: You can`t fight violence with violence! Well, Anita, I don't know exactly what sort of communist organization you belong to, but if you can share with me how violence can be STOPPED by peace, I'd sure like to hear about it.
Recall Marx (you 'communists' in Norway do read Marx, I hope) analyzing the fall of the Paris Commune: 'The Commune, to protect their lives, was obliged to resort to the Prussian practice of securing hostages' (The Civil War in France, International 1940, p. 78)---hostages that were executed in retaliation for their hostages being executed. Again, Marx: 'How could they be spared any longer after the carnage with which MacMahon's prętorians celebrated their entrance into Paris?' (ibid., pp. 78-9).
Then there's the general principle:
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution.(1)
The death penalty, barbaric and lamentable, must be an option during a revolution. Afterwards, when private property in the means of production and classes have been swept away, it can then be swept away too.
To utter inanities like 'you can't fight violence with violence' is a little like supporting the ban of guns before the revolution: if the guns are gone, how do you win a revolution?
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Note:
1. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, International 1948, p. 44.
