Letter: Crime Passionel (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crime Passionel

Ref. the January issue of the Socialist Standard and the article “The Real World Outside”.

The writer of the article says, quote: “Socialist society will have no more need of prisons, than it will have of bombs”. Whilst agreeing with this statement, and the fact that 90-odd per cent of imprisonments are inflicted on people for theft, or for acts committed in the pursuance of them, which would not happen in a Socialist Society.

In a Socialist society however, some misdemeanours will still occur. How are these to be dealt with?

For one example, crime passionel, i.e.: A man desires a woman, but the woman rejects the man’s advances, preferring to live with another man, and not at all interested in the rejected one at all. In blind jealousy, the rejected man inflicts bodily harm, possibly death on the favoured one, or on the woman herself, or on both. Would nothing be done by society in a case like this? Would it be treated purely as a personal affair between the parties involved?

Regarding the criminally insane. Severely mentally disturbed people of a violent nature, would still have to be locked away, in a prison of one sort or another. No doubt with better conditions and facilities than at present, but a prison nevertheless.

J. Cardin

Merseyside.

Reply

J. Cardin raises so many interesting points that we would need a whole issue of the Socialist Standard to deal with them fully. Within the space available, we can only say this: the example of “crime passionel” is dangerously loaded with the prejudices of capitalist society. For example, you assume it is a man (not a woman) who is blindly jealous. Why? Can we suggest it is because so much of the advertizing etc. we see round us, shows woman as part of the complete man, instead of a full human being in her own right? This “blind jealousy” you talk of is usually the result of the conditioning of a perverse environment, where man assumes property rights over “his woman”. And “blind jealousy” is a phrase leaving so many questions unanswered. Why do people go off their rockers? May we suggest that one of the fundamental causes must be life under capitalism with all its stresses, and distorted values.

Why assume that the rejected one would “inflict bodily harm” on the former lover and his or her new lover? If you love someone, you don’t inflict harm on that person, or on the object of his or her affection. And if you don’t love, will you care enough to inflict harm? It is only property society which overloads basic human emotions with absurd and dangerous complications, causing absurd and dangerous reactions.

You do contradict yourself! You agree with our point that Socialist society will not need prisons in your second sentence, and then in your last sentence assume there will be prisons in Socialist society. Let us solve the riddle. There will be no prisons in Socialist society. If people commit violent acts upon their fellows it is almost certain they are mentally ill. If people are mentally sick (“criminally insane” is a brutal expression of property society) they will receive the same attention as the physically sick that is the best treatment possible.

Finally may we refer J. Cardin to the September 1974 Socialist Standard where some of these points are dealt with at more length in the article “Law and Society.”

Editors.