Resolution on capital punishment passed at the 1910 International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen.

‘The Death Penalty: Decisions of the International Socialist Congress’ from the Daily People. Vol. 11 No. 162. December 9, 1910.

In the dawn of modern social evolution the bourgeois rationalists attacked the Death Penalty as a barbarous heritage from the middle ages. The ideal of the progress of humanity did not, for the revolutionary bourgeois, mean only empty phrases, and as consequence its most eminent representatives in every country proclaimed war on this shameful institution, which in the midst of a civilized humanity is nothing but legalized and systematic murder, committed in cold blood by one man on another man.

Since then a profound change has taken place in relation to this question. The ever increasing struggle between the bourgeoisie and the modern proletariat which becomes daily more and more the centre of the public life of each country has induced the degenerate bourgeoisie of our days to abandon the struggle against the death penalty, as well as many other democratic and liberal measures. The dominant class use in an ever greater degree the ignominious weapon of the death penalty, sometimes to fight against attacks on capitalism itself, and sometimes to suppress forcibly the proletariat as it rises and demands emancipation.

In Germany, and in many other countries, which are past masters in the art of oppression, the most brilliant representatives of bourgeois intelligence have lately declared that the Death penalty was necessary. Eminent representatives of modern criminal science have recently declared themselves in favor of essential modifications in the right of asylum; which modifications, especially in the case of Russian emigrants, would have the effect of reinstating the death penalty even in countries where, as in Holland, it has been abolished for a long time.

Under the French republic, the government has voted against a measure abolishing the death penalty. In the United States of America the bourgeoisie fights a militant proletariat with the death penalty. Only a short time ago, the never-to-be-forgotten judicial assassinations of Chicago, in which five workingmen were hanged for having demonstrated in favor of an eight-hour day, were very nearly followed by the execution of the officers of the Western Federation of Miners.

In Spain a worn out and reactionary regime uses judicial assassination as a weapon and means of vengeance against the spirations of the proletariat for emancipation. Finally in Russia, a country where the death penalty has long been abolished for crimes against common laws, the executioner has been, active during the whole revolution of the workers, and specially since the victory of the counter revolution. Thousands and thousands of persons are executed after a contemptible comedy of a council of war. A river of blood is spreading through the whole Russian empire, and all this is being done before the eyes of the civilized world, while the representatives of bourgeois intelligence dare not offer any resistance, dare not refuse their moral compliance and their pecuniary help to the executioner. The intellectual bourgeoisie, which showed indignation at the execution of the free-thinker Ferrer, look on quietly while the Russian autocracy combats by wholesale massacres the proletarian revolution.

This explains why the Socialist proletarian is to-day the most faithful and the most important among the adversaries of the death penalty. It is only through the light spread by the Socialist parties, it is only by increasing the strength and the culture of them ass of workers, through political and Trade Union action, that this outrage on civilized humanity can be efficiently combatted.

The representatives of the proletariat of every country organized politically and in Trade Unions, now deliberating at Copenhagen, desire to pillory the active and passive partisans of assassinations under the orders of judicial, official and military tribunals. They invite the parliamentary representatives of the working classes in every State to demand the abolition of the death penalty, on every occasion. Their action in Parliament as well as political events should be made use of, in order to extend an energetic propaganda at public meetings, in the Socialist and labor press, for the abolition of the death penalty.

(THE END.)

New York Labor News Company was the publishing house of the Socialist Labor Party and their paper The People. The People was the official paper of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in New York City in 1891 as a weekly. The New York SLP, and The People, were dominated Daniel De Leon and his supporters, the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The People became a daily in 1900. It’s first editor was the French socialist Lucien Sanial who was quickly replaced by De Leon who held the position until his death in 1914. Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin, future leaders of the Socialist Party of America were writers before their split from the SLP in 1899. For a while there were two SLPs and two Peoples, requiring a legal case to determine ownership. Eventual the anti-De Leonist produced what would become the New York Call and became the Social Democratic, later Socialist, Party. The De Leonist The People continued publishing until 2008.