This chapter focuses on the form that physical harms take within different capitalist societies. The analysis provided contrasts different forms of physical harm, from those that are viewed as resulting from individual intentional acts, such as homicide, or those that occur as result of ‘biological’ factors or accidents. Data provided demonstrate that intentional harms form a small part of the events that actually cause us physical injury – particularly when one compares homicide to the harms presented here, such as obesity, infant mortality and road traffic injuries. Indeed, what many of us would consider to be ‘criminal events’ appear to constitute only the ‘tip’ of the ‘harm iceberg’. However, common sense often dictates that the harms that constitute the large proportion of these injurious events are determined by natural forces that, it is argued, lie beyond societal control. The analyses presented in this chapter seek to challenge the notion of a ‘natural rate’ for these harms insofar as each harm can be demonstrated to result from alterable social conditions, and thus, if specific societies were organised differently, it is likely that these harms would be significantly reduced.

The chapter explores the notion of ‘preventable harm’ through contrasting levels of physical harm between different varieties of capitalist state. These differences are explained through the lens of social organisation – the arrangements, policies and relations that constitute different societies. Moreover, the chapter provides, where possible within the constraints of the available data, analyses that seek to identify factors that serve to understand why some societies have greater levels of harm than others, thus offering insights into the factors that would appear to protect us from specific physical harms and those that seem to produce greater levels of harm.

Homicide

Homicide may appear to be an odd place to commence a social harm analysis. To begin with, in most capitalist societies murder rates are low and remain stable at the aggregate level. It is therefore highly unlikely any of us will be a homicide victim, or, for that matter, know someone whose life is ended as a result of homicide. Moreover, homicide is, in many respects, the quintessential individual level harm, most commonly viewed as an act of interpersonal violence resulting from intentional acts, and does not obviously fall into the remit of structural harms.