Crimes of Unreason

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Wed Mar 10 11:32:31 PST 1999



> Max, what would happen if you told some of the people that you see in DC
> every day that a factory or farm owner who consciously poisons his workers
> is a murderer?

First of all, "the people I see" in my efforts at persuasion are not DC wonks/bureaucrats/politicians, but union members, church groups, etc. As to your question re: factory/farm owners,

Nobody would blink. Though I would wonder what you mean by "consciously poison." For instance, if a boss puts strychnine in a union activist's coffee cup, that clearly fits the terminology. Alternatively, if a boss runs a factory with a positive fatality rate from industrial accidents, I would not automatically consider that a capital crime; it would depend on the details. It could be a crime of a lower order. In one's fervor to indict the system, such distinctions tend to become very blurred. If we are talking about what should constitute a capital crime, they ought to be important (and not dependent on the class of the offender).


> Or that the Mayor of NYC has run an oppressive and murderous regime?

On that they would automatically classify the speaker as marginal to serious political discourse. And I would agree. Odious as Ghouliani is, he's not a General Somoza. Such terminology tends to let the worst characters off the hook, as well as your mayor.


> They'd think you were nuts, right? But these things are true,
aren't they?>

No, as above.


> That's the nature of hegemonic discourse - if you call a cop or a factory
owner a killer you're perceived as wacky, out there,>

Depends on just what has been done. The 41-bullet cops are legitimate candidates for the designation. Then there are the people running the factory in North Carolina where workers were killed in a fire because most of the doors were kept locked. I'm no lawyer, but to me that is a case of criminal negligence, but not first degree murder.

I'm struck by the herculean arguments against capital punishment, on the one hand (some of which I share), and the tendency to homogenize a great variety of very different situations under the rubric of murder.


> not a serious person. But if one foams at the mouth about welfare moms or
crack babies or railroad shooters then you're just normal.>

Normalcy, like opposition, has its own internal contradictions.


> Isn't that definition of normalcy worth fighting in itself?

Yes, but normalcy is not without its positive or justifiable aspects, one of which is pitilessness for those who commit heinous crimes.


> Why do you consider it a waste of time to explain yourself?

If I didn't have to, I'd have more capacity to concentrate on what I consider to be most important (which is not society's failure to executive enough or the right folks).


> Face it, your views on social security and a debt paydown are almost as
unusual in the eyes of the master discourse as are Yoshie's and mine on factory owners and Rudy Giuliani.>

More so, I'm sorry to say. I can't even sell everybody at EPI.

mbs



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