[lbo-talk] Abolition of prisons (Was: Angela...)

Marv Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Sat Apr 4 12:55:26 PDT 2009


Why would we prempt the right of a future socialist democracy to decide whether it wanted to abolish prisons or not? This is NOT presently a demand arising organically from the people, least of all poor people, for whom the incarceration of criminal offenders is widely seen as a necessary means of protecting their personal safety and private and public propery.

It would not change under a socialist government striving to attain the communist society of abundance envisaged by Marx where all could freely draw on unlimited supplies of goods and services. Short of that ideal state, moral exhortations and incentives would not alone be sufficient to ensure social cooperation, as the Soviets, Chinese, Cubans, and others quickly discovered following the heroic period of their revolutions. In general, the lower the level of the productive forces, the greater the degree of coercion, regardless of the property form.

While it's necessary and possible to fight for penal reform to curb abuses such as the unjust incarceration of drug users or political prisoners, the call to abolish the prison system would be dismissed out of hand as a crackpot demand.



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