Japanese Government Resumes Executions

[Left Leanings]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/29/japan-hangs-three-prisoners-executions

The Japanese Government has resumed its execution of prisoners, in the very same week it won praise from Amnesty, the human rights organization.

There had been an 18 month apparent moratorium on executions, but now this has come to an end.

As a socialist, I find the Death Penalty abhorent.

No Death Penalty!

[RedAnarchist]

"Public support for Noda's cabinet is declining, so my personal feeling is that this was one of many steps aimed at boosting its approval ratings," Wakabayashi said.

It shouldn't come as any surprise to any of us that approval ratings are worth murdering over, in the eyes of capitalist politicians.


Campaigners have also voiced concern over the safety of several convictions, including that of Masaru Okunishi, who has spent four decades on death row for poisoning five women in 1961.

Four decades of waking up and not knowing if it'll be your last day alive, sitting in a cell for a crime you may not have committed. It's not just the death penalty that's cruel and inhumane, it's also the time spent on death row.


Prisoners are not told when they will be executed until a few hours before they are led away to the gallows, and their relatives and lawyers are informed only after the execution has been carried out.

Why? This is just malicious and spiteful.

[Orlov]

The death penalty is a measure of politics. When used by the capitalist state it is oppressive and reactionary as those are the needs of the capitalist state. However, when utilized by a socialist state it will get rid of the enemy of the people and restore order, more or less ensuring the survival of socialism out of the blood of the bourgeois. There's no reason to be a liberal about technique.

As of always, the Japanese state is again acting in it's normal way. Although I'll shed no tears for rapists and murderers whom are executed by the Japanese state. Political comrades though of the former JRA who are on the death row must however be supported against the Japanese state which has always been a toxic monarchy and since the US occupation, a key imperialist lackey of the United States in order to threaten the DPRK and various other nations in Asia.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The death penalty is a measure of politics. When used by the capitalist state it is oppressive and reactionary as those are the needs of the capitalist state. However, when utilized by a socialist state it will get rid of the enemy of the people and restore order, more or less ensuring the survival of socialism out of the blood of the bourgeois. There's no reason to be a liberal about technique.


Is that how Leninists sleep at night? Masturbating over law and order. As long as it's Leninists at the top and pictures of Stalin and co. being carried through the streets during the military parades, right?:rolleyes:

All politics, no humanity.

The idea of state-sanctioned murder being abhorrent isn't home only to liberals, it should be something any caring human being opposes, whether it is carried out in the name of Capitalism, Socialism or any other system.

[Rooster]

How are they being executed? Is it by hanging?

[Orlov]

Is that how Leninists sleep at night? Masturbating over law and order. As long as it's Leninists at the top and pictures of Stalin and co. being carried through the streets during the military parades, right?:rolleyes:

All politics, no humanity.

The idea of state-sanctioned murder being abhorrent isn't home only to liberals, it should be something any caring human being opposes, whether it is carried out in the name of Capitalism, Socialism or any other system.

The revolution is brought about through guns and lead bullets. Those are the only politics that matter, part of these politics are executing the rapists and murderers of society that have no place and cannot contribute to socialism. Someone who murders (apolitically for the sole purpose of murder within certain circumstances should be executed), the same applies for rape. In a socialist context within a revolutionary condition this is building a sense of order for all comrades to follow in line with and it lets them know that if they do not follow in line what the consequences will be. As well when it applies to the bourgeois who will be executed they will know that the crime of being bourgeois influenced is to be punished with the maximum force.

Human beings will have to use methods like this as long as human society remains. Pseudo-morality will not solve the issue of justice and the only proper way to restore justice is through unfortunately techniques such as these, the revolution as well requires these techniques as without them it will be impossible.

[bricolage]

How are they being executed? Is it by hanging?
yeah think so.

[RedAnarchist]

How are they being executed? Is it by hanging?

Yeah, hanging which, incidentally, was the method of execution used on peasants in feudal Europe (beheading was only for the royals, nobles and other landed gentry). It was even worse for those convicted of high treason.

[IrishWorker]

In the correct context I theoretically support the use of the death penalty. Obviously I do not support it in its current form as it is nearly exclusively used against working class people who sometimes commit crime due to their economic situation caused by being oppressed by Capitalism.

But yeah, some people do horrendous things against others and sometimes only a bullet to the back of the head could be considered justice.

[Conscript]

The idea of state-sanctioned murder being abhorrent isn't home only to liberals, it should be something any caring human being opposes, whether it is carried out in the name of Capitalism, Socialism or any other system.

Yea it kinda is, same with legislating morality. How about instead of feel good principles we do what's practical? I for one don't want to pay for a prisoner's free ride for the rest of his life, and the prison system itself concentrates like-minded dangerous criminals and creates a gang problem.

Do you even have an alternative?

[bricolage]

I for one don't want to pay for a prisoner's free ride for the rest of his life,
what free ride?

[Conscript]

what free ride?

His 100% community subsidized sustenance, unless we introduce some sort of forced productive labor to pay for itself (but that'll probably be another moral issue for some). I suspect this would be a non-issue in communism since it's post-scarcity, still could pose a danger though by concentrating some of the more heinous criminals.

[bricolage]

His 100% community subsidized sustenance,
subsidised sustenance of being locked up and denied all human freedoms?
it's hardly a free ride.


unless we introduce some sort of forced productive labor to pay for itself (but that'll probably be another moral issue for some).
less of a moral issue than a contradiction in opposing wage labour yet supporting it in its most brutal form for prisoners.

[Tim Cornelis]

Marxist-Leninist logic:

If capitalists do X it's oppressive and reactionary.
If MLs do X it's just and progressive.

Yeah, let's just kill and murder all murderers and rapists, but only when you call yourself a Marxist-Leninist, if you are a capitalist it's oppressive. Also let's kill everyone who is being "bourgeois". We will bath in blood! Hooray for liberation! Hooray! Death to millions! Everyone who does not act and think exactly like me and other MLs should face the ultimate consequence.

These lyrics suit your beliefs:


The bright red blood
Was spilled over the towns and over the plain of Kampuchea, our motherland,
The blood of our good workers and farmers and of
Our revolutionary combatants, of both men and women.

Their blood produced a great anger and the courage
To contend with heroism.
On the 17th of April, under the revolutionary banner,
Their blood freed us from the state of slavery.

Liberation through extermination.

Fuck you.

And also fuck you concript, executing people because it's cheaper, what a despicable bourgeois logic. Profits over people.

[Conscript]

Just because they're locked up doesn't mean they aren't being given sustenance paid for by the wider community of peaceful and productive workers. It's a shitty life, no doubt it's just an expensive one.

I was under the impression communist cared about liberating the proletariat from wage labor, not the lumpen who produce no value at all yet consume it, though I see your point (would we even pay wages? What's the point of appropriating surplus value from prison labor?). It may be necessary if the other two options, community funded prison and the death penalty, are out of the question. We have to pick one.

Enough of the rage goti. I don't favor execution because it's 'cheaper', I fear accumulating huge prison population that would be taxing on the rest of us, especially since crime in socialism is highly unlikely to be mostly just petty offenses. Good luck selling such things to a self-managing working class.

