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I'm not talking about international law because the term genocide precedes international law, but more from a philosophical point of view. I remember seeing somewhere a definition of genocide which stated the modern definition of genocide includes political and economical motivations directed to kill any social group. Now I can't find it anymore so I dont know how reliable it was, but organization such as RAE (which regulates spanish language) includes political reasons, and in English the Merrian-Webster dictionary also does, stating it is, "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group". I can't find any definition which includes economical reasons anymore though.

Is there a definition of Genocide which includes economical reasons?

JJJ
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Pablo
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    If you have a reason to downvote, please indicate so. Genocide has seen significant broadening from its original description of the Armenian and Jewish horrors, people do use the term rather broadly and that broadening includes even legal definitions of the term. Asking neutral questions around the term shouldn't be a cause for trouble. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Aug 01 '21 at 16:47
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    Does the term genocide really precede international law? As far as I know, the word was coined by a lawyer specifically to make it a crime. – Relaxed Aug 01 '21 at 19:09
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    I wouldn't trust a dictionary to capture the nuances of a complex and contentious concept, that's not what it is for. – Relaxed Aug 01 '21 at 19:15
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    Can you clarify what kind of answer you want? You specifically asked for an answer not based in international law, then accepted an answer based on international law. It's a bit confusing. – indigochild Aug 02 '21 at 02:44
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    "I remember seeing somewhere" It would greatly improve this question if you could find the source of this definition - as it stands, it's entirely possible you misread or misremembered what they said. But even if it's an exact quote, remember that the interpretation of a word is more than its dictionary definition. – Zibbobz Aug 02 '21 at 14:48
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    There may be such a definition, but if it's not a commonly accepted one, it's kind of irrelevant. Anyone can come up with a different definition of a word at any point, but doing so wouldn't give the definition any value by itself. Definitions of words only matter in as far as people agree on those definitions. – NotThatGuy Aug 03 '21 at 09:59
  • You mean for instance to set out to systematically exterminate the rich, bankers, the middle class, etc? (Rather than setting out to destroy a group by economic methods e.g. impoverishing them and letting them starve.) – Stuart F Aug 05 '21 at 10:05

5 Answers5

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Genocide is defined in the genocide convention as targeting a in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, by the enumerated acts. Note that reasons do not matter for this definition, be they racist, religious, or economic. It is about acts and targets, whatever the reason.

So targeting a religious minority for economic reasons would be genocide under the generally accepted definition.

To clarify in response to Relaxed's comments: genocide is genocide for targeting group members because of their membership in protected group, no matter what motivations or excuses the perpetrators bring up. Motivations are often racist even if they pretend to be 'just' economic, but claims of non-racist motives are no justification anyway.

