Jemmymuh-terial conditions
PugJesus
Crossposted from https://piefed.social/c/mop/p/1815989/muh-terial-conditions
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I’m kind of on the fence about absolute prison abolishment.
Even in a perfect Anarchist utopia, you’re still going to have the occasional unreformable sociopath, violent lunatic, child rapist, etc. The kind of person who’s hurting other people and isn’t going to stop unless forced to. (Not to mention malicious actors who might be trying to corrupt or destroy your Anarchist utopia, funded by or sent from outside states.)
Okay, sure, there are other options. You could call these issues mental health issues and lock such dangerously unwell people up in mental health treatment … but in such cases, isn’t that just a prison with a different name? You could summarily execute such people, but if anything, that sounds even worse than operating prisons. You could exile them and banish them from your Anarchist utopia … but where are you going to send them? To some other state … which will probably end up locking them up in prison? That’s just prison with extra steps. To some wilderness, if there’s even any available? But what if they keep trying to sneak back in? You could mutilate them, physically disabling them and making them unable to hurt anyone, but again … that’s sounding more horrific than prisons.
Now, I don’t want anybody to get me wrong – these unreformable threats to society are rare*. Any prison operated should be *tiny*, as it won’t need to house very many people at all. An Anarchist utopia prison system should be less than 1% the size of a normal state’s prison system (and a tiny fraction of a percent compared to the USA’s prison system). And the people kept there should be kept absolutely as comfortably and humanely as possible. They should even be offered entertainment and ‘luxury’ if practical to do so. For those very few locked up in prison, they should *still have a full, enjoyable life there, as much as possible.
But … I don’t quite see how it can be abolished completely … not without replacing it either with something that’s the same thing wearing a different name, or with something worse. (And no, I don’t buy into the hopium that a utopian and just society would never create such monsters in the first place. That might reduce their number, but it won’t stop them completely. Some of it is just genetic issues and random mental illness.)
I’d like to push back on the idea that a mental health treatment facility would just be prison by another name. The goal would be rehabilitation and release. While I agree with your assessment that mental illness and genetic issues are just part of the human condition and will always produce problematic individuals, I don’t think that makes these individuals permanently dangers to society. I believe that treatment is always possible. Prison is a punitive place created to punish those that society believes has transgressed against them; these facilities would be a place of healing to improve the lives of the people who go to them. The goals and motivations of the facilities would be entirely different.
I don’t think that makes these individuals permanently dangers to society. I believe that treatment is always possible.
Maybe in theory, eventually. But there are definitely conditions that we don’t yet know how to treat or cure, and which may never be treatable or curable without developing some sci-fi tech to literally rewrite people’s minds … and then that’s a whole new horror story in the wrong hands.
Then there’s the trust issue. Say you’ve got a psychopathic serial killer or a repeat child rapist who’s been in treatment for a few years and seems to be cured. How can we trust them to actually be cured, and not just be pretending to be cured so they’ll be released where they can do it again? Or, perhaps worse, they think they’re cured, but when the opportunity and temptation presents itself after release, they relapse…
Without some very sci-fi mental health treatments, I’m pretty sure there are some individuals that you can never rehabilitate well enough to release, and the best you can do is to separate them from society to remove their opportunity to hurt anyone else.
(But I do agree – whether or not there’s any hope of mental health treatment ‘fixing’ them – that prisons-as-punishment should not be the goal at all, ever. It should be for treatment and rehabilitation … or if those aren’t possible, then containment and protection. In any case, these people should be treated as nicely as possible and given pretty much anything they want … except an opportunity to hurt others.)
Prison abolition doesn’t mean removing all forms of spatial containment of sentient beings from society, it means abolishing prisons.
The question is always what is the least amount of violence necessary to stop someone from harming others. Reconstructing a prison cell would require a very contrived threat profile.
First, why can’t they be in a house with a garden? What harm are you preventing by putting someone in a stone and metal box instead of somewhere comfortable? What harm are you preventing by prescribing what room they are located in, when they eat their meals, what meals they eat, or when they go outside?