[Tim Cornelis]

just because they're locked up doesn't mean they aren't being given sustenance paid for by the wider community of peaceful and productive workers ... the lumpen who produce no value at all yet consume it

^ The same logic used by right-wingers to agitate against welfare. "why should they leech of productive citizens"


Enough of the rage goti. I don't favor execution because it's 'cheaper', I fear accumulating huge prison population that would be taxing on the rest of us, especially since crime in socialism is highly unlikely to be mostly just petty offenses. Good luck selling such things to a self-managing working class.

Translation: "I don't favour execution because it's cheaper, but because imprisoning them is more expensive"

hurr durr.

[Lord Testicles]

Just because they're locked up doesn't mean they aren't being given sustenance paid for by the wider community of peaceful and productive workers. It's a shitty life, no doubt it's just an expensive one.

I was under the impression communist cared about liberating the proletariat from wage labor, not the lumpen who produce no value at all yet consume it, though I see your point (would we even pay wages? What's the point of appropriating surplus value from prison labor?). It may be necessary if the other two options, community funded prison and the death penalty, are out of the question. We have to pick one.

Enough of the rage goti. I don't favor execution because it's 'cheaper', I fear accumulating huge prison population that would be taxing on the rest of us, especially since crime in socialism is highly unlikely to be mostly just petty offenses. Good luck selling such things to a self-managing working class.

Crime in socialism is highly unlikely so we are likely to accumulate a huge prison population? I have a new strategy for arguing with people like you, it goes like this:

Fuck you, you fucking slime-ball, engage your brain before you open your mouth next time shit-lips. I hope you don't go outside and spout such nonsense under the guise of Communism or socialism because you make the rest of us look as brain dead as you, you fucking oxygen thieving moron.

[bricolage]

Just because they're locked up doesn't mean they aren't being given sustenance paid for by the wider community of peaceful and productive workers. It's a shitty life, no doubt it's just an expensive one.I was under the impression communist cared about liberating the proletariat from wage labor, not the lumpen who produce no value at all yet consume it
yeah but I reject this whole moralist idea of good 'peaceful and productive workers' versus bad 'lumpen' ones, and don't think we should be condemning prisoners simply by virtue of being sentenced. besides, and not that it matters, but plenty of people will jobs end up in jail.


I see your point (would we even pay wages? What's the point of appropriating surplus value from prison labor?).
your suggesting seemed to be getting prisoners to work in order to pay for their own imprisonment, I was guessing you weren't going to pay them wages.


It may be necessary if the other two options, community funded prison and the death penalty, are out of the question. We have to pick one.
i'm not sure we do, we aren't trying to reform capitalist justice and any kind of meaningful communist process will involve a transformation of these options in ways we probably can't comprehend.

[Conscript]

^ The same logic used by right-wingers to agitate against welfare. "why should they leech of productive citizens"

It's cool you can draw parallels and all, but it doesn't invalidate something. After all, communists accuse capitalists of being parasites on labor.


Translation: "I don't favour execution because it's cheaper, but because imprisoning them is more expensive"

hurr durr.That would be true if I support death penalties for all crimes, which I don't.


Crime in socialism is highly unlikely so we are likely to accumulate a huge prison population? I have a new strategy for arguing with people like you, it goes like thispetty crime is, since it's mostly a result of economic pressures. Beyond that we cannot predict what crime in socialism will be like, so I see no reason to start making justice reforms until socialist society actually endures it and can make decisions based on conditions it faces. That means not arbitrarily adopting moral principles, we can only really do that sustainably in a post-scarcity situation.



Fuck you, you fucking slime-ball, engage your brain before you open your mouth next time shit-lips. I hope you don't go outside and spout such nonsense under the guise of Communism or socialism because you make the rest of us look as brain dead as you, you fucking oxygen thieving moron. Piss off and take your own advice. Nobody cares about these rage posts and they contribute nothing. I would like to learn stuff, not be simply berated.


yeah but I reject this whole moralist idea of good 'peaceful and productive workers' versus bad 'lumpen' ones, and don't think we should be condemning prisoners simply by virtue of being sentenced. besides, and not that it matters, but plenty of people will jobs end up in jail. That's fine, it may be counter-productive to stigmatize prisoners, but there would exist differences between the two groups in a resource economy like the socialist one that we simply have to deal with. The last thing we want is a deficit in expenditure. Look at the US, it pays out the ass to sustain its prisons and populations (some 40k a head per year I believe).


your suggesting seemed to be getting prisoners to work in order to pay for their own imprisonment, I was guessing you weren't going to pay them wages. I would favor an 'each according to their work' principle, not only would it solve the resource drain problem, but it would have them taking care of themselves in a way not very different from workers out of prison. In a situation of post-scarcity, well, I don't think we'd even have to worry about all the value going into prisons, if there are any.


i'm not sure we do, we aren't trying to reform capitalist justice and any kind of meaningful communist process will involve a transformation of these options in ways we probably can't comprehend. Well, what makes communism able to make huge leaps such as that is abundance. But what about socialism, or 'lower communism', or whatever you want to call a system of common property + scarcity?

I share your unsureness. I think this really needs to be deliberated on, but I don't think a blanket 'no death penalty' principle is a start or really in anybody's interest.

[Lord Testicles]

Piss off and take your own advice. Nobody cares about these rage posts and they contribute nothing. I would like to learn stuff, not be simply berated.


It's not a rage post, I actually think you are an oxygen stealing slime bucket who needs to kill himself. You see unlike you I don't advocate state sanctioned murder, so yeah, seriously: kill yourself, you are part of the problem.

The fact that people have to argue with you about whether a state has the right to take a life or not is actually depressing. Next thing we'll be arguing is whether it's right to sucker punch old people who are walking to slow. Protip: It's not.

[Conscript]

That's nice I guess. I get the same rap for supporting abortion rights. You're also the only person in this thread against the death penalty telling people to 'kill themselves'.

Are you going to post something I can actually discuss with you? If not let me know so I can just put you on ignore.

[Lord Testicles]

You're also the only person in this thread against the death penalty telling people to 'kill themselves'.

I understand that this can be confusing for someone with questionable morals such as yourself, but you see when you kill yourself that's fine, but when you kill someone else that's wrong. Let's go over that again:
Yourself = Fine.
Someone else = Wrong.


Are you going to post something I can actually discuss with you? If not let me know so I can just put you on ignore.

What is there to discuss? You think that the state has the right to kill people (Only in certain cases ...of course). I think people who think that a state has a right to kill people are scum. Seriously, where are we going to find any common ground to discuss? I look forward to the day that people who think like you are treated like the murderous fringe lunatics that you are.

[GPDP]

I think this really needs to be deliberated on, but I don't think a blanket 'no death penalty' principle is a start or really in anybody's interest.I'm pretty sure it's in the interests of prisoners as a whole, actually.

In any case, the death penalty doesn't really have anything going for it. It has not proven to be an effective deterrent, it's not cheaper than life imprisonment due to the endless appeals process, and the possibility always exists that someone will be wrongfully accused and killed. Also, the mere existence of the death penalty as an option poisons the well and biases juries toward choosing that option. In the end, rehabilitative imprisonment for the small fry and asylums for the true sociopaths are a much better option, and are more humane to boot.

The only thing the death penalty is good for is satisfying a lust for blood. You may say only the most despicable criminals (rapists, counterrevolutionaries, etc) would get it, and they deserve it, but again, what would it actually accomplish? Is the thought of society keeping such people alive just so nauseating that justice can only be served when they lie dead in a ditch? And again, what if we get the wrong guy? A death sentence is not to be taken lightly because of this, which is why it is so necessary to have an appeals process, which is extremely costly.

