Lawful Means and Awful Murders
During a particularly fascinating episode of “Law and Order”, an appeals court judge states: “The ends can never justify the means” . . .
Please pardon my bad manners but I want to break out laughing every time I hear someone on TV talk about “ends and means”, especially when they say “the ends can never justify the means.” They think this is “deep” but really it’s all just a bunch of hyped up nonsense viewed from an honest historical perspective.
It’s the favorite phrase of the hypocrites: the greater the hypocrisy, the more they wed themselves to this phrase. They treat these words as though they were part of a sanctified revelation direct from the mouth of Almighty God himself.
In point of fact, it’s a rather minor, even feeble, shibboleth of the late born capitalist system. It’s just another twisty deceitful little saying of the richest families in the country and their hired guns: politicians, academicians, economists, and people of that ilk–those who earn a good living explaining the “goodness” of capitalism to everybody else.
They wish to convince people that this racist, militaristic, and oppressive epoch of history has really been a benevolent blessing everywhere. Never mind the thousands of murdered Native Americans or the thousands of maimed, scourged, and murdered slaves whose lives—and deaths–were an integral part of this new “blessed” labor system based on coercion and merciless exploitation.
The people who love this phrase tend to be the most craven, obsequious, crawling snakes you can imagine! They get that smug little smirky air of arrogance on their face that only an imbecile or pundit can wear, as though they were casting out pearls of wisdom and we poor ignorant savages should thank our lucky stars they have deigned to smile upon us! . . . .
Good God, cannot moral principles be ends unto themselves? Think of Gandhi, Dr. King, Jesus Christ, or Buddha teaching men and women a moral and spiritual way to live. The people who love the phrase think in far more practical (i.e., selfish) terms about acquiring material possessions, thusly: “My goal is simple, I want a million dollars”.
Next, they assume everybody has that same goal although a lot of people don’t, never did and never will. It is most likely an echo of their own weak and guilt-ridden consciences they are hearing when they project their greed unto others.
They reason: there are different ways to get a million dollars, some legal, some illegal; some just, some unjust. If a person commits murder and mayhem, they are willing to concede we can say the end (“the million dollars”) did not justify the means (“murder”). They like to adopt this simplistic preachy illusionary self-congratulatory “moral” fiction when they can.
SLAVERY AND MORALITY
This conveniently ignores the real history of America. They don’t say “”slavery was unjustified because it involved immoral means.” No, in that day it was moral enough for the apologist of slavery and capitalism. The repudiation of slavery, if you can call it that, comes years later and two-and-a-half centuries of acceptance of same.
If this phrase were true at all then who in God’s name said it was okay to set up as “ends” the conquest of North America by murdering all the Indians that got in the way?
What is that if not a prime example of ‘the means justifying the ends” in the most violent way conceivable? The Europeans wanted Indian land and stopped at nothing to acquire it. Where did the settlers ever show restraint or fair dealing based on moral constraints alone? Wherever they had the numbers and arms to take Native American lands by force, they did so.
And yet these ancestors, and their descendants, think they alone developed a time-honored imperishable moral principle of never seeking “ends” (goals) by using unethical “means.” When it suited them to not have such a saying or to ignore it if they did, then that’s exactly what happened. Who are they to preach to us?
It’s like hearing Hitler lecture on how to keep peace by never invading a peaceful neighbor. Actions betray words and lies expose hypocrites.
What are we to make of the vast wealth garnered by the richest plantation owners and their commercial counterparts in the North, wealth based on slave labor? Was not slavery another prime example of ‘the means justifying the ends”?
What were “the means” employed during America’s growing years if not the near-genocidal crusade against Native Americans and the brutal enslavement of the Black race? Those were the means. If the ends do not justify the means, then how explain American genocide and slavery? Or did we err only in the past, never the present?
What the pundits by the expression mean is a bit trickier to grasp: when the rich seek wealth, anything goes—any means, no matter how violent, ARE justified by the ends as all American history hitherto so richly attests.
On the other hand, when “you” do it—when any common man or woman does or says something that endangers this lucrative system of entrenched exploitation–that’s when we’re told “The ends do not justify the means.” Of course this is truly gross and utter hypocrisy, a cruel double standard based on lies and deceptions that is grievously out of kilter with the real world.
BOGUS ARGUMENTS AND REAL FEARS
These bogus hypocrites create a fallacious series of arguments by which to dupe themselves and to fool others. They engage in a shifting-sands make-believe set of rules of prudish “virtue” that they can adjust directionally and seasonally at any moment.
They invariably rubber stamp their own actions as “approved” while they vigorously attack any popular actions or statements that endanger their positions of power, wealth, and privilege.
In particular, they appear to have one very nasty bee in their bonnet that gives them unrelenting nightmares. Seeing the whole world in black and white makes them half-blind and ruins their moral judgment, if they ever had any. They give exaggerated credence to myth and legend, to rumor and gossip, when they cannot control their fears.
Through the years of these moralizing sermonizing demonizing half-truths served up by the system’s apologists, they heard somewhere (as an old folktale from afar) that once upon a time a “revolutionary” must have said just the opposite, that the ends do justify the means.
