Continued from previous. . . . If she
was going to stick only to the Nietzschean analysis of our drive to punishment
that reveals its underlying desire for revenge, then her ideas would only be
that of Nietzsche himself turned activist. The transition to political activism
would itself be incomplete if a person stuck only to a Nietzschean framework
for thinking. To put radically creative ideas into practice through political
organizing, risking the corruption of your ideas in the ongoing whisper game of
human society, you need fire.
Emma Goldman’s
fire, and that of many other anarchist activists with whom she worked and who
she followed, was born in the immense physical poverty of so many people. The
state, police, and the classes of elite businessmen (and they were always men)
who called the shots of government in her era made sure the mass of America’s
population stayed poor, and were unable to lift themselves out of poverty even
through starting businesses. And even though their material choices were always
heavily constrained by all the circumstances and social frameworks that keep
poor people poor, their poverty was always held to be their own responsibility.
This is a
moment where metaphysics, which is normally a dry and serene tradition of
largely useless contemplation of truths and questions that are taken to be
fundamental, gains a ruthless political power. Much of Goldman’s argument in
her essay on the injustice of the prison system focusses on how most crimes are
crimes of necessity: the paradigm example is someone who is driven to a career
as a thief or a drug dealer because no other viable options are available to him in his community, and he can find no employment elsewhere because of stigma
about people from his community.
The answer
to such crimes is not to punish the individual who commits them, but to
ameliorate the economic and social conditions in which the individual lives, so
that there are material opportunities for an honest living and an end to the
prejudices in wider society that prevents people from disadvantaged communities
from fully integrating with the whole country.
 |
| Namond Brice was one of the kids on The Wire who faced a choice without freedom, locked in a community so damaged that even his mother wanted him to deal drugs for a living. |
Very few
people understand this, both in Goldman’s time and today. Instead, too many
people see crime as an individual decision. If you’re a drug dealer, then it’s
because you chose to be a drug dealer. It’s always your free choice. Goldman
correctly identifies this as an ontological point, an idea about the
fundamental nature of existence itself, given a horribly destructive political
articulation. Each human being has free will: every human action is that
individual’s own choice. Because we are all metaphysically free in this sense,
each of us is wholly and completely responsible for our actions.
If we
understand moral sanction in this way, then poverty and racial or religious
discrimination is never a cause of evil activity: only the individual who
commits a crime is responsible. Punishment is therefore the response to evil
actions. Any recourse to environmental factors like a poverty-stricken
lifestyle, discriminatory social norms, a non-existent legitimate economy, are
seen as excuses. The free choice is always to do good or evil.
“You sell
drugs and rob people for your living. That’s evil! You will be punished!”
“But there’s
nothing else for me in my neighbourhood. Everyone I’ve ever known was either a
drug dealer or a thief. My teachers never cared about our education and never
even disciplined us in class. My father was killed by a police officer when I
was five years old. My mother used to spend all the money she got from the
government to feed me on drugs for herself. Even the nearest convenience store
is two miles from my home. What else could I do but starve?”
“You always
have a choice to do good or evil. You have free will. Because you did evil, you
should be punished.”
“Should I
let myself starve?”
Metaphysical
freedom, the ostensible free will of the self-aware person, can’t trump someone’s
lack of material freedom.
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