Apologies for posting.
I should say by way of introductory remarks, that while this is an effort post, it is an effort post on a shitposting website, and thus ab initio a shitpost and therefore be taken in the correct spirit of levity in which it is intended. Don’t get my thread locked.
Recent discussion on here has touched on the moral status of the execution of the Romanov family by Bolsheviks ahead of the advancing White Army1. While not exactly of practical significance given how few of us have Royal Families locked up in our basement, it did reveal several significant, (sometimes severe) differences in the philosophical underpinnings of the posters on this website.
A Moral Communism
Moral status as such actually has very little to deal with communism/leftist (in the Marxian vein) in terms of it’s internal mechanism. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the rest of that intellectual lineage2. famously thought very little of moral philosophy. A communist is thus entirely at liberty to dismiss this entire discussion as idealism, and observe that within a Marxist framework, there are no ‘good’ and ‘bad’, merely a historically deterministic sequence of class antagonisms that will eventually resolve in favor of the proletariat and thus choosing to be a communist is merely choosing to throw one’s hat in with the predetermined victors. This strand of amoral communism thus is not terribly interested in this discussion, and anyone here that adheres to that framework is excused from the discussion as having won the argument.
Given the rest of us do have moral considerations that prefigure our political beliefs, it’s necessary for us to sketch out at least a scaffolding for what moral commonalities leftists share before going further, lest we fall into a morass of fundamentally incompatible frameworks stemming from different axiomatic premises. Speaking from my own personal position, I ascribe to leftist political positions as they offer me the greatest promise of granting a comfortable and dignified existence to the largest number of people possible. That in of itself does not make a moral axiom though, as achieving a large amount of something is valueless if the individual components don’t themselves have value, and therefore, and a fundamental value informing my politics is the axiomatic value/sanctity of human life. So I am taking on as an assumption that generally speaking, want everyone to have dignified and comfortable lives3. If that position doesn’t more or less describe you, you are also excused as having won the argument.
Justifying Shooting a Tsesarevich in my Pajamas
Which brings us to the Romanovs. In keeping with 3. above, and considering the minor children of royals not culpable for the systematic injustices perpetrated under the dictatorship of their parents, we’ll limit our discussion here to the minors (Anastasia, and especially Alexei), though I think the general outline of the argument can be applied to pretty much all of the Tsar’s issue. The entirety of the family, along with their retinue, were bulleted and bayoneted in Yekaterinburg about 10 days before white occupied the city. In attempting to defend the legacy of one of the most politically successful socialist projects in history4., this action has largely been justified on the left. Examining the commonly proposed justifications in light of our moral principles finds them universally lacking.
- It was necessary in order to safeguard the immediate success of the revolution against an individual with claim to the throne.
This argument goes that while we do value human life and dignity, our efforts to maximize these will sometimes require that certain human lives be forfeit, essentially turning this into a trolley problem5.. This argument differs in an important aspect from the trolley problem in that the trolley problem consists of single moment in time with clearly articulable and certain outcomes given at the outset. Leaving Alexei alive was in no way certain to doom the revolution to failure of significant struggle, as he could have been maintained in custody, and ascribing such outsized influence on the course of political affairs to the life of a sickly 13 year old is a profoundly anti-materialist approach to history. History is replete with challenges to establish socialist authority6., none of which stemmed from claimants to the Imperial thrown. Further, liquidating the Tsar, his children, and his brother did not exhaust the Romanov line, his cousin could and did proclaim himself Emperor-in-exile, and despite being old enough to actually head a restorationist intervention, none materialized. So the notion that killing Alexei was necessary fails to stand up to scrutiny 7.. It is also worth noting as an aside that the Romanovs were deeply unpopular, and to wit, were not the government the Bolshevik revolution occurred under, and supporters of the provisional government (domestic and international alike) formed the overwhelming contingent of the White forces, and the notion that a 14 year old tsarist claimant to the thrown would have had a meaningful impact on that colossal clusterfuck strains credulity.
