We have received the following letter from Mr. George Whitehead, Newcastle-on-Tyne, author of “What is Morality," criticising the article "Socialism and Crime”:
Newcastle,
June 7, 1944
The Editor,
Socialist Standard.
Dear Sir,
The article on "Socialism and Crime" in the May issue of The Socialist Standard tries to show that nearly all serious crime is caused by poverty and economic insecurity, heedless of the fact that most murders are due to drink, sexual jealousy and desire for revenge, when not due to direct mental instability.
With regard to juvenile delinquency, the figures Mr. Nehan himself quotes show that mental causes (which he denies except in 2 per cent, of cases) are a main factor, or why should the crime rate for children be nearly two and a half times as high per 1,000 among Catholics as among those who attend Provided Schools? Is not religion a mental cause? And is not the "education'’ which Mr. Nehan admits fosters blind rebellion against authority, a mental cause? Why should Glasgow and Liverpool have not only the highest proportion of Catholics in Britain, but also the highest ratio of crime for adults? Why also in pre-war times should Catholic Italy have the highest homicide rate in Europe (nearly 30 times that of Britain) and the Catholic Departments of France and the Catholic areas in the United States and Germany be far more criminal than the others? Why should Jews, in spite of economic insecurity, have everywhere a lower ratio of crime than non-Jews, especially crimes of violence, if the mental factor doesn't count? And why should Italians both in America and the Dominions be notorious for crimes of violence?
Why, also, if poverty and insecurity are the chief causes of crimes, should India, one of the poorest countries on earth, have the lowest crime rate recorded, and America, the most prosperous nation, the highest? The "crime waves" and the "booze racket feuds" in 1920, "which sprang from prohibition," first occurred in a period of exceptional prosperity, which encouraged the drug and narcotic trade. "Dope" is not a poor man's vice. It is too expensive. Girls flocking to Hollywood has more to do with silly vanity than poverty, and the mania affects girls comfortably situated as well as others. And if economic pressure forced girls into prostitution and drugs, how is it that at least 95 per cent. of working class girls never resort to either?
Why should Australia, where the standard of living is high and there is more economic security than in Europe or India, have a higher pre-war ratio of crime?
And why should crime have increased so alarmingly during the war in both Britain and America, especially among women and juveniles, whose real wages were never higher in history, and everyone who desires it can obtain a better paid job than in times of peace?
Reply.
While Mr. Whitehead rejects the view put forward in the article in question, we are not sure precisely what, in his view, is the cause of crime. He appears to attribute crime to “mental causes.” including religion, but does not make it clear what he understands by "mental causes,'’ from what circumstances the mental causes arise or how they operate. Mr. Whitehead asks a series of questions, but does not elaborate his own explanation or give answers to his own questions. The Socialist view is that crime is to be explained by the capitalist environment in which we live, including not only poverty and insecurity but the frustration that arises from unemployment and from monotonous work, and the whole “devil take the hindmost” teaching and example of the capitalist system based as it is on the class struggle between the possessing class and the dispossessed class. The fact that wealthy people, who are not driven by the goad of starvation, can behave in a violent or otherwise anti-social manner, does not at all conflict with this explanation. Nor do the examples of varying crime rates in different countries. Without going into the detailed explanation of the causes of these variations, it will suffice to point to the fact that different countries are at different stages of capitalist development. If, in the early days of capitalist industrialism, workers resort to violent methods (rioting, machine breaking, etc.), and later on learn the futility of such attempts to resist the overwhelming power of the capitalists, through their control of the machinery of government, that, is in harmony with the Socialist explanation.
What is Mr. Whitehead’s alternative explanation? By "mental causes” are we to understand a kind of freethought version of the religionists’ "original sin”? Are we to understand that “mental causes'’ themselves have no cause, but arise spontaneously in the minds of individuals irrespective of the material conditions in which they live?
On one point raised by Mr. Whitehead, the higher crime rate of children in Catholic districts, a very pointed answer is given by a Catholic spokesman, Mr. Michael de la Bedoyere. editor of the Catholic Herald. In a letter to the New Statesman on this very point, the editor of the Catholic Herald wrote as follows: —
The real cause of the proportionately high figures of juvenile delinquents from Catholic schools is far less intriguing than Dr. Stopes suggests. Catholics are a comparatively poor community, and their schools are mainly to be found in congested and slum-ridden industrial districts. That even the Word of God cannot make rapid headway against deplorable social conditions is a truth which the New Statesman at least will appreciate. (New Statesman, October. 2, 1943.)
Perhaps Mr. Whitehead will let us have further enlightenment on his own theory and on his criticism of the Socialist explanation.
Editorial Committee
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