Coombs All they want is to stick it to the other side, they don't want to do any political work. They moan that they don't have time or energy, but we know that isn't really true.

People have considerable resources to resist everything that's happening but that if anything is cause for optimism. The Nick Land thesis is incorrect: capitalism is not an unstoppable, adaptive and inhumane machine, but a Rube Goldberg job that barely keeps operating.

People simply don't believe in the plans and efforts put before them, and that's not least because left vanguardists would rather refine their judgements than do anything. Which is another reason for anti-politics and the electoral successes of pseudo-fascist clowns.

Coombs The presence of the oligarchical super-rich hoarders of capital is a convenient excuse for people to pretend that nothing can be done.

It's just a descriptive fact about an absurd and historically unprecedented situation.

Coombs People are mean, stupid, and lazy.

And generous, intelligent and hard-working. But it is neither here nor there. People are people and fundamentally similar all over the world.

Coombs This killer isn't a hero

It's not important to me whether he is good or bad. That said, when I read his manifesto and his online output, the seeming broader landscape of thought struck me as conceptually incoherent, while his manifesto seemed comparably inarguable.

What is important is the pragmatics: what killing the CEO of a vast corporation does. So far, I would say it does little more than draw attention to the fact that these officials are just flesh and blood like everyone else. However, that's not nothing.

Captains of industry like Brian Thompson can be murdered as readily as their companies murder the public, and their wealth and privileges can be appropriated as readily as they appropriate the wealth and diminish the lives of others.

It's a banal orthodoxy that post-industrial economies have accepted a huge widening of the gap between the richest and poorest since the 70s at the same time as our labour movements have disintegrated and our parliaments have descended into an unrepresentative, managerialist farce.

Not controversial judgements, just descriptive facts. The system is killing people daily, so why shouldn't they kill it back? Why shouldn't the murder of CEOs be just as "systemic" as the losses of life and freedom inflicted by corporate abuses?

            Burnwinter It's just a descriptive fact about an absurd and historically unprecedented situation.

            can't really say it's unprecedented. We're just not comfortable with the prescription.

                banduan I'm not sure it's really salient, but although we've seen Gilded Ages in the past, I think there are differences this time. One is the fact all this is occurring when the United States and its historical allies represent a power with a slowly but steadily declining influence. Another is that it's occurring in the wake of history's greatest wave so far of economic globalisation.

                  Burnwinter So far, I would say it does little more than draw attention to the fact that these officials are just flesh and blood like everyone else. However, that's not nothing.

                  It is less than nothing. It says that our politics are so impotent and our convictions so weak that our only recourse is to address evil with evil. It's pathetic.

                  Burnwinter Not controversial judgements, just descriptive facts. The system is killing people daily, so why shouldn't they kill it back? Why shouldn't the murder of CEOs be just as "systemic" as the losses of life and freedom inflicted by corporate abuses?

                  These certainly are judgements, not descriptive facts. Nobody killed the system back, it was just a cold blooded murder justified by an incoherent politics. It's easy to be in simple opposition and just start shooting. Easy, lazy, mean, and stupid. Corporate executives are going to further militarize their lives and condense power while all these angry people continue to vote to subsidize it and make memes. It's just a shit situation and nothing about it has any redeeming factor or silver lining.

                  Why shouldn't the murder of CEOs be systemic? What a hopeless question. This is how vanguardism ruined any hope of there ever being a coherent left. Why don't we just roll out the guillotine while we're at it? When do we get an alternative, coherent programme that addresses real political problems? Never, instead we get power thrown back at itself on its own terms, reinforcing our faulty logics and doubling down on the very system that's killing us.

                        JazzG this is like those articles about some random shit being sold on Ebay for a million dollar when it's not even being bought, it's just listed. Okay, some random people on Twitter have written that Kim Kardashian should defend him and they're turning it into an article.

                          Why does Thiel always look like his head is about to explode

                            Coombs It says that our politics are so impotent and our convictions so weak that our only recourse is to address evil with evil. It's pathetic.

                            I don't see it as that. I think this is the kernel of our disagreement. I don't accept your claim "Murder is a bad solution for any problem, in all cases without exception."

                            Material struggle, armed struggle, these are a normal aspect of politics. Always have been. It is how the masses have obtained what they have. The rule of capital today is very violent, even if we are presently discussing only one aspect of this violence.

                            I do not accept any moral equivalence between a random guy with a grievance shooting a CEO, and that same CEO doing a terrible, corrupt and venal job of leading the administration of health insurance to 50 million customers.

                            These are questions of power. Your "evil with evil" reduction can't serve to answer questions about murder across such varying scales: a single assassination versus the anonymous carnage of tens or hundreds of thousands.

