Resentment, retribution and bleeding-heart liberalism: A belated reply to Reuben on ‘social filth’

This is a response to Reuben’s post from a week and a half back. I realise that’s quite a long delay (I meant to write about it last weekend, but unfortunately I’ve been away for the past week, and frankly a bit rubbish at posting for a few weeks before that) but I think the issues he raises are important enough to merit further discussion in spite of that.

Reuben’s central point, as I understand it, is that the standard liberal-left response to crime, and petty crime like street robbery in particular, is inadequate. It may well be true that the root causes of crime lie in the material conditions of our society – poverty, inequality of wealth, social atomisation and so on – but this, he argues, is of very little practical help to the law-abiding majority who – until the systemic problems of our society have been resolved – have to suffer the distress and inconvenience that crimes like mugging can cause. In addition, this sociological account is, in his view, not able to satisfactorily explain crimes where the perpetrator does not benefit materially, such as vandalism, unprovoked intimidation or threats of violence. He concludes by suggesting – though not explicitly advocating – that we on the left should not shy away from moral condemnation of individual criminals, pointing out that we do in any case tend to be quite ready to condemn certain offences like rape or hate crime.

The problem, as I see it, is that this conflates our interpersonal attitudes with how we think about society as a whole. If someone does you wrong, whether it’s something as minor as treading on your foot or as major as burgling your flat, then it’s very difficult to stop yourself from feeling some sort of resentment towards whoever hurt you.  Whether this is desirable or not, it’s very common (albeit not inevitable, as I pointed out in a previous post a few months back), perfectly understandable and – I’d guess – what motivated Reuben to write his post in the first place. But I don’t think there’s any contradiction between resenting individuals who do you harm and maintaining that an account of why they acted as they did can be given in terms of structural conditions in society. This lack of a contradiction is deeply, profoundly important, and is frequently forgotten in discussions on any number of issues. It’s the reason why talking about the causal relationship between the UK’s foreign policy and 7/7 isn’t justifying terrorism. It’s the reason why talking about Labour’s attitude to white working class people isn’t making excuses for those who vote for the BNP. And it’s the reason why worrying about social deprivation doesn’t preclude you from getting pissed off at petty thieves and people who yell abuse at you in the street. Reuben might be right that lefties can be a bit inconsistent in being more ready to give sociological explanations for some crimes than others, but highlighting that inconsistency doesn’t alter the fact that no crime – no human action, even – comes out of nothing; there are always some motivating factors that are ultimately external to the agent, and that goes for rape and hate crime as much as anything else, as was pointed out in the comments on Reuben’s post.

I don’t think that there’s much wrong with resenting – or maybe even morally condemning – people who mug you, or play obnoxious music on their phones on the bus. The problem comes when you take that resentment, that anger, that near-blind desire for retribution (and as someone who as a teenager was mugged twice and narrowly escaped it a good half dozen more times, believe me I know what I’m talking about) and use it as a basis for your political views. That’s what all the hate-mongering rightwing fuckwits who found their way to Reuben’s post and then spewed their views all over the comments have done, but if we want to actually bring about a serious reduction in crime, condemnation simply isn’t going to do any good. We need to do all the bleeding-heart liberal stuff that’s been shown to actually make a difference – better education, more social cohesion, lifting people out of poverty, and so on. It’s boring, and it’s difficult, but it’s the only thing that’s actually going to work.