Oh my god! This fills them with unrelenting horror as though there were millions of dark-specter’d phantasmagoric figures flitting hither and yon in the wee hours of the morn following the darkest midnight with “ends” and “means” all mixed up and them mumbling and bumbling beneath their breaths . . .
This is yet another crude example of the oppressive censorship of the capitalist class. They fail to come to terms with social reality and class struggle. They fail to honestly assess the past immorality of their own rapacious social brethren. They fail to understand the reasons why not everyone loves the capitalist system that exploits ordinary working people every which way they turn.
REACTIONARIES VERSUS REVOLUTIONARIES
The reformers and revolutionaries saw poverty, wars, chauvinism, racism, and militarism everywhere they looked. Their hearts beat loudly with sympathy for the oppressed and the downtrodden!
They knew the existing economic system was hard-hearted and merciless. They wished to encourage, educate, and organize workers—men, women, and children—so one day everyone could have hope of a better life. For this audacity they were characterized as criminal types.
If you wanted more bread on the table, you were dangerous. If you wanted a shorter working week, you were a fomenter of civil unrest. If you wanted education and recreation, you were a malcontent and trouble-maker.
The radical labor organizers wanted to save people from unnecessary deaths in dangerous factories and from rampant outbreaks of disease in overcrowded ghettos and slums. The radicals soon learned that society’s top class was blind to the misery of the common people; the rich were obstinate and would not budge–would not part with any of their acquired wealth to help lift up their fellow men.
This was a job the workers and the poor people would have to do for themselves. The reformers set new goals for themselves. They raised their level of determination to achieve freedom, peace, prosperity, justice, and equality for all the people previously left behind—those who create the wealth of the nation with their labor!
As Lincoln said:
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
MASSACRES OF INDIANS
Somewhere along the line, an abolitionist or two, a labor organizer or two, must have said something like “we must use whatever means necessary to free the Black slave” or “We must have a union to organize the workers, no matter what it takes”.
And of course, hiding in the woodwork, under the bed and who knows where else, a spy for capitalism must have heard a revolutionary or two say: “We shall eliminate capitalism and replace it with socialism; whatever helps us achieve that goal is both desirable and necessary.”
Suddenly out of the blue–and quite out of character for capitalism–there is a new prohibition against allowing goals to validate the nature of the means used to achieve them! This axiom apparently had not yet occurred to the colonists when they massacred Native Americans who were just trying to protect their homes and families–the “ends” of seizing their lands apparently justified the “means”, including massacres:
- the Pequot Massacre of 1637 (burning hundreds of men, women, and children alive),
- the Sand Creek Massacre of 1862 (murdering Indians living in peace),
- the Kingsley Cave Massacre of 1855 (attempted extermination of California Indians),
- the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 (mass slaughter of 300 or more members of a half-starved band trying to surrender) . . . .
This is but a partial list; there were many other indiscriminate massacres to say nothing of the destruction of homes, crops, and animals along with the senseless deaths of women, children, and old men. The Navajo saw their fine herds of ponies and horses destroyed, along with their beloved peach orchards. They had their own forced “Long Walk”, as many tribes did, like the Cherokee with their “Trail of Tears.”
Every tribe, every Indian nation, had similar stories of wretched suffering, persecution, and senseless deaths inflicted upon them. This was just “business as usual” for the land-hungry European-American settlers. One would be correct to surmise that no great ethical question of whether it was right to murder Indians individually or en masse ever came up—not so that anyone noticed, at any rate.
One imagines that even today, somebody somewhere must be thinking:
“We must do whatever is necessary to stop racial discrimination, we must end gender inequality, and we must help immigrants achieve a better life.”
They probably are pretty moral people and have no idea they are committing a logical and ethical sin by phrasing their hopes and desires in such a manner.
They don’t realize their critics will soon accuse them of a moral lapse of judgment for daring to think that equality and justice are such high democratic priorities that they deserve carte blanche when it comes to selecting “means”.
These are laudable and admirable goals, this concern for the rights and welfare of others. Who would choose war if they could have peace? Who would choose injustice if they could have justice?
The rich have no answer for such altruistic thoughts as these, where brother helps brother and sister helps sister! Virtuous moral ends naturally inspire virtuous moral means . . . but that’s a point the richest people have trouble comprehending.
WHO IS PREACHING TO WHOM?
The wealthiest clans are so used to their own conniving, cheating, power-broking ways they assume everyone else will act in the same way if given the chance. For them a pious platitude or two about keeping their own practices in check almost makes sense. Yet it doesn’t stop them from using their power and wealth in cruel and inhumane ways whenever it suits their purpose, nor do such sayings prevent them from trying to crush any opposition which would criticize or expose their nefarious ways.
When the richest families block all efforts at honest reform and choose instead to slander all those who attempt to bring about change, then they shouldn’t blame the critics, protesters, and reformers take to the streets and are forced to think outside the box and seek innovative ways to gain new ground.
What is a revolutionary anyway except a person who sees no chance of meaningful reform becoming possible within the existing society?
