I think Davis's point, that simple elimination of prisons, under present social conditions, would result in a drop in the crime rate, is pretty well established.
No matter what the left 'demands' the capitalist state is not going to close down the prisons. Arguments over what would happen if prisons were closed today are, then, pointless. (This is how I take Michael's distinction between policy and politics. Politics = What The Left Demands; Policy = What Congress legislates.)
Whatever would be the results of social democracy in the U.S. or France or England or Germany, it is a pipe dream, an unreal possibility. Moreover, it would almost certainly increase the misery outside the richest and most powerful capitalist states. Total world death rates would dramatically increase.
Just because social democracy is both a daydream and undesirable for the rest of the world does not mean the left cannot or should not make social democratic demands. That's a political question to be resolved within left movements, not a policy issue. (See on policy and politics above.)
Probably (this is on the edge of fantasy but perhaps just barely within reality) a strong and threaateningn campaign against the prison system, while of course not achieving its central 'demand," would result in the decriminalizing drug use and drug sales. It might eliminate holding non-violent prisoners in local jails while awaiting trial (no bond required). While it wouldn't 'reform' prison guards it would put them under more restraint, and it might even improve prison food.
The U.S. prison system is a systematic program of torture, so in arguing for its elimination we are arguing for the elimination of torture. Torture is probably the central issue.
The most important point for leftists in all this is that one does not measure a left "demand" by what would happen if it were implemented. Left demands are NEVER simply implemented. In the best case, the demand for X results in Y, a change having no relation to X but serving, the rulers hope, to 'quiet things down.'
We are back to the central point: The goal of left activity, with rare exceptions (the November 15 Moratorium in 1969) is to enlarge the militant left, not to change U.S. policy (which will change as a left grows, but not in any direct way to particular left demands).
And above all, those middle strata will never take to the streets to demand social democracy, though they just might take to the streets against prisons. People love to fight for justice. They really do.
Lenin grounded his politics on "Trust the Workers."
Mao made it explicit: "Trust the people."
This is not based on any conception of how people will act; it is grounded in the fact that if they don't act, nothing will change. If you are trapped on the third floor of a burning building you do not quibble about the trustworthiness of the only available rope.
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of shag carpet bomb Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2011 7:23 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] A Note on the Middle 75%
I always thought that the basic point of contention is this.
There are those who think that murder and rape won't be nearly so prevalent in a society where we eliminate social injustice. For what reason would there be to commit such crimes. Indeed, this view was so prevalent that, in the late 80s, when I took a public policy course, one where you explore "issues in american society," on the issue of crime, one side was indeed, this position.
There are those who think that such crimes will never go away, that there is some core of human being that isn't malleable, that isn't the product of social relations, and such crimes will always exist, though there will be a lot less. For example, there will be, no matter what we do, 25 year old males who will rape 11 year old males. There will always be people who find their partner in bed with another lover, and they will murder in the heat of passion, as they say.
I think there is another position, people who recognize that most of these crimes will disappear, but there will still always be people who are psychopaths, like Harris and Klebold, who have fantasies about world destruction and decide to enact them by shooting people. Psychopaths, in this view, are not produced by social relations but by something outside society - biology, genetics?
If you take the last two positions, that there is something about human nature that exists outside of social relations, then you'll never buy the prison abolition platform.
But I think there is one more division perhaps. I think justin (andie) used to articulate this view: that there has to be punishment, a form of vengeance, where the state acts on behalf of the victims to exact the same kind of harm on the criminal that the criminal has inflicted on both society and the victims. The vengeance view isn't about teaching lessons. The idea is that the criminal can't be taught a lesson and it doesn't matter if punishment deters - only that the criminal is made to suffer.
There is a related view where society is the victim, as are the actual people who suffer. To break a law is to harm society, as much as it is to harm individuals. The only satisfaction for the victims is to punish criminals by treating them as not human. A human is given a chance to live in this just and good society we create and if she fucks up by committing murder or rape or what have you, they must be imprisoned as punishment. Not punishment intended to correct behavior. But punishment intended to banish the criminal from human society altogether.
The argument is also that you need to keep people off the streets, so they don't harm again. But it's not good enough to put them in a hospital where they can be treated (if you take the view that they are sick) or in a place where, treated as human, they are understood to be capable of learning how to become people who don't harm others. We may want to do those things as well, but on this view, it's important to punish.
shag
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