On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 12:19 PM tbyfield <tbyfi...@panix.com> wrote:
> I have some vague idea that over the > last several decades a few people spent some time thinking about the > history and philosophy of punishment. In nettimish contexts (as opposed > to ground-level activism in judicial and penal fields), most of that > thought was applied to critiques of punishment — certainly more than > to imagining new and maybe even constructive ways to address the scale > and complexity of corporate criminality. > To me this is totally interesting. In Chicago I am surrounded with abolitionists whose work I cannot but respect: they have closed down a supermax prison, attained reparations for people imprisoned on the basis of confessions extracted under torture, they're creating an official monument on the torture issue and a module of public curriculum to be used in the city schools, plus many other things. Real achievements with national influence, far more important than anything I have ever been directly involved in. Yet I am convinced that abolitionism can only achieve sectoral victories, not structural ones, because a mass urbanized capitalist society with deep alienation needs the rule of law and the corresponding instruments of behavioral control. It does not need the prisons of poverty and the enforcement of "the new Jim Crow" that we have now; but these things cannot be gotten rid of without proposing new structural devices. "Community" cannot simply replace "society," to quote a dead European theorist (Tonnies). Redesigning the prisons for the people who actually commit the significant crimes is an idea with a future. It took me a while to understand what's at stake in this thread, because of what I continue to think of as the exceptionally poor language involved (I'm with Andreas on that one). When the point moves from an unfocused critique of computation to a demand to change specific aspects of government, then I am all ears. I do not have any interest in being the philosopher of an abstractly righteous anger - it's a common enough position, but there you are speaking to someone else. No problem. There is plenty of real anger to go around. The point - your point, as I understand it - is to learn, pragmatically not just theoretically, how that anger can be focused into politics with consequences. That's begun by continuing the dialogue and dialing down the insults, which is the trend I am detecting and trying participate in. onward, Brian
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