You call us moralists, but I say the real moralists are those who condone state-sanctioned murder because they think some people deserve it. All the other stuff about deterring crime and not wanting to waste resources is often just secondary justifications, and it all falls apart anyway, so we're only left with bloodlust.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The revolution is brought about through guns and lead bullets. Those are the only politics that matter, part of these politics are executing the rapists and murderers of society that have no place and cannot contribute to socialism. Someone who murders (apolitically for the sole purpose of murder within certain circumstances should be executed), the same applies for rape. In a socialist context within a revolutionary condition this is building a sense of order for all comrades to follow in line with and it lets them know that if they do not follow in line what the consequences will be. As well when it applies to the bourgeois who will be executed they will know that the crime of being bourgeois influenced is to be punished with the maximum force.

Human beings will have to use methods like this as long as human society remains. Pseudo-morality will not solve the issue of justice and the only proper way to restore justice is through unfortunately techniques such as these, the revolution as well requires these techniques as without them it will be impossible.

Ah, so now we've gone from 'merely' executing the class enemy to subjectively labelling certain types of criminals as worthy of state-sanctioned murder.

Executing rapists and murderers has nothing to do with Socialism. Socialism is a philosophy based on who owns the means of production; it is not a philosophy which dictates that a small group should be able to rule in the name of the class.

Besides, rapists and murderers are a problem in any society. I don't see how they are a threat to Socialism itself, when the same problem occurs in Capitalist societies too. So don't you dare tie the name of Socialism to state-sanctioned murder - if you want to support such an abhorrent, barbaric practice then attach your own name to it.

Also, love how you say the following:

" In a socialist context within a revolutionary condition this is building a sense of order for all comrades to follow in line with and it lets them know that if they do not follow in line what the consequences will be".

So basically what you mean is, the death penalty is okay for the bourgeoisie, it's okay for the people in society who you can't be bothered to rehabilitate/lock up, AND for anybody who dares to challenge your party's hegemony on power.

Frankly, you are a fucking turncoat for even suggesting that members of the working class should be executed for going against the ruling party, anti-worker piece of shit. Your precious Stalinism will never rise again and it's name will forever be consigned to the dustbin of history - peoples' history as well as bourgeois history. In case the past few decades had passed you by, nobody wants to be ruled over by some dictatorial asshole who imposes his or her ideas on the working class by the end of the gun and the security services.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Yea it kinda is, same with legislating morality. How about instead of feel good principles we do what's practical? I for one don't want to pay for a prisoner's free ride for the rest of his life, and the prison system itself concentrates like-minded dangerous criminals and creates a gang problem.

Do you even have an alternative?

It has been proven, time and again, that it costs far more to execute someone than it does to lock them up in the cushiest of jails for their entire lives.

I don't need to have an alternative to know that state-sanctioned murder is wrong and backwards. It is a totally different animal to revolutionary violence.

So much for rehabilitation. If you view rapists and murderers as free riders, then no doubt by logical extension you have the same dim view of all prisoners.

[Martin Blank]

I for one don't want to pay for a prisoner's free ride for the rest of his life, and the prison system itself concentrates like-minded dangerous criminals and creates a gang problem.

You want to do something practical? Then change your position. It's cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than to execute them. This is why a lot of countries got rid of capital punishment in the first place. The pro-death penalty position is the one that rides the "morality" high horse ("an eye for an eye", and all that).

As for gangs in prison, that's almost a non-issue. Wherever de-classed, lumpenized elements congregate, gangs emerge -- in prison, out of prison, wherever. Unless you're going to advocate that a workers' republic should organize its prison powers along the lines of Ünderland (http://www.venturefans.org/vbwiki/%C3%9CnderlandUpK-mwdiWA&cad=rja), you're not going to be able to kill your way out of a gang culture.

[manic expression]

If capitalists do X it's oppressive and reactionary.
If MLs do X it's just and progressive.
If X happens to be a tactic, that may be the case (though not nearly always, of course). For example, if capitalists form armies, socialists should too...it's the same measure, but one is reactionary and the other is progressive.

I'll definitely grant you that the death penalty can be considered barbaric, but IMO it is inarguable that we live in barbaric times and that socialists need to confront that.


I don't need to have an alternative to know that state-sanctioned murder is wrong and backwards. It is a totally different animal to revolutionary violence.
Saying something like that is all so easy, but it's hard to see much merit behind it as it is.

Building and defending a society is no innocent task...people who expect it to be all peaches and pillows have probably not considered matters very far beyond the very idyllic idea of what they desire society to look like, not how to make it so. Naivete as politics it seems.

[Bostana]

Any hope I had for Japan reaching Socialism has just been subtracted a little bit.

But I still have hope

[GPDP]

I don't think any of us are saying building socialism will be a dinner party or whatever. Of course it will be hard, and of course violence of some kind will most likely need to be enacted. What I and others are trying to wrap our heads around is why the death penalty needs to be a part of a society trying to build socialism.

Killing in a battlefield during a revolution/counter-revolution is of course bound to happen, and given that I am not a pacifist, I have no real objection to our armies/militias defending themselves with deadly force. However, if we instead manage to capture an (accused) counter-revolutionary, what sense is there in employing the death penalty then, given that it doesn't act as a worthwhile deterrent? If he is indeed guilty, he's already been rendered harmless anyway, and may even potentially come to our side or divulge information later on. If we made a mistake, we just avoided needlessly taking a comrade's life.

Besides, we need to think about what precedent we're clearly setting when we allow the death penalty into our code of law. IMO it opens the door for some potentially nasty power creep at the hands of the state, among other undesirable effects.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't understand the arguments about cost. Yes, it does cost quite a bit to execute someone in the USA, but that's because there's a whole spectacle involved in the appeals process and all the crap associated with "due process". Simply shooting someone in the head and never worrying yourself about whether they actually were guilty of what they were accused of is very inexpensive!

Is it something that fosters the kind of society that we might want, I think that's the better question. If you're simply willing to try and shoot your way out of social problems, that doesn't seem like a very healthy society to me.

[GPDP]

I'd like to think those who support the death penalty have some semblance of respect for the possibility that we may just have accused the wrong person, which is why an appeals process is so necessary. That is why we're discussing costs: if you support the death penalty but want to make sure you got the right person, you MUST go through a costly appeals process, which will cost more than just imprisoning them for life.

Of course, there's those that just as you said would rather just shoot the accused and get it over with, but they are not worth engaging, because they are obviously making light of a very delicate issue.

[manic expression]

I'd like to think those who support the death penalty have some semblance of respect for the possibility that we may just have accused the wrong person, which is why an appeals process is so necessary. That is why we're discussing costs: if you support the death penalty but want to make sure you got the right person, you MUST go through a costly appeals process, which will cost more than just imprisoning them for life.
Of course there must be an appeals process. Che himself presided over such a process. I don't think it would be as expensive as most of us are accustomed to. But honestly it shouldn't matter what it costs, if it's costly then it's a justified expense.


