Social murder should become widely recognized in the United States, the country where social and economic structures produce hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths each year. For a nation that presents itself as the world’s leading bastion of freedom, goodness, and human rights, recognizing, naming, and rejecting these ongoing forms of social murder is a necessary moral imperative for any people who would call themselves free.
Even using very conservative public-health estimates, and even without counting all forms of preventable harm, the United States experiences on the order of 170,000 to 245,000 deaths annually directly attributable to social neglect and deprivation rather than inevitability.
These preventable deaths cannot be dismissed as inevitable class differences and lifestyle choice differences – no, these deaths are a direct result of the lack of love in the late-stage capitalistic phase the U.S. is currently in. We are in the stage of capitalism where imperialism becomes the focus – while its own citizens suffer and die needlessly. It is the phase where profit preservation requires force, restraint disappears, and raw power becomes the system’s final operating logic. This is when we, the American people, see how power behaves when profit extraction replaces all other social goals.
I began thinking about writing about the fact that social murder is complacently accepted by most Americans – not just those in government – after viewing a sad video regarding the loss of life in Alaska every winter due to hypothermia and homelessness. Of course, this tragic phenomenon is not isolated to Alaska. Every winter, people across the United States die from cold exposure because they lack adequate shelter and heat. Anyone who has seen recent footage documenting winter exposure and homelessness in American cities knows these deaths are happening — and many who live in those cities know it firsthand.
Approximately 1,000–1,500 Americans die each year from hypothermia or direct cold exposure, and when deaths in which cold is a contributing factor are included — such as winter-triggered cardiovascular and respiratory deaths — winter-related mortality in the United States reaches several thousand annually. These are preventable deaths, fully attributable to inadequate housing, heating, and protection from exposure.
Such death from the cold occurs nationwide in winter – and yet this country calls itself such phrases as: the beacon of freedom, leader of the free world, champion of human rights, focusing on words such as freedom and democracy. Yet this is the “civilized” country that fails its people – not to mention the suffering and death it inflicts on millions worldwide as policy. Furthermore, deaths from the cold are only one of the ways the nation murders its own.
SOCIAL MURDER DEFINED
“Social murder” is a term introduced by Friedrich Engels, a 19th-century German social theorist and industrial analyst, to describe deaths caused by systemic social conditions rather than individual action. The term accurately describes situations in which social, economic, and political structures systematically place large numbers of people in conditions that predictably shorten their lives or lead to premature death.
In The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), Engels wrote, “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 [working people deprived of basic security] 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.”
Social murder occurs when a society permits preventable conditions of premature death despite having the means to prevent them. And the number of such murders in the United States annually is astounding – deaths few give any thought to until it affects themselves or those they care about. Sadly, caring about unknown human beings seems distant from most Americans’ hearts, while caring about supporting and defending the very system that harms people appears far more important.
THE MONEY IS THERE, THE WILL IS NOT
This is not murder in the conventional sense of direct physical violence, but it is no less grave: it describes deaths that are foreseeable, preventable, and knowingly produced by social systems that choose to allow lethal conditions to persist.
I reiterate, the United States experiences on the order of 170,000 to 245,000 deaths annually directly attributable to social neglect and deprivation rather than inevitability.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES
Consider, for example, over five years, this amounts to 850,000 to 1.23 million deaths in the United States. (I conservatively calculated this number from established public-health research on deaths attributable to social and economic deprivation rather than unavoidable medical causes.) To have prevented this through housing, intervention programs, food provision, medical care, etc. would have cost about $800 billion to $1 trillion over five years. That amount, saving a million lives of Americans is less than one year of Pentagon spending – or only about 15-20% of the $5.3–$5.9 trillion the U.S. actually spent on military, intelligence, and overseas intervention in the same period.
So, in those same five years, while the United States spent billions in its desperate attempt to maintain its evil hegemony through military bases, proxy wars, CIA operations etc., about a million people needlessly died in the United States due to lack of provision of basic necessities. To have spent a fraction of what the US spends on warmongering and regime change would have saved these people.
WHY MOST AMERICANS ARE AT RISK
In the United States, many (if not most) are closer than they think to experiencing such tragedy. With many Americans living month to month, roughly 45–55% of U.S. households are vulnerable to serious financial collapse if they experience a major shock — such as job loss, illness, rent increase, or loss of health insurance. It is this percentage from which many of those currently homeless came from.
