Exchange on Lockdowns and Vaccines

To Vernon Davis, Editor

In response to your recent article, “The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony…” 9/1/23¹.

Dear Mr. Davis,

Your article in general is excellent. I felt dismayed upon reading the section concerning the liberal response to Covid-19, however. I was encouraged by your group’s recent statement of opposition to the lockdowns, and of support for the truckers’ convoys opposing the vaccine mandates.² Even here, in this same section, you state that the problem with most of the rest of the (“Lockdown”) Left, when they echo the bourgeoisie’s own slogan of “following the science”, is that they lack “The basic understanding that science in capitalist society is not neutral but is wielded to serve the interest of the bourgeoisie ….”

Yet here, you also promote these Covid-19 vaccines as “life-saving”. Hunh?!

The solution to this seeming contradiction is clear. You still fail to comprehend the difference between the following two, diametrically opposed praxes:

* Genuine science, which demands that the scientific method be observed by scientists/doctors: that the products of science and technology be adequately tested for safety.

* Scientism, which turns science into a religion, and scientists, into its priests: as the mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck wrote in his 1971 essay, The New Universal Church.³ Thus for us ordinary mortals to demand actual proof of adequate safety-testing is sacrilegious. “When you question me,” Anthony Fauci has said publicly, “you question the science!”⁴ (Horrors!)

Yes, you’re right: the products of science may be “wielded” in an abusive manner by the bourgeoisie to serve their interest. But you fetishize these products, since they come from “Science”. You’ve thus blinded yourself to the fact that the medical establishment, more often than not, is guided by such bourgeois corruption in their very production, and promotion of these products as safe and effective. Thus you skip over the key question: Have they been tested?

Is this fetishism the basis for your assertion that these Covid 19 vaccines save lives? Where is the proof for such assertions? That’s the question that at least tens if not hundreds of thousands of formerly pro-vaxx scientists are asking. Pfizer, Moderna, et al. only took six months to “test” these products.⁵ That is simply not enough time. The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System’s reports are off the charts, with more injuries and deaths reported after taking these vaccines than ever reported in the prior thirty years combined.⁶

Consider the possibility that it just might be you, and not the truckers and other vaxxresistant workers, who harbor illusions about whether these vaccines are indeed safe, let alone “life saving”. Don’t patronize: Listen to these workers, and to the parents of children damaged by the one or more of the mandated 72 shots, none of which have been adequately safety-tested, as revealed by the Aaron Siri’s Informed Consent Action Network lawsuit,⁷ and by the book, Turtles All the Way Down⁸

“All theory is gray, my friend, but forever green is the tree of life,”―Lenin (quoting Goethe).

Thomas Smith, Ph.D.

Dear Thomas Smith,

Thank you for your letters. Just as a point of precision, I (Vincent David, not Vernon Davis) am not the sole author of the content of Spartacist. While the main article on the breakdown of U.S. hegemony is the work of comrade G. Perrault, all the articles in Spartacist are the work of a collective of leading comrades, which is why they are usually not signed.

We found your letter to the Workers League interesting and are happy you are circulating our article to them. I have not had the chance to study their material but from what you are saying, you seem to be right against them. We would be interested in seeing their response.

We obviously have a disagreement regarding the pandemic and vaccines. You argue that our position is contradictory because we opposed the lockdowns while at the same time supporting the Covid-19 vaccines. You say that this is due to our illusions in the vaccines produced by big pharma and our failure to distinguish between “genuine science” and “scientism.” First, our opposition to the lockdowns and the vaccine mandates which threatened mass firing of workers was not based on the lack of scientific evidence to support such measures. Most scientific studies show that lockdowns slowed the spread of Covid-19. We have no illusions in the benevolence of big pharma, but the overwhelming evidence shows that the vaccines developed by these vultures did reduce the risk of complications from the disease.

The main question for communists during the pandemic was not “scientism” versus “genuine science” but whether the capitalist class or the workers will call the shots as to what is safe and what is not. We opposed the lockdowns and vaccine mandates threatening mass firing because they were attacks against the working class, preventing it from uniting in struggle against the capitalists, which is the only way for workers to really defend their health and safety. However, you should know that we did support mandatory vaccination, i.e., being forced to get a jab. It is not a democratic right to jam hospital wards with diseases that are preventable through vaccination. Forcing people to get a vaccine does not undermine workers’ capacity to struggle. What we opposed was the implementation of such mandates through mass firing of workers. Such positions seem contradictory only if you have a classless approach to “science” as opposed to what advances the struggle of the proletariat for its liberation.