                            Coombs Why shouldn't the murder of CEOs be systemic? What a hopeless question. This is how vanguardism ruined any hope of there ever being a coherent left.

                            Are you saying I'm a vanguardist? Don't be silly. It's lost on me why you ratcheted up the hostility in this way, but you are projecting wildly.

                            The point I was making with that rhetorical question: the "systemic" is that which is rendered normal, expected and invisible.

                            If murdering CEOs really did become "systemic", then we would discuss CEO murders with as little day to day interest or moral outrage as we discuss the relentless statistical torments inflicted by the United States health insurance industry.

                            As an example, the Atrium Health debt forgiveness programme has just ended ~11,000 frivolously and viciously pursued medical debts. Despite the timing, this was nothing to do with Luigi Mangione killing Brian Thompson. But the headline by itself explains how much room there is for change here.

                            I would say yes, top level officials in that industry who own the decisions that prevent claims being processed fairly and promptly, and run the campaigns that prevent health care reform in the US, yes they are deserving of death.

                            Coombs When do we get an alternative, coherent programme that addresses real political problems?

                            Let's say hypothetically you were talking about M4A. The first thing you might ask is what the fuck anyone's been doing since it was first debated twenty years ago? And it's still being debated, still to be legislated. I think we can assume whatever political methods that have been pursued in relation to it thus far have not been effective.

                            I remember reading how the United States health system was 50% less efficient than the Australian health system dollar for dollar in the 1990s, almost entirely due to the lack of a universal single payer system such as the one we have.

                            If more generally you want a strong, organised left politics within the US system, you should consider the conditions under which that last came about:

                            1. Strong working class political action based on a demonstrated capacity to disrupt production and profit
                            2. External threats of upheaval (the former USSR)

                            If you think you're going to get it by moaning about the "evil" of ordinary people taking pleasure in the news that a profoundly awful person responsible for terrible things got shot, you're absolutely wrong. That urge to cramp any sort of enjoyment on the left is a huge impediment to solidarity.

                                    https://www.newsweek.com/luigi-mangione-jury-sympathy-former-prosecutor-alvin-bragg-terrorism-new-york-brian-thompson-2002626

                                    Neama Rahmani, who was a federal prosecutor in California, said that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have to be very careful during the jury selection process.

                                    "I've never seen an alleged murderer receive so much sympathy. To many people, Mangione is a hero of sorts," Rahmani said.

                                    Burnwinter If you think you're going to get it by moaning about the "evil" of ordinary people taking pleasure in the news that a profoundly awful person responsible for terrible things got shot, you're absolutely wrong.

                                    I never said taking pleasure in it was evil. I find killing to be generally abhorrent, and I am suspicious of any politics that condones it, let alone asks for or celebrates it. I have reasons for this, and I think they are good ones. Have you seen someone bleed out after a gunshot wound? Whatever comes from that is corrupted, I'm sure of it.

                                    I also don't think that violence has won all that much at all. Whatever has been gained seems like it was in spite of violence, not because of it. The 20th century left was a failure, so I'm not sure why you bring it up as a model. All it did was produce the 21st century.

                                    There are no masses - only ways of seeing people as masses. These ways are always brutal, even if they are justified by a liberatory politics.

                                        Coombs I never said taking pleasure in it was evil. I find killing to be generally abhorrent, and I am suspicious of any politics that condones it, let alone asks for or celebrates it. I have reasons for this, and I think they are good ones. Have you seen someone bleed out after a gunshot wound? Whatever comes from that is corrupted, I'm sure of it.

                                        I've been there when someone was shot. I didn't see the bullet. I didn't get the chance to sit around and watch them bleed out. I'm glad I didn't have to.

                                        Have you been around when someone died from the pain of terminal cancer? Over about a week I witnessed a man get literally flogged to death by pain. This pain had no rational purpose, it wasn't a signal to change his behaviour, it was death pain. It manifested from every point of his body as his organs failed, despite him being on a nearly lethal regime of painkillers.

                                        Deaths like that are what officials like Brian Thompson, and the owners of corporations like UnitedHealthcare should be held accountable for.

                                        To me, you fail to close the gap between your premises "I never said taking pleasure in [murder] was evil" and "I am suspicious of any politics that … celebrates [murder]".

                                        What Rahmani's quote above gets wrong is that people are not "heroising murder". They are enjoying the fact that just for once, as a treat, one of the right people got shot. Any why shouldn't he have? And why shouldn't another of his ilk get shot?

                                        Perhaps the United States can just wait another year, ten years, twenty years for M4A to get legislated?

