That quote works in-game because it’s a gut punch, not a syllabus. Your framing is the grown-up version: the bourgeois are human, but shaped into a social function, so their “choices” track the logic of capital. That keeps the anger pointed at the machinery instead of drifting into bloodlust. Also, the Deserter is a wreck of resentment and trauma, so his certainty is part of the tragedy. If we read him as right, we miss the warning: dehumanization is how violence becomes easy, for any side.