What's your opinion on capital punishment?

arquebus wrote:I believe in punishing all capitalists capitally. I do not believe in prisons or gulags. Common criminals should be put to sleep, deported, or exiled. Why should workers have to pay $50,000 per year, per inmate, to keep incorrigible types locked up?

"Punishing" capitalists is absolutely inconsequential. The capitalist is ultimately bound to the same subject-object inversion process as the proletarian. The accumulation of capital becomes for him an inescapable primary pursuit, his subjective preferences ignored. The capitalist is forced to sell his commodities at the socially necessary labor time; otherwise, he loses in the market, injuring both him and his workers (disproportionately, of course). The only logical manner of ending capitalist exploitation is to eliminate capital itself, not the subjective persons who occupy the "capitalist" role in the production process.

As far as your suggested punishments of "common" criminals are concerned, I highly doubt most individuals would find such draconian policies acceptable, especially given the institutional character of the crimes you refer to: people do not commit crimes independent of a social context. A minority of irrelevant anti-social riff raff on the internet notwithstanding, most people simply would not find your penalties to be commensurate with the offenses, and I state this as a staunch advocate of the death sentence.

I suggest you abandon your idealist twaddle promptly.

USSR, anyone? I see I've posted here already, but I'll forget about whatever I said then and start afresh with my take on the subject.

I think that certain people under the evil trio umbrella (i.e. murderers, rapists and kiddie fiddlers) cannot be placed under the same label as others. It is clear to me, as well as many psychologists, that a number of rapists and child molesters have a great deal of difficulty understanding "normal" people. We all know of the weird, nervous, probably-a-virgin rapists who are likely to pounce out of nowhere, and these people are often said to believe that their victims are somehow sending them hints and literally "asking for it", in which case they clearly don't understand the seriousness of what they are doing. Same thing for child molesters; I was watching a documentary on NAMBLA and paedophiles and they couldn't seem to understand the harm they were causing to children by performing sexual acts on them. One of the men they interviewed was certain that young boys would send him low-key hints and subtly flirt with him. I see it as being somewhat similar to autistic people who do not understand that their actions and words may be offensive to others, and therefore fail to understand why they should be punished for it. These people I would have put under heavy security and put into rehabilitation. Letting them out after a year or two of therapy simply because of statistics showing that the majority of rehabilitated child molesters do not recommit doesn't tell us who will and won't pull a child into an alleyway the day they are released. I don't think they should be made to suffer, but the safety of society must be put before their personal freedoms. Letting them play chess all day in paedophile prisons will indeed be a drag on society, so I see no reason why they can't be given work to do.

On the other hand, however, we have paedophiles and rapists who are clearly aware of the fact that they are causing serious harm to their victims (murderers are always aware of their wrongdoing unless they suffer from some sort of extreme mental illness such as schizophrenia). The problem arises, however, when we try to distinguish the wiser offenders from the more socially retarded ones who don't understand what damage comes from their actions. These people should, as Leon Mcnichol said, be used for the benefit of society without consideration for their wellbeing. Surely taking away someone's quality of life as a punishment which will also contribute to the wellbeing of the society they have basically said "fuck you" to is more productive than simply getting rid of them?

I would argue the whole "you can't show that killing is wrong by killing a murderer" story, but I suppose if we are talking about murderers then they themselves clearly don't see anything wrong with murdering people—unless of course it was somehow justified (killing the person who killed your best friend, for instance).

And while I see that we're on the topic of punishing capitalists, I might as well add to that as well. A capitalist is, just like the rest of us, a product of his environment and upbringing, but I don't think that when the capitalist drops his workers' wages and refuses to provide them with better working conditions he honestly feels bad about what he is doing. "Oh, those poor proles, I really wish I wasn't so disgustingly powerful so I didn't have to exploit them for my own personal benefit." If the capitalist sees nothing wrong with using the weak for his own benefit, then he shouldn't have a problem with being used for our benefit when he is the weak one.

I've never really considered writing a (serious) manifesto of punishments and brutal slave labour under socialism, so I'm not glued to any particular ideas yet. If anyone is interested in reading something of the sort written for comedic purposes, feel free to message me.

Celtiberian wrote:Serial killers, child molesters, and serial rapists have forfeited their right to life, as far as I'm concerned.

That is not only immoral because it promotes the transformation of the inalienable human rights into privileges granted only on the condition of a certain behaviour, it is also highly illogical since a state cannot prohibit homocide while at the same time execute capital punishment (state organized homcide).

