Social Murder and the Individual

Engel's in Light of Contemporary Systemic Violence

Morning Comrades.

Last week, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in what appears to be a retaliatory assassination, which, for legal purposes, let’s not be too jubilant about.

Anyway, no, let’s be, and if anything, the responses to this fact over the last week has very clearly shown that everyone other than the ruling class and their puppets are more than jubilant about this fact. It is obvious why, the US healthcare system is anything but caring nor does it deal in health and to this day I am semi-confused that this has happened before. Truly, there are a number of constructs that shape life in the US that demand this type of reaction and the way the capitalist have shaped a prime human need around their greed sits very much at the top of it all.

There are number of thoughts that have resulted from this assassination over the last week, one being the main topic of this dispatch that is the disproportionate response of Western Society to systemic violence, aside from a few individual acts of resistance and we will get into that through Engel’s monumental work “The Condition of the Working Class in England”, specifically the chapter “Results”. Before that deep dive few other pointers are worth mentioning, for one, the overwhelming support within the US and across the Western Empire of this deed and the person that committed this act and the glaring ineptitude of the NYPD.

It didn’t come as a surprise that our own online “lefty” bubble celebrated this act of self-defense, yes, every pun intended, but that it the support of this murder quickly became so widespread that even the majority of the bootlicking manufacturers in Western Media got flack from their coy-ish audience for either trying to blame this on the damn commies or feigning outrage at “this pillar of society” being killed was surprising, even to me. When the Ban Shapiro audience of all audiences rips that ghoul a new one on his quest of bullshit, it is noteworthy.

Additionally, despite a daily budget of 29 million USD, the NYPD, the largest occupying force of any western city, has once again shown its total irrelevance of intent, no crime was stopped, no crime was solved and as if we didn’t already have a 29 million daily reasons to abolish that gang of fascist thugs, here we are.

Most importantly, all of this brings us back to an analysis from 1845 that Engels coined “Social Murder”. In his work about the realities of the Working Class in England, Engels importantly wrote:

“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder.

But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains”

Obviously, these conditions existed well before this analysis and it is so important to understand the assassination within that context as for too long the ruling classes have used the bourgeois state and all its tools from alienation to cultural indoctrination to opposing violence through their police forces to create a reality where the murder of millions is justified, moralised and made almost irrelevant to steal the profits we unnecessarily are forced to create.

It then comes as an eerie “coincidence” that the US government a few days after this fact passed another bill that is so glaring in its understanding of their class war against us, called the Crucial Communism Teaching Act that passed with a bipartisan vote of 327 to 62.

“It’s not a radical idea to say that American values should be taught in American schools. But at a time when nearly a third of Gen Z are in favor of communism, it’s clear that we’re falling short when it comes to educating young people about the history and dangers of that ideology,” said Chairwoman Foxx. “The Crucial Communism Teaching Act is an important step in making sure that the future leaders of our great nation have the tools and knowledge to protect capitalism and freedom for the next generation. I’m grateful to Congresswoman Salazar for lending her first-hand experience and leadership to this vital effort.”

Need I say more. Without much further ado, let’s get into the above.