Death and Justice in Capitalism

“Only the poor break laws – the rich evade them.” – T‑Bone Slim

This newspaper often carries articles involving death. This has especially been the case in the past year-and-a-half, as nearly four million workers died prematurely and unnecessarily across the globe, and life expectancy dropped in even the wealthiest countries. This issue is no exception: we describe the murder of our fellow militant Adil Belakhdim in Italy, the building collapse in Florida has left at least 24 dead and dozens more missing, the heatwave that killed hundreds of people in the Pacific Northwest of North America, the brutal conditions that kill prisoners in Italy and around the world, and the massive number of Covid casualties in Brazil.

We would prefer not to fill the pages of our newspaper with these sad stories, and in our communist future we will write about happier things. But the present bloodbath is the worst expression of the criminal dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Every one of the deaths mentioned above is a homicide, either through intent or through neglect. The perpetrators make no attempts to hide their identities, their whereabouts, or their guilt. But the police will never arrest them, and the law will never hold them accountable, because the capitalist state is nothing other than an instrument for the bourgeoisie to oppress the proletariat.

Common criminals go to great lengths to conceal their activities from the state. The bourgeoisie, by contrast, openly brag about who they are and what harm they do. They attend glamorous parties to compare notes on the best way to extract surplus value from the proletariat’s labor. They buy luxury homes in the most desirable neighborhoods. They sit for TV interviews and write opinion pieces for the bourgeois press. Every public company is required to identify its executives and board members.

Yet these people remain at‑large. Everybody knows that oil companies have fought all attempts to reduce carbon emissions, but will this government arrest the board of directors of ExxonMobil for the deaths caused by the recent heatwave? Will it charge the owners of the Lidl supermarket chain with terrorism because they murdered Adil Belakhdim? No! Those charges are only for the proletariat. The members of the bourgeoisie are not subjected to such things. When a few of them occasionally get busted, as happened with the Enron and Madoff scandals, it is for ripping off other members of their own class, not for what they all do to the proletariat.

That the bourgeoisie still feel comfortable showing their faces in public demonstrates that they are the law in the present state. Only the communist revolution can make them answer for their crimes.