1) A person can be causally responsible for a criminal act even though there is no free choice in a libertarian sense. On the basis of this causal responsibility punishment may be in order. As mentioned, if the punishment can be tailored so as to alter the criminal's behavior so that it is not repeated this might (or might not) be justified in consequentialist terms- or if it deters others. Also, if criminals are allowed to profit from crime with no "payment", incentives for not acting criminally are weakened. (Although personally I think this is a minor factor in people's behavior). Those who are insane would not be punished since punishment could not be expected to alter their behavior. As in the present system they would not be legally repsonsible--although some legal reformers suggest a trial simply on the basis of casual agency and the matter of "responsibility" as far as insanity and social factors are concerned would enter at the sentencing stage.
2) Surely crime IS a function of upbringing and social factors. The justice system too is hardly impartial and functioning outside social influences. Consider the fact that often trivial property crimes result in long prison terms and worse if they occur three times in a row. Consider the lax enforcement of weak anti-pollution laws. Consider the proportionately large number of blacks on death row. Consider that many criminal acts should probably not be criminalized at all such as possession of marijuana. Other acts that should be criminalised are not. The list could go on and on.
3) I don't think that Muslim fundamentalist harsh punishments are based upon any individual bourgeois ideology of personal responsibility. In organic communitarian societies punishments are often extremely harsh, as in fundamentalist Islamic societies. Even in the former Soviet Union, punishments tended to be harsh and no attention was paid to Marx's caustic remarks on capital punishment.
4) I though that the article on Taliban punishment was well-written and well worth posting. That the US also has a very vindictive system is hardly a reason not to reveal the barbarity of another system. Just to have non-US content on this list is surely a plus:) The Taliban are also notoriously rotten in their treatment of women. It should be noted that the US and other western powers helped overthrow a communist regime in Afghanistan that was far more progressive than the Taliban and certainly all the gains that women made under communism have now been rolled back.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
James Farmelant wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jan 2000 12:55:05 EST JKSCHW at aol.com writes:
> >In a message dated Fri, 21 Jan 2000 11:05:28 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> >James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> writes:
> >
> >Also, underlying support of capital punishment and of harsh
> >> punishments by the criminal justice system generally is
> >> bourgeois individualist ideology. According to this idea
> >> we are each masters of our own fates. Each of us bears
> >> ultimate responsibility for the choices that we make, for
> >> what we make of ourselves whether good or bad.
> >
> >Do you actually disagree with this proposition? Do you think that if I
> >rob a bank, or perhaps, since we are on LBO I should say, if I found a
> >bank, and am hauled in front of Doug's revolutionary tribunal, I
> >should be able defend myself by saying, I wasn't responsible! I am
> >just a creature of society! Bourgeois ideology made me do it!
>
> Well, I find myself inclined to a view similar to the one Ted Honderich
> (who is also BTW a good friend of G.A. Cohen) defends in
> his *A Theory of Determinism* or in his *How Free Are You* which
> is I suppose a species of hard determinism. BTW Marx seems
> to have taken a somewhat similar view in his famous New York
> Tribune article on capital punishment. Marx seems to have regarded
> the retributivist rationales for punishment that Rousseau and
> Hegel as valid in themselves but for the assumption that there exists
> free
> individuals in the sense required by their theories. This
> assumption Marx denied. Engels in writings like *Anti-Durhing*
> also seems to have been a determinist as well. For him freedom
> was something that was contrary to the reign of necessity
> but was achieved under it through the understanding and
> application of natural laws.
>
> >
> >> Those
> >> who make good or wise choices are thus entitled to
> >> rewards commensurate with the wisdom or goodness
> >> of those choices and those who make bad or foolish
> >> choices are likewise deserving of punishments
> >> commensurate with such choices.
> >
> >Well, it's one thing to say that people are responsible for their
> >choices and another to say that they should get what their choices
> >deserve. These are seperate questions.
>
> Most determinists have traditionally rejected the idea that
> the notion of desert should be regarded as a primary concept.
