The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only useful standard of political morality; everything else is cheap literature, vague prattle that slips between your fingers. But the principle only holds true when the action serves a useful collective purpose and not merely an individual goal. If Raskolnikov had dispatched the old woman on assignment from the party, for instance to enrich a strike fund or enable an illegal print shop, then the calculation would add up, and the novel, with its misleading presentation of the problem, would never have been written, to the
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