We must oppose the death penalty

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

We must oppose the death penalty, not from a wishy-washy liberal kind of perspective, but because it is a reactionary, cruel tool of the state. Our job as Socialists is not to rule, but to enable the working class to rule themselves. We can do that by breaking down the biggest barrier to this: the state. The state is an arbiter in class war, whether used 'for the bourgeoisie' or 'for the workers'. It is not something that should be expanded, but contracted. Thus, we must completely oppose the institutionalised death penalty in all cases. If there are deaths in a revolutionary war, then so be it. But the state should not be the arbiter of life and death.

Here is a recent US case:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/27/mumia-abujamal-capital-punishment

[Os Cangaceiros]

I agree. The death penalty as a state-administered institution is revolting. The death penalty in the United States is like some kind of hideous clinical ritual of death.

[PhoenixAsh]

The death penalty is a violation of individual autonomy and its authority nobody should have. Its also a penalty which contradicts itself and concentrates the right to decide over life and death not with the induvidual itself but with an outside agent such as the state it therefore becomming the ultimate tool of threat and repression.

[Crux]

Inb4 the stalinists.

[El Chuncho]

Inb4 the stalinists.

Not quite. ;) I'm just waiting for the criticism. :laugh:

[caramelpence]

Philosophically, I'm not sure I agree with your formulation of contracting vs expanding the state. The focus of Marx's early critique of the state as presented in his Contribution to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right as well as in The German Ideology is that the state exists as a limited form of universality and is rendered necessary by the inability of civil society to move beyond the particular interests of private individuals and social groups (In a footnote in The German Ideology, Max describes the state as "an illusory communal life", for example, tracing it to the conflict between individuals and the community) and so, considered in these terms, the communist revolution marks the extension of the universality that is implicit in the political state, through the abolition of the state, or rather the abolition of the state/society distinction - it is through the abolition of the state that its implicit function is made meaningful.

[Tim Finnegan]

The death penalty is a violation of individual autonomy and its authority nobody should have.
Even the working class? How, then, do you propose to carry out a workers' revolution- cuddling fascists into submission?

The death penalty is not fundamentally transgressive; rather, it's an extreme imposition of authority. The question isn't whether or not it is being used, but who is using it and why; socialist opposition should therefore oppose it as an expression of bourgeois oppression, not on the grounds of some proclaimed universal sanctity of life.
Of course, if liberals want to oppose it as such and thereby help us undermine the power of the bourgeois state, then all the better.