💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › elisee-reclus-the-death-penalty.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 09:48:00. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: The Death Penalty Author: Elisée Reclus Date: 1879 Language: en Topics: law, death penalty, the State, prison, justice Source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/reclus/deathpenalty.html Notes: Translated by Natalya Ratan and Virginia Anton.
I do not have the honour of being a Swiss Citizen and know only
imperfectly the means to petition the removal of an article, but it is
an issue of human agitation in all civilized countries. As an
international citizen I have the right to address this issue.
Unfortunately I also am French and my motherland is also a country of
executioners and the guillotine, that we have invented and use everyday.
Enemies of the death penalty. I must try to find their origins. Is if
justifiable that it takes away from the right to self defence? If it is,
it will be difficult to oppose it because we all have the right to self
defence, against beasts and attacks from other men. But is it not clear
if the right to self defence can be delegated because it ends
immediately with danger? When we take into our hands the lives of our
fellow men, there is no social action against them, its nothing that can
be done for us to help them; it's the same when a man's place is outside
of others, above which when there is a contract that has power over
citizens, they have the right to kill that which opposes them. History,
funnily enough havs given us numerous examples that claim this right.
The origin of the death penalty, that which is actually applied in the
States, is certainly one of vengeance, vengeance without measure, as
terrible that it can inspire hatred, this vengeance is governed by the
following summary of justice, that is to say the law of retaliation:
"tooth for a tooth, eye for an eye, head for a head". When the family
was established it was substituted for individual vengeance or vendetta.
It excercised the price of blood: each injury is paid for by another
injury, each death with another death, hence causing hatred and wars. It
is the state of a large part of Europe during the middle ages, it is the
last century of Albania, of Caucasus and of many other countries.
It is dependent a little on the order that is perpetually present in
wars, through redemption. Individuals or families, can usually redeem
themselves, and that form of transaction is fixed by custom. Lots of
cattle, sheep, goats, lots of coins ringing or acres of land were set
apart to redeem the blood. The condemption can also redeem when it is
adopted by another family, occasionally even when one has offended them,
one can also return free by an action of brilliance; finally, one can
fall too low from deigning to punish It is suffice to say that one can
hide behind a woman and from then on be free, so vile they want to kill
him, but is more unhappy when covered in injuries. He lives, but his
life is worse than death.
The law of retaliation of family to family is not evidently maintained
in the large central States, monarchies, aristocracies or republics.
Society is represented by its government, King, councils or magistrates,
which take charge of vengeance or retribution, the same one would say in
the language of jurisprudence. But history has proved us that we are
monopolising the state's right to punishment, caste or King, dealt
primarily to deal with personal injuries, and we know the fury with
which he pursued his enemies and the cruel fate he makes them suffer.
There is no torture that the imagination has invented which has then
been applied to millions of men: here burned, a small fire, furthermore
it was successively cut or skinned by its members, at Nuremburg, the
prisoner was commanded in the body of the "Virgin" of iron, red-hot, in
France, he broke his limbs or was pulled by four horses; in the Orient,
the impale the unlucky, in Morocco, on the masonry leaving only the head
above the wall. And why does everyone seek vengeance? Is it to punish
real crimes? No, everyday hatred of the Kings and dominant classes is
turned against the people who demand the freedom to think and act.
Its the service of tyranny that is always the death penalty. What did
Calvin do, master of death? He burned Michel Servet, one of those divine
men as science has only existed for ten or twelve years in the history
of mankind. What did Luther do, another founder of religion? He has
excited his friends, the Lords, to attack the peasants "kill them all,
kill them, hell will return soon." What did the Catholic Church triumph
over? She organised auto de fés. It was she who lit the pyres, which
held the noble people of Spain for three centuries in terror. And
recently when a free city, guilty of having maintained its autonomy, was
reclaimed by its oppressors, have we not seen them kill thousands, men,
women, children and use guns to quickly increase the piles of corpses.
And whoever plays a part in the massacre, proud of their work, do they
not cynically brad about it? Here we can hear them.
(The Narrator is alluding to the repression of the Paris Commune.)
