Ah, I see you’ve found Engels’s description of Social Murder
The fundamental problem you have with this concept is that it runs headlong into the Americanized theory of Individualist Personal Responsibility. If you are being Socially Murdered you should simply… not be. “Don’t be a victim” is what you’ll be told. The public response to this must necessarily be some form of economic austerity - belt tightening, better personal habits, improved economic education, stronger (protestant) work ethic, and a greater degree of deference to your patriarchal superiors.
If you argue otherwise, you will be presented with an orgy of “evidence” that it is - in fact - the individual who is responsible for their own harm. Bum fights videos, thousand word articles about welfare cheats and secretly wealthy vagrants, drug abuse statistics, cartoon caricatures of miserable or stupid working class people, macro-econ statistics asserting there’s simply not enough to go around for everyone, testimonials from executives and administrators detailing the disreputable conduct of their inferiors, a broad condemnation of “the culture” (music, movies, and other media) that is indicted for its glamorization of poverty. And, of course, the ever-present specter of Communism, which poisons the minds of the proletariat against their best interests and always leads to mass starvation, disease epidemics, civil war, and an authoritarian military intent on slaughtering the hard working to appease the appetites of the degenerate left.
How do you break the siren’s song of libertarianism and galvanize the public at-large (even within your immediate neighborhood) into a single cohesive social movement without the benefit of a multi-billion dollar 24/7/365 propaganda stream that modern capital has built for itself?
Even Luigi Mangione himself was pilled on this shit. In an era of Neoliberal-on-Neoliberal violence, where Dark Enlightenment Longtermist techbros decide to go ham on their corporate seniors, what kind of purchase does an idea like Social Murder have on a public convinced they’re the wronged exception to a righteous rule?
“Social murder” is a term coined by Friedrich Engels in 1845 and used to describe murder committed by the political and social elite where they knowingly permit conditions to exist where the poorest and most vulnerable in society are deprived of the necessities of life and are placed in a position in which they cannot reasonably be expected to live and will inevitably meet an early and unnatural death.
One of the core tenants of neoliberal education is that violence is always wrong, it’s never the answer, etc. They repeat it so often and in so many places because it’s at obvious odds with the state. They use violence against us so often and on such wide scales that their only option is to convince that it’s not violence.
Over producing with limited resources is violence. Throwing away food while people starve is violence. Leaving buildings empty while people die of the cold on the street is violence. Preventing the sick and dying from accessing healthcare is violence. Evicting people from their homes is violence. Depriving the chronically ill and physically disabled of the means of survival because they can’t generate capital for capitalists is violence. Climate change is violence.
The truth is that they deeply fear what we would do if we actually recognized all those things as violence. They do literally everything in their power to prevent us from achieving class consciousness. They have infected literally every single facet of society in an effort to keep us from seeing each other as human.
Do you really think that the ones who make the rules will pass rules that may put then in jail?
That’s the crux. The rule has to come from the common people for this to work.
But the majority of common people vote against it or don’t believe in democracy to start with. Honestly a real conundrum.
or don’t believe in democracy to start with
I seriously have no idea where this started. For the vast majority of my life democracy was something that everyone fiercely believed in, and would die to protect. Then completely out of the blue people’s attitudes started radically changing. Much of it must be astroturfing.
Also the Nazis did the olocaust with an order (the final solution, they called it), and most just followed it blindly. Always raise questions! Never stop thinking for yourself!
