Doing well or doing good?
By Allen Myers
A story about a potential breakthrough in the treatment of cancer appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on October 14. The events began when a team of US scientists was collecting specimens off the coast of Western Australia in order to study organisms that use chemicals to defend themselves from predators. One of the specimens collected was a previously unknown type of coral.
Months after the scientists returned to the US, a student of one of them decided to see whether a fluid extracted from the coral had any effect on cancer cells. It did; it killed them.
That's about as far as the story goes at present. There is some sort of dispute between the scientists and the WA Department of Conservation and Land Management about obtaining further samples of the coral for testing, and chemicals extracted from it may or may not turn out to be really useful in treating cancer in human beings.
But what struck me about the story, after the optimism aroused by the possibility of such a breakthrough, was the comments of the scientist whose student had made the first test. According to the Herald report, he said later:
"I began to realise that this might not only be something of academic importance but also something of _______ importance as well."
Before you read on, can you guess what word the scientist used in the place where I have left a blank? Was it "medical"? "Humanitarian"? "Social"?
No, unfortunately. What the scientist said was, "... something of commercial importance". What mattered most about the chemical from the coral was not that it might restore a normal life to people who would otherwise die, but that it would make money.
Now, if that scientist had a close friend or child or parent or lover stricken by cancer, and the scientist had it in his power to produce a potential cure, I'm sure he would do so, without regard for whether he made a profit for himself or anyone else.
Similarly, most people will spontaneously go to the aid of another person — even a total stranger — in a life-threatening emergency, and would not even think of asking to be paid for doing so.
So what explains the scientist's remark? Why did money crowd out his view of the welfare of human beings? It's not something peculiar to that scientist, for the Herald's journalist and editors apparently saw nothing strange in what he'd said.
If we were able to question the scientist about his remark, he would probably reply that he doesn't really consider money more important than curing cancer. It's just that he knows a cure for cancer won't be produced unless it's "commercially viable".
And that's true. It's one of the incurable, fundamentally perverse things about capitalism: nothing can happen unless it makes money for someone (generally someone who already has more money than they need).
Capitalist economic textbooks usually explain money as a "tool" to help human beings accomplish their goals. But in real capitalism, things are turned upside down: people are secondary, and money is what really matters.
It's possible, of course, that making money and helping people can coincide: a cure for cancer would probably make money, so the discoverer would not be torn between the choices of doing well and doing good.
But often they don't coincide; it is even frequently the case that there is money to be made by doing harm. It is unlikely, for example, that the eventual discoverers of a cure for cancer will make more than a small fraction of the accumulated profits of tobacco companies, not to mention the producers of asbestos or the hundreds and thousands of carcinogenic chemicals of "commercial importance".
That's why socialists argue that we need a system of "production for people, not for profit".