themselves victims of this iniquitous industry; both as underpaid wage slaves and with thousands dying each year from misguidedly taking these drugs. The Chinese state allows its bourgeois overlords a lot of leeway to

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