However, if we instead manage to capture an (accused) counter-revolutionary, what sense is there in employing the death penalty then, given that it doesn't act as a worthwhile deterrent? If he is indeed guilty, he's already been rendered harmless anyway, and may even potentially come to our side or divulge information later on.
I don't think it's as simple as capturing an accused counterrevolutionary and deciding what to do with him/her. I think it's more about capturing the leader of an infamous death squad that for months has been rampaging through working-class communities, murdering families and using rape as a weapon of intimidation. Things become very different with the addition of those details IMO.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The death penalty is a measure of politics. When used by the capitalist state it is oppressive and reactionary as those are the needs of the capitalist state. However, when utilized by a socialist state it will get rid of the enemy of the people and restore order, more or less ensuring the survival of socialism out of the blood of the bourgeois. There's no reason to be a liberal about technique.

As of always, the Japanese state is again acting in it's normal way. Although I'll shed no tears for rapists and murderers whom are executed by the Japanese state. Political comrades though of the former JRA who are on the death row must however be supported against the Japanese state which has always been a toxic monarchy and since the US occupation, a key imperialist lackey of the United States in order to threaten the DPRK and various other nations in Asia.
When governments with the same politics as me violently represses political subversives, it's necessary, but when governments I dislike do it it's tyranny.

That's not to say that a proletarian state isn't to be violent. The state by nature is violent, but there is a difference between suppressing the remnants of capital out of absolute necessity and disallowing any and all deviance from the norm.

[l'Enfermé]

Four decades of waking up and not knowing if it'll be your last day alive, sitting in a cell for a crime you may not have committed. It's not just the death penalty that's cruel and inhumane, it's also the time spent on death row.


It's still not a punishment sufficient enough for his horrendous crimes. Why should he be granted the leniency he didn't grant his victims?

This is ridiculous. Death to murderers of innocents! Such scum forfeit their rights to life when they rob others of theirs. To object to their execution because you are not fond of the executioner, that's absurd; justice must be done irregardless.

Protest against the State locking up racial minorities on ridiculous drug charges, yes, protest against the imprisonment of those who have evidence that disproves their guilt, yes, but protesting against those that deserve it? Is this what is left of the Left?

[Q]

Enough of the rage goti. I don't favor execution because it's 'cheaper', I fear accumulating huge prison population that would be taxing on the rest of us, especially since crime in socialism is highly unlikely to be mostly just petty offenses. Good luck selling such things to a self-managing working class.

As Cthulhu already pointed out it is exactly the "eye-for-an-eye" mentality that burdens society so much. So, besides holding a reactionary position it is also plain wrong. Every case study shows how when incarcerated people are treated as humans, with a decent perspective of bettering themselves and have a future, how this turns out better for everyone: The incarcerated and society as a whole.

Some numbers:

Recidivism: Norway, a country with one of the most humane prison system, has an overall recidivism rate of two years after prisoners are released (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.html). Compared: The US and UK stand at between 50% and 60%.

Positions of countries by incarceration rate per capita (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate): US stands firmly on spot 1, Norway near the bottom at spot 169.

Some pictures:

USA prisons:
http://prisoncellss.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Prison-Cell.jpg

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/five-star-jail.jpg

http://blog.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/gitmo-cell.jpg

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CA-prisons.jpg

http://cdn.radionetherlands.nl/data/files/imagecache/must_carry/images/lead/prison-650.jpg

Norway prisons:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/05/11/article-1277158-0985D624000005DC-56_634x423.jpg

http://news.isay.no/files/2010/08/Luksusfengsel.jpg

http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000b13oDviidKc/s/860/860/Halden-Luxury-Prison-Norway-029.jpg

http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/500x_norway2.jpg

http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/500x_norway1.jpg
Not to mention that executions have not been carried out on Norway since a very long time (last one in peacetime was in 1876 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Norway)).

[Yuppie Grinder]

As Cthulhu already pointed out it is exactly the "eye-for-an-eye" mentality that burdens society so much. So, besides holding a reactionary position it is also plain wrong. Every case study shows how when incarcerated people are treated as humans, with a decent perspective of bettering themselves and have a future, how this turns out better for everyone: The incarcerated and society as a whole.

Some numbers:

Recidivism: Norway, a country with one of the most humane prison system, has an overall recidivism rate of two years after prisoners are released (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.html). Compared: The US and UK stand at between 50% and 60%.

Positions of countries by incarceration rate per capita (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate): US stands firmly on spot 1, Norway near the bottom at spot 169.

Some pictures:

USA prisons:
http://prisoncellss.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Prison-Cell.jpg

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/five-star-jail.jpg

http://blog.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/gitmo-cell.jpg

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CA-prisons.jpg

http://cdn.radionetherlands.nl/data/files/imagecache/must_carry/images/lead/prison-650.jpg

Norway prisons:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/05/11/article-1277158-0985D624000005DC-56_634x423.jpg

http://news.isay.no/files/2010/08/Luksusfengsel.jpg

http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000b13oDviidKc/s/860/860/Halden-Luxury-Prison-Norway-029.jpg

http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/500x_norway2.jpg

http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/500x_norway1.jpg
Not to mention that executions have not been carried out on Norway since a very long time (last one in peacetime was in 1876 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Norway)).
The Norwegian bourgeoisie's treatment of the proletariat differs from the American bourgeoisie's, because different means are required to maintain the capitalist order. If there comes a time when Norway's approach to prison better fits the class goals of the American bourgeoisie, they will adapt.

The modern prison is unique to industrial capitalism, and I believe that under the dictatorship of the proletariat more cooperative, decentralized means of dealing with anti-social behavior will necessarily be developed.

[Q]

The Norwegian bourgeoisie's treatment of the proletariat differs from the American bourgeoisie's, because different means are required to maintain the capitalist order. If there comes a time when Norway's approach to prison better fits the class goals of the American bourgeoisie, they will adapt.

Despite the rather obvious truism here, the point still stands: Treating people like shit will create shit people. Treating people like humans will create humans. This is the main point we need to take into consideration if the working class ever took power and I have every confidence of the working class moving into a humane trajectory as it came closer to taking power.

But as to the truism: yes, duh. There is a reason the prison system works in Norway. This reason is the broader social context of having a lower overall crime rate, which in turn is a result Norway's social policies and overall wealth.

I'm not saying we should fight to emulate Norway within the context of capitalism, as we would hit the many barriers on that road pretty soon. I am saying that there is a difference between seeing the justice system as an institutionalised way for society to "get revenge" and seeing the justice system as a way to try and decriminalise and reintegrate people back into society as good as one can. In that sense Norway is a model for socialists.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

In the fear that this thread is de-railing, let me say this in marxist materialist logic:
Trying to stop the cause for criminality goes before all kind of reactionary "police" reaction. This is the main difference between capitalist conservatives and marxists. That said, let me remind you all for what we fight, 36 Million damned humans die of starvation and its causes a year. So, if it came to a revolution and we would take over the banks like Deutsche Bank that speculate on Food, i would have no problem with putting a bullet _______, but would not like to institutionalise execution. Institutionalising torture or murder is abhorrent, and anyone who takes these steps would have to face the consequence by the decision of working people's court.

Personally, it would be a great moment of revolutionary terror to instigate political violence, murder, unto the mass murdering pawns of the capitalist system. But that is because i am a stupid primitive little human that cannot subconsciously see the material conditions that forced this banker or politician to become such a mass murdering participant of this utterly disgusting, indignant, brutal and systemic murdering system.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Despite the rather obvious truism here, the point still stands: Treating people like shit will create shit people. Treating people like humans will create humans. This is the main point we need to take into consideration if the working class ever took power and I have every confidence of the working class moving into a humane trajectory as it came closer to taking power.