But if the state is fierce when it acts to avenge an infringement of its
power, it provides less power in the condemnation of private crimes, and
gradually is ashamed to apply the death penalty. Gone are the times
where the executioner, wearing red, stands behind the king: he is no
longer the second figure of the state, no longer the "living miracle"
like Joseph de Maistre; he has become the shame of society and no body
knows his name any longer. One can see men cutting off their hands in
order to save themselves from serving as an executioner. In many
countries where the death penalty still exists, no one is beheaded, no
one is hung, they just collect on the inside of prisons. Again, in many
countries, the death penalty is abolished; over a hundred years of the
blood from those who have been decapitated no longer pollutes the soil
of Tuscanny and Switzerland which is one of the nations who had the
honour of burning the scaffolding. And now she is ashamed to restore it!
She has very little concern for her glories. Before she reestablishes
the death penalty, that she shows the countries with the last crime are
those where the penalty is the harshest.
Or it is precisely the opposite that happens: the blood is the blood,
that covers the scaffolding and the prisons that are forming murderers
and thieves. Our courts are schools of crime. What is most vile is that
which public prosecutors use for repression and wardens and police
torture
So the death penalty is useless. But is it just?
No, it is not just. When an individual seeks revenge alone, he can
consider his opponents as being responsible, but society as a whole,
must understand the bond of solidarity which binds together all its
members, virtuous or criminal, and recognise that each crime has its
share. Has the childhood of criminals been taken care of? Were they
given a complete education? Has it facilitated their lives paths? Were
they given good examples everyday? Has it ensured that everyone had a
good chance to remain honest or to regain after an initial fall. And if
that is not possible, can the criminal not be accused of injustice?
The economist Stuart Mill, an honest scholar that has given a good
example to all his collegues, compares all members of society to the
riders in which a Caesar fixes the same goal. One competitor is young,
agile, alert, another is old: he is sick, lame, crippled. Is it fair to
condemn the latter: to misery, slavery or to death which the former is
crowned a winner. And what does another choose in society? Some have the
chance of happiness, education and power: they are declared virtuous;
the others are condemned by society to remain in their misery or in
their vice: is it on them that social condemnation must fall?
But it is again another cause to defend the bourgeois in pronouncing the
death penalty. They kill themselves and kill millions. Studies have
proved that hygiene, has doubled a lifespan. Poverty shortens the life
of the poor. It kills some in a few years or others in a few months. If
you have the pleasures of life, like that of our peers in England, they
live past sixty years, but are sentenced to forced labour - what is
worse - to not work, die before your time, live a short life with the
torture of disease. The choice is easy to make. It is about 8 to 10
million people, that society has exterminated, in Europe alone, not by
killing them with rifles but by removing their places from the banquet
of life. Ten years ago, an english worker, Duggan, committed suicide
with his whole family. A infamous journal, always busy extolling the
virtues of kings and the powerful had the impudence to welcome the
suicide. "Good riddance to the workers who kill themselves, they relieve
us of the unpleasant task of doing it ourselves". That is the cynical
confession of all the worshippers of God Capital
Is the remedy of all these mass murders, the same as that of murders
committed individually? You know in advance what a socialist would
propose. Collectivism is a complete social change, the division of land
between all those who work it. Thus narrowing the gulf of hatred between
men, that poverty and the pursuit of wealth, the great advisor of
crimes, will cease to pit people against each other, and social
condemnation will finally rest. The law of force prevails in nature and
it is time to replace justice, which is ideal for any man worthy of the
name.
But in a transformed society, it is possible that crimes will still be
committed. Psychologically the mind of a criminal will present itself
again. What will we do then? Will we kill the criminal? Certainly not.
He committed the crime in madness, we care for him, as we care for those
with other sicknesses, we guarantee their violence. When men become
criminals through the impetuosity of temperament or the sent of blood,
it is now possible to offer them rehabilitation through heroism.
We have seen this a hundred times, criminals run into flames or water to
save the unhappy and feel reborn in the esteem of other men. The
convicts that the town of Carthagene freed, that France has re-enslaved,
showed sublime heroism during their few months of freedom. Christianity
said to obey, and the people have been degraded. Enrich yourselves say
the bourgeois to their children, and they seek to enrich themselves in
anyway, either through violating or more skillfully turning the law.
Become the heros say the socialist revolutionaries and bandits can even
rise through heroism.