IS the coronavirus crisis all but over? That was the big question for the middle of last week, after we had been warned for months how we might be doomed by the horrible bug that has already infected 60 million people and killed more than a million of us.

I had a view of my own. Often through my life, events in the real world have driven me to ask how anybody could ever be a socialist. I would say this has happened more frequently since I started writing for The National simply because, by the nature of its readership, I now probably encounter more socialists than ever before. It’s better on the whole that I do so at arm’s length.

But I make an exception for my esteemed colleague Kevin McKenna. We have from time to time crossed swords, preferably in expensive restaurants, where he listens courteously to my expositions of why socialism always fails. Or, to put it another way, socialism has never succeeded, and we cannot say it has had no chance to. In the first half of the 20th century, plus some decades of the second half, the number of socialist countries was growing and in a great variety of circumstances which surely offered one of them some chance of success.

Yet there was none. By 1989, when socialists ruled 40% of the human race, their failings were so dreadful that, as an international movement, they just collapsed. Through all the troubles the world has suffered since, there has been little attempt at revival. Of the 193 sovereign states that are members of the UN, only three can seriously be regarded as socialist – Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea. Nobody could define them as states worth living in.

Of course there are unsuccessful capitalist states too. But at least they have a chance of turning failure into success if they select the right model of capitalism (there are many) and have democracy to accompany it, as most do. Choice of that kind is never available under socialism. Democracy and capitalism are on the other hand closely linked. While democracy comes from free political choice, capitalism comes from free economic choice.

Circumstance does make a difference, of course. At this point in the pandemic, there are many lives to be saved and also many jobs to be created. A socialist might claim that the apparently enterprising pharmaceutical companies merely trade in and exploit human misery, and will carry on doing so unless controlled. I answer that profit is not something nasty, rather a sign we are spending our money well and making the best use of our resources.

But, as ever with capitalism, qualifications can be made. It will be good to beat coronavirus, but it will also cost us dear. The coming cures will earn huge profits, counted in billions, for the pharmaceutical companies – Pfizer of New York; Moderna of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Astra Zeneca of Cambridge, England; or GlaxoSmithKline of Brentford, England.

Some socialists have suggested we should nationalise such corporations because we would then have no need to worry about profit. Whereas the normal condition of a socialist marketplace has always been shortage, however, the normal condition of a capitalist marketplace is abundance. The latter can be set up anywhere, whether by multinational companies or by local supermarkets or by corner shops. They are there the whole time, by day and often by night too, to give us what we want, to keep us at the forefront of fashion or of technical discovery, to make human existence that wee bit better in all sorts of little ways, whether serious or frivolous. Again and again, capitalism is interesting, while socialism is boring.

Yet none of this could be done the world over if we did not earn profits out of an infinite variety of commercial invention and ingenuity. Profits come in all shapes and sizes, and not just to plutocrats. The pharmaceutical companies will be attractive places for investment by financial institutions, by banks and pension funds and stockbrokers and building societies and investment houses, which in their turn handle the money entrusted in them by millions and millions of ordinary citizens, working or retired. The drugs save lives and the dividends let the lives be enjoyed.

But investment is anyway a risky business, and we hear little of the products that never make it to the market. Instead the companies absorb the risk themselves. Even that makes the individual sectors more efficient because it discourages the companies from pursuing speculative experiments, which in practice are far more economically damaging than profiteering, fraud and greed.

This is not a zero-sum game where what is good for the pharmaceutical industry must be bad for the NHS and vice versa. On the contrary, round the world the health systems and the pharmaceutical companies have a mutually dependent relationship. The systems cannot operate without customers, while the health services cannot continue to improve without new drugs. So the question is not about winners and losers but of finding the right balance among competing interests.

Altogether, profit and public health are not distinct interests but are intimately connected. Profit gives us the incentive to research new treatments. The rewards for successful drugs can be enormous, but these must be offset against the losses incurred in the far greater number of projects that never produce a marketable drug.

The hunt for the coronavirus will confirm these lessons, but perhaps give us some new ones. First, it shows what the human race can do when it works together, but also demonstrates the value of a diversified approach. A year ago, we did not know which of these would prove effective. Now it seems as though the coronavirus puzzle can be solved along several different routes. In the end, however, it is chiefly a demonstration of what the market can deliver, a reminder that capitalism, for all its shortcomings and brutality, is the means by which the human race improves its lot.