Capital Punishment in a Communist Society?

[00000000000]

I suppose it would be naive to think a revolution would be completely bloodless, so my question is more about what happens in the wake of a revolution, as socialism or communism begins to take hold.

Would the execution of 'counter-revolutionaries' ever be justifiable?

Even within a classless society, is there be any crime that would warrant the death penalty?

Did Marx or any other theorist / revolutionary of the Left ever espouse the use of capital punishment?

[Chairman Wow]

"Plainly speaking, and dispensing with all paraphrases, punishment is nothing but a means of society to defend itself against the infraction of its vital conditions, whatever may be their character. Now, what a state of society is that, which knows of no better Instrument for its own defense than the hangman, and which proclaims through the “leading journal of the world” its own brutality as eternal law?" - Karl Marx in New-York Tribune 1853

[citizen of industry]

From the same source (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/02/18.htm) : "it would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to establish any principle upon which the justice or expediency of capital punishment could be founded, in a society glorying in its civilization. Punishment in general has been defended as a means either of ameliorating or of intimidating. Now what right have you to punish me for the amelioration or intimidation of others? And besides, there is history — there is such a thing as statistics — which prove with the most complete evidence that since Cain the world has neither been intimidated nor ameliorated by punishment. Quite the contrary."

[citizen of industry]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1918/military/ch16.htm:

‘We are told that when people are sentenced to be shot by Dzherzhinsky’s commission it is all right, but if a court were to declare publicly and openly that a man was a counter-revolutionary and deserved to be shot, that would be wrong. People who have sunk to such depths of hypocrisy are political corpses. No, a revolutionary who does not want to be a hypocrite cannot renounce capital punishment. There has never been a revolution or a period of civil war without shootings.’ (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.27, p.519.

‘The death penalty was not abolished altogether but only so far as concerned the soldiers at the front ... The abolition of the death penalty is for times of peace ... and not for revolutionary times ... The execution of Shchastny was not the first case of capital punishment in the Soviet Republic ... Death sentences by the dozen were being passed in every city, in Petrograd, in Moscow and in the provinces.’ (Sverdlov, quoted in Bunyan, J., Intervention, Civil War and Communism in Russia, April-December 1918 [1936].)]

The ‘‘Cheka’’—the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Speculation, Sabotage, and Misuse of Authority—was the agency that carried out the directives of the Council of People’s Commissars. Established in December 1917, the Cheka grew out of the Petrograd Soviet’s ‘‘Military Revolutionary Committee,’’ which, under Trotsky, had organized the October uprising. The Cheka was instructed, as its name implies, to suppress crime, bureaucratic abuse and counterrevolution.
Anticipating an imminent eruption of proletarian revolution in Western Europe, the Soviet leadership initially saw the Cheka as a temporary expedient until the workers state was consolidated. As the civil war against the Whites dragged on, leading Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries began questioning the severity of the Red Terror. Throughout 1918, Nikolai Bukharin, Lev Kamenev, Maxim Gorky, Victor Serge and I.Z. Steinberg (a Left SR and Commissar of Justice and Home Affairs) were among those who voiced misgivings over the growing power of the Cheka to operate free of any independent review. Lenin and Trotsky dismissed their concerns and asserted that responsibility for the use of terror lay with the enemy.
In 1919 Bukharin again approached Lenin to urge that the Cheka’s power to impose capital punishment be reined in. At Lenin’s initiative he was appointed to the Collegium of the Cheka ‘‘with the right of veto’’ over executions. According to Stephen Cohen in Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, Bukharin supported the use of coercive measures against counterrevolutionaries, but ‘‘worried about the recurring mistreatment of non-Bolshevik political figures and intellectuals’’ and often intervened on their behalf. He perhaps began to reconsider some of his misgivings when, on 25 September 1919, anarchists bombed a meeting in Moscow where he was speaking. Twelve people were killed and 55 wounded in the attack, including Bukharin himself.
(http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no10/no10kgb.html)

[piet11111]

I support the death sentence in cases where people are a clear threat to society and show no inclination to rehabilitate like anders breivik.

This not as a way of punishment or revenge but to permanently remove a threat.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This should be in Learning.

[citizen of industry]

"Permanently remove a threat." My boss, the management structure of my company and the the holding company they belong to are all "threats" to our union's drive to get them to comply with government labor law. The right-wing government representatives who let them escape through loopholes are also threats. Would you recommend the execution of management, everyone in the holding company and everyone in government so I could remove the threats to my organizing activities?

Do better then that. If people die fighting on the battlefield, okay. Don't string them up.

[blake 3:17]

I support the death sentence in cases where people are a clear threat to society and show no inclination to rehabilitate like anders breivik.

Someone like that should be jailed indefinitely.

Outside of war or civil war situations, where detention isn't possible, the death penalty should be banned. Most prisoners shouldn't be imprisoned, and the few who need to be removed from society should be kept in the most humane conditions possible.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

In a communist society (i.e. one where class war has subsided and the working class self-governs), I would not support Capital Punishment under any circumstances.

[runequester]

In a communist society (i.e. one where class war has subsided and the working class self-governs), I would not support Capital Punishment under any circumstances.

What if the democratic majority does, f.x. in a specific commune?

[Rooster]

Has no one read about the Stanford prison experiment?