o.m.
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    By this definition targeting the poor would not be genocide? – slebetman Aug 02 '21 at 04:24
  • @slebetman No, the UN definition does not list economic class as a protected group. – Philipp Aug 02 '21 at 08:09
  • This answer has been accepted but seems to entirely fail to address the question. Are you implying there is only one possible definition of a genocide? – Relaxed Aug 02 '21 at 08:12
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    @Relaxed do you have an alternative, similarly widely accepted definition? – Tim Aug 02 '21 at 08:24
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    @slebetman It would be a different word. – Reasonably Against Genocide Aug 02 '21 at 09:09
  • @Tim I posted an answer. Even if you want to reject alternative definitions, you could acknowledge their existence and explain why you don't think they should be considered notable. It just makes no sense to treat this as entirely unproblematic as if there was no academic debate on this. Quite apart from the specific question at hand, it's a very naive way to approach definitional issues. – Relaxed Aug 02 '21 at 09:51
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    @Relaxed, the summary of the question was "is there a definition which includes economical reasons?" My answer was "yes, of course, the most common definition includes economical reasons." – o.m. Aug 02 '21 at 15:16
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    @Relaxed The question asks whether there is a definition meeting the OP's criteria, not whether it is the only definition. Now there is a loophole to say "well, a definition is what you make it, so I can of course invent my own arbitrary definition which includes economic reasons." To this end, o.m. does cite the official UN definition of genocide, and its hard to argue that the UN's accepted definition, in their words, is an arbitrary unimportant definition. – Cort Ammon Aug 02 '21 at 15:42
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    Except it doesn't. If that's your conclusion, you havent expressed it clearly and you haven't understood the UN Convention. The idea of targeting a racial group for economic reasons doesn't fully make sense, doesn't reflect current scholarship on the topic and fails to properly explain the debate the OP heard about but doesn't quite understand. It also fails to clarify the idea of a “modern definition” and how it differs from the original definition. – Relaxed Aug 02 '21 at 15:43
  • @o.m. That being said, would it disrupt the messaging too much to edit it say "Genocide is defined by the UN..."? I think that points towards Relaxed's issue of multiple definitions while, in fact, making the immplicit appeal to authority in your answer more explicit. – Cort Ammon Aug 02 '21 at 15:44
  • @Relaxed "The idea of targeting a racial group for economic reasons doesn't fully make sense" Sure, it does. That's what Nazi Germany did, after all; one of the primary beefs that they had with the Jews was economic in nature. – nick012000 Aug 03 '21 at 06:44
  • @nick012000 That's not in line with mainstream scholarship. The whole point of the notion of genocide, certainly in its original definition, is that Jews were targeted qua Jews, as a result of a racist ideology. Rationalizing it as a way to obtain material gains (or military gains, for the Armenian genocide) is a complete misunderstanding of the notion, that's why I think it makes no sense to consider that that definition “includes economical reasons”. If anything, one of the main criticism against broader definitions is that they trivialise genocide by deemphasizing this aspect. – Relaxed Aug 03 '21 at 08:08
  • To be honest, going down that line of thinking (the Nazi genocide as a result of a real economic “beef“ between Jews and non-Jews in Germany) risk bringing us uncomfortably close to revisionist tropes and common stereotypes about Jews. That's one of the problem with the OP's naive reading of the UN convention's definition of genocide. – Relaxed Aug 03 '21 at 08:14
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    @Relaxed, you might look at it this way: the Nazi persecution against the Jews used ethnicity as a targeting criterion. That made it a genocide, regardless of the motivation of selecting this criterion. There is no need to follow the history and internal "logic" of their ideology to come to the genocide conclusion, a look on their policies like the Wannsee protocol is enough. – o.m. Aug 03 '21 at 19:38
  • @o.m. I understood you the first time around but that's totally muddled thinking and a dangerous misrepresentation of the meaning of the definition you purport to be interpreting. The motivation is key in this definition, that's also why it refers to the “intent to destroy”. The notion of a mere “targeting” criterion for an otherwise rational project (economical or otherwise) is really completely at odds with what motivated the creation of this concept. – Relaxed Aug 03 '21 at 20:31
  • It's also difficult to read the Wannsee protocol without noticing the deeply racist thinking that was an integral part of the Nazi genocide. You “might“ of course look at the whole thing differently and chose to downplay its racist nature but it's odd to offer that document as evidence and you will find yourself in very troublesome company. – Relaxed Aug 03 '21 at 20:41
  • @Relaxed, I'm not trying to "downplay" anything. My point is that the racist categories are sufficient proof of genocide, without a need to look into the motivation and history. To give a comparison, I don't have to get into nuclear physics to conclude that uranium is toxic, because the chemical toxicity is enough for any number of warning labels. – o.m. Aug 04 '21 at 05:34
  • @o.m. You might not be trying to do anything, I am sure you're doing it out of ignorance more than anything but that's a complete misunderstanding of the meaning and history of the definition you're quoting. You do have to look at all this to understand it and your answer is still completely wrong. – Relaxed Aug 04 '21 at 06:40
  • I frankly fail to see the point of your edit. You're not clarifying anything, you're just reiterating something that was quite clear from your original answer. It just happen to be a misguided literal reading of a definition you clearly do not understand. Repeating the same thing is not a meaningful answer to my comments. – Relaxed Aug 04 '21 at 13:33
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Is there a definition of Genocide which includes economical reasons?

Yes. In 1994, Steven T. Katz provided a definition that includes economic reasons independent of other reasons.

[Genocide is] the actualization of the intent, however successfully carried out, to murder in its totality any national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, gender or economic group, as these groups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever means. (The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. 1, 1994)

