Free Luigi!

The cops say Luigi Mangione killed hated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The media denounces widespread support for Luigi among the oppressed of all political leanings. They smear Luigi and try to explain away what everybody already understands. It’s no mystery why someone would want to off a bloodsucking insurance millionaire, and it’s certainly no crime from the standpoint of the working class.

Given the miserable state of healthcare, it’s almost surprising that such shootings aren’t more common, but gunning down CEOs—while certainly a bold, decisive and courageous act—is not an answer. The strategy of individual terror and assassination is counterproductive. The ruling class is responding by ratcheting up their forces of repression, which can only be bad news for workers and everyone else it oppresses. Luigi was indicted on multiple counts, including “terrorism,” an ominous charge in the hands of the capitalist state. Companies are expanding private security, and a Florida woman was charged for simply uttering “Delay, Deny, Depose” to her insurance provider during a dispute. More is sure to come and will be wielded against labor and the left.

The shooting and its popularity reflect deep-seated hatred of the insurance parasites and the healthcare system. But they are also symptomatic of demoralization and desperation in the population. Few have hope that the system can change but find solace that one of the parasites got knocked off. It’s possible that others will be inspired by the act and choose the same road—a waste of potentially revolutionary human material. But if lone gunmen aren’t the answer, the question is: What to do now?

The situation has inflamed class polarization in society. On one side, the elite and their media mouthpieces recoil at political violence against the rich. On the other, many of the oppressed oppose Luigi’s arrest. There is burgeoning class hatred against the bosses and their state that defends for-profit medicine. But while self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” offer words of understanding for Luigi, they refuse to defend him. The capitalists prepare to make an example of Luigi and take measures that threaten us all. Labor and the left must demand Mangione’s release. Free Luigi!

Free Luigi!

Liberal and conservative pundits alike are proving they have more in common with each other and the wealthy insurance execs than with the working masses. Notable right-wing nut job Ben Shapiro tried to blame all the sympathy for the assassin on Marxist influence and equated defense of Luigi with calls for revolution. His rant backfired and showed just how out of touch he is—even with his own conservative audience, which is largely sympathetic to the shooter.

Shapiro’s analysis, although obviously idiotic, has a political purpose. The masses don’t hate insurance companies and feel sympathy with Luigi because they’re all revolutionary Marxists. It’s because the insurers are killing them. Shapiro’s rant blaming Marxism is intended to leverage anti-communist sentiment to isolate Luigi and set up the left for repression. But let’s be clear: while the shooter’s action had nothing to do with Marxism, Marxists must defend those accused of violence against the oppressors. So, what do the so-called Marxists have to say?

Left Voice, the Revolutionary Communists of America, Socialist Alternative and the Socialist Equality Party have all weighed in. They learnedly explain that we need collective action, not individual acts of terror. Correct. Marxists certainly insist on class struggle as against the inexpedience of lone avengers. But while these comrades can quote the leaders of the Russian Revolution to explain why Marxists oppose individual terrorism, they conveniently omit a central point. In the current conflict between Luigi and the state, workers have a side! The task now is to oppose the capitalist state’s crusade against Luigi!

It is unfortunate that the self-sacrificing avenger’s revolutionary energy did not find a more effective outlet. Regardless, all our sympathies lie firmly with Luigi, not with his jailers. The crime here is that anyone claiming the mantle of Marxism would only oppose the killer’s methods, while not opposing Luigi’s prosecution. Lenin and Trotsky opposed the road of individual terrorism, but they defended those accused of such acts from the capitalist state. The shallow statements approximating Marxist orthodoxy that these left groups spew are only a cover. In omitting the elementary act of defense, they are bending to bourgeois morality and the capitalist state, echoing the campaign in the bourgeois press—all while providing no real way forward.

The task of revolutionaries in the context of Thompson’s killing is not to merely preach against assassination, but to harness the sympathies of the masses and direct them productively against the forces of the class enemy. This starts with being clear that while the killer’s methods are counter to our own, the act was no crime. Obviously, we must build a class-struggle movement to fight for free healthcare! But this requires a program that breaks illusions in the capitalist state and politically exposes the misleaders of the labor movement. Rallying the masses to fight for Luigi’s release would be a great start.

Fight for Free Healthcare!

The “Marxists” who refuse to forthrightly call to free Luigi do so because they want to maintain an air of bourgeois respectability in the eyes of the labor bureaucracy and “progressive” capitalist politicians. These “Marxists” proclaim the need for working-class action, but suck up to the class enemy’s agents in the unions who block the way. The labor traitors will never mobilize workers to defend Luigi or lead a movement to expropriate the healthcare industry. From the UAW’s Shawn Fain to Teamsters head Sean O’Brien to the SEIU misleaders, the bureaucrats are bound by their respect for the capitalist system, its state and the private property it protects. Leading a fight for free universal healthcare means taking head-on core capitalist interests—private hospitals, insurance companies, Big Pharma. No matter how militant, the loyally pro-capitalist union bureaucrats won’t do that.

Thompson’s killing shows that the question of healthcare has the potential to bring class polarizations in society sharply to the fore and bridge divisions that cripple the working class. A mass class-struggle movement for healthcare is needed, but that requires the left to fight for an entirely different strategy than what the bureaucracy offers. In particular, healthcare unions have a crucial role to play—the struggle to improve their own conditions is fundamentally connected to the healthcare needs of the masses. By fighting against things like overcrowding and short-staffing, workers are fighting not only for themselves but patients too. By making the call for free universal healthcare central to their struggles, healthcare workers have the potential to galvanize a mighty mass movement for medicine. Such a movement would not only have enormous popular support, but also provide a productive alternative to those considering going down the same desperate road as Thompson’s killer.