50 Years Ago: Crime and Punishment (1977)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist society will, of course, try to protect itself against anti-social acts. What it will not do is to debase human life and stultify its own efforts by introducing the irrelevant idea of punishment. It will seek primarily to remove the cause, a line which our present rulers are prevented from following by their need to defend private property.

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Secondly, it will recognise that some breaches of public order are inevitable, and are risks which society must accept as it accepts the wind and the rain. To embody brutal penalties in legal codes is no better insurance against them than is the action of the savage who makes an image of his God to protect him against the terrors of nature and then smashes the image when he suffers loss through storm or flood. All he does is to give vent to his disappointment. We are not savages, and must learn not to wreak our rage on unfortunate prisoners whom chance has brought within the reach of the law!

[From an unsigned editorial on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, Socialist Standard, September 1927.]

Editorial: Crime and Punishment. (1927)

Editorial from the September 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti.
All the world has been stirred by the execution of the two Italians, Sacco and Vanzetti, in Massachusetts, U.S.A. The workers, generally speaking, have assumed their innocence, and have seen in the case the vindictiveness of a ruling class which manipulates the machinery of the law against propertyless wage-earners. Legal circles in this and other European countries have been shocked by the glaring defects, of a judicial system which can keep men for seven years in jail, and still, in spite of manifest doubts as to their guilt, contemplate their execution. And hundreds of thousands of ordinarily humane people, who accept the original verdict of the American Courts, and do not think of reading class bias into the case, nevertheless felt impelled to protest against the brutality of adding to the sentence of death the torture of seven years' suspense.

By far the most significant and promising aspect of the tragedy has hardly been mentioned. We refer to the statement made by American newspapers that the attitude of propertied circles who resisted the release of these prisoners was frankly based on the interests, real or imaginary, of the ruling class in Massachusetts. They said, in effect, that, guilty or not guilty, Sacco and Vanzetti were men with opinions dangerous to the privileges of the capitalist class, and the latter needed, therefore, no other justification for taking their lives. This is naked and cynical class interest, the bold casting aside of the conventional cloak of the law. But we welcome it as a sign of the passing of the whole of the senselessly cruel and ineffective apparatus of "justice," which will have no place in the more rational social order at which we aim. We reject the self-righteousness of the timid nonconformist Labour conscience which mocks the victims of that modern Inquisition, the Law, by enquiring into their guilt or innocence. If Sacco and Vanzetti were "guilty," it would make no difference to our attitude. But it must not be thought that we share the equally vicious outlook of the alleged Communists who sought to justify the recent executions of political prisoners in Russia on the ground that they had been proved "guilty" of some crime or other, and that this was a piece of "stern revolutionary justice" meted out by the Soviet Government.

All this talk of crime and punishment is a relic of barbarism, and should be discarded by human beings laying claim to civilisation. “Justice” is "vengeance,” in origin the instinctive protection of primitive peoples against individuals who endanger the community by breaches of accepted custom. In later ages, with the entry of class rule, it became the repressive act of ruling classes against those who attacked their privileges. The human impulse which sanctions the cruelty, the legalised violence and murder of the law, is not obedience to some, noble abstract justice, but the animal instinct of vengeance. The infliction of punishment satisfies this primal impulse, and gives pleasure similar in kind both to the suburban Englishman, who likes to hear of criminals brought to book, and to the American mob, drunk with blood-lust, dragging some negro to horrible death by fire. Guilty or not guilty, what does that matter? It does not matter to the lynching party any more than do the moral qualities of the bull to a bull-fight audience, their pleasure is indifferent to such details, and it does not touch the real stability of society. The fabric of twentieth century civilisation is not held together by wreaking vengeance, in the name of justice, on the ignorant and half-witted who commit petty thefts, or on the too-clever Bottomleys who over-reach themselves in the circles of high finance, or even on murderers—what are the latter, anyway, but potential "war heroes” who have killed their man at the wrong time and place?

The emotionalists who gloat over the sickening details of murder trials and executions are a much more potent source of social instability than are the "criminals” who happen to transgress capitalist laws and are found out. If punishment were a question of "deserts," or if it served a purpose commensurate with the harm it does, why not punish these people too, and those who pander to their tastes? The obvious answer is that the remedy lies in education, not in the infliction of penalties. Socialist society will, of course, try to protect itself against anti-social acts. What it will not do is to debase human life and stultify its own efforts by introducing the irrelevant idea of punishment. It will seek primarily to remove the cause, a line which our present rulers are prevented from following by their need to defend private property. How can they, for instance, remove the incentive to theft—poverty—in face of the simple fact that, without the poverty of the workers, there would be no wages system and no profits for the employing class? Secondly, it will recognise that some breaches of public order are inevitable, and are risks which society must accept as it accepts the wind and the rain. To embody brutal penalties in legal codes is no better insurance against them than is the action of the savage who makes an image of his God to protect him against the terrors of nature and then smashes the image when he suffers loss through storm or flood. All he does is to give vent to his disappointment. We are not savages, and must learn not to wreak our rage on unfortunate prisoners whom chance has brought within the reach of the law!

