How about people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, who've pledged a lot of their time, money, and effort into "charitable" causes? Obscene wealth, but I guess they're doing something that can lift the material conditions or standard of living for people across the world.
Who is further redeemable between a methhead mugging a stranger on the street to get their next fix or some Wall Street banker who plays the game but also makes sure to acknowledge or give cash to the homeless people he passes on his way to work? No one's perfect, of course, but are we drawing lines in the sand in a future society?
I know, I know, I'm turning in my Lib card. :liberalism: .
When you're that wealthy it warps your brain. Taking someone like Gates or Bezos and giving them the same deal as everyone else under communism would be like a prison to them. They would reject it outright and try to lead a rebellion. It's not enough to have their material needs taken care of. It's about something else.
The charity they do is not lifting material conditions for people across the world. It's a means of gaining even more influence and expanding their wealth. Keeping African countries from being consumed by malaria isn't altruistic, it's about preserving a cheap supply of labor and testing ground for vaccines or social experiments. If they wanted to do actual charity they would pay their fucking taxes and stop spending their wealth to rig the system in their favor.
A meth addict mugging someone is not like being a billionaire exploiting thousands/millions. A meth addict is a product of the system, not a perpetrator of it. The war of poverty and drugs creates desperate drug addict criminals. The wealthy create the war on poverty and drugs. A banker giving a few bucks to a homeless person on their way home (as if they walk home or allow homeless to hang out on Wall Street) is not doing anything. Again, if they wanted to help people they'd stop their exploitative jobs.
It's not about being perfect. It's about making a logical connection between exploitation and the results of exploitation. Asking someone to stop being a monster and contribute to society is not demanding perfection. Being a wealthy elite is not some oopsie daisy I accidentally messed up pobody's nerfect moment. It's a conscious will to exploit others.
Redeeming even the worst meth head would be a simple task in comparison to redeeming a capitalist.
Everyone has room to grow and humans are inherently valuable. You have to prove yourself completely irredeemable.
There are lots of steps between here and the guillotine.
I think what we're discussing here is what would render someone completely irredeemable
This is entirely the wrong framework to look at things from, imo. Redeemable for what, to get into heaven? If heaven exists, then it still doesn't matter because I'm not the one to make that call.
Presumably what you mean is redeemable enough to deserve to be spared from being guillotined or whatever. But that's not how punishment works. The purpose of punishment should not be to hurt people because we don't like them. The purpose should be about deterring certain behaviors. It's the same way, if you're deciding whether to put a toddler in time out, you probably don't assess whether they're a good or bad person, rather, you do it because you believe it will improve their behavior. If you apply ethics correctly, which is to say, focusing on your own actions and how to produce the best consequences, then I find that the question of who is a good person or who is and who isn't redeemable fades to irrelevancy.
From that framework, we can see that the question of what sort of punishment we ought to administer to the rich is a strategic question. Does killing them make a counter-revolution less likely? Would it antagonize foreign nations that we don't want to be openly hostile towards? Would it be perceived as just or unjust, and would we gain or lose support? These are the questions we ought to be asking.
Justice is cool and good, and is an important tool for being seen as legitimate, but in cases where justice does conflict with survival, survival is generally more important. If our decision (whatever it is) on what to do with a handful of people causes a war, then you can be sure that plenty of innocent people will be unjustly harmed in the course of that war, so I don't see the sense in that. Our guiding principle should be to do what's best for the people.
This is a really awesome take; thank you for sharing!
reeducation through labor, into the amazon warehouse with them
Our boy Robespierre says it best : to be lenient against tyranny is to be complicit. Those who have been exploited since the dawn of time deserve to see their oppressors judged, and punished accordingly. Billionaires aren't the same as libs or fascists, they're the ones who build the system, and actively enforce it to this day. Where's the justice if these ghouls don't get their very own Nuremberg ? What makes you think they won't try anything either ? Letting them go is not only a moral injustice, but also a risk.
Also, I would like to add to this that ordinary crime is a result of poverty. With the bourgeoisie out of the picture, we have free reign to finally redistribute their wealth and abolish private property. As for those who were petty criminals and addicts, they deserve only one thing : rehabilitation and reinsertion.
Who is further redeemable between a methhead mugging a stranger on the street to get their next fix or some Wall Street banker
Middle class white socialists: "the banker contributes more to society than some (((lumpenprole)))"
who cares if they're redeemable morally? take all their money and stuff and they can be as awful as they want without hurting people.
Their existing followings are going to make that hard - even stripped of wealth, you can imagine someone like Musk using his cult of fanboys for power
I am of course fantasizing about this in the context of a complete cultural revolution where peoples' lives are no longer so empty of joy, hope, and fulfillment that they have to pretend the rich and powerful are their friends or their saviors or their parents. Ignore my username.
They would fund fascist death squads the second their wealth is threatened. Guillotine them and they will be redeemed.
If we treated addiction as a treatable disease instead of a serious crime and moral failing the meth addict would be less likely to be in the precarious position of needing to mug someone to avoid the physiological torture of withdrawal.
Why does the "methhead" have to mug someone? It's because of the capitalists
I wish having a methhead as a neighbor radicalize more people. The drugs are so rampant and damaging and bring out peoples' worst side, and I wish more libs would realize that by signing off on these increasingly neoliberal and fascist politicians as the "lesser evil", they're validating the cartels and war machine that is so many layers of suits and bureaucracy removed from the people getting their hands dirty. It needs to go.
I have no problem with someone wanting to use meth but the reason most people use meth is as an escape from their world as it crumbles around them. Will people still do drugs in a socialist society? Definitely, but the systemic issues that lead people towards drugs as a self destructive form of escapism should hopefully decrease.
