From: "Rebecca Peoples" <wellsfargo-AT-tinet.ie>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Rape & Punishment
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 20:08:49 -0800



-----Original Message-----
From: Rebecca Peoples <wellsfargo-AT-tinet.ie>
To: marxism-thaxis-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
<marxism-thaxis-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 15 December 1997 04:05
Subject: M-TH: Rape & Punishment


Hi James,

I hope you had an enjoyable weekend.

I have been doing some work on the rape issue. Many people are of the
opinion that the way in which rape against women is eliminated or scaled
down is by putting the men that so attack women behind bars even to the
extent of throwing away the key.

My view is that punishment is no solution. I see the existence of rape as
having its source in capitalism itself. Consequently the only way in which
to eliminate the problem of rape is by eliminating its source, capitalism.
This being so a campaign against rape must be based in the context of
replacing socialism with capitalism. This entails mounting the campaign as
an attack on the state and capitalism itself. This means forcing the state
to intervene positively towards eliminating the problem --struggling for
reforms in a revolutionary context. In this way the participants in the
campaign and the working class will tend to experience the positive
intervention of the state as due to mass revolutionary pressure while at the
same time increasingly demonstrating the limits of the state concerning
achieving a solution to the problem. The logic of such a campaign entails
challenging the state and its ultimate overthrowal.

Having said all this James my problem and it is, in a way, a concrete one is
the issue of imprisonment. I have not yet found a way of relating to the
issue of the imprisonment of rapists to the strategy outlined above. If
feminism is calling longer and harsher imprisonment of rapists how  do
revolutionary socialists respond. It is a difficult problem so I am not
necessarily asking you for something definitive but for some comments that
might prove of some help to me in this regard. Remember James it is the
imprisonment issue which I am immediately concerned with. This is the
problem I want you to particularly respond to. The drug abuse problem has a
similar character in relation to the punishment issue.


Fraternally,
James
should be Fraternally Rebecca --sorry



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