Capitalism doesn't cause death by tornados

There’s an interesting attempt out there to insist that those deaths in the tornados were caused by capitalism. You see, folks were at work, work is capitalism, so, without capitalism they wouldn’t be at work and therefore wouldn’t have died. We’ve seen the idea floated in several places so we might think that it’s an attempt to create a meme - something wildly untrue, a lie even, but which is popular.

Here’s The Guardian version:

They were forced to stay at work as a tornado bore down. Would a union have saved them?

Those who died in an Amazon warehouse in Illinois and a Kentucky candle factory were sacrificed to the altar of profit

Profit, d’ye see? Capitalism.

Because none of them had a union to protect them.

Fight the power etc.

Some 100 people, around and about, died in those tornados. Something like 10% of those were at work. Meaning that 90% were not and having a union or not would have made no difference at all. Nor would capitalism in fact. So, at this level of detail we can reject the idea already. Even if it were all about capitalism, unions, the pursuit of profit and work then it’s only trivially so.

Except, of course, it isn’t about any of those things at all. Work is not something unique to a capitalist system of production. Indeed, given that capitalism and markets are what make modern society so rich - and richer people work fewer hours because leisure has value - we can actually say that given capitalism fewer were at work when the tornados struck than would have been under any other system. After all, the workloads under socialism of feudalism weren’t lighter, were they?

So, no, it’s not true. Capitalism didn’t kill here. Unions wouldn’t have saved. It’s an attempt to create one of those memes. Something lightly and generally believed but which on examination has no truth to it at all.

But then, you know, The Guardian.