                                        Coombs I also don't think that violence has won all that much at all. Whatever has been gained seems like it was in spite of violence, not because of it. The 20th century left was a failure, so I'm not sure why you bring it up as a model. All it did was produce the 21st century.

                                        This is neither true, nor tenable in the face of your demands for "a coherent left".

                                        It's the last day of work for an office I'm contracting to in Perth, Western Australia. Everyone in it is about to head off for a 1–2 week break with friends and family that they wouldn't receive were it not for the illegal strikes of 19C Britain.

                                        Violent and illegal actions have always been a vital aspect of resistance to capital, because at its limit capital has always outlawed resistance and met it with violence.

                                        The working class expressing its power to strike is what has eventually led to once-violent industrial action becoming pacified under the aegis of trade union bureaucracy, industrial relations law that legalised strike actions, collective bargaining protocols, and more.

                                        We need not speak about historical movements of revolution or national liberation that depended upon violence, it goes without saying there have been many of them.

                                        Coombs There are no masses - only ways of seeing people as masses.

                                        Under capitalism, there are no people, only ways of seeing workers as people.

                                                Coombs fully have this perspective I don't support anyone being murdered whatever beliefs they hold and I agree I don't think anything good comes from these actions. Would also say that in my view if you cross the threshold of saying that an individual or group are fair game to be murdered then you've fully compromised any stance you might hold.

                                                If you condone those types of actions you have legitimised murder as a tool to get what you want and how ever horrible another ideology may be you can't really credibly oppose their actions by saying subjectively they shouldn't kill those people because you don't agree with they are "the right targets" not to mention taking such a view you stop seeing them as human beings with family and friends probably nothing to do with whatever cause that is being "fought for" all impacted adversely by such actions and also judged as legitimate to have inflicted on them without any consideration.

                                                    awooga83 If you condone those types of actions you have legitimised murder as a tool to get what you want

                                                    A lack of access to health care is implicated in tens of thousands of deaths in the US every year. In that country a form of single payer health insurance that would be considered inadequate where I live has been debated by politicians since at least the early 00s, without ever being legislated.

                                                    The question is why these deaths are legitimised as a tool of profit, while the death of one profiteer must be solemnly decried as a moral transgression?

                                                        Burnwinter The question is why these deaths are legitimised as a tool of profit, while the death of one profiteer must be solemnly decried as a moral transgression?

                                                        We're making entirely different arguments on different grounds, I think. I don't think this is how my position extrapolates (I know you aren't replying to me here, but it seems to be the kernel of the thing). It's not about whether one action is more good than the other. I am not making this kind of "scales of justice" argument. If you stack it up, you're absolutely right, but I don't see any value, purpose, or benefit to stacking them up.

                                                        Burnwinter I've been there when someone was shot. I didn't see the bullet. I didn't get the chance to sit around and watch them bleed out. I'm glad I didn't have to.

                                                        Have you been around when someone died from the pain of terminal cancer? Over about a week I witnessed a man get literally flogged to death by pain. This pain had no rational purpose, it wasn't a signal to change his behaviour, it was death pain. It manifested from every point of his body as his organs failed, despite him being on a nearly lethal regime of painkillers.

                                                        I have had the misfortune to witness both of these. I sat next to my mother as she died of breast cancer that moved into her abdomen and literally ate her from the inside. It was a slow, tormenting death for which we paid very dearly (her insurance costs were at almost $900/month and we even did the pathetic GoFundMe thing, but nobody showed up and most of the measly $3k we raised was from my own bank account). I also sat with a stranger as she bled out who was shot twice in the throat right in front of me on the street. I was 15 and it still haunts me.

                                                        My mother and her siblings (almost all of them have, had, or died from cancer) as well as my father who currently has prostate and bladder cancer, continue to viciously and vehemently vote against candidates that support M4A due to issues like abortion, immigration, and LGBTQ+ rights. They don't even want M4A! They hate the idea that anyone who is not like them would get free health care more than they love the idea of getting it themselves. Despite this cruel and perverse system ravaging them physically and financially year on year, over and over again, they continue to vote for it with the kind of fervor only hatred inspires. They brag about it. They even laugh about it. One Christmas, my uncle screamed in my face and did Hitler salutes at me in that same room where my mother died, but a few years earlier, when the Affordable Care Act was phased in, and my mother agreed with him even as she was struggling with her diagnosis and mounting medical bills.

                                                        The answer to your question, even though it isn't really the question I would ask, is this: the people voted for one, and not the other. We can blame capitalism all we want, but it's too often just a way of absolving us from our own complicity. The workers will celebrate when the ACA is overturned in this country, and they would have made it happen. It's actually quite condescending when people forgive them and say they know not what they do. They know.