Pandemic Politics and Science

Historical Materialism

Alienation, Privatization and Science: Rethinking “Capitalist Science” in the Time of a PandemicHeather A. Brown, Westfield State University, USAThe spread of Coronavirus and the response from the center of neo-liberalism, the US (among other states), has laid bare the deep contradictions of capitalism and its hostility toward human life as well as toward the natural world. It has never been clearer that the drive for profit on the basis of “production for the sake of production” dominates much of the thinking of many in the US including elites, the petty bourgeois and some workers who have called for a return to “normal” regardless of the cost of human life. This stems, in part, from a profound mistrust of science by these same individuals. Given capital’s ability to incorporate seemingly neutral and social labor of science into its despotic plans to extract greater and greater surplus value from human beings, this instinctual distrust of science is not completely misplaced. However, this “science” is capitalist science—the appropriation of social labor (both past and present) for the benefit of a capital. Perhaps it is time to return to Marx and his notion of a combined “human science” of the natural and social sciences for the purpose of theorizing a non-capitalist science that can be truly communal and work toward the betterment of all rather than enriching the few at the cost of greater exploitation and dehumanization of the many. Certainly, much has changed since Marx’s time, however, I would argue that he offers an outline of what such a science could look like in his own work, which, with an analysis of the present situation, can serve as a basis for a new understanding of the relationship between science and society—one that can potentially serve liberatory purposes.The Politics of Death: the Bolsonaro Government, Pseudoscience and the Covid-19 Pandemic in BrazilSean Purdy, Department of History, University of São Paulo, BrazilAbstract: The Covid-19 pandemic is an integral part of the current capitalist crisis and pseudoscientific approaches to confront this global healthcare tragedy have functioned as weapons in the ideological arsenal of the far right and neofascists. This is clearly the case in Brazil where the neofascist government of Jair Bolsonaro has denied and/or severely minimized the pandemic, undermined and/or blocked proven scientific approaches to deal with the coronavirus and constantly touted demonstrably false “miracle cures” produced by a small minority of scientists and physicians aligned with the Bolsonarist project. Small wonder that Brazil has suffered the second highest total number of deaths in the global pandemic (582,000 as of September 3, 2021); has not yet fully vaccinated more than one third of the population; and still faces a daily death toll of approximately 800 deaths. Pseudoscience is not new in Brazil nor in other countries, but its active inclusion in healthcare politics by a powerful federal government has elevated it to the status of “respectable”, prompting the widespread proliferation of dangerous and anti-scientific approaches by public authorities and right-wing political forces to the pandemic such as anti-lockdown and anti-social distancing positions, skepticism if not outright rejection of the use of masks and vaccination and, perhaps most prominently, the promotion of supposedly miraculous pharmacological treatments such as Hidroxochloroquine and Ivermectine as panaceas and substitutions for the proven scientific management of the pandemic. This paper thus traces the politics of healthcare in the Bolsonaro government during the Covid-19 pandemic focusing on how pseudoscience became an integral part of the neoliberal and neofascist ideology of Bolsonarism.The British Society for Social Responsibility in Science Archive in a Time of CovidWill Greenacre, Collections Information Officer, Wellcome Collection, UKEoin O’Cearnaigh, Research Development Specialist, Wellcome Collection, UKAlongside many much more significant consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, the building closure of the Wellcome Collection has disrupted scheduled plans to catalogue the archive of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS).From its emergence out of a 1968 conference on chemical weapons use during the Vietnam War until the mid-1980s, BSSRS represented a key component of the international radical science movement of the period. This linked scientists to the wider social movements of the time through an open Marxist politics that shared links with currents within the Women’s, Black liberation and environmental movements. While developing new theoretical perspectives on the interplay between scientific knowledge production and social relations, BSSRS members and their peers addressed a range of specific social issues through their praxis. These included: ecological concerns about industrial pollution and nuclear weapons; opposition to the British state’s deployment of technologies of social control in the north of Ireland that were then adopted within Britain; and work refuting scientific racism, which threatened to regain credibility within mainstream science following a post-war hiatus.This paper comes in two parts. First, it introduces the BSSRS archive: describing its extent; explaining how it came to be deposited at the Wellcome Collection; and charting the progress and obstacles encountered in cataloguing this material. The second part provides an historical overview of BSSRS: situating this organisation both in relation to its immediate context and to the prior social engagement of an earlier generation of scientists and Marxist historians of science; providing an outline of the group’s broad trajectory; and highlighting the contemporary relevance. In doing so, it highlights aspects of BSSRS’s history that cut across several areas relevant to the conference theme, from Marxist-feminism and social movements to anti-racism and ecological crisis during a previous period of crisis in terms of political economy and the shifting role of the state.Chair: Conrad HamiltonPLEASE NOTE: All events for HM Online are free to register, however we would ask comrades who are able to please consider making a donation, which would help us enormously in covering the costs of putting of this programme of events. Like all left organisations, HM has had a very tough period since the beginning of 2020 and our budgets are very stretched and bank balance is sinking all the time, with very little revenue coming in. If you can make a contribution to keep us afloat, please don’t hesitate! You can donate by selecting the &#x27;donation&#x27; ticket type at registration.Once you have registered, a link to the live session will be emailed to you on the day of the event. For any technical queries please contact historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.ukPlease consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism journal, published by BRILL. www.brill.com/hima

"Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen": A book launch with Nicolas Helm-Grovas

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