To return to Sacco and Vanzetti—while we do not imagine that the Dollar aristocracy who wield the sceptre in Massachusetts is occupied with the problem of introducing socialism, their refreshing candour on the real nature of "justice" may well serve to interest others in the class motives of that institution. If the Sacco and Vanzetti case brings justice into disrepute so much the sooner will the workers perceive that the time has arrived for its abolition.

Obituary: Isaac Rabinowich (1987)

Obituary from the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have learned of the death of Isaac Rabinowich - or Rab as he was known - a founder member of our companion party in the United States. He was a warm, boundlessly energetic comrade who will be surely missed. As an obituary, we publish this account of his life which he gave in an interview with an American student newspaper in 1978.

'Rab': a lifetime in the socialist movement

On Sunday mornings, a small group of people meet in a room over Church's Fried Chicken on Huntington Avenue. This is the public discussion group of the World Socialist Party, a small, proud party. One man who prides himself in "telling it like it is" in these meetings is Isaac Rabinowich, or Rab for short. He helped found the party in 1916 and has been active in it ever since. The Fenway News interviewed him on a recent Sunday.

Fenway News: How did you first become a socialist?

Rab: From my birth, I've been exposed to socialist ideas. Both my mother and father were revolutionary socialists in Russia before they came to the US. They came to Boston in 1893, and I was born later that year. The first thing my father did when he came to Boston was to inquire whether there was a socialist group in Boston . . . 

About 1897, they had organised a socialist Sunday school in Boston, for kids 6-10. We used to have socialist songs a general good time. About 1905, the labour unions of Boston organised a march to protest the trial of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone for killing the governor of Idaho. The labour unions picked out the socialist Sunday school to be at the head of the parade, and I was the marshal of the parade.

Fenway News: What led you to form the World Socialist Party?

Rab: Well, I joined the Socialist Party of America in 1909 and remained a member until 1916. In 1915 I went to Detroit. I had many jobs there -  some good, some poor. I worked in the tool cribs as a carpenter. I worked in the automobile plants. The original auto workers' union was formed in Detroit in 1915. I joined that union.

At that time workers were coming from all over the world to Detroit. Detroit was a prominent maker of war materials, so workers expected to find good jobs at good pay. Among the workers were scientific socialists from Canada and England. They organised study classes and held lectures. As a result of the classes, I became aware that the Socialist Party of America was a reformist organisation and not a scientific socialist one. So 43 of us organised a new party called the Workers' Socialist Party (later changed to the World Socialist Party) in 1916.

Fenway News: What stand did the WSP take on the issues of the day—like the world war?

Rab: On the war, the Socialist Party was divided. They took a milk and water attitude; they didn't "approve" of capitalist wars. But they really weren't anti-war. We were opposed to the war, and to all wars. Wars are only of benefit to the capitalist class: to win markets, trade routes and spheres of influence . . . 

Fenway News: When did you come back to Boston?

Rab: I came back in 1921 to help my father run his cigar and tobacco business. He delivered all over the Boston area with a horse and wagon. Later I worked in an electrical, locksmith and hardware shop.

Those were the days of Sacco and Vanzetti (two Massachusetts labour activists who were framed and executed for murder). At their funeral, there was a huge parade. My wife and two children and myself were in the parade. On the 50th anniversary of their execution last year, the Globe ran a picture of the parade and there were the four of us! 

I spent six years almost single-handedly holding street meetings, directing boys' clubs, and especially conducting classes in socialist theory. Then in 1927, the Boston local of the WSP was formed. It wasn't long before we had a wonderful membership. Seven days of the week we had activities going on.

Fenway News: I understand you later joined the Boston Typographical Union. Did you do organising in that union?

Rab: I wasn't organising. I was just teaching and explaining. I was a proofreader, and men would always come into the proofroom for explanations of science or other things.

Above all, I was a militant guy. For example, sometimes contract provisions were violated by the foremen and managers. The other guys would hesitate about calling them on it, but I never did.

Fenway News: What do you see for the future?

Rab: I'm an optimistic guy. They say the guy on the street is dumb, but he's not. I think the wheels are beginning to turn up here (taps head). He's not acting on it yet, but he realises there's something wrong with capitalism. The conditions have never been better for socialism, and there will be a majority of people in favour of socialism.

(The Fenway News, October 1978).