[lbo-talk] What is genocide?

[Charles Brown]

K :
Is law also about upholding our ideals as a society, too, perhaps even
regardless as to what "works"? E.g., if we say that our ideal is that we
shouldn't harm others _because_ of their membership in a group, then isn't
it reasonable to punish people for doing that too, in addition to whatever
else they did. As we discussed here before, we already have a tradition of
punishing perpetrators on the basis of the mental states: was it purposeful?
in cold blood? for money? an accident? negligence? if a transman is beaten
and killed because he dares be a transman -- calling into question the
regime of heteronormativity -- I don't think that liberals want such laws
because they want to act tough. I think it's 
because they believe that, just as we punish someone more for killing for
money than we do for killing from passion, then there's no reason why we
can't punish someone more for committing crimes in the name of racism,
ablism, hetero/sexism.

i don't much care whether it works or not in that sense. I do care what
message we send to people of color, women, queers, and so forth. If
oppression works like the bird cage in Marilyn frye's essay, then our fight 
against oppression can and does take on many angles. there is no one bar
that we can attack that will dismantle oppression. Rather, there are many
bars and this is but on of them

Arguments against hate crimes, when they stay within this frame of 
accepting that some people should be punished for their state of mind, but
rejecting the idea that such punishment 'can work' for racism, etc. are
simply incoherent. (Carrol and Yoshie, OTOH, seem to be working outside this
frame in their critique of the bourgeois state.) If measured as to whether
they 'work' or not, it may not be the case that punishment actually works.

Finally, sometimes punishment isn't about fixing the perpetrator but making
amends to a group of people harmed by this system. Charles and the lawyers
can correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that as part of Ethics
101.

Kelley

^^^^^

CB: Yes, and also, as far as I can think it through the left has no other
way to organize the movement except through a struggle for reforms as well
as for revolutionary change. Reforms mainly take the form of laws in the
bourgeois legal system.

So, a critique of the bourgeois state drifts into anarchism and ultraleftism
if that critique discourages the struggle for goals to reform the bourgoeis
state. What is on Carrol and Yoshie's program of action , if there are no
reform goals ? Is it only anti-genocide laws that are overmoralizing and
subject to abuse by the state ?