___STEADY_PAYWALL___ Last December the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson sent the internet into a frenzy.  The 50 year old was gunned down in the early hours on the way to a meeting. Bullets were later found with the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose”. The Associated Press noted that these words are often used by critics of the insurance industry, arguing that these are the tactics companies use to avoid payouts. As a blurry CCTV image of the alleged assailant circulated social media, users expressed glee at Thompson’s killing. A Facebook post from UnitedHealthcare memorialising the company’s friend and colleague received over 90’000 laughing emoji responses. Eventually, the prime suspect, then 26 year old, Luigi Mangione was captured and indicted on federal charges of murder, firearms offences and stalking. Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty and Mangione has plead not guilty. 

The celebration of Thompson’s execution points to a wider societal understanding of how capitalists thrive specifically because of the suffering they impose on workers. In 1845 German philosopher Friedrich Engels published a text called The Condition of the Working Class in England. In it, the lifelong friend and collaborator of Karl Marx coined the term “social murder” accusing capitalists of creating a society that relied on the illness, suffering and death of the most vulnerable to sustain their own personal wealth. To give a modern day example: imagine a country that doesn’t provide free care at the point of access, forces people to pay insurance tariffs, then finds spurious reasons to deny them healthcare. Only to use that money to give their executives high salaries and bonuses. In the wake of Thompson’s killing social media was awash with personal stories of people who had lost their loved ones due to them being denied healthcare. Whilst the U.S. is far from Marxist leaning, the celebration of Thompson’s killing suggests that people understand the commercialisation of human rights (like healthcare) is a bad thing.

The ramifications of private healthcare in the U.S. are thankfully not holistically mirrored in the U.K. Even so, the NHS is a shell of its former self after 14 years of Tory austerity. Former Prime Minister David Cameron and former chancellor George Osbourne began a string of successive campaigns of austerity under consecutive Tory governments. People dying because of companies like UnitedHealthcare flat out denying healthcare is easy to understand. The preventable deaths created by Tory austerity are less blatant, but equally concrete. In 2019 a study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that over 130’000 deaths could have been avoided if improvements to public health policy were not halted due to austerity cuts. The study goes on to outline how treatments of preventable diseases were made impossible due to budget cuts to local councils. Put simply: underfunding healthcare, limiting access to sports and making it unaffordable to sustain a healthy diet will inevitably kill people.

Another human right that has been commodified under capitalism is shelter. In his text 1845 text Engles writes “The working-man is constrained to occupy such ruinous dwellings because he cannot pay for others, and because there are no others in the vicinity of his mill; perhaps, too, because they belong to the employer”. He goes on to outline the police’s inability to protect the interests of workers being subjected to substandard housing writing “Police regulations have been plentiful as blackberries; but they can only hedge in the distress of the workers, they cannot remove it”. One of the most harrowing tragedies in modern Britain was the fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower. The flammable cladding that heavily contributed to the quick spread of the fire, which claimed a recorded 72 lives, was chosen for its cost effectiveness. This is despite failing numerous fire safety tests. The fire took place in 2017 and 8 years later no criminal prosecutions have taken place. When we consider social murder as a concept, Grenfell Tower is a glaring contemporary example. Innocent people died because it wasn’t deemed cost effective to ensure their safety. But the causality between business decisions and their deaths isn’t recognised by our legal system, because it isn’t designed to protect the interests of normal people. By contrast, in 2022 when protestors held a demonstration in protest of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at an empty London mansion owned by Oleg Deripaska (a Russian oligarch and friend of Vladimir Putin) police showed up with 10 riot vans, a crane to enter the property and made 8 arrests on the same day. This is because our legal system is designed to protect private property. 

Based on election results its fair to assume that if you asked the average British or North American voter how they feel about Marxism, Engels, socialism or communism they would not respond positively. I would also imagine if you asked the same people how they felt about people dying of preventable diseases because they couldn’t afford health insurance or Grenfell Tower they would accept these are bad outcomes. There is a gap between academic theory and how we discuss current political issues. This is intentional. Poor education funding, limited curriculums and high university fees keep people away from information that would benefit them. At the very least we should acknowledge that there are more ways to be responsible for killing someone than pulling a trigger and question who it serves to benefit that our systems of governance do not acknowledge that. 

Article by Martyn Ewoma