I know Engels coined the term in Conditions of the Working Class but I guess I'm wondering if anyone can recommend a good essay or expansion on the concept.

I feel like it's such a powerful concept with a ton of revolutionary potential but I feel like I don't see or hear many people use it. I've been thinking about it a lot since the US election.

  • Wertheimer [any]
    ·
    13 days ago

    Here's a paper:

    In 1845, Friedrich Engels identified how the living and working conditions experienced by English workers sent them prematurely to the grave, arguing that those responsible for these conditions -- ruling authorities and the bourgeoisie -- were committing social murder. The concept remained, for the most part, dormant in academic journals through the 1900s. Since 2000, there has been a revival of the social murder concept with its growth especially evident in the UK over the last decade as a result of the Grenfell Tower Fire and the effects of austerity imposed by successive Conservative governments. The purpose of this paper is to document the reemergence of the concept of social murder in academic journal articles. To do so we conducted a scoping review of content applying the social murder concept since 1900 in relation to health and well-being.

    ...

    The two most immediate stimuli for the return of the concept were the 2018 UK documentary Grenfell Tower and Social Murder and the 2019 academic article by UK academic Chris Grover Violent Proletarianization: Social Murder, the Reserve Army of Labour and Social Security ‘Austerity’ in Britain. The latter two received wide coverage in the UK mainstream media and stimulated its use in social media in the UK and elsewhere.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953621007097 , which only gives snippets but maybe the bibliography will help.