A history of cruel executions and state brutality?

[Tower of Bebel]

Lately I've been thinking about how death penalties were executed in the past. There are numerous stories and historic examples of very cruel styles of execution and brutal forms of repression. Several examples are skinning of people, public hangings, chopping someone's head off (it mostly happend after the second blow), defenestration and even the crusifiction of Jesus and many others who were sentensed to death in Palestine. Some of these penalties are still in use today: stoning for example. The Romans even trained slaves to fight each other to death in front of thousands of people.

On the other hand there were also popular, less violent forms of penalty: shoving someone's face into a horse's ass, bannings, rediculization, etc.
Yet, they're humiliating.

Most of the time these penalties were performed in public. Does it mean a culture of brutality? What's the reason behing the existence of such a tradition which characterized societies and regimes ranging from Ancient Athens to the French Revolution? And why does modern society look different?

[pastradamus]

Lately I've been thinking about how death penalties were executed in the past. There are numerous stories and historic examples of very cruel styles of execution and brutal forms of repression. Several examples are skinning of people, public hangings, chopping someone's head off (it mostly happend after the second blow), defenestration and even the crusifiction of Jesus and many others who were sentensed to death in Palestine. Some of these penalties are still in use today: stoning for example. The Romans even trained slaves to fight each other to death in front of thousands of people.

On the other hand there were also popular, less violent forms of penalty: shoving someone's face into a horse's ass, bannings, rediculization, etc.
Yet, they're humiliating.

Most of the time these penalties were performed in public. Does it mean a culture of brutality? What's the reason behing the existence of such a tradition which characterized societies and regimes ranging from Ancient Athens to the French Revolution? And why does modern society look different?

Well the need for Public executions is simple. To punish someone in the most cruel manner on front of an observing crowd. This sends a strong message and the more sadistic and cruel the better from the states point of view. If you go back to say, the middle ages when people couldnt read and did not have a luxury of newspapers or Television then this was the way the government enforced its authority.

Cruel, sadistic mayhem used to make the nations working/peasent class fearful of their master. Im very opposed to the death penalty but I do understand the reasoning behind it.

[Tower of Bebel]

I see you link this "culture" of cruelty and brutality to the (antagonistic) relationship between states and the population (society). Why do you think that the state saw a cuasal relation between brutality and effectiveness? Why did states of the "old regimes" need such brutality while the modern capitalist state doesn't?

[Il Medico]

Lately I've been thinking about how death penalties were executed in the past. There are numerous stories and historic examples of very cruel styles of execution and brutal forms of repression. Several examples are skinning of people, public hangings, chopping someone's head off (it mostly happend after the second blow), defenestration and even the crusifiction of Jesus and many others who were sentensed to death in Palestine. Some of these penalties are still in use today: stoning for example. The Romans even trained slaves to fight each other to death in front of thousands of people.

On the other hand there were also popular, less violent forms of penalty: shoving someone's face into a horse's ass, bannings, rediculization, etc.
Yet, they're humiliating.

Most of the time these penalties were performed in public. Does it mean a culture of brutality? What's the reason behing the existence of such a tradition which characterized societies and regimes ranging from Ancient Athens to the French Revolution? And why does modern society look different?
Well as pastradamus said, it was a means of control. The ruling class had to instill fear into the lower classes to keep them in line. As you can imagine, a brutal and painful execution of someone in public would send a strong message. The reason this is not used in modern society is that there is no need. The bourgeois have come up with a better means of control, the illusion of freedom. After all, if someone thinks they are free why would they resist? By giving the proletariat a few retractable privileges (rights) they control them without need to instill fear in them. The sad fact is, public execution no longer exist because the state (and the class which controls it) no longer has a need to fear the people, I hope this will come back to haunt them.

[pastradamus]

I see you link this "culture" of cruelty and brutality to the (antagonistic) relationship between states and the population (society). Why do you think that the state saw a cuasal relation between brutality and effectiveness? Why did states of the "old regimes" need such brutality while the modern capitalist state doesn't?