> Hume for instance seemed to think that the justification for
> rewarding and punishing of people lied in its observed efficacy
> in modifying behavior with the implication that if such practices
> should be found to be lacking in efficacy then they would lose
> their justification. Honderich as I understand him advances a
> similar view and in such works as *A Theory of Determinism*
> and his *Conservatism* he attacks retributivist rationales for
> punishment as well as justifications for economic inequalities
> in terms of "desert."
>
> >
> >But even here, although people on the left might not think that bad
> >people who make bad choices are the root of our problems, we don't
> >have to reject the idea that if you make bad choices you pay the
> >price. Surely that's waht we think in the case of, say, Pinochet, or
> >anyway we think he should pay the price.
>
> The rationale for making people "pay the price" would be largely
> a matter of deterrence and possible of rehabilitation of the offenders.
> BTW I am not necesaarily in favor of attempting to make Pinochet
> "pay the price" if that means supporting his arrest in the UK with
> the the threat of extradition to Spain. That it seems to me sets a
> bad precedent that can easily be used against revolutionary leaders
> in the future. And in fact some "human rights" groups have clear
> that they would seek to take similar action against leaders like
> Fidel Castro (which was one reason why Castro avoided coming
> to the US during the WTO conference in Seattle).
>
> >
> > People
> >> are endowed with free will and thus responsibility
> >> for their choices lies with the individuals that make
> >> them not with society or social structures etc.
> >
> >Well, this doesn't follow. Why not both? Why is it either/or? If we
> >have a bad society that tends to make some people into bad people, why
> >cannot we say that the people who do bad things should be punished,
> >and the fact that our society makes them that way means it needs to be
> >changed>
>
> I wouldn't necessarily disagree in principle except to note that
> our current criminal justice system seems more effective
> in shoring up the present social order than it does in
> altering for the better the behaviors of those who have been
> deemed criminals (and it of course does little to modify for
> the better the behaviors of capitalists and other privileged
> people who are largely free from its grip in the first place).
>
> >
> >> To the extent that it might be admitted that some
> >> people's choices might not be freely made, then
> >> the factors that are held responsible are still said
> >> to be internal to the individual - perhaps in the form
> >> of bad genes, or mental illness conceived of in
> >> strictly individualist terms.
> >
> >Of course legal insanity will get you off, after a fashion.
>
> As you know few defendants are able to get off using
> an insanity defense (which is usuall a defense of last
> resort) and of course insanity is anyway coneptualized as
> a defect that is internal to the individual. Thus it is
> not a threat to individualist ideology.
>
> >
> >But my main point here is that I don't think that the left should buy
> >into this bad old 60s liberal palaver about the poor widdle cwiminals
> >and their bad enviwonments that isn't their fault.
>
> I would suggest that there was perhaps more wisdom in that
> view than people (including most leftists) are willing to admit
> these days. And anyway determinism has never excluded
> the use of punishment.
>
> >
> >I don't think real hard determinism is a tenable position. Hard
> >determinism means no one is morally responsible for what she does
> >because it is all caused by factors beyond her control, and therefore
> >no one can be justly rewarded or punished for what they do. No one
> >really believes this, and I don't think anyone could. Surely you could
> >not raise children based on that premise.
>
> The hard determinist would not necessarily deny the empirical
> generalization that rewards and punishments can modify
> human behavior. The rationale for using them would, however,
> no longer be grounded in notions like retribution or of desert
> taken as a primitive.
>
> >
> >Of course the left must not buy into the idea that we cannot point to
> >social causes of crime and other misbehavior without excusing such
> >conduct. If we reject hard determinism, we need not excuse rape,
> >tyranny, etc., or deny the responsibility of those who chose to do
> >such things,a nd ounish thema ccordingly. And we can still say that
> >these bad things are caused by a bad society.
> >
> >My co-clerk here in the judge's chambers says I am becoming very
> >conservate. Maybe, who knows.
>
> I am inclined to agree with your co-clerk. From your more recent
> posts I get the impression that you have come to accept rather
> uncritically many of the premises of bourgeois jurisprudence.
>
> Jim F.
>
> >
> >--Justin Schwartz
> >
>
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