So what do the rich and their apologists hear instead? They hear what they want to hear in order to create new half-truths by which to attack and ridicule. They pretend they hear “by any means necessary” as some sort of “threat of violence” aimed at them.
They confuse historic revolutionary movements compelled to take up arms against a bloody oppressor with peaceful American movements for building a better society. Our own American Revolution was just such a revolutionary movement!
In actual fact, the movements for peace, for labor unions, for racial equality, for the liberation of women have overwhelmingly been fueled by the peaceful intentions and heightened moral understanding of hundreds of thousands of thoughtful caring human beings. If conflicts occasionally occurred, invariably it was because peaceful protesters were met with brute force by the oppressors.
If you are an underpaid, overworked employee who wants a union, then the rich people want to make sure you are warned about ‘ends and means.” On the other hand, if you are a scab or a paid stoolie for the boss, then balancing “ends and means” is one lesson they won’t bother teaching you.
SECRET MEANS, SECRET ENDS
In too many instances, “secret means” can somehow be used to justify “secret ends”; quite the double standard bursts forth when labor rights and owner profits come into conflict. The factory, mill, and mine owners hire scabs, spies, thugs, and agent provocateurs by the busload and all that’s fine and dandy, but let a worker suggest a union to organize workers to demand a raise and suddenly all hell breaks loose!
Whenever I hear one of these apologists for the system throw up their arms in mock horror as though the expression “by any means necessary” is the WORST phrase they ever heard (!) I have to laugh quite heartily . . .wait a bit, and then laugh some more. But then, maybe some of that rich person’s fear is real and not faked; maybe they have a good reason to experience fear from working people organizing to fight for their rights!
Perhaps the rich people know, in a subconscious way, that their time is coming, the way time ran out for the French aristocracy. The wealthy aristocrats ruthlessly oppressed the peasants of France for centuries and then threw up their hands in horror when the peasants came for them. Today’s capitalist class is no different.
Why be surprised, Sir Gentlemen? The Bible tells us “You reap what you sow.” You relied on the means of brute force to get your way: colonizing, conquering, exploiting, oppressing, imprisoning, torturing, and murdering people everywhere you could, here and abroad—did you think your time would never come? That you are so rich with these ill-gotten gains that there would never be a Day of Reckoning for you?
Kvetch and bitch all you want about such phrases but it won’t do you any good in the hour of your comeuppance. People are judged by what they have done and not their pretensions or self-serving lies. Your record of bloody deeds leaves a trail of destruction hundreds of miles long and wide . . .
Think of all the violence you have perpetrated in the name of greed! And now you dare throw these little hissy fits at anyone who suggests that you are the evil ones?
You boil with outrage to hear anyone suggest that whatever it takes to push your kind out in order to create a better world for our children—that’s what needs to be done . . . and you take that as insult and threat! It is neither; it is merely a promise: the fulfillment of a long-traveling, late-arriving, historical rising tide of inevitability.
The Tide Is Rising
The tide is rising, gentlemen!!
Whether the ends justify the means is not the question—you seem to think it is, no doubt because of a guilty conscience for all those cowardly deeds you and your ancestors committed all over the world for lo! all these many heartbroken centuries . . . .
but your advice on what constitutes “morality” bears less and less fruit year by year—less relevance, less meaning, less cogency of purpose for the rest of us fortunate enough not to be part of your upper class wealthy kinships and kingships.
You may trip on the expression “The ends never justify the means” as much as you like–whenever something threatens your interests or whenever you find it expedient to keep critics in line–but it matters little.
The people can see through you—and your time, like the dinosaurs, will one day end. Whether the means ultimately used to dispose of your class will meet with your sanctimonious approval hardly matters; it won’t be up to you, will it?
If both the means and the ends are moral, each justifies the other. Reformers and radicals are not stuck in a circle nor are they descending into copycat madness; we do not wish to emulate the violence you so wantonly inflicted upon others.
That was your doing, not ours! You took millions of lives in ways that can never be justified. If you want to condemn anyone for violating the sanctity of the “ends and means” argument, condemn yourself!
We are looking for ways to end the violence, not promote it; for ways to end poverty and misery, not create more; for ways to put an end to war through cooperation and reason, not justify it; for ways to promote justice, peace, equality, fairness, love, and brotherhood—these are our goals, our means, our ends, our hopes, aspirations, desires, dreams, and life-giving life-fulfilling needs. We are determined to be free!
DO ENDS EVER JUSTIFY MEANS?
Do the ends ever justify the means? It is not for you to say. You have botched every aspect of ethical and moral conduct with your devious, lying, and hypocritical double standard set of rules for the last 500 years. You have forfeited any chance of being believed!
You have deceived and lied and committed countless acts of treachery and now you dare to come around yet again preaching the same old stale platitude of “be good little boys and girls” and “obey” and “do what we say” and all will be well–and please ignore the fact that we do not bother to follow these rules ourselves!
Goddamn the whole stinking kit and caboodle lot of you! And if we must see you to the gates of hell before you understand the depth of anger and hatred that you have created among the countless millions of people you so cruelly exploited and viciously mistreated, so be it—we shall see you all in Hell before we listen to any more of your gutless lying homilies!!!!!
Prof. R.