- It prevented a longterm challenge to Boshevik control in a manner similar to Jacobite uprisings or the Bourbon Restoration.
Taking a more longterm view of the problem, it might be acknowledged that the Alexei presented no immediate threat justifying his liquidation, but, drawing from the history of pre-CIA regime changes, he presented a longterm likely/probable/plausible/possible threat in the form of an eventual challenge, and that acting in light of that possibility was justified if not strictly necessary. If we wish to examine this in light of our moral principles, we need to develop some notion of probability calculus; at what point is taking in innocent life now justified in order to avoid certain possible harms that have a certain probability of occurring. You can formalize this to ridiculous extents8., or you can take the legal systems more qualitative approach, of establish some standard of proof (you are, after all, justifying killing someone), where the execution is deemed justified if seems more likely than not/clearly and convincingly/beyond a reasonable doubt that it will prevent further, greater harm in the future. This lets you weaken the requirement that it is necessary to kill him to merely it is prudent to kill him. What is lacking though is any evidence that anyone has meaningfully carried out this process for any standard beyond plausible. The greatest extent to which this is established is that historically, there have been several restorationist insurrections, but no systematized historical study has been undertaken to quantify the risk of insurrection/coup in the presence or absence of an legitimate claimant.9.
Well perhaps we leave it there; a plausible narrative that places Alexei as the cause of some harm is sufficient in our eyes to justify his liquidation. The problem with this is that it is such a liberal standard that it can be applied to nearly everyone. There are scores of documented peasant rebellions throughout history, so by the same standard it is plausible that any given peasant may be at risk for launching a peasant rebellion down the line and thus, by that same standard, we are justified in liquidating them. Universalizing from this generic peasant^.10. to all peasants. And thus our system named aimed an providing dignity and comfort is able to justify pretty much any atrocity.
- The moral culpability of for the executions lies at the feet of the Tsar who created the system and not the executioners themselves.
This argument goes that it was actually the Tsar that placed him in position to be killed by standing at the top of a monarchical system that has ruined and ended untold numbers of lives. Had the Tsar dismantled that system before it came to blows, Alexei would have lived a happily inbred life as a continental European curiosity.
This argument plays fast an lose with the notion of fault to an extent that borders on the absurd. Within getting into the morass that encompasses the legal notion of fault, I’ll observe that the executioners where in total control of the situation, given the Romanovs were in the zone of immediate material influence, while the Bolshevik leaderships were at a more distant proximity, and Tsar Nicholas II at the head of the Imperial State was a fleeting memory, having greatly influenced the events that now overtook them, but having no control over them. The Bolshevik’s in Ipatiev House or those in leadership in Moscow alone decided who in that house lived and died, they knew that, and they exercised that choice.
- Unpleasant things happen during a revolution and we accept that as soon as they begin.
This is true, but once again, it comes down to the notions of control and proximity. As a leftist, I acknowledge that the struggle for political power may involve the world becoming a worse place (as judged according to my moral principles outline above) due to my actions to make it a better one. This is an abstract acknowledgement. It may also result in me taking actions that I find unpleasant or repugnant11. If it is the moral principles that describe motivate my political struggle though, it is fundamentally self-defeating to exercise my control over my immediate surroundings to knowingly act in a manner that results in an immediate degradation of the world around me (once again, as judged by my moral standards). My actions in the here and now, must be justified according to my principles in the here and now and my actions in the here and now. If 10 minutes ago I was standing in Yekaterinburg and the Whites are closing in, and now I’m still standing in Yekaterinburg and the Whites are still closing in, but now there is a brand new pile of child corpses of my making, then I have made the world a worse place.
No tears for dead peasants
It is reasonable to ask why go to such great lengths to challenge the justifications for the murder of Alexei (which is so emotionally remote to me as to essentially be fictitious). To which I offer the following justifications.
- It’s ridiculous and therefore funny.
