The killing of the UnitedHealth Insurance CEO and Contested Violence

• In Event: 50660 - Section on Marxist Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 4: The Politics of Class Struggle

Abstract

Why are many people looking past the homicide of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and are seemly focused more on Luigi Mangione as a kind of hero? This homicide has generated discussions about the greed and profit enterprises of the U.S. health insurance corporations and the entire health care system in the United States. Besides fact that many people have probably experienced firsthand the insurance corporation’s mantra “Delay, Deny, Defend,” while attempting to use their coverage for medical treatments, procedures, and medications, the use of violence as a form of redress is an interesting phenomenon. There is a long history of what has been called counterviolence or revolutionary violence, the violence used to stop state oppression and violence, either in the periphery or in the core nations. Currently, as the case against Mangione moves forward, the case appears to have all the hallmarks of a non-legalistic political action and not the act of a “common” criminal act – i.e., an act to accomplish personal gain. Within a non-legalistic framework, actions or violence used to advance a political objective, such as to call attention or to prevent the plight of the oppressed people is not considered a criminal act, but a political act.
What this paper intends to take Mangione and his supporter’s claims seriously and to understand the historical antecedents (counterviolence and revolutionary violence, both individual and collective) and present context of this action (a period docility and dormant organized resistance). The disciplines of sociology and criminology inform us that the definition of violence is not politically neutral, and the legal definition is one that fits within the parameters of the state, and its role to maintain the continuation of the political or capitalist order (Karl Marx, Max Weber, Charles Tilly

Author

• Vince Montes, Northeastern University at Mills College