Good News: And No Religion, Too
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Yes, you could be right to some extent. There will still be rules and regulations in socialism and I can’t see “I couldn’t help it, I was just a link in a chain of causation” being accepted as an excuse for careless or dangerous driving, can you?
In which case I would reply,
“True, but you still need to be restrained.”
Or do you believe in blame and punishment in socialism?Surely restraint is a form of punishment?
No. The big difference is, that in class society, restraint isn’t just restraint. It’s about inflicting punishment. Prison: ugly, violent, dirty and smelly surroundings. Regimentation. Deliberate disrespect.
In socialism, restraint will be enough, surely? Need the place of restraint be horrendous? Need the subject be placed amid those likely to do him violence? Need he be shouted at and abused, or made to stand to attention?
Whatever the nature of restraint will be, it will be for those in that society to decide.
Punishment, on the other hand, is linked to the idealist dogma of free will and guilt, in which human representatives of divine judgment hand down rewards and punishments.
In socialism, I believe restraint will be purely utilitarian.
“Surely restraint is a form of punishment?”
The subject won’t perhaps like it, and may see it as such. But would society be inflicting it as punishment? That’s the difference.
In a sane society, very unlike today, the subject would also be looked at to try and find the roots of why he feels the need to drink himself stupid, and then risk his own life by driving.
Under capitalism we know that intoxication (with drink or drugs), is a form of escapism. Why would anyone in socialism wish to escape?
Once you take away the societal reasons for violent behaviour, the only criminals remaining will be the minority whose actions are caused for medical reasons: congenital (from birth ) psychopathy. A very tiny number of people.
Caligula was an example.
http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Godwin/pj71.html
Godwin on punishment.
(I have to ask, ALB, have you REALLY read him?)
Not only read him but written about him.
As a matter of fact I was just typing a reply in which I was going to suggest that you had read too much of him and so think that humans are born good and, if freed from authority, would behave just like angels.
So, I guess you expect all the punitive paraphernalia we have now, in socialism?
See where the denial of cause and effect leads you!
So capitalism is not now the principal cause of the overwhelming majority of crimes, of violent, murderous and suicidal behaviour, of mental illnesses leading to anti-social behaviour?Denying the social chain of causation dumps you back into “It’s human nature.”
No but I think there will be rules and regulations in socialist society and tribunals, juries or whatever for deciding whether or not someone has infringed them. Even in the case of rare violent behaviour I would think the perpetrator would have a chance to argue that they shouldn’t be “restrained”. We are realists, not airy-fairy anarchist philosophers.
But I wasn’t thinking of violent behaviour but rather of the ordinary everyday (mis)behaviour of ordinary people. What the Americans call misdemeanours.
Are you saying that people will be so angelic in socialism as to never deliberately break some of the lesser rules and regulations of socialist society? I myself occasionally drive what would be considered as carelessly, for example not respecting a speed limit. Tens of thousands of others do every day. I imagine you yourself have occasionally jaywalked. Others may have left their dog in a car on a hot day. I am sure people will continue to do such things in socialism.
If I was caught doing this in socialism I would say “fair cop” rather than “I couldn’t help it. I was just a link in a chain of causation”. I doubt if a jury or tribunal would accept that. I must confess, too, that having 6 penalty points on my licence (never had more than that) is an incentive to respect the motorway speed limit.
It wouldn’t, but then they wouldn’t be materialists. Which is ok by me, but the party excludes non-materialists (avowed), which is inconsistent. It’s inconsistency that annoys me.
So Godwin is an airy-fairy philosopher? Which leads me to think you’ve only read bits of interest to you making SPGB points.
In the link I gave you he sums up exactly the laws of causation that are everywhere. Furthermore, he says that, in spite of the facts of causation, the malefactor should still be taken in hand.Godwin airy fairy … Is that your summation of a brilliant mind?
And i’m actually for anyone wanting real socialism to be allowed to join us, whatever their philosophy in other areas.
But you’re not, are you?
I just said restraint would be necessary.
I’m airy-fairy because i’m against prisons, punishments, abuse, incarceration.
Maybe restraint will require some kind of social isolation, but are you thinking of capitalism’s penal institutions?
Why am I airy fairy?
You sound like a Tory mocker of “arty farty liberals.”
The issue of so-called “Free Will” is a red herring anyway. Even the Christian and Islamic theologians who preach it only see it as applying to the choice or whether or not to follow their god’s commandments. Only a minority of them think their god had written a Grand Scroll on which the whole future was prescribed. Just as only a few materialists do.
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