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Unnatural death caused by social, political, or economic factors
Social murder (German: sozialer Mord) is a concept used to describe an unnatural death that is believed to occur due to social, political, or economic oppression, instead of direct violence. Originally coined in 1845 by German philosopher Friedrich Engels, it has since been used by left-wing politicians, journalists and activists to describe deaths they attribute to larger social forces.
Background
The term "social murder" was first introduced by Friedrich Engels in his 1845 work The Condition of the Working-Class in England with regard to the English city of Manchester in the Victorian era. Engels used the term after describing how societal conditions such as poverty, poor housing, and dangerous working conditions have resulted in avoidable excess mortality among the working class. He also argued that those conditions were the results of inherent exploitation and pursuit of profit under the capitalist system. In his opinion, at fault was "the class which at present holds social and political control" (i.e. the bourgeoisie), who placed hundreds of proletarians in a position where they inevitably met an early and unnatural death. According to Engels, this type of death was in a different category to murder and manslaughter committed by individuals against one another, as social murder explicitly was committed by the political and social elite against the poorest in society.[1]
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.[1]
History
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In the 21st century, the term social murder reemerged in response to growing social and health inequalities seen around the world.[2] For example, British Politician John McDonnell used the term to describe Conservative economic policy as well as events such as the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire.[3][4][5] York University professor Dennis Raphael used it to describe Conservative public policy in Ontario, Canada.[6]
Canadian economists Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson of the University of Manitoba used the term to refer to conservative economics in their book Social Murder: And Other Shortcomings of Conservative Economics released in 2007.
An article published in Critical Social Policy in 2018, sociologist Chris Grover of Lancaster University writes that social security austerity in Great Britain, which imposes hardships on the mental and physical well-being of working class people, has resulted in "social murder" with increases in suicides, deaths from malnutrition and people dying on the streets.[7][8] In 2021, the BMJ executive editor Kamran Abbasi used the term to describe governmental policy which he proposed had failed to control the COVID-19 pandemic.[9]
Author and journalist Chris Hedges claims "ruling elites" are the "architects of social murder" by accelerating ecological collapse and climate change:
What is taking place is not neglect. It is not ineptitude. It is not policy failure. It is murder. It is murder because it is premeditated. It is murder because a conscious choice was made by the global ruling classes to extinguish life rather than protect it. It is murder because profit, despite the hard statistics, the growing climate disruptions and the scientific modeling, is deemed more important than human life and human survival.[10]
In the United Kingdom, consistent cuts of healthcare and public services spending, together with a push towards privatized jobs with poor conditions, are argued to be the same kind of consequences that Engels saw in the 1840s.[11]
After the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, an opinion piece by New York Intelligencer argued that the company's policies and practices related to denying coverage for essential medical treatments fall under the concept of social murder, also noting that it could have potentially contributed as a motive for the attack. As they put it in their piece, "UnitedHealthcare does not pull a trigger and shoot its victims in the street. Instead, they suffer and may die of cancer, or of heart disease, or of some other treatable condition".[13]
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