But as to the truism: yes, duh. There is a reason the prison system works in Norway. This reason is the broader social context of having a lower overall crime rate, which in turn is a result Norway's social policies and overall wealth.

I'm not saying we should fight to emulate Norway within the context of capitalism, as we would hit the many barriers on that road pretty soon. I am saying that there is a difference between seeing the justice system as an institutionalised way for society to "get revenge" and seeing the justice system as a way to try and decriminalise and reintegrate people back into society as good as one can. In that sense Norway is a model for socialists.
The modern prison system is inherently bourgeois, and absolutely not a model for socialists no matter what. That's what I'm trying to say. It was born out of necessity, the justice system of pre-industrial society was no longer effective in suppressing behavior unhealthy to capitalist society. Each economic epoch births it's own technology and social constructs and so will socialism, only they will necessarily be cooperative.

[Ostrinski]

The type of posts made by GPDP and Q are what change reactionary minds. I think we should try to emulate this type of response no matter how abhorrent we think a certain position is, I think it has the best results. I really don't think anyone has ever reconsidered their politics after being told to go kill themselves.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The type of posts made by GPDP and Q are what change reactionary minds. I think we should try to emulate this type of response no matter how abhorrent we think a certain position is, I think it has the best results. I really don't think anyone has ever reconsidered their politics after being told to go kill themselves.
What understanding is most accessible to non-leftists is usually not the one that actually makes sense.

[Ostrinski]

What understanding is most accessible to non-leftists is usually not the one that actually makes sense.Could you reiterate this? I'm not sure I understand you.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Could you reiterate this? I'm not sure I understand you.
Q's idea that more humane prisons (as if a humane prison could exist) would have a role in a future, more just society is agreeable to those outside of the revolutionary left, but doesn't actually hold up very well under a Marxian critique.

[Q]

Q's idea that more humane prisons (as if a humane prison could exist) would have a role in a future, more just society is agreeable to those outside of the revolutionary left, but doesn't actually hold up very well under a Marxian critique.

If I remember correctly, I brought in some number that underpin my claim that treating inmates as humans and providing them with a future perspective does create a lower recidivist rate. You, so far, have responded with truisms that our society is bourgeois and that each epoch comes up with their own solutions to social issues that supposedly blows my argument out of the water.

It didn't really convince me though. Perhaps you have to position your "Marxian critique" a little better.

[Ostrinski]

Q's idea that more humane prisons (as if a humane prison could exist) would have a role in a future, more just society is agreeable to those outside of the revolutionary left, but doesn't actually hold up very well under a Marxian critique.Well then let's see your Marxian critique.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Well then let's see your Marxian critique.
I posted it a few posts up.

[Ostrinski]

I see assertions without validation.

[Yuppie Grinder]

If I remember correctly, I brought in some number that underpin my claim that treating inmates as humans and providing them with a future perspective does create a lower recidivist rate.
This is not what I'm disagreeing with, this is:

In that sense Norway is a model for socialists.

I see assertions without validation.
What do you want validated, my claim that the modern prison is unique to industrial capitalism?

[Ostrinski]

Q's idea that more humane prisons (as if a humane prison could exist) would have a role in a future, more just society is agreeable to those outside of the revolutionary left, but doesn't actually hold up very well under a Marxian critique.This is what I want validated. You haven't explained why a more humane prison system isn't a practical solution.

[Positivist]

It's not a rage post, I actually think you are an oxygen stealing slime bucket who needs to kill himself. You see unlike you I don't advocate state sanctioned murder, so yeah, seriously: kill yourself, you are part of the problem.

The fact that people have to argue with you about whether a state has the right to take a life or not is actually depressing. Next thing we'll be arguing is whether it's right to sucker punch old people who are walking to slow. Protip: It's not.

How can you feign righteousness on the issue of the death penalty when in your argument against it you promote suicide?

[Q]

This is not what I'm disagreeing with, this is:

So, you disagree with my point that, under working class rule, we shouldn't punish criminals out of spite but instead work towards making them fully participating members of society?

So, how should we deal with criminals? Or will they magically just disappear under socialism?

(I do expect a sharp decrease of criminality actually, as the social causes of criminal levels will be tackled such as poverty, social hierarchy, low perspectives, etc. But some level of criminality will most likely exist and we probably need some sort of justice system for it).

[Yuppie Grinder]

So, you disagree with my point that, under working class rule, we shouldn't punish criminals out of spite but instead work towards making them fully participating members of society?

So, how should we deal with criminals? Or will they magically just disappear under socialism?

(I do expect a sharp decrease of criminality actually, as the social causes of criminal levels will be tackled such as poverty, social hierarchy, low perspectives, etc. But some level of criminality will most likely exist and we probably need some sort of justice system for it).

I'm saying that we can't really treat criminals humanely within a prison system. Socialism would develop alternative means of dealing with anti-social behavior.


This is what I want validated. You haven't explained why a more humane prison system isn't a practical solution.
My argument was that the modern prison system was unique to the epoch of industrial capital, and that socialism like all previous systems would develop its own method of reforming anti-social behavior. The correctional methods of the bourgeois era wouldn't fit socialist society any better than the correctional methods of feudal society fit bourgeois society.
Brospierre, I think our debate is becoming circular.

[Ocean Seal]

His 100% community subsidized sustenance, unless we introduce some sort of forced productive labor to pay for itself (but that'll probably be another moral issue for some). I suspect this would be a non-issue in communism since it's post-scarcity, still could pose a danger though by concentrating some of the more heinous criminals.
Hi there I'm a communist suggesting slave labor as a reasonable alternative nevermind that the vast majority of prisoners are there for non-violent crimes and an aggressive police state.

[MarxSchmarx]

You want to do something practical? Then change your position. It's cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than to execute them. This is why a lot of countries got rid of capital punishment in the first place.


Historically that may be the case, but as someone who opposes the death penalty I find the cost argument pretty weak.

In many countries, notoriously the US and Japan but also from my understanding India and until recently Russia, it was the costs associated with the appeals process that dragged on for years that caused the death penalty to be more expensive. But where such costs don't exist or are minimal, as in Romania with the Ceasescus or a lot of cases in mainland China, it is probably fair to say execution is cheaper than life imprisonment.

Ultimately the cost argument in favor of abolition is unwinnable - all the supporters of the death penalty have to claim is that we should lower the costs associated with litigation or limit the scope of litigation to abet their claims. The cost of life imprisonment will be higher than the cost of a bullet.

Indeed, the strength of the abolitionist's position, as I see it, should be our claim that even if it costs more it's unacceptable to kill another.

[GPDP]

Historically that may be the case, but as someone who opposes the death penalty I find the cost argument pretty weak.

In many countries, notoriously the US and Japan but also from my understanding India and until recently Russia, it was the costs associated with the appeals process that dragged on for years that caused the death penalty to be more expensive. But where such costs don't exist or are minimal, as in Romania with the Ceasescus or a lot of cases in mainland China, it is probably fair to say execution is cheaper than life imprisonment.

Ultimately the cost argument in favor of abolition is unwinnable - all the supporters of the death penalty have to claim is that we should lower the costs associated with litigation or limit the scope of litigation to abet their claims. The cost of life imprisonment will be higher than the cost of a bullet.

