Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

A dose of free enterprise

Back in the days before inflation, when a small amount of money could 
buy quite a lot, and $10,000 was a fortune, unscrupulous citizens of an 
enterprising bent used to forge coins and pass them off as real money.

In the 1950 film "Mister 880", Edmund Gwenn plays an amiable forger who 
earns a comfortable living forging nothing more ambitious than $5 bills.

Today, no self-respecting forger would bother with recreating a banknote of 
less than $50 denomination, if not $100.

But in the USA, the land of free enterprise and deregulation, they forge 
something that's even better value than forging money: they forge 
prescription drugs.

"The New York Times" earlier this month reported some recent cases of 
forged injectible drugs found in pharmacies in Indiana, California and 
Florida. It says something about the profit mark-ups on pharmaceuticals in 
the US that forgers would find it worth their while to fake up a prominent 
drug.

One of the drugs that were faked was Serostim, a growth hormone used by 
AIDS patients. A 12-week course of Serostim costs US$21,000. I did say this 
was a profitable form of forgery, didn't I?

The cases exemplify the frenetic chase after profits that is capitalism. 
The manufacture and supply of medicines is left in the hands of "the 
market", a free-for-all in which small companies jostle for a foothold 
while big corporations try to ride roughshod over everybody else.

In this chaotic, anarchic situation, the US government has abdicated its 
responsibilities to the people — so as not to interfere with business, you 
understand — and left the distribution of medicines to a host of private 
wholesalers and distributors.

Small wonder that in that situation some operators — more ruthless, more 
greedy or just more desperate than others — seek to increase their profit 
rates by forging the labels and bottles of expensive drugs but filling them 
with very cheap contents (often stolen, expired, discarded or home-made and 
frequently not harmless).

The New York Times reported "a small Florida distributor sold some 
counterfeit Serostim to ... a small distributor in Las Vegas, which then 
sold it to ... a distributor in Ronkonkoma [in New York state]" who then 
sold it "to other distributors". Not surprisingly, counterfeit Serostim had 
turned up "in at least seven states".

With the huge prices charged for pharmaceuticals, and the ever-present 
example of the blatant price-gouging by the so-called "ethical drug 
industry", it's hardly surprising that less respectable crooks should also 
try to get in on the act.

Another way that has proved popular is to buy drugs ostensibly for nursing 
homes, because many US drug companies offer substantial discounts to such 
institutions. Once bought, however, the drugs are "diverted" into what The 
New York Times calls "a network of hundreds of small distributors".

These small distributors resell the drugs "any number of times, marking up 
the prices in the process" [naturally, this is capitalism, after all]. "The 
origin of a drug can quickly become unclear as it passes from warehouse to 
warehouse."

And these are the people who used to sneer at "socialised medicine" — and 
probably still do.

* * *

Levellers remembered

The ruling class has been as diligent in its misrepresentation of the 
English Revolution as it has in its portrayal of the French Revolution (let 
alone the Russian!).

The English Revolution is always portrayed as being between dashing, 
romantic and ever so well dressed Cavaliers, loyal to the King, and dour, 
Puritan Roundheads, dressed in black, their heads full of bible quotes and 
fear of witches, loyal to a power-mad dictator named Cromwell.

The great ferment of ideas and questioning of the status quo that 
accompanied the establishment of capitalist class rule in Britain — for 
that is what the English Revolution was all about — is seldom even hinted 
at.

But ferment of ideas there was. Gerard Winstanley and his followers even 
set up a commune on a hill in Surrey, claiming that all should now be 
equal.

Within the Parliamentary army was a similar movement known as the 
Levellers. They produced a program significantly called "The Agreement of 
the People".

The Levellers demanded an end to arrears of pay and the calling of a new 
Parliament. As with the later French Revolution, the triumphant new 
bourgeoisie had no intention of allowing their revolutionary followers 
amongst the masses to go too far. Talk of "equality" and "brotherhood" was 
all very well, but there were limits, after all.

In 1649, Parliamentary troops loyal to Cromwell were sent from London to 
Burford, in Oxfordshire, where the main body of Levellers were. Betrayed 
and surprised in the middle of the night, the Leveller soldiers were 
overwhelmed.

Three of them were executed against the Church wall on May 19. Last May 19, 
over a thousand people in Burford commemorated the executions with a march 
and rally under the slogan, "Equality — the Awkward Ideal".

One of the speakers, Professor Frances Stewart of the University of Oxford, 
pointed out that an annual contribution of one percent of the wealth of the 
richest 200 people in the world would pay for primary education for the 
whole world.

The Levellers' revolution has still to be won.