Socialism and Crime
Measures will shortly be taken, in particular the development of ultra-short wave radio, to deal with a “possible increase in crime” following the demobilisation period—this was the substance of a recent speech by Mr. Morrison, who as Home Secretary has a special interest in this matter.
A Socialist has an attitude towards crime; he explains crime, and he explains crime along with unemployment, poverty amidst plenty, malnutrition, wars, etc., in order to get the working class to change the conditions which make these things possible. Many people, in particular Christian parsons, consider themselves qualified to speak on the subject. They continually exhort us to “change our hearts,” but the Socialist knows that to expect paragons of virtue to arise in conditions of competitive society, where almost everything has its price, is foolish in the extreme. Indeed, it is a trifle ironic that the Report by the Educational Psychologist for the Bradford Educational Committee says (page 27): “The delinquency rate per 1,000 in Provided Schools is less than half that in Roman Catholic Schools, and slightly less than in Church of England Schools” (the figures being 6.6, 15.3 and 7.5 respectively) (quoted in “The New Statesman and Nation,” October 9th, 1943). . ~
Non-Socialists have recognised the correctness of our conclusions, however, and Mr. D. Griffiths, who was a member of the Home Office Committee on Persistent Offenders, states in a Reservation to the Report of the above: “I have shown in detail how 98 per cent. of our serious crime is related to money and insecurity, and how only 2 per cent. can be traced to physical or mental cause” (Reynolds, October 19, 1941).
It must be obvious to a more than superficial observer that the conditions portrayed in the book, “Our Towns—A Close-Up,” which was reviewed in the September 1943 Socialist Standard, are conducive to the development of vicious, cruel and unscrupulous people. It surely is no cause for surprise that where a whole family shares one or two rooms, lacks the elementary amenities of life, etc., the effects of that environment on young pliable minds must be one which makes the trite adage, “Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” a very true one. The mental friction generated where people are in such close intimate contact that children of both sexes sleep in the same room as their parents, and indeed sometimes in the same bed, must be such that sexual relations appear sordid and tawdry, every decent instinct must be stifled and thwarted, and “sexual crimes,” which not infrequently lead to terrible results, are engendered in conditions such as these.
In these “enlightened” days it is compulsory for children to acquire an “education” at school. Falsified history and nostrums about the civilising mission of our forefathers are taught therein, but it is a fact, however, that youngsters do obtain from the smattering of education taught a certain enlargement of mental vision. One consequence of this process, however, is a rebellion against squalid vermin-infested hovels, they call their home. This rebellion is a blind one, and often assumes the form of a rebellion against authority as such. The partial recognition of this fact has been made by Dr. T. L. Good, a mental specialist, who in a speech at Oxford in 1932 said:
“Owing to altered social environment, another group of moral defectives has arisen—those for whom there is not sufficient outlet for emotional energy. The scope of the adventurous emotions has been narrowed in a densely populated world, and the vigour which once found an outlet in adventure now finds a morbid outlet in crime.” (Quoted in “The Criminals We Deserve,” by H. T. F. Rhodes, pages 5 and 6, published by Methuen, London.)
Even anti-socialists are arriving at the same conclusions, and on the basis of a “Poverty Line” established by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree for the years 1917 and 1918, a report on juvenile delinquency was published in 1920; it was shown ‘ “that of those offenders who were found living below the Poverty Line, 76.48 per cent. had committed larceny, whereas for those not below that standard the corresponding figure was only 57.48 ” (“Young Offenders,” page 16, by A. M. Carr-Saunders, H. Mannheim and E. C. Rhodes, published by Cambridge University Press). According to Metropolitan Police figures, “from 1935 to 1937 the total arrests of male juveniles for indictable crimes rose from 4,587 to 5,879, an increase of 28 per cent.” (Ibid, page 113), and even the authors of the above book, who continually stress what they call the absence of worship, say, on page 133, “At any rate, whatever may be the linking process, we found in our enquiry that irregularity of father’s employment was associated with the boy’s delinquency.” It is therefore easy to see why juvenile delinquency is so rampant in slum areas. In a world which represses the natural adventurous spirit of youth, which throws them willy-nilly into blind-alley jobs, which is increasingly making men into machine minders, it it no small wonder that crime is on the increase.