Indeed, the strength of the abolitionist's position, as I see it, should be our claim that even if it costs more it's unacceptable to kill another.

Despite the fact that I too do not believe in the death penalty for moral reasons, morality alone should not be the only angle through which to approach the issue. Debating the death penalty on moral grounds only results in life vs. justice debates that go in circles. Pro-death penalty people, after all, believe someone who commits a most heinous crime has forfeited their right to live, thus the moral thing to do is kill them. How do you defeat that by appealing to morality as you and I conceive it?

That is why my approach is to challenge the utility of the death penalty. What, ultimately, is the purpose of keeping it around? It has been proven it does not deter crime, unless it is applied so liberally it cows the entire population into submission for fear of being branded a criminal or counter-revolutionary. If that's the socialism we're trying to build, I want no part of it.

Plus, what does it even accomplish? To just sentence all criminals who are supposedly worthy of death with the same broad stroke is IMO stupid as fuck. What if some of them are actually capable of coming back around, becoming rehabilitated, and rejoining society? I mean, I'm sure there's always gonna be the odd Charles Manson or Joker-esque character that is utterly incapable of being anything other than a sociopath, but we can't assume all those who are on death row are like them.

It's about this point where proponents begin to argue that it wouldn't be fair to those whose lives they took or ruined to have them eventually be set free or still living. To that, I say you're only cultivating further anger and hate, and encouraging revenge fantasies. It suggests criminal justice should be directed by emotions and irrationality. Will killing a serial killer erase what he did or bring back those he murdered? No, but damn it he should still die because it's not fair otherwise!

And that's where you can't really argue when it comes to morality. Your morality indicates taking a life is wrong regardless of who does it. Their morality says those who took a life unprovoked forfeit theirs. Two utterly incompatible viewpoints that convince no one who doesn't already agree and run basically on appeals to emotion.

Yet the more objective ground lies in the death penalty's inability to justify itself in terms of utility in terms of building a better society. It basically exists solely to satisfy someone else's base desire to see those who wronged them dead.

[MarxSchmarx]

Despite the fact that I too do not believe in the death penalty for moral reasons, morality alone should not be the only angle through which to approach the issue. Debating the death penalty on moral grounds only results in life vs. justice debates that go in circles. Pro-death penalty people, after all, believe someone who commits a most heinous crime has forfeited their right to live, thus the moral thing to do is kill them. How do you defeat that by appealing to morality as you and I conceive it?

That is why my approach is to challenge the utility of the death penalty. What, ultimately, is the purpose of keeping it around? It has been proven it does not deter crime, unless it is applied so liberally it cows the entire population into submission for fear of being branded a criminal or counter-revolutionary. If that's the socialism we're trying to build, I want no part of it.

Plus, what does it even accomplish? To just sentence all criminals who are supposedly worthy of death with the same broad stroke is IMO stupid as fuck. What if some of them are actually capable of coming back around, becoming rehabilitated, and rejoining society? I mean, I'm sure there's always gonna be the odd Charles Manson or Joker-esque character that is utterly incapable of being anything other than a sociopath, but we can't assume all those who are on death row are like them.

It's about this point where proponents begin to argue that it wouldn't be fair to those whose lives they took or ruined to have them eventually be set free or still living. To that, I say you're only cultivating further anger and hate, and encouraging revenge fantasies. It suggests criminal justice should be directed by emotions and irrationality. Will killing a serial killer erase what he did or bring back those he murdered? No, but damn it he should still die because it's not fair otherwise!

And that's where you can't really argue when it comes to morality. Your morality indicates taking a life is wrong regardless of who does it. Their morality says those who took a life unprovoked forfeit theirs. Two utterly incompatible viewpoints that convince no one who doesn't already agree and run basically on appeals to emotion.

Yet the more objective ground lies in the death penalty's inability to justify itself in terms of utility in terms of building a better society. It basically exists solely to satisfy someone else's base desire to see those who wronged them dead.

The thing with the utility argument is that, what if the net satisfaction (however measured) the victims friends and family derived from executing the perpetrator exceeds all the benefits (again, however measured) of keeping the killer alive? I think this might be true in some cases, and propents of the death penalty need merely argue we have to be more selective about who we execute, not whether we should kill anybody at all in the first place.

The forfeiture argument is a legitimate rebuttal to appeals to morality. I think the best approach is to provoke holes in that argument - for instance, forfeiture implies something of a "default state". Is this "default state" death for everybody, as the forfeiture argument suggest? That is, is a person's life a privilege merely granted in lieu of death that can be revoked if needs be? Indeed, ultimately all the forfeiture argument says is one who commits murder should be at the mercy of the victim's friends and family. Aside from the obvious incongruence that the murderer too has friends and family who should be consulted under this logic, it is not clear that the correct course of action of the victim's relations is to kill the perpetrator.

Indeed, this issue comes down to a sort of "categorical imperative" that one should not willfully take another's life as a matter of principle. I think the utilitarian argument is compelling and frankly sufficient, but we have to understand that it too can be overcome with a sufficient balancing of the factors. Whereas the only rebuttal to a dictum "thou shalt not kill willfully" is an irrational bloodlust and appeal to emotion - an outright rejection of the foundation of a functioning society. That apparently carries the day in some circles (e.g., the voting public in Japan, the US and the UK), but at the same time is exposed in the course of doing so as the barbaric and primal urge that it is.

[GPDP]

Well, to be fair to my argument, I wasn't discussing utility in terms of utilitarian philosophy, so much as there not being any tangible social benefits to having the death penalty. In fact, there are documented drawbacks, such as its effects on biasing jury decisions, as well as the possibility always existing that we have the wrong person.

As for us being "more selective" about who we kill, who exactly would have that power? Do we put that up for democratic vote? Would the decision be universal or left to each region to decide? It's a can of worms that IMO is not worth opening for whatever satisfaction or ambiguous sense of "justice" one may get out of it.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't think it's as simple as capturing an accused counterrevolutionary and deciding what to do with him/her. I think it's more about capturing the leader of an infamous death squad that for months has been rampaging through working-class communities, murdering families and using rape as a weapon of intimidation. Things become very different with the addition of those details IMO.

You are not a man of the law. Neither am I. When we read the paper, we divide murderers into 'normal' murders, and those with extra emotional details. Killing an 80 year old woman, for example. Killing a child. Sexually assaulting someone during the act. But whilst we get swayed by these emotional details, it's important that those in the judiciary do not. It's important that, post/during-revolution, the entire working class is involved in setting up a new constitution and drafting new laws and that, once drafted, these are adhered to in the courts, not presided over by an ideologue like Che. That simply isn't fair to the accused, no matter how disgusting their alleged crime is.

I don't think we can simply support the death penalty on the (totally misguided) assumption that, as Socialists, we can make it a cost-effective process where Capitalism has failed. All the evidence shows that to be a fair process, the death penalty and associated appeals will cost a fair amount of time of prison authorities, attorneys, prosecutors and their offices, courthouses, judges, clerks, juries and security services. None of which will come cheap, let's not be under any illusions.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The thing with the utility argument is that, what if the net satisfaction (however measured) the victims friends and family derived from executing the perpetrator exceeds all the benefits (again, however measured) of keeping the killer alive? I think this might be true in some cases, and propents of the death penalty need merely argue we have to be more selective about who we execute, not whether we should kill anybody at all in the first place.