Lumpenproletariat wrote:That is not only immoral because it promotes the transformation of the inalienable human rights into privileges granted only on the condition of a certain behaviour, it is also highly illogical since a state cannot prohibit homocide while at the same time execute capital punishment (state organized homcide).

Those 'unalienable' human rights are entirely subjective to begin with. There is also a hierarchy of rights when it comes to liberalism. Think about this, if people have the right to free assembly and that assembly spills onto someone's property the owner could say that they are violating his rights to decide who is on his or her property. This latter right would take precedence in the eyes of the law and the people assembling would be moved by force. In a similar manner, you could view that hierarchy of rights in the sense that one right no longer becomes a right given certain circumstances.

Let's take another example - self-defense - if someone is attacking me with lethal force and I have a gun then my shooting the assailant would be a violation of their right to live, but most people would see that right as being forfeit when the attack began.

Do you see what I mean?

Red Aegis wrote:Those 'unalienable' human rights are entirely subjective to begin with. There is also a hierarchy of rights when it comes to liberalism. Think about this, if people have the right to free assembly and that assembly spills onto someone's property the owner could say that they are violating his rights to decide who is on his or her property. This latter right would take precedence in the eyes of the law and the people assembling would be moved by force. In a similar manner, you could view that hierarchy of rights in the sense that one right no longer becomes a right given certain circumstances.

I find it problematic to say the least to compare a conflict of interest on the level of civil rights to a conflict that arises from a state violating the human rights of a felon (a.k.a. human being) in a way that is not only disproportionate and unethical but final. Having said that I think it is weird to debate over hierarchies of rights and at the same time negate the neccessity of human rights being the chief concern in every judicial decision. The ideas behind human rights are humanism, equality and justice. I think every socialist can relate to these values.

Let's take another example - self-defense - if someone is attacking me with lethal force and I have a gun then my shooting the assailant would be a violation of their right to live, but most people would see that right as being forfeit when the attack began. Do you see what I mean?

Yes, I do. And no, I don't agree with you. The example you state would be subject to interpretation. Common law refers to something called abuse of right. The act of self defense must not be excessive. The defendant is only entitled to use reasonable force. And this is where human rights come into play.

Lumpenproletariat wrote:I find it problematic to say the least to compare a conflict of interest on the level of civil rights to a conflict that arises from a state violating the human rights of a felon (a.k.a. human being) in a way that is not only disproportionate and unethical but final. Having said that I think it is weird to debate over hierarchies of rights and at the same time negate the neccessity of human rights being the chief concern in every judicial decision. The ideas behind human rights are humanism, equality and justice. I think every socialist can relate to these values.

Your argument is that it is wrong to compare Human Rights (HR) with Civil Rights (CR), and such is the property of HR that that they are not decided upon by a group - government or assembly - but are rights which are endowed upon and by birth. This argument is fallacious since to assume that there is a set of rights as such is to say that there is some objective measure that: 1) exists and 2) you can divine it and it's relations.

I do not think that such a thing exists or is even possible. To think that there is some objective measure would be a form of Idealism in which we would have to bring these Forms to bare in the physical world.

No, rights are social agreements that are not to be violated except under strictly determined and agreed to circumstances. Currently the only difference between CR and HR is that not all governments agree on which rights are agreeable between them so they invented a class called HR. Even this is not true because not all nations define HR in the same way.

You are merely applying the loose consensus of the world as some unalienable, unalterable agreement or as some abstract ideal, but neither is the case and neither are a good argument for why it is different for property rights to be held over the right of assembly and for the right to life to be subservient to the debt owed to society for severe wrongs inflicted and or severe danger to that same society.

In this case it would have to be democratically decided within a population through their particular organizational apparatus which exact cases - if any - would be an adequate circumstance in which an individual: 1) did something which puts the society in danger to a degree in which the society's desire is greater than that right or 2) the person is such a danger to society that the person's right to life is less than the right to safety of society.

Different groups would likely come up with different rules, which is fair, but it would still be a choosing of a societal preference.

Yes, I do. And no, I don't agree with you. The example you state would be subject to interpretation. Common law refers to something called abuse of right. The act of self defense must not be excessive. The defendant is only entitled to use reasonable force. And this is where human rights come into play.

This is only a play on the degree to which a right is placed over another in an hierarchy. I addressed this above.