- Because eventually some of us may be in positions to make decisions that make the world a substantially better or worse place for others, and I want it be very clear what stands before us when making those decisions. No, none of us are going to decide whether or not an heir lives or dies, but we are going to decide how to treat with those around us, and want everyone to pause before they exercise what little control they have in the world around them before making it a worse place, justifying it with a glib aphorism or some half-baked argument.
1. The fitness for humor here is not considered, as something can be both morally bad and the legitimate target of well-done comedy. Like 9/11.
2. I was promised ice cream if I didn’t say ‘ilk’ here.
3. To wit, one of the main justifications for political violence on the left is that it is directed at those preventing others from enjoying dignity, comfort, or well, life.
4. Such as it is.
5. which we may dub the Yekaterinburg Streetcar Defense
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rebellions_in_the_Soviet_Union
7. One could alternatively take the logical form of necessity as a conditional, ~P -> ~Q with P being “the legitimate claimant to the imperial thrown is killed” and “Q” being “the revolution is successful”. Given the contra-factual nature of ~P, the truth value of this statement can’t be evaluated directly, but given the analogous situation in China with PuYi, we can strongly infer that this conditional is in fact false and thus logical necessity is not present.
8. define xi to be each enumerated possible future in space X, p(xi) to be the probability of that future occurring, and h(xi) to be the number of lives ruined by Alexei in that future xi. Shoot kid if
9. To reach a preponderance of evidence standard you would need to establish P(Insurrection|Legitimate Claimant) > P(Insurrection), which the strictly materialist interpretation would hold P(Insurrection|Legitimate Claimant) = P(Insurrection).
10 Regular viewers will recognize this as universal generalization.
11 Orwell’s description of the conditions of fighting in the Spanish civil war come to mind.
You’re absolutely allowed to estimate probabilities in your head without doing a formal study, but when the subject in question is murdering children, you have obligation to be methodical about that process, and to absolutely show your work.
If I just went out a murdered a child and claimed it was justified, I agree with you that I’d better have a damned good explanation for it when I could’ve just sat at home playing video games. But we’re talking about this in the context of revolution. There were far more important things to consider, and it’s in no way worth the time or energy to contemplete the moral philosophy and historical data for this decision when every day you’re making decisions that affect the life or death of thousands, perhaps even millions of people. In the amount of time you might spend figuring out whether to kill them or not, you might be able to find a marginally better troop deployment that saves 100 people’s lives. Expecting a full on scientific study in that context is pretty absurd imo.
I’m getting tired of saying this to people, but show your work. I’m not claiming that you must murder a million peasants just because it’s justified, I’m showing that this standard of reasoning lets you murder any peasant, and so you’re then welcome to deploy this reasoning as a pretext for killing motivated by any other axe to grind.
And what about your framework? It’s easy enough to justify harming others when your actions are based on “justice” and “deserving.” On the previous point you mentioned that making snap decisions makes me sound like a police defender, but another police defender line is to argue that a killing was justified because the victim had done something wrong in the past, “They were no angel.” I can point to countless cases in the historical record where violence was argued to be justified on the basis of the moral inferiority of the victims, while ignoring the consequences of said violence.
In reality, anyone can act in bad faith in the context of any moral framework. There’s shitty people who do shitty things and claim cover on the basis of “The ends justify the means” and there’s shitty people who do shitty things and claim cover on the basis of “They deserved it.” You can’t throw out consequentialism just because some people invoke it in bad faith.
You say things like “likelihood” and “calculation”, but given you can’t point to any actual math or statistics, it seems to me like you’re trying to borrow legitimacy and rigor from these fields, when in fact you really mean “judgements”.
I use the words interchangeably, yes. Statisticians don’t have a copyright on the word “likelihood,” sorry.
Maybe all the other peasants hated this guy, so in my judgement (not calculation), it doesn’t effect the chance of revolution. So in that case it’s justified?
No, you have to make a full judgement of various factors. If you want to make the case for murdering peasants under a consequentialist framework then I expect you to put more effort into it than that if you want me to seriously engage the question.
