Socialists on the Criminal Justice System – Rosa Luxemburg

This is the first in a series of pieces about writings by various Socialist thinkers that I keep seeming to come across. This pieces is a commentary on Rosa Luxemburg’s ‘Against Capital Punishment’ which can be found http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/11/18c-alt.htm
(Please note, my quotes are from the text published in Rosa Luxemburg Speaks from Pathfinder Press)

‘Against Capital Punishment’ is an article of Rosa Luxemburg’s from when she was newly released from her imprisonment during the First World War. She had been imprisoned under an administrative order which meant that she wasn’t released during the earlier amnesty of political prisoners and had to wait until the masses of Breslau opened the prison gates.

Suprisingly, given the title, Luxemburg doesn’t actually talk about capital punishment all that much apart from calling for it’s abolition on the basis it is barbaric. What I found more interesting in the article were some of her more general comments on criminality and the criminal justice system.

Her view of criminals is of people barbarised under capitalism, stating that they are “victims of the imperialistic war which pushed distress and misery to the very limit of intolerable torture, victims of the frightful butchery of men which let loose all the violent instincts.”(pg.525)

And she adds that “The justice of the bourgeois classes has again been like a net, which allowed the voracious sharks to escape, while the little sardines were caught.” (pg.525) In her opinion the main criminals did not get caught, whilst it was only those who were plainly guilty or those who got dragged into the criminal justice system for minor incidents who had to face the full force of the capitalist criminal justice system.

They are sentiments I agree with, and I’m sure many of the readers of this blog will. But what she states should be done about it could to a large extent have been written about the criminal justice system today. She believes “The proletarian revolution ought now, by a little ray of kindness, to illuminate the gloomy life of the prisons, shorten Draconian sentences, abolish barbarous punishments – the use of manacles and whippings – improve, as far as possible, the medical attention, the food allowance, and the conditions of labour.”(pg.526)

Although it is a very short piece, it states in clear terms some of the main problems that socialists have with the criminal justice system under capitalism alongside some observations of Rosa’s as to the conditions that criminals endured in prisons at that time. If you are interested in this area it is worth a minute or two of your time to read.

Review - Rosa Luxemburg by Harry Harmer - £9.99

Bonus posts today - cos i've been working so muchg recently I haven't had time to post much, so today I'm posting twice with this review, and the rather different piece below. Btw. I am especially interested as to waht people think of both of these pieces.

At first appearances this book seems like it could be a good introduction to the life and ideas of Rosa Luxemburg. The author is acquainted fairly familiarly with Luxemburg’s life and the major disputes she was involved in within the world of socialist politics, he is also particularly acquainted with her letters, especially to her first lover, Leo Jogiches. But this is where what can be commended in this book ends.
The whole method used in the book is flawed. Partially I believe this is because Harmer tries to portray himself as much more knowledgable than he is, claiming at one point that no Marxist has explained why capitalism hasn’t collapsed from all its contradictions (a position that was held by many pre-WW1 Marxists), but this was discussed thoroughly at the first four congresses of the Communist International, which concluded that although capitalism will inevitably experience continually more severe crises it could possibly recover on the basis of massive defeats of the working class. But also problematic is that Harmer does not seem to want to understand the complexities of how Luxemburg’s thought developed, rather he wants it to be fully formed and fails particularly to understand how Rosa’s ideas on question of working class organisation and the Russian revolution were moving decisively in support of the Bolsheviks. Worst of all, however, is the implicit suggestion (and many of the worst features of the book are things that the author half-says, questions posed that the author could if he were serious answer but doesn’t) that Luxemburg, and other Marxists of the time, were simply playing at being revolutionaries because they were rich and idle. In particular he accuses Rosa of effectively being a power-hungry megalomaniac, adapting her ideas, to suit her opportunistic aims. Her belief in Marxism is put down to its “romantic allure of revolutionary conspiracy”, rather than her seeing it as the theory that explains the world best.
One could carry on listing the flaws and weakness of the book, but it is hardly worth it. There are far better sources of information on Rosa Luxemburg and her ideas than this book.