It seems clear that you are falling into one of the two main reactionary poles during the pandemic. This is precisely what the sentence you criticize captures: “Given that science was used to justify one reactionary policy after another, millions of people turned against ‘science’ and refused lifesaving vaccines.” The challenge for revolutionaries during the pandemic was to mount an opposition to the bourgeoisie and government even though some of their measures did save lives. But in the absence of such a working-class and revolutionary opposition to the government, society became divided between two reactionary camps. On one side, the liberals supported anything done by the government in the name of “science,” including devastating anti-worker attacks. Most of the “socialist” left supported this. On the other side, and in reaction to this, many rightly revolted, but under all sorts of reactionary programs. Some rejected all vaccines and science. Others (like you) resorted to deny reality: vaccines murdered children and were a giant plot by big pharma, brandishing obscure studies by discredited doctors as the ultimate proof of this.

The latter (and more generally the spread of what the liberals call “conspiracy theories”) is a sign of the inability to resolve what appeared to many as an insoluble contradiction: on one hand, the capitalist class response to the pandemic was a disaster for working people and big pharmaceutical companies are vultures making gigantic profits. On the other hand, billions of people received their vaccines with no problem, hospitalization rates actually fell, and Covid-19 is now similar to the flu.

This is an impossible dilemma only if you reject the science of Marxism The exploitation of the working class by the bourgeoisie requires the latter to keep the workers alive. Nevertheless, the domination of the bourgeoisie over society is a fundamental obstacle to the development of productive forces and to the progress of humanity, which makes its response to any catastrophe reactionary. Only on this basis is it possible to oppose the government and big pharma without denying reality through conspiracies.

Comradely,
Vincent David

Dear Vincent,

Upon re-examining your last email, I insist that your view is indeed based on scientism vs genuine science. You have what the Spartacist League used to accuse Labor Militant of: “a touching faith in the benevolence of the bourgeois state”. Well, you’re not that bad. You only promote such faith, when it comes to “Progressive” scientific government agencies. Somehow, the Ph.Ds that the staff of these agencies possess, makes them ineligible for suspicion that they might be corrupted by a bourgeois agenda—despite your statement that at least the USE of science is INEVITABLY so corrupted under a capitalist regime! And despite the fact that, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has shown convincingly in his book, The Real Anthony Fauci, that all these agencies have been captured by the industries they supposedly regulate.

This explains to me why you have accepted the bourgeois establishment’s “finding” vis a vis the effectivity of lockdowns and mRNA vaccines: and why you so calmly, one might say, cavalierly, dismiss my view as merely “reactionary”.

As I said in my letter, for the governmental propaganda that the vaccines were effective, there was not enough time to verify this scientifically. The only evidence for effectivity is that infections started decreasing right around the time these vaccines were introduced. But that conclusion has been disputed. For this decline in infections to have declined that quickly―before a majority of the population had been inoculated—is a sheer impossibility. The basis of this decline, therefore, was not the vaccines, but instead, the rise of natural immunity. As a recent study by the Cleveland Clinic shows, the more so-called “booster” shots you take, the MORE vulnerable you are to catching Covid! See https://thehighwire.com/editorial/cleveland-clinic-more-boosters-more-likelyto- get-covid-19.

There was no time to measure whether these vaccines were safe, either. I provided you evidence of this: the fact that there have been more deaths and injuries resulting from these vaccines over the past few years, than the earlier thirty years in the VAERS existence.

But I notice you didn’t even mention this in your reply. Where is your evidence that these vaccines are safe?

As for lockdowns, Dr. John Iannidis, who even according to the mainstream Washington Post, is a top scientist (though of course they then proceeded to try to spin it against him, found no benefit to lockdowns whatsoever. See the following. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/12/16/john-ioannidis-coronavirus-lockdowns-fox-news/

And without the spin: https://www.ihmc.us/stemtalk/episode-151/

What evidence do you have to contradict these findings? As you and I are both Marxists, you will have to do a lot better than to tell me that government agencies reported such effectivity. You must be familiar with the critique of Progressivism, as a petite bourgeois attempt at an alternative to socialism, by such authors as Kolko and Weinstein.

The Progressives believed that they could merely rein in the abuses of robber baron capitalism, by an expansion of the state with these same regulatory agencies, staffed by scientific experts.

Do YOU believe in this utopian, petite bourgeois myth, Vincent?

This is scientism, Vincent. This is not science. Science, and Marxism, dictate that you present your evidence. If that is to be the evidence presented by the governmental agencies, that’s fine. But it is NOT sufficient that you just use such phrases “as the overwhelming evidence is that”, etc. This smothers over the actual social/power relations, involved with capitalist society, and its tendency toward corruption. That doesn’t provide us with a basis by which we can meaningfully debate these issues.

I’d appreciate a much more careful, nuanced reply, with actual evidence, that we can talk about, as critical thinkers, and not blind followers.

Yours respectfully,
Professor Thomas Smith

Dear Thomas,

Thank you for sending the polemic from The Medical Freedom Socialists of New York.