If we draw up a list of every stakeholder in a crime, we do not simply have 'criminal' and 'victim' and 'families'. There are many more people than that involved. Society, for one. I think it impossible for the utility of the criminals death, from the victim's families point of view, to outweight the utility of not killing the criminal, given that their utility, whilst existing, must surely be weighted as quite a small percentage of the overall pie, right? Am I making sense?:confused:

[ckaihatsu]

---





And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of over-fed barbarism amongst us.

With authority, punishment will pass away. This will be a great gain—a gain, in fact, of incalculable value. As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for school-boys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the occurrence of crime. It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the more crime is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly recognised this, and has made it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can. Wherever it has really diminished it, the results have always been extremely good. The less punishment, the less crime. When there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness. For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime. That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view. They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins. They are merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat. When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though such are the crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more than what a man is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible severity, if we except the crime of murder, and regard death as worse than penal servitude, a point on which our criminals, I believe, disagree. But though a crime may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and so, when that system is abolished, will disappear. When each member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not interfered with by his neighbour, it will not be an object of any interest to him to interfere with anyone else. Jealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property, and under Socialism and Individualism will die out. It is remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown.





The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1017

[ckaihatsu]

Speaking as a materialist Marxist, let's throw out any and all moralistic arguments for being too subjective and unwieldy. Let's also throw out any and all monetary "cost" accounting arguments as well, since it should be clear that it would be apples-and-oranges.

In a post-capitalist (socialist / communist) society, the watchword would be 'productivity in common'. *That* should be the yardstick for this issue, and if a rampantly damaging counter-revolutionary type happened to "get loose", the "rap sheet" should be one that makes an assessment of how that person's decisions hampered collectivist politics and/or cut against collectivist productivity.

Certainly if people / worker(s) are injured or -- in the worst-imaginable case -- killed, a fairly accurate estimation could be made of that person's detriment to realistically potential societal productivity, and a customized "balance sheet" created based on that estimation.

Moreover, a *second* estimation could be made as to what *future*, *ongoing* societal costs -- liberated labor, especially -- would be required to neutralize this person and their potential future activity for the rest of their life. A collective decision could certainly be made as to whether *anyone* in that post-capitalist society would be ready to commit a portion of their life-time in that objectively-superior society to *personally* provide the liberated-labor necessary to keep that person neutralized. Also, at the same time, that person's 'case' would necessarily be a recurring *political issue* for the society, collectively, for the rest of that person's existence.

Given this potential load against a collectivist liberated productivity, such a society would have to collectively decide -- whatever the severity of the case -- how its best interests would be served.

[MarxSchmarx]

Well, to be fair to my argument, I wasn't discussing utility in terms of utilitarian philosophy, so much as there not being any tangible social benefits to having the death penalty. In fact, there are documented drawbacks, such as its effects on biasing jury decisions, as well as the possibility always existing that we have the wrong person.


I see; but why wouldn't the "closure" afforded to victims, their families, or the security of society in knowing beyond any doubt that "this maniac can no longer do any more damage", or even freeing the murderer from being haunted by their conscience for decades, not be considered social benefits?



As for us being "more selective" about who we kill, who exactly would have that power? Do we put that up for democratic vote? Would the decision be universal or left to each region to decide? It's a can of worms that IMO is not worth opening for whatever satisfaction or ambiguous sense of "justice" one may get out of it.

To be sure, isn't the same true of any criminal sanction involving penalization? I disagree with retributive "justice", but if one sees value in retribution of any form, the death penalty isn't really all that unique.



If we draw up a list of every stakeholder in a crime, we do not simply have 'criminal' and 'victim' and 'families'. There are many more people than that involved. Society, for one. I think it impossible for the utility of the criminals death, from the victim's families point of view, to outweight the utility of not killing the criminal, given that their utility, whilst existing, must surely be weighted as quite a small percentage of the overall pie, right? Am I making sense?:confused:

Well to put your argument algebraically,
x=utility of criminal's death to victim's (let's say immediate) family
f=number of such family members
y=utility gained by each individual from society as a whole by keeping criminal alive
n=number of overall population

For any combination of (f,n,y), you can always find a number x such that

net utility of killing the murderer = x*f>y*n = net utility of sparing the murderer

Should society place upper limits on x and lower bounds on y? Then it is merely a matter of degree of how heavily you weigh the family's utility gained by the criminal's death, or how much you devalue the benefit per member of society of keeping the criminal alive.

It's compounded by the fact that society as a whole may benefit (for the reasons mentioned in this thread above) from the death of the criminal. If the benefit to a completely random stranger to the whole incident is A (say, in the comfort of knowing this person can't kill again, or in some sadistic smugness, or whatever), then it's:

net utility of killing the murderer = A*n + x*f > y*n

or, if you are just interested in people other than the victim's family,

net utility of killing the murderer = A*(n-f) + x*f > y*n
which means an even greater value of y, the benefit of keeping the criminal alive, needs to be proffered up to reverse this inequality.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Speaking as a materialist Marxist, let's throw out any and all moralistic arguments for being too subjective and unwieldy. Let's also throw out any and all monetary "cost" accounting arguments as well, since it should be clear that it would be apples-and-oranges.

In a post-capitalist (socialist / communist) society, the watchword would be 'productivity in common'. *That* should be the yardstick for this issue, and if a rampantly damaging counter-revolutionary type happened to "get loose", the "rap sheet" should be one that makes an assessment of how that person's decisions hampered collectivist politics and/or cut against collectivist productivity.

Certainly if people / worker(s) are injured or -- in the worst-imaginable case -- killed, a fairly accurate estimation could be made of that person's detriment to realistically potential societal productivity, and a customized "balance sheet" created based on that estimation.

Moreover, a *second* estimation could be made as to what *future*, *ongoing* societal costs -- liberated labor, especially -- would be required to neutralize this person and their potential future activity for the rest of their life. A collective decision could certainly be made as to whether *anyone* in that post-capitalist society would be ready to commit a portion of their life-time in that objectively-superior society to *personally* provide the liberated-labor necessary to keep that person neutralized. Also, at the same time, that person's 'case' would necessarily be a recurring *political issue* for the society, collectively, for the rest of that person's existence.

Given this potential load against a collectivist liberated productivity, such a society would have to collectively decide -- whatever the severity of the case -- how its best interests would be served.

No offence, but I would hate to live in such a society. It misses one key variable...the human factor. That may not be wholly 'materialist' or 'scientific', but a lot of pseudo-scientific methods present their theories very neatly, but don't often work out too well in practice. That is the great problem.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I see; but why wouldn't the "closure" afforded to victims, their families, or the security of society in knowing beyond any doubt that "this maniac can no longer do any more damage", or even freeing the murderer from being haunted by their conscience for decades, not be considered social benefits?



To be sure, isn't the same true of any criminal sanction involving penalization? I disagree with retributive "justice", but if one sees value in retribution of any form, the death penalty isn't really all that unique.




Well to put your argument algebraically,
x=utility of criminal's death to victim's (let's say immediate) family
f=number of such family members
y=utility gained by each individual from society as a whole by keeping criminal alive
n=number of overall population

For any combination of (f,n,y), you can always find a number x such that

net utility of killing the murderer = x*f>y*n = net utility of sparing the murderer

Should society place upper limits on x and lower bounds on y? Then it is merely a matter of degree of how heavily you weigh the family's utility gained by the criminal's death, or how much you devalue the benefit per member of society of keeping the criminal alive.

