One of the things that the blogosphere provides is stories, for the mainstream media. And I’m starting to believe that the multinational pharmaceuticals corporation Pfizer – best-known in the UK, if known of at all, for producing the world-renowned wrinkly recreational drug Viagra – is a story.
The thing is, Pfizer supports the free market, with arguments and with money. The magazine Prospect, for example, now contains, on the inside of each front cover, not mere adverts for Pfizer, but essays under the heading “Pfizer forum”, frequently of a decidedly pro-free-market persuasion. In September of last year, for example, they had one by Milton Friedman.
Go to the Pfizer website. Look there under “public policy” and you get the Pfizer forum website. It turns out that one of those pro-free-market essays is by Johan Norberg and is called “In Defense of Global Capitalism”. So they’re not making much of a secret about being in favour of capitalism, are they?
I have already passed the question on through a mutual friend, of mine and of Pfizer. (He wrote one of the Pfizer forum essays.) I repeat the question here: What if the global anti-capitalist left decides to “expose” Pfizer? What if they try to turn them into corporate demons, the way they demonised Dow Chemicals (napalm, if I remember it right), and then Monsanto (genetic engineering)? What if anti-capitalist stirrers start showing up at Pfizer annual general meetings? Maybe this has been tried, but hasn’t worked.
Pfizer must have thought about this because like I say they are not supporting capitalism in secret; they are advertising that they support it. Yet if you type “Pfizer” into Google, you have to wade through a ton of pro-Pfizer material before you encounter anything remotely critical. (The first anti-Pfizer thing I spotted was Oxfam complaining about Pfizer’s attitude to their patents. I guess Pfizer believes that their patents are theirs.)
It is because most multinational corporations do not like the answers to questions like the one I am asking that they do not support capitalism other than in apologetic whispers. How come Pfizer thinks it’s good business to support it out loud? I am delighted they do. Nevertheless, why? I am sure some of this story has already been written, but not so I have noticed. And written or not, like I say, it is a story.