[piet11111]

"Permanently remove a threat." My boss, the management structure of my company and the the holding company they belong to are all "threats" to our union's drive to get them to comply with government labor law. The right-wing government representatives who let them escape through loopholes are also threats. Would you recommend the execution of management, everyone in the holding company and everyone in government so I could remove the threats to my organizing activities?

Do better then that. If people die fighting on the battlefield, okay. Don't string them up.

Depends have they been shooting at you and your colleagues ?

You understand perfectly well that by threat i am talking about those that would use lethal force against us i even specifically mentioned Anders Breivik to make that clear.


And to jail someone indefinitely is something i consider inhumane to both prisoner and jailor.

[cenv]

The idea of "punishment" -- much less capital punishment -- is completely out of date. Bourgeois justice only clings to the Judeo-Christian conception of sin and punishment because real inquiry into what drives people to commit crimes and how crime can be reduced would ultimately lead to questioning the core structures of capitalism. Post-revolutionary society will have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to understanding the psychological, neuorological, social, and material circumstances that lead someone to kill someone else, for example, and it would be arrogant and short-sighted to start executing people based on a knee-jerk reaction inherited from the childishly moralistic ethic of punishment dominant in bourgeois society.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

What if the democratic majority does, f.x. in a specific commune?

Well, unless I was the dictator, I guess the majority would rule. I'd still oppose it, though.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The idea of "punishment" -- much less capital punishment -- is completely out of date. Bourgeois justice only clings to the Judeo-Christian conception of sin and punishment because real inquiry into what drives people to commit crimes and how crime can be reduced would ultimately lead to questioning the core structures of capitalism. Post-revolutionary society will have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to understanding the psychological, neuorological, social, and material circumstances that lead someone to kill someone else, for example, and it would be arrogant and short-sighted to start executing people based on a knee-jerk reaction inherited from the childishly moralistic ethic of punishment dominant in bourgeois society.

Whilst I understand what you're getting at, it's still important to recognise that we are in many senses, animals, with natural instincts, one of those being retribution and revenge, the moderated forms of these being judicial course and ultimately, justice. Justice will be important in any future society, whether Socialist or otherwise. Justice obviously incorporates a portion of punishment.

What I think might be a better thing to say is that we must escape from the biblical idea of punishment based on moral hazard. Every society will have rules (which I don't mind as long as they are genuinely democratically arrived upon), breaking these rules will involve punishment, hopefully not of the Capital type. Aside from Capital punishment, we need to move away from moral punishment - i.e. post-offender syndrome (i'm sure Baby P's newly released killer won't be getting employed any time soon!), non-judicial moral standards (such as adultery and so on).

[Luís Henrique]

What if the democratic majority does, f.x. in a specific commune?

It would be a very clear sign that the conditions for a communist society were not in place.

It is "communism or barbarism", not "communism and barbarism".

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Would the execution of 'counter-revolutionaries' ever be justifiable?

No. We know how it ends: with people denouncing each others as "counterrevolutionaries", to get their positions. If there is going to be punishment, it must be, at the worst, punishment for actual, recognisable deeds. We don't need a thought police, do we?


Even within a classless society, is there be any crime that would warrant the death penalty?

No.


Did Marx or any other theorist / revolutionary of the Left ever espouse the use of capital punishment?

Maybe; if they did, they were just simply wrong.

Luís Henrique

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

as my arguments in the other thread have concluded, no. apparently if you go and kill someone, its completely ok. but if the state try's to kill someone because they killed someone else, its completely wrong.

[mickey maoist]

Anyone who believes that the death penalty wouldn't exist under communism is a naïve liberal. The true democracies (north korea, china, cuba, venezuela ,belarus, zimbabwe etc) without the death penalty would hav degenerated into individualistic, hedonistic barbarism. Enemies of revolution should be made to pay for their crimes. The idea that we can ask the enemies of the people to nicely cooperate with the revolution is an inherently flawed and petty bourgois dream. Get real comrades, the revolution will not be a trip to the swings.

[Luís Henrique]

The true democracies (north korea, china, cuba, venezuela ,belarus, zimbabwe etc) without the death penalty would hav degenerated into individualistic, hedonistic barbarism.

So, why didn't Venezuela degenerate into "into individualistic, hedonistic barbarism", since it doesn't have a death penalty?

Luís Henrique

[Kenco Smooth]

it is completely impossible for a fair trial to be carried out (and there's no reason to simply assume this would disappear in a post-capitalist society) when capital punishment is an option. It significantly biases the jury against the defendant and lowers the necessary threshold of proof to secure a guilty verdict.

This may largely be due to the necessary screening out of those who oppose the death penalty from sitting on capital juries. This process is necessary as allowing jurors onto capital juries who oppose the death penalty on principle can often lead (as it did during the 19th century when capital punishment was handed out for minor crimes) to jurors refusing to convict on the grounds of their opposition to the punishment. This means only those who do not oppose the death penalty (and typically support it) are chosen to sit on capital juries. This group has time and time again been shown to be biased towards convictions in capital cases. A meta-analysis of the bias in this group of jurors by Allen, Mabry and McKelton (1998) showed that "this favorable attitude towards the death penalty translates into a 44% increase in the probability of a juror favoring conviction.".

A fair trial in which capital punishment features is impossible given that the selection process necessarily picks biased jurors.