74. Proletarian penal Methods.
In the sanguinary struggle with capitalism, the working class cannot refrain from inflicting the last extremity of punishment upon its declared enemies. While the civil war continues, the abolition of the death penalty is impossible. But a dispassionate comparison of proletarian justice with the justice of the bourgeois counter-revolution shows the marvellous leniency of the workers’ courts in comparison with the executioners of bourgeois justice. The workers pass death sentences in extreme cases only. This was especially characteristic of the legal proceedings during the first months of the proletarian dictatorship. It suffices to recall that in Petrograd the notorious Purishkevich was condemned to only two weeks’ imprisonment by the revolutionary tribunal. We find that the progressive classes, the inheritors of the future, have dealt very gently with their enemies, whereas the classes that are dying have displayed almost incredible ferocity.
When we come to consider the punishments inflicted by proletarian courts of justice for criminal offences which have no counter-revolutionary bearing, we find them to be radically different from those inflicted for similar offences by bourgeois courts. This is what we should expect. The great majority of crimes committed in bourgeois society are either direct infringements of property rights or are indirectly connected with property. It is natural that the bourgeois State should take vengeance upon criminals, and that the punishments inflicted by bourgeois society should be various expressions of the vengeful sentiments of the infuriated owner. Just as absurd have been and are the punishments inflicted for casual offences, or for offences which arise out of the fundamentally imperfect character of personal relationships in