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.

                        That last point is where my thoughts are as well Coombs . I agree on the the point about not arguing one side is good. But ultimately the political system as voted by the people has allowed that to be the case and decent numbers vote for the groups that are against it. As you said I'm very much a believer in people need to be more accountable there is so much information available to ordinary people to understand these issues and choose to engage and like you said I think too often it's well you can't blame them or I never knew that would be the case.

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

                          We aren't waiting, because we don't actually want it. See my previous post. Better to focus our energies on state-level medicaid for all concepts or similar, just like marijuana legalization. National-level entertainment politics, the Trump soap opera, CEO assassinations, etc. aren't worth it.

                          Burnwinter 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.

                          Or, capital has always required violent resistance to justify its violent oppression.

                          Burnwinter 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.

                          You know how bourgeois this sounds, right? You don't get these kinds of benefits when you're poor. You just keep working. Workers' movements are a product of capitalism, not its antithesis. I think they are worthwhile, noble, and can sometimes help in certain circumstances, but the jobs they relate to are quickly fading. They also reinscribe the power of capital at every turn.

                          I helped on a campaign to pass a law that would allow public employees to collectively bargain in Colorado (it's illegal under state law), and when it finally got to the governor's office it was stripped down so much that I myself and everyone who worked on the bill was excluded! I still pay union dues, but it's basically lighting money on fire at this point.

                          Uprising, demands, revolution, I'm just not interested. Working small, making improvements, helping people face-to-face, this is what feels right to me in the face of all this hell. Think local, act local, change culture, and avoid platform/social media at all costs.

                          EDIT: I'm probably wrong about all of this, but this is the only way I have found to survive. The years of misery and death have certainly taken their toll. I just can't get any positive emotion out of some guy killing a baddie on the street, I only feel sad.

                                  Coombs You know how bourgeois this sounds, right? You don't get these kinds of benefits when you're poor.

                                  Working for an hourly rate in an office that provides an ergonomic chair, then going on a fortnight's leave at Christmas is not "bourgeois". It's just being a worker, and enjoying benefits of historical campaigns of the labour movement here, most of which occurred during the twentieth century and all. The benefits you are saying don't exist or something?

                                  That the labour force in Australia consists more and more of workers who don't have these sorts of protections, full time workers on part time contracts, gig workers, casuals who don't get superannuation paid? That's part and parcel of the dispersal and decline of militant left wing politics that has attended economic globalisation and the steady deindustrialisation of countries such as both the US and Australia. There's nothing controversial about what I'm saying.

                                  I'll respond to the rest later whatever it was, been out for a film now I'm turning in.

                                      Burnwinter There's nothing controversial about what I'm saying.

                                      Certainly not. Indeed, I am aware that my own takes are generally considered to be bad ones, both on the left and otherwise, especially when it comes to politics at-scale. My pacificism drives many of my comrades nuts. The idea that you have to stop fighting to win is not particularly intuitive, and may be downright irresponsible, but I'm feeling more sure of it the older I get. I'm also finding it harder and harder to have any real sympathy for my country folk, and my response is to just accept them as they are and expect nothing from them.

                                        Coombs Or, capital has always required violent resistance to justify its violent oppression.

                                        I've seen far too many peaceful protests crushed by violent oppression to agree with that.

                                        Coombs You know how bourgeois this sounds, right? You don't get these kinds of benefits when you're poor.

                                        There are loads of working class people who get Christmas holidays. Arguing they are the bourgeoisie just seems like you don't want workers to have a holidays, which I know you don't actually believe. Getting these small concessions doesn't make someone bourgeois.

                                              Qwiss There are loads of working class people who get Christmas holidays.

                                              2 weeks off is crazy long. No poor person can afford that, not one, unless the plan is to stay poor. My father often worked part of Christmas day and got the afternoon off. Countless billions do not get this benefit, even those who are paid decent/living wages. I think there is a disconnect in our experience and understanding. You're talking about some employer who gives time off, but many people don't even have an employer to ask for such a thing. When you're earnings are different every day because you're hustling one gig to the next, there is no time off. Just time you don't get paid for the time you don't work.

                                              Getting a paid, genuine, 2 weeks of actual vacation is not normal in my experience. But that's not the bougie part. I think it sounds bougie to use the fact that someone gets that benefit as a great victory when it seems so inaccessible to so many. 2 weeks off at Christmas would be great, but I don't know any poor or working class person who can afford it. Maybe that's what makes one poor or working class...

