Infinite Justice: A Critique of Capitalism & Capital Punishment

Capitalism began in murder. Bodies were marked by slavery, colonialism, and genocide, white to have, and black to have not. Capitalism, “covered in dirt and dripping with blood,” was born of these three “primitive accumulations.” Slavery is death, and just like colonialism and genocide, it is a capital sentence. The law of capital punishment continues this legacy of murder and racism, as if on “rails to infinity.” This article uses insights from the critique of political economy to examine the death penalty, and the role of law generally, in maintaining racial and other inequalities. Law’s Justice enacts an endless repetition-&-forgetting of its origin in slavery, colonialism, and genocide, and this endlessness shows itself nowhere more brightly than in the law of capital punishment, the subject of this article. In its analysis of the law of capital punishment, this article pays particular attention to two anti-capitalist ideas, Evgeny Pashukanis’s commodity theory of law and Guy Debord’s notion of spectacle. Readers will see connections to anarchist-communism, the prison abolition movement, critical legal studies, critical race theory, the theology of liberation, and the author’s memories of once having been a federal prosecutor. “Infinite Justice” has been presented at over two dozen institutions around the world.