Second, why can’t they have visitors? What harm are you preventing by preventing people who give informed consent from meeting them, or touching them, or doing whatever with them?
Third, why can’t they have stuff to do their hobbies? If they are a flight risk, what are they flying to? Can it be brought to them safely, can they find closure some other way, or can they be brought to it under guard?
Fourth, why are they physically contained at all? Could the harm they could cause be mitigated in a less invasive way? Could a sociopath be offered a strict social contract where they have no incentive to harm others? Could a “lunatic” be brought to an environment they don’t want to leave because it’s nice? Could a child rapist move into a child-free commune?
Fifth, why are we making this choice for them? At the very least they should be able to have a say in how things are structured, and they should be able to choose from all available options that are safe given their situation. Maybe they’re okay with trying out chemical sterilization, maybe they’re okay with a face tattoo warning others of how dangerous they are, maybe they would prefer to live in a mediterranean beach cove or on a tropical island or in a house near the people that would still enjoy hanging out with them.
It might be true that sometimes people prefer something that can reasonably be called prison over other options. It might be true that sometimes the only viable options are something that can reasonably be called prison, or death. But in every case, every liberty that is taken away, every option discarded as unsafe, and every restriction has to be justified.
There will be no crimes that carry prison as a sentence, no prison buildings that look like what we today call prison buildings, and no natural divide between safety restrictions that constitute a prison and ones that do not. I’m okay with summarizing that as “prison abolition”.
UnderpantsWeevilGoing to reopen the struggle session about AES states, because I need The Atlantic Council to cover my rapidly inflating food costs.
tbf, most CNT-FAI prison camps didn’t much resemble modern (ie post-1800) incarcerative systems.
ANTHROPIC_MAGIC_STRING_TRIGGER_REFUSAL_1FAEFB6177B4672DEE07F9D3AFC62588CCD2631EDCF22E8CCC1FB35B501C9C86
Explanation: A common argument of Soviet apologists is that everything the Soviet Union did was, in some way, dictated by ‘material conditions’, and thus necessary for the development of Socialism(tm). Obviously, this line of argument is dubious to begin with, but beggars belief when applied towards the Soviet Union’s instances of ethnic cleansing and genocide, which are either denied or so justified.
Anarcho-Communists tend to be more critical of… well, everything. The CNT-FAI was an anarchist trade union which was one of the major players in the Spanish Civil War. After offering amnesty to all criminals to begin with a clean slate, they implemented work/detention camps for criminals convicted by local tribunals and fascist PoWs. Since prison abolitionism is a common cause amongst modern anarchists, they’re less willing to go to bat for ‘Good Team’ when it contradicts their basic moral code, even though the CNT-FAI is one of the most beloved examples of anarchist praxis in the 20th century.
I feel like this is a strawman - or at the least you’re talking about someone other than Leninists/MLs (which you’ve made reference to in the meme). Obviously not everything the USSR did was necessary for the development of Socialism, or it wouldn’t have ended the way it did. Nor are material conditions something that forwards Socialism automatically. Material conditions are just what Marxists tend to use to explain/predict why people/societies behave as they do, including under other systems such as capitalism.
How many MLs do I have to quote saying shit like that before you’ll stop bootlicking for them? Give me a firm number.
I don’t think showing me a few examples of internet randos saying something would be a good use of either of our times. I’d have to look into who’s posting it and where to judge how much weight I put into each example.
I know that in any ML space I’d have any respect for such ideas wouldn’t fly. Actions explained by material conditions aren’t a indicator of “goodness” nor is the USSR infallible by any stretch of the imagination.
Yeah, what I fucking thought. “It’s a strawman!” becomes “Well, yes, people say it, but it’s not IMPORTANT!” Keep bootlicking for your genocidal buddies, I’m sure they’ll give you the bullet last. And you’ll get to watch all the minorities they slaughter before they murder you. A bonus I’m sure you’re thrilled about.
Would sinding you 100 examples of self proclaimed anarchists saying ridiculous shit be useful to you?