Speaking about western Europe here, Well there are numerous reasons as to why the modern State changed their attitude towards public executions and towards executions in general. The state controls a huge labour force which it see's as a financial asset. Public thinking around the 1800's was changing very quickly as people began to question the state and revolutionary idea's such as Marxism and Anarchism began to flourish in some communities.

As revolutions occured in France, Germany and other area's of Europe the state sought means of quelling the resistance as eliminating members would only strengthen the Revolutionaries numbers through martyrdom. So one aspect of quelling the resistance was to improve working conditions through Idea's such as pensions and sick pay as we see Von bismarck doing in Prussian Germany. He detested socialism but knew he had to live with it and through populist programes he quelled resistance temporally.

The Same is true for Executions. Public murders would have increased this air of hostility towards government as murders were witnessed. So the state had to change its punishment to Imprisonment a much better system which didnt attack human right as much. People are also kept in line through money. Back a few hundread years ago people were bound by law to their master who basically owned his peasents as stock, its when serfdom ended we see a change. In modern terms people are controlled and kept in line by money. For example, Rent, Bills, Taxes, Mortgages....people wont step out of line in their job because they dont want to risk the means of losing what little property they have or get involved in criminal activity as it again risks the loss of property and assets of which the worker spent so much of his/her life trying to pay off anyway.

[ComradeOm]

Why did states of the "old regimes" need such brutality while the modern capitalist state doesn't?Because the old feudal regimes had 'subjects' while modern capitalist states possess 'citizens'. This is perhaps the most fundamental difference wrought by the French Revolution. Citizens possess rights and in turn legitimise the bourgeois state. Capitalist hegemony is therefore not exercised directly through violence (or at least to a lesser degree than feudal societies) but rather, to quote Gramsci, "a certain balance of compromises [is] formed" between the ruling and subservient classes

Of course you also have to account for a range of less class orientated factors. In particular the urbanisation of society permitted the dissemination of more pacifist/enlightened outlooks. In contrast the everyday peasant world of the countryside was notoriously violent and brutal

[Tower of Bebel]

All of you probably meant to say that in the end capitalism and feudalism or slave systems have different ways of surplus extraction. While capitalist states don't need such a violent rule over its 'citizens' feudalism had to because its 'subjects' could sustain themselves. What capitalism had in the form of commodity fetishism did not exist in the "old regimes".

The perceived dichotomy between state and society was much bigger around c. 1000 than it was in c. 1500 and c. 2000. Surplus extraction was more direct and more visible in the slave-owner or peasant-lord relation than it is in a worker-capitalist relation. This created the basis for a more assertive or even aggressive attitude of the state in relation to its 'subjects'.

[bricolage]

Have you read Discipline and Punish?

Here Foucault identifies the evolution from public execution and torture to the prison system as a shift from punishment designed to punish the body to punishment designed to punish the 'soul'. It is this that forms much of the basis of the Panopticon/Carceral State that we live in today.

[chimx]

This is the first time I've seen someone use the term defenestration seriously.

[Black Dagger]

Most of the time these penalties were performed in public. Does it mean a culture of brutality? What's the reason behing the existence of such a tradition which characterized societies and regimes ranging from Ancient Athens to the French Revolution? And why does modern society look different?

Does it really?

The idea that the past was a place of ignorance, brutality and cruelty in comparison to our enlightened 'modern' age is something of a fallacy. In reality there is nothing humane about the way the prisoners of today are treated whilst in prison or when they are executed (as if being electrocuted to death, hung or injected with a lethal drug cocktail were not cruel or brutal, nor imprisonment itself - which has been converted into a for-profit venture in 'modern society'). Moreover, public executions are still practiced around the world, stonings, hanging, beheading, immolation and firing squad have not left human society so what really separates us from past societies?

As to the question of why 'public'? Perhaps as a form of deterrent - essentially 'look what happens to people who do X. Now don't do it!' But also as a demonstration of authority/power of an individual or group- basically, 'this is what we can do to you' - whether it be asserting the authority of a monarch, or government (this compliments the deterrence aspect).