this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
975 points (99.0% liked)
People Twitter
5391 readers
1262 users here now
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a tweet or similar
- No bullying or international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
- Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury 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 necessities of life, places them in 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.
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?