From: "Rebecca Peoples" <wellsfargo-AT-tinet.ie>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Rape & Punishment
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 16:33:26 -0800


Thanks Dave and Yoshie,

Yoshie I am studying your lengthy posting which I thank you for sending.

My other message to James and you Dave serves as, I think, an adequate
response to your postings.

It is good that we engage in this kind of discussion whereby we tease out
problems that pose unresolved difficulties. It is more valuable than some
other forms of outpourings that take place on the list.

Rebecca

------------
-----------------------------

No, I agree there are no easy answers to this one. But there are still
some principles to argue for as the basis for doing something
practical.
One, as revolutionaries we don't trust the bourgeois state or its
legal apparatus, the evidence, or the process by which people are
convicted of crimes.
So who are we to oppose an apparently lenient sentence.
We don't even attribute anything more than an aberrant fit
of madness to the judge, given that judges are pillars of the
establishment. This sentence would be appealed and maybe the judge
sacked if s/he persisted in "lenient" sentences.

Two, against those who are demanding stiffer penalties we have to ask
why?  What would that acheive? We would put forward the arguments that
I raised with you in the last letter pointing to what should happen
if the working class was in control. They would reply in two sorts:
Either,  all rapists are born rapists. To which we would have a standard
Marxist rejoiner and defend the freed individual from their harrassment.
Or,  but this person is a threat if he is free, what are you going to do
about that?

So, Three, we would have to say "what are you going to do about it"
too?  And find some common ground were revolutionaries and "concerned
liberal citizens" could monitor the behaviour of a potential rapist
without calling on the state forces to do it on our behalf. This guy
would have his every move watched. He would be harrassed by outraged
law officers and vigilantes anyway. So a solution might be a "safe
house" in a working class neighbourhood where his behaviour could be
put under "workers control".

Some ideas anyway.
Dave.

> Hi Dave,
>
> Your message is one of the better responses to  the problem I raised.
>
> Now I appreciate your point concerning workers' defence organisations.
> However my problem is what way do revolutionaries politically and
otherwise
> relate to the arrest, charging and conviction of a man for a very brutal
> rape. Say the man convicted  of this rape gets a two year suspended
sentence
> and their is a mass outcry in which people attack the judge and call for a
> much heavier sentence. What does a revolutionary organisation do here. How
> does it relate to the issue. What kind of slogans does it advance etc.
>
> In conditions where workers are not yet prepared to organise in workers'
> defence committees such as today in Britain or the US what is the correct
> way to relate to workers regarding the issue without surrendering
principle
> while at the same time relating to the issue in a concrete way.
>
> One of the big problems Dave is not so much working out the problems
> confronting a revolutionary organisation in a revolutionary or near
> revolutionary situation but of working out how to relate on a concrete
basis
> to particular issues as they exist under present non revolutionary
> conditions in Britain and the US.
>
>
> Fraternally,
> Rebecca
>
>
> ----------
> Dave writes:
>
> Rebecca,
> Revolutionaries try to develop a working class solution to capitalist
> violence of all sorts. As opposed to relying upon the bourgeois state
which
> interest is to rule over workers.  We support workers's defence
> organisations
> to "police" working class neighbourhoods; we support worker's "courts" to
> find
> solutions that do not use the bourgeois methods of punishment,
> victimisation of workers as criminals, demonisation of  criminals as
> "born evil", vengeance as catharsis.Such  "sentences" might involve
> basic gender education [some of which appears to be taking place
> belatedly on this list]; doing social work in the working class
> community; serving on a self-defence organisation etc.
> In this way we would work on eroding capitalism's cultural  control
> over the working class and its success in dividing us by jobs,  gender,
> race, sexorientation etc and build the unity we need to dump the ]
> whole rotten system.
> Dave.
>
> > 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >      --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> >
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
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