As a westerner, of course it is, and given that I imagine you’re a westerner too, so is yours. But everything you say after this has no relation to or connection to my position, given that I don’t think there is any such thing as a ‘good’ person or any need to justify oneself in the afterlife.
It is relevant because I at least find the assumptions I mentioned necessary to understanding your position. I don’t deny that my worldview is influenced by a Christian framework through lingering brainworms I’ve yet to uproot.
and it’s in no way worth the time or energy to contemplete the moral philosophy and historical data for this decision when every day you’re making decisions that affect the life or death of thousands, perhaps even millions of people.
I mean if this decision is not that important, not important enough to justify putting to much thought into it, just a throwaway decision, then surely the immediate consequentialist decision is to not shoot the children according to our moral framework. In order to justify shooting the children you have to develop some future spanning narrative, and if you can be bothered to do that, you might as well be bothered to consider the question fully.
justified because the victim had done something wrong in the past
I actually agree that this reasoning is unsound, and so I don’t use it (my footnote 3 being it’s close cousin that the victim is currently doing something wrong). I actually wouldn’t have shot any of the Romanov’s, but given that many people here do believe that past misdeeds justify reprisal (we’ll make no excuses for the terror blah blah blah), I didn’t think this would be a side argument worth having.
In reality, anyone can act in bad faith in the context of any moral framework. There’s shitty people who do shitty things and claim cover on the basis of “The ends justify the means” and there’s shitty people who do shitty things and claim cover on the basis of “They deserved it.” You can’t throw out consequentialism just because some people invoke it in bad faith.
And there are good people who can be made to do shitty things because someone stands at the ready with a pat, half-baked consequentialist justification for them. This comes up every time liberals want to intervene in some country, and our response to them is the same as my responses in these threads. “Show your work”, in which case their arguments all fall to pierces.
I use the words interchangeably, yes. Statisticians don’t have a copyright on the word “likelihood,” sorry.
No, but they, probability theorists and logicians are the only ones who can handle them in a formalized way. Everyone else is more or less eyeballing it, which if we’re trying to make decisions that optimize future outcomes seems like exactly the sort of thing you’d want to avoid.
In order to justify shooting the children you have to develop some future spanning narrative, and if you can be bothered to do that, you might as well be bothered to consider the question fully.
That’s ridiculous.
“Maybe we shouldn’t kill the kids, they weren’t responsible.”
“Yeah, but if we don’t, the monarchists might use them to strengthen their claims.”
End of discussion, versus “Ok let’s go do a historical survey to verify that possibility and also break out the philosophy textbooks.” Your point is incredibly bad faith. It didn’t take a bunch of sitting around theorizing to come up with a justification, it was immediately apparent and easy to express in a single sentence.
No, but they, probability theorists and logicians are the only ones who can handle them in a formalized way. Everyone else is more or less eyeballing it, which if we’re trying to make decisions that optimize future outcomes seems like exactly the sort of thing you’d want to avoid.
This is one of those cases where I literally could not agree with your point even if I wanted to. You’re essentially trying to argue that everyone but the groups you named should forfeit their agency as a moral actor. “Should I ask this person on a date? Better go find a statistician!” Extreme level of field arrogance.
“Maybe we shouldn’t kill the kids, they weren’t responsible.”
“Yeah, but if we don’t, the monarchists might use them to strengthen their claims.”
End of discussion,
Great, so the standard of evidence required is literally “can anyone say anything in favor of doing this terrible thing” in order for it to be justified, and as soon as that justification is offered, any follow-up questions could be dismissed as “we don’t have time”.
You’re essentially trying to argue that everyone but the groups you named should forfeit their agency as a moral actor.
Absolutely not, they are welcome to use whatever systematized thought process they like or none. But if they’re going to engage in fraught moral decision making that have grave consequences for other people, they should absolutely engage in a degree of epistemic humility instead of coming up with some pat 30 second justification for their decision and then insisting to everyone else that they have in fact done their homework.
