Death penalty and class

[Chris Burford]

I was wondering about the lack of reference on this list to George Ryan's 
dramatic decision to pardon all Illinois prisoners on death row. Apologies 
if I missed something. The story played strongly in the news media in the 
UK, where the intelligentsia is against the death penalty, even though the 
majority of the population probably still report it (they have given up 
doing polls). The death penalty also separates Europe from the USA. It 
places the USA in the same league as China, and I am not sure if ithe USA 
actually comes first in the world, in terms of executions per head of 
population.

Perhaps the links between the application of a law about homicide, and 
economics and business are not immediately clear. However the application 
of a law about bourgeois right and bourgeois duty, even with apparent 
impartiality, will lead to unequal effects in practice where people are 
unequal. We know that the application of  the death penalty has a class and 
a racial bias.

Is it that some people on this list will support the death penalty, 
although it would be rare in a UK only list of this nature, and people do 
not want to divide the list in an acrimonious way?

Is it because no Republican can every do anything progressive? Certainly in 
Ryan's dramatic speech, some of which I saw live on CNN, he was making his 
contribution to history. But it is a compelling as well as a reasoned 
speech, and the video needs to be used across the country. While I am 
critical of leftists who refuse as a matter of principle to see that the 
Democrats may at times be more progressive than the Republicans, in order 
to break out of tailing behind one party, it is necessary to be alert to 
wider trends that cut across parties, where there is an opening for 
progressive advance. That means that it is important to look for progessive 
Republicans if you are to avoid tailing behind Democrats.

 From this side of the Atlantic, there is a fascistic feel to US politics 
(and economics). It may seem a stretch, but even under Bush, my impression 
is that the balance of forces in the US is shifting such that the death 
penalty could be abolished in 15 years. DNA testing has heightened the 
awareness of error. In the UK too there have been a series of case reviews 
about wrongful verdicts, but at least the victims of miscarriages of 
justice are alive to claim compensation.

Abolition  would be an important blow for the quality of the civil society 
in the USA and would make certain other advances easier, which ultimately 
would undermine capitalism itself.

Does such a campaign appear to have little to do with class, or economics? 
Or is it so obvious that the trend is towards abolition that it is not of 
interest to progressive people and can be left to a reformist Democratic 
senator to follow on with a call for an inquiry into the operation of the 
death penalty.

Chris Burford

London