Medicine production in an anarchist society
Hello all, I am wondering can you point me to reading material or share ideas on how manifacure of medicine(and other things currently requiring complex supply chains) can be achieved in anarchist society?
People can, and have, and still do organize completely without any kind of hierarchy/leadership. So... Likely exactly the same way they do now, with the exception that they wouldn't have some pencil pusher who doesn't know medicine from dogshit telling them how, when, where, and what to make so that he can show some sycophants a line going in an upward direction.
What is it that you think would be a barrier? anarchism isn't when you're not organised. It's when you're not forced.
People can still be organised, everyone needs medicine and sees it's benefit. Would you help? whether that's growing or gathering precursor materials, managing inventories, doing synthesis, maintaining and building machines, hosting educators and specialists, or transporting goods. The work involved isn't different from what everyone already does.
I've been waiting to reshare this link!!!
https://fourthievesvinegar.org/
Its very, very out there, but they have developed solutions for manufacturing cure for hep B, etc cheaply and effectively using stuff you can get cheaply - or steal. They also have a full suite for, exploring production pathways and refining them. They do a lot and at some point I'll put together a Lemmy post about them and what they do, if you are a scientist/developer they really need those skills!
This, unlike other examples which will be posted in this thread, is a good example of direct action. And I feel looking at examples like this is a much better way to understanding anarchist societies, since we seek to build a new world inside the old - and eventually supersede the old one.
The guy who heads that gave a fantastic Defcon talk showing it in action.
Is this a 'how can we do complex production without capitalism' question or a 'how can we motivate people to do work without capitalism' question?
Former: Catalonia ran entire industries while at war. Something needs doing and it isn't getting done? Volunteer, find people to help you, etc.
Latter: I dunno, ask your mom how she cleaned and fed you for decades without financial compensation.
Bonus: a significant portion of drug research at least in the US is (or was anyway) funded by the US government, so capitalists aren't exactly doing all the work themselves.
Depends on the medicine. You can make a lot yourself, check out Michael Moore's books. (Not that one, the other one). For pharmaceuticals you had better study your chemistry and bio. Many things are not so hard, but difficult to scale, and expensive depending on the drugs. You're going to have to have a pretty driven and skilled collective to make it happen.
I think one thing people need to think about is that if we succeed in abolishing capitalism, then all medicines become public domain, no more proprietary formulas, and no more profit motive.
So instead of a few dozen or hundred scientists and business-persons figuring out production of medicines strictly constrained by maximum profit (industrialized automation, single point of manufacture, distribution, etc), instead, we'd have potentially millions of people looking at the science and working on sustainable, local, and easy-to-produce formulations that put people, not profits, first.
We need to understand that the reason medicines currently require complicated expensive machinery and huge supply chains is due 100% to the profit motive. That reality ceases to exist post-capitalism. We HAVE to learn to think outside of the confines of "capitalist realism."
Silk road baby!
Jkjk
A lot of pharmaceutical production is moving from complex chemical processes to utilizing genetically modified microorganisms to produce the substances more or less directly. This makes it about as complex as a modern beer brewery.
Do any beer breweries genetically engineer their yeast? Honest question. I was gonna use that question to counter you but then I realized I wouldn't be surprised if some already do, and IMO that would be pretty cool!
This makes it about as complex as a modern beer brewery.
how on earth is making a GMO as simple are brewing beer?!
I cant tell if ur joking or being serious
I have a genetics researcher in the family that brews beer as a hobby, who would have a field day replying to this comment! Unfortunately I posses knowledge of neither but I feel like the answer would not be simple or straight-forward.
Once you have the genetically modified organisms obviously. But making the genetic modifications doesn't need a very complex setup either, a typical university research lab is sufficiently equipped to do so.
Read The Dispossessed.
Have done, very good book! Le Guin is a legend.
Not exactly what you asked, but...
I think that in an anarchist society, much of the "medicine" mindset would fade away. An anarchist society would have no human supremacists, so people would not eat animals or use them for medical experiments. This alone would prevent a great deal of ill health. While certain drugs can be useful in emergency situations (like opium for pain relief during and after surgery), most if not all of these emergency "medicines" can be found in some form in the plant kingdom and do not require complex manufacturing processes. Modern medicine and "better living through chemistry" is really quite a recent concept, and the pharmaceuticals of today are no more necessary for health than anything that the snake oil salesmen were selling 200 years ago. The current medical industry is one of the largest and most profitable capitalist enterprises in the world, with a huge financial incentive to keep people sick. (I recommend the documentary They're Trying To Kill Us which explores how the medical industry, fast-food industry, and government are interconnected in oppressing people.) Take away the profit motive, and 99.9% of "medicine" in the world would disappear, and we'd all be better off as a result.
What good is a vast amount of learning if what you have learned is not true? The medical profession has from the beginning based its practices upon false principles, hence throw physiology out the window and poison the sick with nostrums. We do not seek warmth of an iceberg, so why seek health from a poison? Let's get our principles straight. Health comes from healthful influences and agencies. Drugs, all of which are poisons, do not belong among the health-building factors of life. – Herbert Shelton, Natural Hygiene: Man's Pristine Way of Life (1968)