Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Rakesh Bhandari
> Sent: Friday, June 04, 1999 6:58 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Downturn in Pharmaceutical Stocks
>
>
>
> Chris Beggy pointed out:
>
> >Two months ago, a frontpage Wall Street Journal article announced that
> >the drug companies had capitulated in their long-standing
> >campaign to prevent Medicare from covering the cost of prescription
> >drugs. The article implied that sometime in the future, the
> >government would eventually have the power to dictate their prices.
>
> This would seem to explain the downturn that Beth has inquired about. It
> also seems that a capitalist economy left to itself cannot reproduce labor
> power via the wage, direct and social. The drugs that capitalists find
> profitable to sell at the prices they set are out of reach of too many
> waged workers, exposing the proletariat to workless sickness. The state is
> forced to dictate prices to a capitalist industry upon which the health of
> the working class depends if the system is not to damage its own golden
> geese. In dictating the prices (and perhaps indirectly quantitites
> produced) of certain drugs, the state then assumes the role of an ideal
> collective capitalist, ensuring that no one industry interferes with the
> reproduction of labor power upon which the system as a whole depends. The
> grave problem for capital here is its own inability to provide
> its own most
> basic general precondition--the health of the working class--in terms of
> its own (value form) logic. By having to allow non market criteria to
> determine the prices of certain goods, capital then finds itself in an
> insoluble ideological dilemma. I have been stimulated here by Bob Jessop's
> discussion in his State Theory: Putting Capitalist States in their Place.
>
> yours, rakesh
>
>