All the while, the “representatives” of these people, the so-called “leaders,” in the United States are safely kept from such catastrophic events. A defining feature of the U.S. system is that many in the governing class are not subject to the same exposure to economic and health shocks faced by a large share of the population. They are insulated from job loss, medical bankruptcy, housing insecurity, and loss of healthcare.
And yet, strangely, the American people rally around them, jumping between the two controlling political parties, blinded to the obvious. Whatever personal beliefs individual lawmakers may hold, congressional decision-making in the United States is not governed by a consistent moral evaluation of right and wrong. As an institution, Congress operates according to what is economically and politically profitable within an imperial system—prioritizing the preservation of power, capital, and global dominance over the preservation of human life.
Both parties simply grab on to different stances to keep the people supporting them – but both agree on one thing: U.S. hegemony. Both remain broadly aligned on the preservation of U.S. global dominance, which translates to the oppression of people around the world if it provides benefits of power/money. Within this framework, decisions are not primarily evaluated on moral grounds of right and wrong, but on whether they sustain power, capital accumulation, and geopolitical advantage. This enables the ruling class, a tiny percentage of Americans, to profit from the suffering and death its military and intelligence operations cause worldwide. (Recent examples: the continued allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine and Israel—expenditures driven by the pursuit of power, strategic dominance, and geopolitical control rather than by a commitment to human life or righteousness.)
Simultaneously, while the US government allocates those trillions in discretionary funds to military and overseas power projection, it does not prevent mass domestic deprivation and death at home.
The U.S. is in a state of disintegration, and while some of you wave the flag and campaign for your next oppressor, you will begin to soon suffer more than you ever have before. Living in the delusion of being in a free society will keep you imprisoned – recognizing that the society around you is spiritually crazy and void of love for humanity – can save you… save you from supporting the very tyranny which doesn’t care if you live or die, and perhaps refocus you on what really matters – preparing yourself for the worst and caring for others.
American society can barely be called a “society” any longer. The homelessness, food deprivation, lack of adequate health and medical care and the closeness of so many Americans to losing everything they worked for all their lives shows a nation in serious degradation. The divisiveness which fuels most Americans to choose a political party based on one or more matters which are purposefully used to gain their support (distracting them from their own deprivation) has made a society where unity among the working class is not present. When social cohesion breaks down like this and basic needs are unmet, crime and drug use increase as a consequence of instability — not as a justified response, but as a predictable outcome of systemic failure… and society falls deeper into the chasm of no return.
THE ILLUSION OF CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION
For those of you (of which I was once one) who cling to the US Constitution as your hope – face reality. The Constitution has no functional authority over the US government. In practice, the U.S. Constitution has not meaningfully restrained military intervention. Since World War II, the United States has repeatedly engaged in major wars, prolonged military occupations, regime-change operations, and sustained bombing campaigns without formal declarations of war by Congress, often relying instead on executive authority, emergency rationales, or broadly interpreted authorizations. This pattern demonstrates that constitutional limits on the use of force have functioned inconsistently, if at all, as binding restraints on U.S. military power.
The Constitution and International Law are routinely violated – this is what the US has become. It has no internal restrictions. Going to those in government and aligned private sectors who profit from sustained military and overseas spending is like going to the wolves to guard the sheep. The Constitution consists of words – rarely implemented, and its existence has failed to contain the government for which it was written. Disgustingly, the United States will do anything to maintain its evil hegemony – including letting its own people suffer and die so that a small percentage of individuals financially benefit.
While you work hard to provide for yourself and your family, you are giving up precious hours of life simply to survive – and most of you will never thrive. But as a human being, as one created in the image of God, you should be thriving – not merely surviving.
Most Americans would have far more security living in most other countries of the world than the U.S. Most countries in the world — including many far poorer than the United States — have social arrangements that reduce the risk of total household collapse from a single variable such as illness, job loss, or housing disruption. Here we suffer from a lack of social cohesion (indeed, our society is more divided than ever with the divisiveness on relatively trivial matters as compared to the important ones of housing, medical care, and other necessities). If the majority of Americans began focusing on the provision of life-sustaining needs, it theoretically could become the driving force to change this society where millions needlessly currently struggle, suffer and die.
