Anarchism

What you're essentially asking is, "how will industry work in an anarchist society?"

It's a very, very wide question, methinks - and a lot of the answer is going to depend on what it is you actually define as an anarchist society.

If you were to ask me how aspirin will be made in an anarchist society, the answer is simple - the same way we make aspirin now. But if you were to ask me how the raw materials needed for aspirin manufacture will be sourced in an anarchist society... well, now things start getting more interesting.

Aspirin is easy - thermo-nuclear weapons is difficult.

People can, and have, and still do organize completely without any kind of hierarchy/leadership. So... Likely exactly the same way they do now, with the exception that they wouldn't have some pencil pusher who doesn't know medicine from dogshit telling them how, when, where, and what to make so that he can show some sycophants a line going in an upward direction.

What is it that you think would be a barrier? anarchism isn't when you're not organised. It's when you're not forced.

People can still be organised, everyone needs medicine and sees it's benefit. Would you help? whether that's growing or gathering precursor materials, managing inventories, doing synthesis, maintaining and building machines, hosting educators and specialists, or transporting goods. The work involved isn't different from what everyone already does.

I've been waiting to reshare this link!!!

https://fourthievesvinegar.org/

Its very, very out there, but they have developed solutions for manufacturing cure for hep B, etc cheaply and effectively using stuff you can get cheaply - or steal. They also have a full suite for, exploring production pathways and refining them. They do a lot and at some point I'll put together a Lemmy post about them and what they do, if you are a scientist/developer they really need those skills!

This, unlike other examples which will be posted in this thread, is a good example of direct action. And I feel looking at examples like this is a much better way to understanding anarchist societies, since we seek to build a new world inside the old - and eventually supersede the old one.

Is this a 'how can we do complex production without capitalism' question or a 'how can we motivate people to do work without capitalism' question?

Former: Catalonia ran entire industries while at war. Something needs doing and it isn't getting done? Volunteer, find people to help you, etc.

Latter: I dunno, ask your mom how she cleaned and fed you for decades without financial compensation.

Bonus: a significant portion of drug research at least in the US is (or was anyway) funded by the US government, so capitalists aren't exactly doing all the work themselves.

Depends on the medicine. You can make a lot yourself, check out Michael Moore's books. (Not that one, the other one). For pharmaceuticals you had better study your chemistry and bio. Many things are not so hard, but difficult to scale, and expensive depending on the drugs. You're going to have to have a pretty driven and skilled collective to make it happen.

I think one thing people need to think about is that if we succeed in abolishing capitalism, then all medicines become public domain, no more proprietary formulas, and no more profit motive.

So instead of a few dozen or hundred scientists and business-persons figuring out production of medicines strictly constrained by maximum profit (industrialized automation, single point of manufacture, distribution, etc), instead, we'd have potentially millions of people looking at the science and working on sustainable, local, and easy-to-produce formulations that put people, not profits, first.

We need to understand that the reason medicines currently require complicated expensive machinery and huge supply chains is due 100% to the profit motive. That reality ceases to exist post-capitalism. We HAVE to learn to think outside of the confines of "capitalist realism."

Silk road baby!

Jkjk

A lot of pharmaceutical production is moving from complex chemical processes to utilizing genetically modified microorganisms to produce the substances more or less directly. This makes it about as complex as a modern beer brewery.

Read The Dispossessed.