Warning: some technical Marxology for those that care about such things. (I don't get to do this much any more. . . .)
OK, I've checked the German of Die Todesstrafe (The Death Penalty) (Marx Engels Werke, Band 8, pp. 506-508).
Marx thinks (please note below) that "there is only
one theory of punishment (es gibt nur eine Theorie der
Bestrafung)
> which recognizes human
> >> dignity in the abstract," namely, what we call
retributivism, but (like so much in bourgeois right),
it cannot be realized, or at least fully realized
under conditions of class society.
The idea, as I take it, is that the retributivist theory treats human beings as agents, as persons responsible for their own acts, rather than, as the utilitarian would have it, as mere passive objects for "ameliorating or intimidating" others.
The problem is that "it [is a] delusion to
> substitute for the
> >> individual with his real motives, with
> multifarious social
> >> circumstances pressing upon him, the abstraction
> of "free will"--one
> >> among the many qualities of man for man himself!"
This is a bit fuzzy, but I think Marx's point is that
it's good that instead of looking upon the criminal as
> the mere object, the
> >> slave of justice, [retributivism] elevates him to
a position of a
> free and
> >> self-determined being," given the reality of
"multifarious social
> >> circumstances pressing upon him," and it is
"somewhat attractive" to think of human action as
wholly self-determined and deserving, therefore, of
punishment for transgression. However, this is at best
one-sided and abstract.
Btw the word Marx uses to describe Hegel's retribuvism is Bestechendes, meaning attractive, seductive, or appealing, but translated misleadingly in the version Ted gives and Murphy quotes as 'specious', which meant "attractive" or "plausible" in 18th century English, but means "false" in modern English, and is rather misleading as a translation in context. Murphy correctly states that Marx's view of Hegel's theory is ambiguous; he does not simply reject it; he thinks it is the only possible theory of punishment, but ends up saying that a theory of punishment is not what is needed at this point.
Although it is not so clear from this article, Hegel's version of retributivism (as Murphy explains it, reasonably accurately) shows what Marx is probably driving at. Marx is not making a metaphysical point that we are not responsible for our actions because they are wholly determined by social circumstances. He is not interested in metaphysics and anyway, likes the German idealist conception of humans as active agents. That preserves human dignity.
Rather, Marx differs from Hegel in this: Hegel thinks that the criminal is a free participant in making the laws according to which he is punished. That is why But Marx thinks that is a delusion in the idea that ordinary citizens, including criminals, in class society do have much to do with making their laws.
That is why is is an error to think that punishment
"is
> an act of [the criminal's] own
> >> will. The violation of right has been proclaimed
> by the criminal as
> >> his own right." (Hegel's view)
Not so, when the laws are made undemocratically, which for Marx means under class conditions. (Remember that in the Manifesto (1848), the first task of the revolutionary proletariat is to "win the battle for (or of) democracy."
Now clearly Marx thinks that worker's state will have far less need of punishment than a capitslist one -- presumably because it will eliminate the poverty that breeds street crime and the greed that breeds "suite" crime. No doubt that is true.
But note the logic of the position. In a genuinely democratic and classless society, the laws would be made by the ordinary citizens,a nd would be their own acts, and so the necessary condition for retributivism would be satisfied -- even if it would be far less needed than under capitalism.
There is an analogy here with Marx's discussion in the Critique of the Gotha Progarm of the bourgeois principle, To Each According To His Work, which he thinks cannot be realized under capitslim, but only in the first phase of communism. Naturally Marx says there that in the higher pahase of communism, the narrow horizons of bourgeois right will be transcended and we will ultimately be able to look at each individual in his multi-sidededness rather than merely as a worker (the parallel to merely as a free actor in the abstract here), thus realing the principle To Each According To His Need.
In that happy world, no doubt, there would be no need for punishment, or so litle that it would not merit a theory. But in the meantime, just as under the first phase of communism the bourgeois principle of distribution of wealth could be realized, so under that phase of communism, the bourgeois but only correct -- retributivist-- theory of punsihment could also be realized.
Ted quotes:
>
> The relevant part of Marx's article is available on
> the web.
>
>
> > On capital punishment
> > Monthly Review, May, 1984 by Karl Marx
> >
> > In view of the resurgence of capital punishment
> in the United States
> > we thought MR readers might be interested in
> Marx's observations in a
> > dispatch from him that appeared in the New York
> Daily Tribune of
> > February 17, 1853. The occasion for writing on
> this subject was a
> > leading article in The Times (London) that
> provided, in Marx's words,
> > "no less than a direct apotheosis of the hangman,
> while capital
> > punishment is extolled as the ultima ratio of
> society." The following
> > extract gives the gist of Marx's rebuttal. --The
> editors.
> >
> >> It is astonishing that the article in question
> does not even produce
> >> a single argument or pretext for indulging in the
> savage theory
> >> therein propounded; and it would be very
> difficult, if not altogether
> >> impossible to establish any principle upon which
> the justice or
> >> expediency of capital punishment could be founded
> in a society
> >> glorifying in its civilization. Punishment in
> general has been
> >> defended as a means either of ameliorating or
> intimidating. Now what
> >> right have you to punish me for the amelioration
> or intimidation of
> >> others? And besides, there is history--there is
> such a thing as
> >> statistics--which prove with the most complete
> evidence that since
> >> Cain the world has neither been intimidated nor
> ameliorated by
> >> punishment. Quite the contrary. From the point of
> view of abstract
> >> right, there is only one theory of punishment
> which recognizes human
> >> dignity in the abstract, and that is the theory
> of Kant, especially
> >> in the more rigid formula given to it by Hegel.
> Hegel says:
> >> "Punishment is the right of the criminal. It is
> an act of his own
> >> will. The violation of right has been proclaimed
> by the criminal as
> >> his own right. His crime is the negation of
> right. Punishment is the
> >> negation of this negation, and consequently an
> affirmation of right,
> >> solicited and forced upon the criminal by
> himself."
> >>
> >> There is no doubt something specious in this
> formula, inasmuch as
> >> Hegel, instead of looking upon the criminal as
> the mere object, the
> >> slave of justice, elevates him to a position of a
> free and
> >> self-determined being. Looking, however, more
> closely into the
> >> matter, we discover that German idealism here, as
> in most other
> >> instances, has but given a transcendental
> sanction to the rules of
> >> existing society. Is it not a delusion to
> substitute for the
> >> individual with his real motives, with
> multifarious social
> >> circumstances pressing upon him, the abstraction
> of "free will"--one
> >> among the many qualities of man for man himself!
> This theory,
> >> considering punishment as the result of the
> criminal's own will, is
> >> only a metaphysical expression for the old jus
> talionis: eye against
> >> eye, tooth against tooth, blood against blood.
> Plainly speaking, and
> >> dispensing with all paraphrases, punishment is
> nothing but a means of
> >> society to defend itself against the infraction
> of its vital
> >> conditions, whatever may be their character. Now,
> what a state of
> >> society is that which knows of no better
> instrument for its own
> >> defense than the hangman, and which proclaims
> through the "leading
> >> journal of the world" its own brutality as
> eternal law?
> >
>
<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_v36>
>
>
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