It's compounded by the fact that society as a whole may benefit (for the reasons mentioned in this thread above) from the death of the criminal. If the benefit to a completely random stranger to the whole incident is A (say, in the comfort of knowing this person can't kill again, or in some sadistic smugness, or whatever), then it's:

net utility of killing the murderer = A*n + x*f > y*n

or, if you are just interested in people other than the victim's family,

net utility of killing the murderer = A*(n-f) + x*f > y*n
which means an even greater value of y, the benefit of keeping the criminal alive, needs to be proffered up to reverse this inequality.

Again, a neat theory.

But there are several problems. Your theory is binary. It deals with the net utility of killing the murderer vs the net utility of keeping the murderer alive. It says nothing of the factors within.

So, within the utility of killing the murderer, you have not only their utility of death, but offset against this is the time that it takes to kill them (greater time = less utility, obviously), the cost (again, an inverse relationship with utility) and the strength of the case against them/the fairness of the judicial process (a positive relationship this time).

Within the utility of keeping the murderer alive, you have the choice of the utility (to society, to the victim's family to the murderer and to the murderer's family) of setting the murderer free, the utility (again to all parties) of having the murderer serve a portion of their life in prison, and the utility (again to all parties) of the murderer spending the rest of their life behind bars.

Of course, the problem with using utility is that it is not really measurable, not accurately anyway. Stated preference methods are known for being pathetically inaccurate and prone to bias, interference and so on, and i'm not really sure how you'd go about using a revealed preference method for state-sanctioned murder, you'd have to kill a huge amount of people for any study to be statistically reliable!!

[ckaihatsu]

No offence,


None taken.





but I would hate to live in such a society. It misses one key variable...the human factor.


No, actually, it *doesn't* miss that factor:





[S]uch a society would have to collectively decide [...] how its best interests would be served.


And I'm not pleased that you're playing the "human factor" card here -- it *may* be taken either as an act of stating-the-obvious, or even as a veiled slight against anyone who proposes a formal procedural process of any sort, for anything -- stereotyping it and blithely dismissing it by implying that it's "too technical".





That may not be wholly 'materialist' or 'scientific', but a lot of pseudo-scientific methods present their theories very neatly, but don't often work out too well in practice. That is the great problem.


Well, if it's of any satisfaction to you, we happen to be discussing on the very *fringes* of what a theoretical topic can realistically deal with. As socialists we wouldn't proffer detailed blueprints anyway, for *any* aspect of what we describe with our politics. That is the case here, where *no one* would presume to say how a potential future socialist society would deal with the details of this-or-that hypothetical "criminal" case.

[MarxSchmarx]

Within the utility of keeping the murderer alive, you have the choice of the utility (to society, to the victim's family to the murderer and to the murderer's family) of setting the murderer free, the utility (again to all parties) of having the murderer serve a portion of their life in prison, and the utility (again to all parties) of the murderer spending the rest of their life behind bars.

Of course, the problem with using utility is that it is not really measurable, not accurately anyway. Stated preference methods are known for being pathetically inaccurate and prone to bias, interference and so on, and i'm not really sure how you'd go about using a revealed preference method for state-sanctioned murder, you'd have to kill a huge amount of people for any study to be statistically reliable!!

Well just so that we are absolutely on the same page, ITT utilitarianism is rubbish; I just think in general we have to take a theory in the best possible light, give it every benefit of the doubt, and if it still comes up short, why, that's reason enough to abandon it irrespective of its other merits.

So let's take first the question of whether utility is even accurately measurable. I agree that stated preference is unreliable and "pathetic" is probably a fair way to describe the approach. A revealed preference for state-sanctioned murder, however, can be I believe be reliably estimated, with the caveat that these are culturally specific. For example, effectively local communities in rural Iran today and in the American, Mexican and Canadian frontier in the 19th/early 20th century conducted executions quite regularly. There are/were many such communities, and one can ask, for example, during the period of frontier expansion in North America, or in particular rural regions of Iran, whether executions show/ed a reliable pace. Given that frontier communities (and to some extent rural Iranian communities) are more responsive to the sensibilities of their residents than a distant government in Tokyo, I suspect that this would be one sociological measure of the "revealed" preference of "common folk" for regular executions.

But I think you give the utilarian approach far too much credit. Let us suppose that the utilitarians are right, and that you CAN reliably measure preference for executions. So, to take the rest of your argument:


Again, a neat theory.

But there are several problems. Your theory is binary. It deals with the net utility of killing the murderer vs the net utility of keeping the murderer alive. It says nothing of the factors within.

It is so, but let us look at the "factors within" that you raise, and see if they change the basic conclusion:




So, within the utility of killing the murderer, you have not only their utility of death, but offset against this is the time that it takes to kill them (greater time = less utility, obviously), the cost (again, an inverse relationship with utility) and the strength of the case against them/the fairness of the judicial process (a positive relationship this time).

Within the utility of keeping the murderer alive, you have the choice of the utility (to society, to the victim's family to the murderer and to the murderer's family) of setting the murderer free, the utility (again to all parties) of having the murderer serve a portion of their life in prison, and the utility (again to all parties) of the murderer spending the rest of their life behind bars.


OK, so let's modify our algrebra:
net utility of killing the murderer = x*f. Now x is defined as:

x = (1/T)*(1/c)*(J)

Where T = time it takes to kill them (so if T is very large the utility decreases), c=cost of killing them (again, if c is huge x decreases), and J is fairness of judicial process.

As to the utility y of keeping the murderer alive, let's say

y = L *kL + p*kp + A *kA
the choice of setting the murderer free gave us a utility per person of L, the choice of putting them in jail for a given period of time utility p and the choice of throwing away the key utility A. And obviously one cannot do all three or any two (hence the minus terms) simultaneously, so these are weighted by the probability kj that outcome j occurs.

It therefore seems you have merely shifted the terms of debate from the precise values of x versus y to the precise values of (T vs. c vs. J vs. L vs. p vs. A). And yet, it seems perfectly logical that still whatever the values of T, c, J, whatever, that one can have a set of values (L,p,A whatever) on the other side of the inequality so that whether the analysis is binary or not,

net utility of killing murderer > net utility of sparing murderer's life

Thus the utilatarian defense of the death penalty stands irrespective of how one partitions the relative values of each component.

Ultimately I think those of us who oppose the death penalty effectively argue, in this framework, that the net utility of sparing the murderer's life is infinite. This would be the only way to make the inequality logically false.

In short, I think your criticisms fail to counter the utilitarian defense of the death penalty. The criticism therefore must be of utilitarian ethics itself, rather than the particulars of that ethics as applied to any particular issue.

[El Oso Rojo]

It's not a rage post, I actually think you are an oxygen stealing slime bucket who needs to kill himself. You see unlike you I don't advocate state sanctioned murder, so yeah, seriously: kill yourself, you are part of the problem.

The fact that people have to argue with you about whether a state has the right to take a life or not is actually depressing. Next thing we'll be arguing is whether it's right to sucker punch old people who are walking to slow. Protip: It's not.

This makes you a hypocritic ^. Also, it best not to have the death sentence because I am sure in a socialist society, we can make the same mistakes too.