                                                  Coombs that's because you live in a country with virtually no workers rights. 2 weeks is loads but most workers not in the service industry will get a week off here. It comes out of annual leave but at least that leaves there and it was won through industrial action.

                                                  Your argument is contradictory anyway. You say it's not enough, which I agree with, but you also say it's bourgie to have it. If we want more we have to keep fighting.

                                                  If I've a cynical view on this murder it's that it's too random and isolated. It'll achieve nothing because of that. I won't be feeling any sympathy for Thompson though. If there was a hell he'd surely be burning now.

                                                    Coombs think you and the others main point of disconnect is that working in the US is extremely different to working in the UK when it comes to workers rights. Unless you're one of those people who do not have the right to work because you've not got a NI Number then you'll be either entitled to time off during Christmas or extra pay for working during that period.

                                                    The US life looks crazy tough on workers for me, and people in general. Yeah you might ha e more opportunities but in terms of social services and support it's like two different planets. I'm still shocked that a person can get attacked and need emergency attention and has to end up paying for the ambulance and hospital treatment and be forced into huge debt unless they have insurance in the US.

                                                      Coombs 2 weeks off is crazy long.

                                                      To put all this in context before we get too far arguing the toss on this specific detail, I'm currently contracting to a government department that has a mandatory paid 1 week Christmas shutdown for all its permanent staff: this is leave that was negotiated by the union in the workplace agreement. The arrangement suits this department because it's an industry regulator that goes into caretaker mode during the festive season.

                                                      Some but not all staff will choose to take 2–3 January as leave as well, so then they're off from 22 December to 3 Jan.

                                                      Barring special circumstances, permanent salaried employees in Australia receive 4 weeks of paid leave per annum, plus public holidays, so the 7 "business days" taken as leave in this period are only about a third of the standard entitlement.

                                                      I'll actually be working sometimes during the Christmas period, but that's because I'm an independent who negotiates every day of leave I take, and I owe some work to two of my other clients.

                                                      Obviously I'm discussing premises of industrial relations and employment conditions that are specific to one country. I'm aware things are in many ways worse in the United States. Next try asking a shopgirl in Hanoi how often she gets a holiday.

                                                      The point is that everywhere you will find holders of capital extracting as much from workers as workers will allow, unevenly but unrelentingly.

                                                      In Australia, a 1980s covenant of ur-neoliberal revisions to collective bargaining and union wage claims (known as The Accord and introduced by the then Labor government) sounded the death knell of militant trade unionism, even though the economic transformations of 1970s globalisation were already bringing it about.

                                                      Since this period the various forms of precarious labour have steadily grown as a share of total labour, leading to today's situation where there are a lot of Australian workers who have to hold down multiple casual jobs to survive with housing very unaffordable to rent or buy.

                                                      Thing is, calling this new precarity a result of the failures of the historical left gets it backwards: we only understand with certainty that this situation sucks because of what was achieved historically.

                                                      It's not unusual for any worker here to be taking the next two weeks off. That's something the majority of the workforce will do.

                                                          Burnwinter Thing is, calling this new precarity a result of the failures of the historical left gets it backwards: we only understand with certainty that this situation sucks because of what was achieved historically.

                                                          Maybe. Maybe. But I remain unconvinced that we are doing anything but accept the terms of capital to win relatively minor concessions for a privileged few. I also remain unconvinced that life was so horrible before capitalism that its terms cannot be more systematically challenged. What bugs me is the idea that we should be grateful for a 40-hour work week because it could be worse, when it currently is so much worse for so many precisely because capitalists can afford us to have that 40-hour work week at the periphery's expense. That doesn't seem like a victory for the left, but for capital, or perhaps more precisely, the dynamics of an exploitative global labor market.

                                                              All businesses are obligated by law to provide 4 weeks of paid holiday here. Certainly nothing luxurious about it. If anything, many employees might be pressured into taking some of that time during Christmas since there's less work to do.

                                                              Burnwinter the balls to write this after long posts arguing that it’s fine to shoot people because life is unfair 😂

                                                              Online Lenins unite!

                                                                Weird interpretation of his posts, but I guess "so you're fine with mass-murderers being shot" doesn't have the same edge to it.