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.
Friedrich Engels, The Conditions of the Working Class in England
Every year, around 1,330 people are killed by the purposeful neglect of the capitalist state in the richest and most powerful of the Western capitalist countries, where we are told resources are the most plentiful. These 1,330 people — some years more, some years less — are left to freeze to death. Over the 2022 holiday weekend in December, a killing winter storm swept across North America. The death toll currently stands at or above 60 individuals, more than half of them in upstate New York. Power across the worst-affected regions exacerbated the effects of the storm. At its height, the storm left 1.2 million homes and businesses without power. Two-thirds of the U.S. population were under winter warnings or advisories. Overnight temperatures were as low as 9 degrees below zero, and that’s before accounting for wind chill. As always, it is those with the fewest resources and least able to deal with a dire event like this that were most affected.
The U.S. imperialist news turned the storm into a spectacle of horror, but not once was a serious attempt made by the federal government to reduce the impact of the storm on the unhoused or those who could not afford their power bills. No, indeed, in places like Connecticut, electricity and heating prices are set to spike on 1 January. But we must not lie to ourselves: the deaths that came after this storm are no different than the deaths that follow every major weather event in the U.S. Empire. This isn’t an outlier; this is the status quo. It is accepted and expected that thousands of unhoused persons and lower-income members of the working class will die whenever a seasonal weather disturbance hits the country. Meanwhile, COVID is still killing hundreds and sometimes thousands of people every day, and the capitalist government has completely given up the pretense of trying to combat it.
Every last one of these deaths is directly attributable to the iron laws of capitalism: the private ownership and control of economic production and the exploitation of billions of workers by and for the profit of a small class of capitalists. The capitalist state takes great pains to preserve the private property and hoarded wealth of the opulent capitalists, while it lets those who have the least — the workers, the unemployed, the elderly and disabled poor, the unhoused — suffer and die with little more than a shrug and a few misery-porn stories in the capitalist media. When, for instance, the stock market begins to crash, like it did in 2020, or when the “too big to fail” capitalist institutions of the country crumble under their own weight, like they did in 2008, the state is always ready to lend a helping hand. Oh, I’m sorry, did your value-per-share drop? Here comes the state to make up the difference. Oh my, did your rampant speculation destroy your company and other big banks like it? Well, here is a prop and a taxpayer-funded loan to help keep it afloat. “Too big to fail” was the phrase they used, and too big to fail is what they mean: the wealthy are the state. For the capitalist, society exists only to service and protect those of means. There is a corollary to “too big to fail” — “too small to care.” The lives of the working people are meaningless to the capitalist state. Let ten, let one hundred, let two thousand die each day — of what concern is it to Washington or Wall Street?
But COVID and this latest winter storm are hardly the beginning or the end of the weather catastrophes that struck the beleaguered working class of the U.S. Empire this year. 83 tornadoes struck the U.S. South. Hurricane Ian blasted Florida and killed more than 125 people. Nearly 7.5 million acres burned in wildfires. The drought in the U.S. West continues unabated, even as new data centers and chip-building facilities that threaten to use the last remnants of the Colorado River reserves are being constructed or opened.
These are not isolated events. This is the result of a regime that thrives on, relies on, and profits from social murder. The capitalists that run the U.S. Empire don’t care what happens to the environment. The only thing they care about — the only thing they’re capable of caring about — is lining their own pockets. If that means the planet’s ecosphere dies, they’re willing to kill it. If it means thousands and hundreds of thousands of working class people die, they’re ready to commit social mass-murder. Oh, how they’ll cry for us on television, but don’t think for a moment that they aren’t laughing as soon as the cameras are off… and all the way to the bank.
Since the advent of capitalism itself, the ruling class have used natural disasters, cold, and hunger as weapons against the working people. Today, they want you to know that unless you take their minimum wage job, you will freeze to death in the snow — freeze to death in incredible storms created by their own greed. That is the legacy of the U.S. Empire and its capitalist masters: a world ruined by rapacious, never-ending greed, and lives thrown away into the frigid winter they themselves have brought.
Well said, comrade.