Friedrich Engels introduced the concept of “social murder” in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845. Engels argued that the ruling class knowingly forces workers into conditions where they cannot live full or healthy lives, conditions that steadily “hurry them to the grave before their time.” This murder is not the act of an individual. It is the routine violence of capitalism that puts profit above human life.
Social murder: business as usual
Social murder remains as deadly in the twenty-first century as it was in the nineteenth. The fires at Grenfell Tower in London in 2017 (The Guardian, 9/4/24), the Twin Parks North West fire in the Bronx in 2022 (New York Times, 1/9/22), and the Wang Fuk Court inferno in Hong Kong in 2025 (The Guardian, 11/27) expose, with painful clarity, the continuing disposability of workers—especially migrant families forced into the most precarious housing by class domination and borders. A World Health Organization (WHO) report illustrates the devastating magnitude of unhealthy living conditions for workers. In 2012, an estimated 12.6 million people died as a result of living or working in an unhealthy environment—nearly one in four deaths globally. Environmental risk factors such as air, water, and soil pollution; chemical exposures; climate change; and ultraviolet radiation contribute to more than 100 diseases and injuries. The highest share of these deaths—some 2.2 million—occurred in Africa, further underscoring the racist and murderous nature of life for workers under capitalism (WHO, 3/15/2016).
Only communism can prevent future Grenfells, Bronx fires, or Wang Fuk Courts. Safe housing cannot exist under markets or profit-driven development. It requires abolishing housing as a commodity, ending the wage system, and building a society organized around human need. But that future will not appear on its own. It demands an organized, international communist movement. That is why joining the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is essential. Join PLP to fight for a world without borders, without bosses, and without the profit system that incinerates workers.
Inferno: a dossier of class crimes
Engels insisted that capitalists are responsible when they maintain conditions they know will kill workers. Racism sharpens this process. It pushes migrant and racialized workers into the most dangerous buildings and jobs, feeding them into a blaze that never stops consuming the working class. Under capitalism, racism is not ignorance or prejudice. It is a weapon to divide, weaken, and disarm workers.
This reality was unmistakable at Grenfell Tower, where seventy-two people were burned alive after flames shot up the building’s exterior (The Guardian, 9/4/24). Grenfell stood in one of Britain’s wealthiest boroughs, yet housed low-income workers, many of them migrants or refugees. For years, residents warned about broken alarms, faulty wiring, and hazardous renovations. Their concerns were dismissed (The Guardian, 6/14/18).
The capitalist bosses installed cheap, highly flammable cladding because it was cost-efficient and hid the “ugly” tower from nearby wealth.
The Bronx fire of 2022 repeated the same script. Seventeen residents—mostly West African migrant workers—perished when a faulty space heater ignited in an apartment left freezing by landlords who refused to provide adequate heat (New York Times, 1/9/22). The self-closing doors that should have stopped the smoke had been broken for years despite constant complaints (Pulitzer Center, 12/9/22). For the ruling class, these workers were disposable: bodies to extract rent from and nothing more. In a city of billionaires, workers died choking in toxic smoke because business as usual demanded it.
The Wang Fuk Court fire in Hong Kong in November 2025 was yet another chapter in this global dossier of class crimes. Flammable bamboo scaffolding, phased out by the government because it’s a fire hazard, sealed windows, and dead alarms transformed the complex into a dripping fuse (The Guardian, 11/27/25). When it ignited, flames tore through seven towers, killing more than one hundred residents, including elderly tenants and migrant domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines (Reuters, 11/27/25). These workers keep the city alive, yet their lives are exposed to a hell of capitalism’s making. Their confinement in cramped, unsafe housing reveals capitalism’s worldwide sorting of the working class into two categories: those temporarily protected and those already marked for sacrifice.
Across Grenfell, the Bronx, and Wang Fuk Court, every hazard was known long before the flames erupted. Tenants warned. Workers begged for repairs. Authorities documented failures. The ruling class ignored it all because protecting working-class life is never on capitalism’s agenda. Engels would recognize these infernos instantly: they are social murder.
Communism will end the hellfire
A communist horizon envisions cities where no worker is disposable, where no migrant is forced into unsafe rooms, where no family is wrapped in flammable cladding to beautify a neighborhood for the wealthy, and where housing is built as a shared social necessity rather than a financial asset. Only communism can abolish social murder entirely rather than manage it.
Capitalism must be actively overturned through organizing, collective struggle, and disciplined revolutionary action. To fight social murder, workers need organization rooted in workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods, a direct challenge to racism, nationalism, and every division within our class, and a long-term strategy to destroy the capitalist system entirely. This requires a revolutionary communist party capable of giving direction, clarity, and unity to that struggle.
This is why building the Progressive Labor Party is essential. The Party fights for a world without borders, without bosses, and without the profit system that burns workers alive. It organizes across countries to turn outrage into revolutionary power. The fires in Grenfell, the Bronx, and Wang Fuk Court show the stakes with brutal precision. Joining PLP means taking up the fight to end social murder at its source.
