EXCERPT:
In June 1933, just months after Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, Leon Trotsky, the great co-leader of the Russian Revolution, called attention to the fact that even in an age of rapid technological development, the most backward conceptions can flourish. Commenting on this contradiction between scientific advance and social backwardness amid the death agony of capitalism, Trotsky wrote:
Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance, and savagery!
One of the peculiar elements of the present period is that mankind’s vast technological advances are not understood by a signficant section of the population, who have been deprived of an elementary understanding of the scientific method. The capitalist ruling elites prey upon and cultivate fear and ignorance.
Nevertheless, the force of human progress is far greater, to the extent that science becomes rooted in the working class. Mankind’s scientific achievements are inexhaustible and all of the problems we confront can be overcome. The great barrier is the existing social relations, based on private ownership of the means of production and the division of the world into rival nation-states.
The conflict with anti-vaccine elements is not a debate within the scientific community. It is a struggle of genuine scientists and all representatives of progressive thought against ignorance, fear, cultural backwardness and the most dangerous forms of contemporary political reaction.
The Marxist attitude to scientific advance and innovation is infused with confidence in human progress. The vast potential of mRNA technology itself is only beginning to emerge. A May 2022 report in Nature noted, “mRNA-based therapeutics are expected to become a powerful therapy for a variety of refractory diseases, including infectious diseases, metabolic genetic diseases, cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and other diseases.”
The full blossoming of this potential, alongside the flowering of every scientific discipline, requires the socialist reorganization of the global economy and society as a whole. Pfizer, Moderna and all other pharmaceutical giants must be internationalized and retooled to provide free treatments for all. The trillions squandered on war and the financial oligarchy must be seized and reallocated to provide for social needs--above all, public health, reversing climate change and guaranteeing high quality education and living standards to all of humanity.
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