(Excerpts from Rosa Luxemburg’s article, November 1918. Rosa and Karl Liebknecht, imprisoned for their opposition to the First World War, were freed from jail as a result of a revolutionary uprising of German workers in November 1918. This article was written not long after Rosa’s release from prison. Her call to abolish capital punishment goes to the heart of the matter: the barbarism and hypocrisy of capitalist “justice”.)

The justice of the bourgeois classes had again been like a net, which allowed the voracious sharks to escape, while the little sardines were caught. The profiteers who have realized millions during the war have been acquitted or let off with ridiculous penalties. The little thieves, men and women, have been punished with sentences of Draconian severity.

Worn out by hunger and cold, in cells which are hardly heated, these derelicts of society await mercy and pity.

The Proletarian Revolution ought now, by a little ray of kindness, to illuminate the gloomy life of the prisons, shorten Draconian sentences, abolish barbarous punishments – the use of manacles and whippings – improve, as far as possible, the medical attention, the food allowance, and the conditions of labour. That is a duty of honour!

The existing disciplinary system, which is impregnated with brutal class spirit and with capitalist barbarism, should be radically altered.

But a complete reform, in harmony with the spirit of socialism, can be based only on a new economic and social order; for both crime and punishment have, in the last analysis, their roots deep in the organization of society. One radical measure, however, can be taken without any elabourate legal process. Capital punishment, the greatest shame of the ultra-reactionary German code, ought to be done away with at once. Why are there any hesitations on the part of this Government of workers and soldiers? The noble Beccaria, two hundred years ago, denounced the ignominy of the death penalty. Doesn’t its ignominy exist for you, Ledebour, Barth, Daeumig?

You have no time, you have a thousand cares, a thousand difficulties, a thousand tasks before you? That is true. But mark, watch in hand, how much time would be needed to say: “Capital punishment is abolished!” Would you argue that, on this question also, long discussions followed by votes are necessary? Would you thus lose yourselves in the complications of formalism, in considerations of jurisdiction, in questions of departmental red tape?

The history of the world is not made without grandeur of spirit, without lofty morale, without noble gestures.

Liebknecht and I, on leaving the hospitable halls which we recently inhabited – he, among his pale companions in the penitentiary, I with my dear, poor thieves and women of the streets, with whom I have passed, under the same roof, three years and a half of my life – we took this oath as they followed us with their sad eyes: “We shall not forget you!”

We demand of the executive committee of the Council of Workers and Soldiers an immediate amelioration of the lot of all the prisoners in the German jails!

We demand the excision of capital punishment from the German penal code!

During the four years of this slaughter of the peoples, blood has flowed in torrents. Today, each drop of that precious fluid ought to be preserved devotedly in crystal urns.

Revolutionary activity and profound humanitarianism – they alone are the true breath of socialism.

A world must be turned upside down. But each tear that flows, when it could have been spared, is an accusation, and he commits a crime who with brutal inadvertency crushes a poor earthworm.

Box 1

Hang Him

He says he wants bread and clothes

Not only that, he wants justice too

On top of that he wants genuine freedom too

Hang him

He says he wants regular work

Not only work, he wants the fruits of his work

And then he even wants untrammelled possession of both work and fruits

Hang him

He says he doesn’t want empty speeches

Nor false promises, violent rule

Nor a false democratic throne erected on

The burning breasts of hungry and naked people

Hang him

He says he will march with everyone

Will change the system founded on oppression

He’s no doubt allied with some foreign force

He will get just desserts for his treachery without delay

Come, patriotic executioners!

Trustworthy pawns of capital!

Hang him

Gorakh Pande, 1978

(On peasant revolutionaries Kista Gowd and Bhoomiah being given the death sentence)

Box 2

Abolish Death Penalty

(CPI(ML) Statement)

The CPI(ML) welcomes the Supreme Court decision to commute the death sentences of the 3 convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The Supreme Court recently upheld the principle that delay in carrying out death sentences is ground for commutation. This ruling has brought relief in the Bhullar case as well as in the case of the 3 convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi case. But the question arises why Afzal Guru was denied the benefit of this principle, and why Guru’s death sentence was not commuted on similar grounds by the Supreme Court. The manner in which the hanging of Afzal Guru was carried out smacks of double standards.

The subjective standards for judging what is ‘rarest of rare’ and the rampant double standards of justice that exist, make it all the more urgent for the draconian death penalty to be abolished in India. More than 2/3rds of the countries of the world have got rid of the death penalty, either in law or in practice. India should declare a moratorium on the death penalty immediately, as a step towards its speedy abolition.

Box 3

Dr. Ambedkar on Capital Punishment

“… I would much rather support the abolition of death sentence itself. …the proper thing for this county to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether”.