this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
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sino
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I consider this a critical support moment. I don't believe the death penalty should exist in a socialist society. In fact, I don't even understand what the logical argument(s) for the death penalty are?
Outside of special circumstances (guerilla war with no capacity to imprison someone, critical prisoner who will be imminently recovered by reactionary forces due to military advance, etc.), none I'm aware of. By definition, I think if you have the stability and resources to carry out an extended legal process for the death penalty then you don't need it because you can imprison someone instead.
As far as I know, the death penalty is often not carried out in cases like this, and instead commuted to imprisonment. It would be better to abolish it altogether.
i'd extend that to precarious states that are the enemy of the global hegemon. it's not imminent but you don't want collaborators around. and then that's only justified to the extent of the evil of the hegemon.
I would say that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than the great satan. There's no cause to execute anyone outside of extreme precarity, generally in active warfare. A good example is Che executing a traitor during the Cuban revolution. If you are able to keep counter-revolutionaries imprisoned in a place they cannot be extracted from and used by reactionary forces, then killing them serves no purpose.
i should've written more, i think the more evil it is the more threatening its agents are and that changes the calculation of whether holding them is more trouble, whether you can trust their guards etc.
Jeanine wasn't a threat once the coup was rebuffed but if she was dead she'd be dead instead of getting out (and i know they don't have capital punishment in Bolivia which is admirable, but i think executing a coup leader is acceptable). a more hypothetical example might be that holding them drives a movement for their release while execution has a sharper spike but much less capacity to build anything.
i prefer the Puyi treatment, and i certainly don't think a bourgeois state is ever legitimate in killing anyone, but i think it's fine if high-ranking officials who do premeditated white collar crimes get the wall.
Appreciate the reply! Totally agree with how you elaborated it
I think you have to do it with these people because otherwise once they get out they're going to form the backbone of the bourgeois forces aiming to overthrow the country. And unlike the proles they have a whole different skillset and set of knowledge that makes them far more dangerous to your country than a violent prole.
China has a population of over a billion people; even light corruption can harm tens of thousands of people as evidenced in a case mentioned somewhere here that led to 50,000 infants being hospitalized; the worse the corruption, the more and more people who are harmed, and the lighter the sentence, the more likely people will mentally balance whether they're fine in engaging with corruption vs a light sentence they may receive. Studies have even shown that punishing the wealthy is more likely to deter crime from their class than it does with poorer people (so there's data proving it works). China has a billion people, and even light corruption can destroy the lives of millions.
Being against the death penalty at this point would be more a personal aversion than a reasoned stance.
being against the death penalty is always a reasoned stance, it has nothing to do with the population density. get a grip.
Can the subject be with absolute certainty the correct perpetrator? Can we make people execute this person?--is that okay? What is the benefit to society of killing this person vs. reforming or extracting labor from them? this is in a stable context, we're not talking about white army officers in the middle of a civil war here.
So, still very little?
For deterrence to have any impact, detection needs to be very high and close in time to the offence.
In this instance, the former minister took bribes from 2007 to 2024, so if anything it's a signal that if you only did a little bit of corruption, briefly, you'd probably be fine.
People also don't weigh the death penalty in rational ways against other punishments.
I could be wrong but I highly doubt the study is actually capable of measuring literally death penalty vs life in prison as two punishments and whether the life in prison option leads to much more corruption than the death option--both are probably big deterrents if literally instituted as such.
It could also be argued that the death of certain individuals could potentially cause social unrest, dissent, or some type of martyrdom in a negative socialist direction, vs. life in prison ensuring that does not happen. Therefore possibly being the more reasonable stance.
I don't consider this an overly important point personally nor do I give a shit about some corrupt billionaire getting got.
Have studies ever shown that execution is actually more of a deterrent than life in prison? My understanding is that it isn't, but I'm happy to be corrected.
What are good reasons for killing anyone? There are lots, and thats the problem with being anti death penalty. Personally I dont find the death penalty suitable for low quantity crimes of murder, but should someone who has killed, 80 people, children even, like Anders Breivik be allowed to survive and even engage with the society he committed the crime in? I dont think so, nor should a person who knowingly condemned 500 people to an early grave through cancer and the like for thousands of dollars. I think these people have fundamentally forgotten and thrown away their humanity for their own sake, and you cant have a society where that is acceptable.
I think the more important question is, what do we gain by killing someone who has been made unable to cause further harm? The answer is nothing, and we shouldn't (at least institutionally as a government) do things which have no benefit.
Though whether they are able to cause further harm or not from inside of a prison cell remains to be seen. Look at Nalvalny in Russia, even completely powerless and imprisoned, the west still tried to use him as a tool to manipulate the Russian people and forment colour revolution. A politician in China could easily end up with the same sort of support from the west if they seem like a good puppet (and someone extremely corrupt certainly would make for a great puppet).
I feel like this is where I diverge, I dont feel like any prison solution is permanent or without flaw, I can very easily imagine scenarios where a permanently incarcerated person could not be that anymore, and continue or be emboldened by their release. I do agree that a government free of class conceptions and the trappings of a State wouldnt need to or would have very little reason for a death penalty. We are very far from those times.
Also quick edit, while I think there is utility in the death penalty, I do also think theres not a lot of good solutions for carrying it out in a humane way that shows care rather than the barbarity of it. And also whether or not the barbarity of taking someones life should be exposed for how brutal it is or should be softened to reflect a better nature of carrying it out.
Is anything going to be better by gim being dead? Not really. The crimes are committed, no amount of punishment can turn back the clock. No need to be cruel for nothing. Also the guy has life in prison, he's not getting out.
I agree comrade. For what it's worth, I find arguing from outcomes easier than from logic. For example 4% of inmates in the US Death Row are innocent, which is 1 out of 25 executions. A clear failure. It's also incredibly expensive and lengthy for the appeals process, which also drags out the time spent in prison anyway. It also doesn't meaningfully deter the crimes it punishes, as both the US and China can attest.
The real question is how can we make corruption (and other such crimes) systemically impossible so people cannot do the crime.
Like presuming innocence for the accused, we must also start from the basis that everybody can be rehabilitated.
"fiscally socialist, socially conservative"