>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.
Until now, making patented drugs has been one the most profitable legal industries, if not the most profitable, on earth. I doubt that's going to change profoundly. The U.S. government subsidizes the industry's basic research costs (NIH, university contracts, etc.) while industry gets to privatize all the profits.
The U.S. does less to assure the health of its working class than any First World country, yet its capital is the most profitable of all.
Doug