OK, I have looked up the article on Marx and Retribution, which is by Jeffrie Murphy (not Jeffrey Reiman, as I misremembered) in PPA, reprinted in Cohen, Nagel, & Scanlon, Marx, Justice & History, Princeton 1980. If we are going to get Marxological here, we should look at the text where Marx actually discusses the issue.
According to Murphy, and I think he is right, because I know Marx's writing pretty well and cannot recall any other discussion of the topic directly, his only extended treatment of punishment in criminal law is the article "Capital Punishment," NY Daily Tribune, 18 Feb 1853. This is mature Marx, not early Marx, and may be said to reflect a fairlt considered view.
In this piece, Marx says mainly two things that Murphy expands to modern philosophy essay length -- not that convincingly, in my view. I mean I think a beter job could be done, not that Murphy's ideas are bad in outline.
OK, Marx says, (a) that the _only_ theory of punishment worthy of the name is Hegel's retributive theory, that Punishment is the right of the criminal that represents the act of his own will, and (b) that there is "something specious" about this theory in a class-divided society where (for all the reasons Marx set forth in his critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and his theory of the state as a class instrument), it is not reasonable to think of the state as representing the will of the criminal -- at least the poor criminal.
Two points. One is that this endorses retributivism as the correct theory of punishment for a worker's state, where presumably the laws _would_ represent the will of all the people. (b) In capitalist retributivism would still apply without any speciousness to the crimes of the bourgeoisie, whose will the state largely represents, according to Marx.
So, Marx is more on my side than yours on this. He might have been inconsistent with his won premises. I have argued that in other contexts. But we have to be clear: Marx does not reject retributivism. He rather worries about its full applicability in class society. If we are worried about Marx's views, that is where we must start.
jks
--- Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> wrote:
> Justin wrote:
>
> > The point that thae anti-retributivists on the
> lists
> > are not geting is that the idea that those who do
> ill
> > should be made to suffer is not an endorsement of
> > howling mob violence or torture or perpetual
> > inaceration under bright lights.
>
> This has nothing to do with the argument I pointed
> to. It derives the
> unreasonableness of any form of making others suffer
> retributively from
> assumptions about human being. Those assumptions
> are found in the
> passages from Marx I quoted to demonstrate the
> difference between
> Marx's assumptions and Arrow's.
>
> How can they be made to produce a justification for
> making others
> suffer retributively i.e. how can the assumption
> that rational
> self-consciousness would desire a life creating and
> appropriating
> beauty and truth within relations of mutual
> recognition justify any
> form of retributively inflicting suffering?
>
> Ted
>
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