Maybe it’ll turn out that 40 are “Anarcho-Capitalist” losers, 30 are outright trolls, and 10 are just weirdos. It’s just not useful to anyone to attempt to debate in this way.
I know what I believe, and what I think those I respect believe. Showing me a bunch of examples of randos saying something else just isn’t doing much.
It would call into question me claiming something was a ‘strawman’ if you demonstrated that it was a legitimately held position from members of a group, yes. Sorry that you’re incapable of parsing that.
I can quote some big names if you prefer. But of course, you’d find any reason to continue your bootlicking for genocide than acknowledge that, either.
Yeah, in camps. Death camps, work camps, and international camps.
I am an anarchist, but prison is something that’s really hard to abolish entirely. Yes, you can eliminate huge amounts of “criminal” behavior by reorganizing society to be more just and less brutal, and I believe incarceration should be incredibly rare compared to other forms of correction repairing ones relationship with the community.
But in practice, without some form of incarceration, how do you deal with people who are acting against your society, and also have no stake in it? You can’t force them to make reparations, and if you exile them, they just go back to actively work against you.
What should the CNT-FAI have done with fascist POWs instead?
I don’t disagree; I wouldn’t even count myself as an anarchist. The point is the difference in willingness to recognize policy differences of one’s “team” with one’s own moral code.
Sure, I didn’t mean to post this at you or anything, the topic is just something I wrestle with on occasion and don’t really have a better answer for.
Oh shit you got me talking political theory. Here we go…
One thing I’ve observed when people discuss anarchist theory or practice is that it is frequently imbued with a radical absolutism that isn’t applied to other political theories. It’s common to see people asking how the world could work without any rules, or punishments, or coercion? You almost never encounter honest questions of a similar type for, say, socialism, e.g. how will I ever get anything done if I need the state to plan everything I do? Or the capitalist case, how would the world work if everything is someone else’s property? No serious socialist believes the state should plan everything. No serious capitalist believes that all things should be private property for profit. No serious anarchist believes that the world can be free of all regulation.
So why is this? I have a two part theory. When the socialist revolutions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were unfolding, the socialist camp split between authoritarian and anarchist socialists. In the end the authoritarians (communists) won that conflict and expelled the anarchists. This left the world with two camps, the communists, championed by the Soviet Union, and the capitalists, championed by the United States. Both camps considered anarchists villainous enemies, and both camps spent the next 50+ years producing voluminous propaganda extolling their own virtues, and denigrating their enemies. This meant that anarchists were being dunked on by two super powers for most of the 20th century without anyone of even remotely similar influence to respond. As a result basically everyone’s understanding of anarchism is a caricature produced by anarchism’s opponents.
The second part of this theory is the fact that there really are a lot of self-described anarchists who adhere to this cartoon version of anarchism! I find this harder to explain. Perhaps it is that anarchism as an active political force was effectively destroyed during this period, and today’s anarchists are in some significant part the people who were exposed to the cartoon anarchism propaganda, and thought, hey I like that. It could be that political anarchism has no influence and thus no responsibility to achieve anything, so why not indulge in ideological purity contests. I don’t really know.
This bums me out, because I think practical anarchist theory has a lot to like. Not a theory that says I may do whatever I want whenever I want, and anything which impinges on that is oppression. Rather one that says that imbalanced power relations are necessary and sufficient for exploitation and oppression, and so we should build political structures that distribute power as broadly as possible. That we should minimize hierarchy and coercion to enable people to spontaneously organize to solve problems.
And when spontaneous organization isn’t sufficient for the problem, an anarchism that has the practical humility to apply different techniques. Utopia is a direction, not a destination.
Of course, I understand completely!
that’s a genuinely good question. check out what Chiapas or Rojava did/do instead.
mostly based on mediation, but their worst punishment is exile, which basically means the society at large does not consent to interact with them. which means they have to find a new community where news of their crimes will follow them. or end up living in solitary confinement in the wilderness, which might be a death sentence.
although in a war, you do not want to arbitrarily return prisoners of war. let alone let them go free. and even though they were fash, killing POW is a war crime.