WHY THE SYSTEM PERSISTS
Yet, I have no optimism this will happen – at least not anytime relatively soon. Why? Because the problems facing us, the very problems which lead to the completely preventable deaths of thousands of our people every year, emanate from the vast majority of working Americans who themselves have accepted greed as a top priority for their life. Even if they have little of monetary value, greed still motivates them and controls their character.
Multiple national surveys I reviewed consistently showed that a majority of Americans equate cultural success with money and accumulation, with consumerism, materialism, greed, and selfishness increasingly dominating—or replacing—previously esteemed values such as family, responsibility, and community. Family, community involvement, and civic responsibility were once ranked above wealth and material success as indicators of a good life. The pursuit of possessions is often motivated less by genuine need than by the desire to keep up with or outdo others.
Labor and compensation offer everyday examples of how Americans prioritize money over humanity. For many, the “going rate” becomes the moral ceiling for what they pay someone, rather than what they can reasonably and comfortably afford for another person’s labor or service. Likewise, charging the maximum the market will bear—especially for essential goods or services—rather than being content with fair compensation illustrates how this evil value system has become embedded in the American psyche. In these ordinary transactions, profit is treated as the primary obligation, while love for others is relegated very low if at all considered.
At the same time, economic data reveal that the top 10% of Americans now account for nearly half of all consumer spending — a small minority that drives consumption while the majority of Americans live far below that level of economic capacity, often struggling to meet basic needs despite being surrounded by a culture that equates consumption with success.
Formal education is frequently treated as evidence of social health and progress, yet in the United States it often produces debt, conformity, and credentialism while failing to provide material security, moral strength, or protection against hunger, homelessness, illness, and collapse. Education that leaves people struggling month to month and one medical bill, job loss, or rent increase away from ruin cannot credibly be cited as progress. A society in which people are formally educated yet remain structurally vulnerable to collapse is neither truly educated nor functional.
The now virtually unrestrained capitalism seen in the U.S. is an economic system in which profit and private accumulation are treated as primary goals by nearly everyone. It functions less as a neutral market mechanism and more so as the moral framework – a framework which normalizes greed, and measures success by personal wealth rather than collective well-being or social health. Consumerism sadly defines most Americans.
In this manner, the United States is unusual among most nations. In most economically comparable countries, at least two of the following are guaranteed: healthcare, housing, food, insurance, and other essentials such as child and elder care, unemployment/housing/utilities protections, etc. Even if only two are always present, it can keep a household from collapse. In other countries, misfortune in one month doesn’t become a loss of all much less a literal potential fatal blow.
At the personal level, confronting social murder requires detachment from the morally bankrupt system. Continued faith in a political duopoly that reproduces the same outcomes, regardless of rhetoric or party, guarantees only repetition of harm. The cycle persists because attention, hope, and moral energy are continually reinvested into systems structurally incapable of reforming themselves.
WITHDRAWING MORAL CONSENT
Despite the despair that surrounds us, confronting social murder ultimately demands moral clarity at the individual level. To step away from this illusion is not apathy, but discernment. Real change does not begin with choosing between two options that differ in rhetoric yet are equally harmful in outcome; it begins with withdrawing moral consent from systems that normalize preventable suffering. It requires questioning the very premise on which the society around you is built. A society cannot be healed by endlessly rearranging its politicians while preserving the hateful structures and policies that produce social murder.
When political and economic systems knowingly generate mass preventable death, continued participation in their rituals, spectacles, and partisan performances does not resist that harm — it sustains it. In a society structured around acceptance of social murder, socially encouraged patriotism, partisan loyalty, and endless political argument do not counter that violence; they divert time, attention, emotional energy, and material resources away from preserving life itself.
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
— Jesus Christ, Gospel of Matthew 25:40 (King James Version)
It is time to recognize that the destructive and murderous foreign policy of the United States is directly related—spiritually and economically—to the domestic decay of the nation itself. Murder abroad and social murder at home arise from the same spiritually corrupt premise on which American society is built: the elevation of profit and power as the ultimate measures of progress. Loyalty to the sanctity of human life must come before loyalty to any system. A society that accepts social murder cannot be redeemed by participation, only by refusal.
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