Again, it is not just fortuitous that crime increases during “economic blizzards” and wars. The News Chronicle (December 21, 1943) makes the statement: “. . . but during the past two years the thieves have taken things which in peace-time they would have ignored.”
The following figures will provide some indication of the increase in crime, and special notice should be taken of the increase of the years 1930-33.
“On the five-yearly average of 1900-04, 27.2 crimes of housebreaking were committed among every 100,000 of our population. For 1925-29 (the last published five-yearly average) there were 51.69. . . . The 1930-33 average was 83.85.” (Quoted in “The Criminals We Deserve,” by H. T. F. Rhodes, page 238). According to the same book, Mr. F. Briant wrote in “Public Opinion” (April 8, 1932): “Whatever may have happened in the past, my strong impression is that we are going to see an increase in crime among young fellows as a result of their being cut off from transitional benefit. . . (page 242). The very conditions of capitalism constantly throw up increases of crime generally known as crime waves; who does net remember the “booze-racket” feuds in the U.S.A. in the 1920s, which sprang from “prohibition”?
The drug and narcotic trades also did well at this time, and J. Spenser, in his book “Limey,” tells how film-struck girls from all over the States flock to Hollywood and its environs hoping for a break to fame . . . and how often, due to economic pressure, they take to prostitution and drugs . . . not as a result of their ” wickedness,” but as a result of capitalism. Added weight is given to this assertion by Rex North in an article in The People (December 12, 1943). In it he describes conditions in Amgot— rule Italy, “You can see women holding rickety, dirty, half-starved children, begging for the price of a bowl of spaghetti. They beg because, under the strain of war and German domination, Italian morals have crashed.” “Walk down the main street of Naples—the Via Roma. In 50 yards you will be stopped 20 times by youngsters of eight to old men of eighty; “Roast beef, spaghetti, nice sister,’ they whisper as you pass.”
What a comment on capitalism, and how true the remark of Karl Marx, “But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.” “The Communist Manifesto” (Proletarian Publ. Assoc., page 36.) (Our italics.)
Even our public schoolboys, upon leaving school, are beset with the same problems as other workers, “How to get a job and hang on to it.” The tendency of capitalism is often to make skilled labour unskilled, and these young men meet fierce and keen competition from secondary schoolboys who have improved their education by evening classes, etc.: this, coupled with the ever-increasing rationalisation process in evidence in industry, may cause some to leave the “straight and narrow path.” Being used to a fairly high standard of living, it is not hard to perceive that confidence tricksters and other like “shady” occupations are such that may attract the plausibility, “good breeding” and accent of these men. They often have high technical qualifications and University degrees rarely obtained by the elementary schoolboy, and men with these qualifications are in a position of being of use to illicit drug and kindred trades.
Lest we are misunderstood, however, we do not say that law-breakers spring only from the working class. Capitalists are also a product of the system. Who has not heard of Kruger and Hatry? Insecurity also affects our masters, and in point of fact literally thousands of banks and industrial enterprise went “broke” in 1931, and although it is not comparable to the insecurity of the workers, nevertheless a rule of capitalism is accumulation, and if this can be achieved “illegally,” well it is just too bad for the victims.
From the foregoing, we think it should be obvious that whilst the majority of the people in this and other lauds are compelled, by their propertyless condition, to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary to another section in society who do possess the instruments for producing wealth, whilst goods are produced for profit and not solely for use—in a word, so long as we have capitalism, so long will the conditions be there that make crime and the other problems the workers know so well, a constant feature of society.
The Socialist has a solution . . . the only solution . . . make the instruments of wealth production the common property of all, introduce a system of society where the principle will obtain: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need”—in a word. Socialism. Then to quote Engels, “Man, at last master of his own form of social organisation, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master—free.” (“Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” Kerr Edition, page 130).
G. J. NEHAM
(Socialist Standard, May 1944)