Rick Smith
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    I think it is fair to say that the definition proposed by Katz is a minority view. A quest to cause the class of video rental store operators, or unions, to cease to exist, for example, would not be genocide. Also, genocide is normally defined to include elimination by conversion or non-reproduction, and is not normally exclusively limited to murder. Eliminating a "capitalist class" might target an aristocracy that is culturally defined genocidally (or e.g. a jati in India), but the elimination of the class itself through economic reform normally wouldn't be called genocide either. – ohwilleke Aug 02 '21 at 21:58
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    @ohwilleke - Sure, but the elimination of an economic class by murder would be pretty close to genocide, whether it strictly qualified or not. – Obie 2.0 Aug 02 '21 at 22:11
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    Suppose every member of the UAW is murdered. Would that be genocide? It would be a mass murder and a horrible crime. But I'm not sure that it would be genocide as that term is usually used. Class warfare would be a more commonly used terminology. – ohwilleke Aug 02 '21 at 22:16
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    Perhaps. But if someone decided to "kill the poor" with "the neutron bomb" (for instance), would it still not be a genocide? At a certain point, when the motivations and tactics look almost the same, the deed might be almost the same as well. Classes could also well considered subcultures in a sense, and class is highly heritable in societies with high income inequality. – Obie 2.0 Aug 02 '21 at 22:18
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    As far as I can see, this definition does not talk about reasons at all. It talks about an economic delineation of the targeted group, but the question is about the reason for the genocide, not the target. Note that the fact that the definition does not talk about reasons at all can be (likely correctly) interpreted to mean that the reasons are irrelevant, and thus automatically include economic reasons, but then the same would be true of the Merriam-Webster definition the OP cited or the UN definition cited in o.m.'s answer. – Jörg W Mittag Aug 03 '21 at 18:19
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There are reputable academic definitions of genocide intended to side-step this issue and which could certainly cover the slaughter of people belonging to a specific socio-economic group. For example, Israel Charny (editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide) defines it as

the mass killing of a substantial number of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims

This definition differs markedly from Lemkin's original definition (“the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group”) and deliberately avoids restricting the concept of “genocide” to certain categories of victims like the UN convention does. Unlike the original definition, it doesn't make the intent of the perpetrators a key part of the definition either (beside excluding civilian victims of military operations).

Relaxed
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Imagine you're a deer. You're prancing along, you get thirsty, you spot a little brook, you put your little deer lips down to the cool clear water... BAM! A f-in bullet rips off part of your head! Your brains are laying on the ground in little bloody pieces! Now I ask ya. Would you give a f- what kind of pants the son of a b- who shot you was wearing? (from the movie My Cousin Vinny)

At the end of the day, exact definitions are not of much importance. You could be killing people for their ethnicity, their intellect, their religion, their political views or just to maintain power. Are all the examples I've linked to unequivocally considered to be "genocide"? No, of course not, at the very least because the descendants of the perpetrators aren't necessarily happy to be called out for what they did. But if you're staring at the end of a gun barrel, I assure you that knowing if its being done as part of a "genocide" won't make the process any more pleasant.

So I'd go with one of the wider definitions of genocide, this one by Martin Shaw:

Genocide is a form of violent social conflict or war, between armed power organizations that aim to destroy civilian social groups and those groups and other actors who resist this destruction. Genocidal action is action in which armed power organizations treat civilian social groups as enemies and aim to destroy their real or putative social power, by means of killing, violence and coercion against individuals whom they regard as members of the groups.

To expand a bit more, here's an interesting comment by @Kevin:

The basic problem with this definition is the word "substantial." Does September 11th count (nearly 3,000 people died)? Or is that not enough people? Where do you draw the line?

Yes, 9/11 could count as a part of an attempted genocide of American people. It didn't go far luckily but that was very much the intention behind the original attacks. The first steps of many historical genocides also had a small number of initial victims. Government authorities were able to quickly put an end to the attacks, so we now refer to 9/11 as a solitary "act of terrorism", rather than a part of a bigger chain of attacks.