Your article highlights what you consider to be a longstanding connection between Kautskyism and Trotskyism, going all the way up to Jim Robertson and us, which is our illusion in “scientism” expressed in the following formulations of the document “The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony…”:

If we are to believe the Medical Freedom Socialists, we have yet to break from Kautskyism and the Second International as long as we think that the Covid-19 vaccines were “lifesaving.”

I am far from being a specialist on vaccination. Nevertheless, I could probably find 10 or 20 studies which show that Covid-19 vaccines were effective in diminishing the risks of complications due to Covid-19 (which is what I claimed in my previous letter, and what remains the broad consensus among scientists). Then, in response, I assume the Medical Freedom Socialists will come up with 10 or 20 studies that show the opposite (from rather dubious sources like the “Children’s Health Defense”, but this observation probably makes me a Kautskyist “scientisist” to your eyes). But while we would be having a long and complicated exchange over vaccines, the world historic movement for the emancipation of the working class would have not advanced one iota.

And this is really where our fundamental difference lies, not over vaccines. The entire approach to the pandemic of the Medical Freedom Socialists is limited to evaluating the effectiveness of vaccines and public health guidance based on this or that study while ours is to guide the struggles of the working class to defend its health and safety against the capitalist class. And for this arduous task, the proletariat can expect no help from the Medical Freedom Socialists.

In your whole polemic against Perrault and our conference document, as well as your multiple letters, there is not a single hint as to what the workers movement should have done differently with the crucial information you claim to possess (apart from not getting vaccinated). This is precisely what Marxism entails. That is what my previous letter to you tried to argue (to no avail) and that is why you found it so disappointing.

The problem with your approach is easy to see: what would happen if lockdowns or vaccines were suddenly proven to be effective by 100% of scientific studies? Would the Medical Freedom Socialists change their position then? I said in my previous letter that most studies did show that lockdowns slowed the spread of Covid-19, and the reason why this is true is because locking the entire population in their homes does stop the spread of diseases, as it stops many other things. The only solid basis to oppose the Covid-19 lockdowns is to be found in the necessities of the class struggle, not in the pages of scientific studies.

But let’s turn the question the other way, for the sake of argument. Let’s say the Medical Freedom Socialists are right about these vaccines, that their testing was inadequate or that they did cause harm. Again, we arrive at the same place. How does this help us to do anything? How does this help to combat the many illusions in the bourgeois state, or in capitalist politicians (liberal or rightwing), illusions which were widespread during the pandemic, and which are still prevalent on almost all other social issues? It does not.

Even worse, the one concrete thing the Medical Freedom Socialists recommends to the ICL, apart from poring over your selection of medical studies, is to “listen to these workers” who were part of the truckers convoy and anti-vaxx demonstrations. Surely, I am all for listening. But workers who took part in these protests, despite legitimate anger against the liberal establishment, had all sorts of bizarre and reactionary things in their minds, something the Medical Freedom Socialists seem not to be bothered by. There is a reason why our leaflet defending the truckers in Canada also had the slogan “For a Communist Opposition to the Government” in its headline complex.

If we are to speak of “listening to workers,” the Medical Freedom Socialists should consider the fact that hundreds of millions of workers did receive vaccines from wretched pharma companies and are doing just fine. And the vast majority of working-class people, over a year since the end of the pandemic, think that those who rant about vaccines killing children are kind of creepy. I am not trying to be insulting. There is a real social truth in this that you should reckon with.

Lastly, your dismissal of Trotsky’s excellent 1925 speech on Dialectical Materialism and Science tells me a lot about how you conceive of Marxism as well as science. The entirety of Trotsky’s speech, which you dismissed as being closer to Feuerbach than Marx, is dedicated to explaining the relation between scientific thoughts and social regimes, and how the 1917 October Revolution—the greatest revolution witnessed by mankind, and of which Trotsky was a central architect—unleashed a new and higher potential for human knowledge. Your dismissal of this speech shows that you have understood neither Trotsky’s speech, nor Marx, nor Feuerbach. Here is another quote from it:

You see, the whole purpose of Marxism is to fight for new October Revolutions and build parties which can accomplish this task. And the struggle against Kautskyism and for the independence of the working class makes sense only for this purpose.

Marx exposed Feuerbach through his famous theses, which concluded with: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” The Medical Freedom Socialists’ polemic against us shows that you are neither capable of offering an alternative road of struggle for the working class, nor are you capable of explaining how your battle for “genuine science vs scientism” is in any way relevant to the fight for socialist revolution, nor are you capable of showing how the quote against which you object (and which opened this letter) is in any way an obstacle to fight for socialist revolution. You are condemned to interpret through the lens of your selection of “scientific” studies the world-historic event that was the pandemic, incapable of changing it.

Therefore, all of this for me is sufficient proof (according to the scientific method and not, God forbid, scientism) to safely conclude that the words “socialist” and even “freedom” in “Medical Freedom Socialist” are not worth a penny.

Nevertheless, we welcome this opportunity to have a frank exchange of views and we hope you will reconsider your course.