JonathanReez
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  • I don't know where I stand on this answer. I agree with your argument, at least as I understand it: “Defining ‘genocide’ doesn’t actually do anything to address or prevent it.” But then that makes me question whether a broader definition is the right response, rather than a new framework. Secondly, I like Shaw's focus on the destruction of "real or putative social power" of civilian groups, but I don't get why he sees the need to include a resistance to the act in the definition. – Tim Pederick Aug 02 '21 at 08:34
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    I disagree. 911 was an (horrific) injury to the people of the US. But it did not come anywhere near destroying the people or the power of the US. Only 1 in 100,000 people died. I don't want to down play, or seem insensitive to the tragedy, but of the whole 'group' that is a very small percentage. – DarcyThomas Aug 02 '21 at 09:44
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    @DarcyThomas if Taliban had their way, a lot more Americans would die than 1 in 100,000. But they didn't, as America launched a massive counter attack and stopped them in their tracks. – JonathanReez Aug 02 '21 at 10:04
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    @JonathanReez If I want to become a millionaire, no matter how bad I want it, it is not the first dollar I make but the 1,000,000th that makes me one. Likewise the definition is 'destroy the group', not 'really really want to destroy the group but only hurt a few', or 'really really want to destroy a group and totally would have if they had rolled over didn't fight back'. – DarcyThomas Aug 02 '21 at 10:28
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    @DarcyThomas at the end of the day it all comes down to one group of people wanting to kill another group of people. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. But that's the core of the concept of genocide. – JonathanReez Aug 02 '21 at 10:37
  • @JonathanReez So if someone goes and kills 1 person, from a different 'group' than themselves, a group whom they for whatever reason hate, is that genocide? – DarcyThomas Aug 02 '21 at 19:14
  • @DarcyThomas only if they're a part of an "armed power organization" and the organization as a whole is officially or informally stating the extermination of a certain group as their goal. Its a fuzzy concept, not a scientific definition. – JonathanReez Aug 02 '21 at 19:24
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    I watched the video clip to check if they say "f-" or "fuck". They say fuck. What's the point of "hiding" a word in a quote on this site? Does this really hurt someone who treats this site to see fuck in the context of a movie quote? – WoJ Aug 02 '21 at 20:36
  • @WoJ https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22232/are-expletives-cursing-swear-words-or-vulgar-language-allowed-on-se-sites. – JonathanReez Aug 02 '21 at 20:42
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    @JonathanReez Thanks for the link. It is completely ridiculo-s and childi-h to the extreme. What a copulating world (to take the expression of a comment there) some live in, if they fear words. – WoJ Aug 02 '21 at 20:59
  • @JonathanReez So if one person belongs to one group, which has some arms (so a loop hole if you hand to hand combat haha), and kills one member of another group, then do you think that counts as genocide? Or does it need to be a bigger number of people killed? – DarcyThomas Aug 02 '21 at 22:27
  • @DarcyThomas there is no clear boundary. 1 million dead is clearly genocide. 10 people dead is clearly not. Where the line crosses is muddy at best. – JonathanReez Aug 02 '21 at 22:31
  • @JonathanReez Well, unless those 10 people were the last of their group. – DKNguyen Aug 04 '21 at 02:44
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    It doesn't make any sense to classify 9/11 as an intended genocide. As a terror attack, yes. As an intended trigger to international jihad, yes. As an intent to eradicate American culture or population? No. Especially as apparently the attack went far beyond OBL's expectations in destroying the towers (a large bomb was exploded in 1993 to achieve the same goal, with no success). – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Aug 04 '21 at 18:15
  • @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica genocides rarely end up fully pre-planned from the start. Did Hitler envision killing 6 million Jews in 1933? If Al Qaeda was given enough resources, they'd be more than happy to kill 6 million Americans. They don't have such resources (as the US can crush anyone in the world who doesn't have nukes) but the intent is there. – JonathanReez Aug 04 '21 at 18:29
  • I'm pretty sure Hitler intended the Holocaust in 33. In any case, I've upvoted you, but my cynical self thinks that exact definitions are not of much importance may not entirely be true either. Exact definitions are likely plenty important to veto-holding UN members when those definitions omit political or economic cases of genocide. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Aug 05 '21 at 00:33
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    @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica it seems like it wasn't finalized until 1942. From reading history books, historical genocides (like the sacking of Baghdad) were never entirely pre-planned but rather a result of long-time feuds between different groups. – JonathanReez Aug 05 '21 at 00:49
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Yes. Pol Pot's massacre of up to 1.5-2 million Cambodians, out of 7-8 million at the time, mostly on the basis of class/economic war is often interpreted as a genocide.

The Khmer Rouge regime frequently arrested and often executed anyone who it suspected of having connections with the former Cambodian government or foreign governments, as well as professionals, intellectuals, the Buddhist monkhood, and ethnic minorities. Even those people who were stereotypically thought of as having intellectual qualities, such as wearing glasses or speaking multiple languages, were executed out of fear that they would rebel against the Khmer Rouge. As a result, Pol Pot has been described as "a genocidal tyrant" by journalists and historians such as William Branigin. The British sociologist Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era". The attempt to purify Cambodian society along racial, social and political lines led to purges of Cambodia's previous military and political leadership, along with business leaders, journalists, students, doctors, and lawyers.

It isn't, strictly, classifiable as genocide according to the UN definition in international law, which is predicated on using ethnic/religious/nationality qualifiers for the persecution of an identifiable group.

I will look for it later, but when looking at the recent question here on whether China's behavior wrt Uyghurs could be considered genocide, I found the writings of a specialized international genocide legal expert that stated that, according to the current international law definition, Cambodia could not be considered a genocide. Something the author agreed with.

That is both morally wrong and against what common sense would indicate when you see the number of hits a targeted Google search such as "Cambodia" genocide or "Pol Pot" genocide return. Or Google ngrams

People do consider an event like Cambodia a genocide, with good reason.

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Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
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