Radfem:

But that’s policy issues. In my opinion, tasing a passive resister is akin to torturing them.

Precisely. Except that it’s not even “akin to.” It just is torture.

Using powerful electric shocks to inflict disabling pain on someone whose actions pose absolutely no physical threat, in order to coerce compliance with the officer’s demands, just is using torture to try to get what you want. Using repeated shocks on someone who is lying helpless on the ground is precisely the kind of official sadism that we’re familiar with from authoritarian regimes like Augusto Pinochet’s or or Saddam Hussein’s.

Incidentally, how much you want to bet that here, as elsewhere, the campus cops will “review” the incident and decide that the problem is that they equipped the cops with tasers? Because, you know, out-of-control cops sure wouldn’t brutalize people by low-tech means like beating them or shooting them. Ha ha ha.

Robert,

O.K., but I don’t think that that very well explains the decline in union membership and union influence over the past 30 years. Average real wages are substantially lower now than they were in the 1960s and early 1970s, and despite several years of modest increases during the late 1990s, the steady trend since 1973 has been the erosion of workers’ wealth, not an increase in the baseline.

Maia,

Thanks for this post. It’s an important topic that all too often gets ignored or whitewashed in labor history.

In America, at least, there are two really distinct periods of history to consider — the labor movement up to the establishment of government-sponsored unionism by the Wagner Act in 1935, and then the labor movement after the establishment of government sponsorship. Before 1935 there were many different strands of the labor movement, who were often vigorously competing with one another over the vision of organized labor — conservative unions, especially those affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, either actively excluded workers on the basis of sex, race, nationality, and class, or else tolerated and supported their union brothers [sic] who did so. Their strategy was, generally, to shore up the bargaining power of male, white, American-born, skilled tradesmen within the system of Gilded Age state capitalism, by shoving women, blacks, Asians, immigrants, and industrial workers out of the labor market. But other unions, especially radical unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World, explicitly aimed at inclusion of all workers and worked actively to organize across lines of sex, race, nationality, class, etc. They aimed not to shore up the position of unionized workers within the state capitalist system, but rather to organize against the state capitalist system as such and replace it with worker ownership of the means of production. The conservative unions thus effectively became the junior partners of the bosses in trying to protect capitalist labor relations from the organizing of the radical unionists; meanwhile the radical unionists gained strength by organizing precisely those workers who were excluded by the conservative unions.

What happened in 1935 is that the Wagner Act created an extensive system of government privileges for unions that met the conditions for government recognition. Not surprisingly, the system was designed to favor the conservative unions’ organizing models and to focus union energies as much as possible on collective bargaining over wages and conditions with the sitting boss. Thus the explosive growth of the American Separation of Labor and its younger cousin, the CIO, through the new government-sponsored privileges, which “subversive organizations” like the IWW had no access to. The big union bosses flourished as they were inducted into the establishment alongside Big Government and Big Business. The bosses screamed bloody murder but then happily settled down to business with compliant, easy-to-coopt unions. The politicians celebrated their success in incorporating a new organized “base” into the system of political patronage and vote-buying. The radical unions dwindled in membership, or else were bought off by the other new big player in town — the Communist Party and its financial backers in Stalinist Russia. And the privileged, educated professionals who fancied themselves “Progressives” shouted “Hallelujah” and passed off the evisceration of domestic labor radicalism as the great triumph of labor history.

What’s happening now is that, with neither Soviet Communism nor autonomous domestic labor radicalism being considered a serious threat to the stability of the state capitalist system, Big Business and Big Government no longer have as much need for keeping Big Labor at the table. With less of a perceived threat, there is less of a perceived need for co-opting a buffer against that threat. It has served its purpose and now can be scaled back like any other obsolete resource. Thus, the current situation and the decaying prospects of the establishment unions. And since the establishment unions have spent the last half century selling out workers at large in order to protect the short-term interests of their own membership and especially their own union bosses, they have nobody but themselves to blame for that situation.

Amp,

Thanks for this post.

This puzzled me, though:

In virtually any context other than a crime committed by US soldiers, a 14 year old girl who was raped and murdered would be called a girl, not a “woman.”

That’s probably true, but why is it important? Is raping a woman, then murdering her and burning her body to cover up, any less monstrous than doing the same thing to a “girl”?

The language might not provoke the same level of outrage amongst the average newspaper reader: sexual assault against children or adolescents tends to be treated as if it were more of an outrage than sexual assault against adult women. But if it doesn’t provoke the same level of outrage, then that’s a problem with the audience, not a problem with the newspaper.

Robert:

For an individual or minority group which disagrees with those laws to demand that they not be enforced is for that group to de-legitimize the state.

What my argument “de-legitimizes” is the government inflicting injustice upon innocent third parties, even if it should scribble down a permission slip for itself to commit the injustice, and call it a “Law.” If the state can carry out its policies without doing injustice to innocent third parties, then more power to it. If the state cannot do its business without invading the rights of innocent people, however, then its business had jolly well better be left undone. This has nothing to do with whether a faction of one or more people “disagree” with the law; it has to do with whether or not the law violates innocent people’s rights (that is, whether or not it involves pushing around people who aren’t doing any violence themselves).

Robert:

The legislature can point to a big chunk of people who affirmatively chose to give them power; you can’t.

I don’t give a damn. Might does not make right, whether from the force of arms or from the force of numbers. The rights of drug users to be let alone to make their own decisions does not depend on permission from the powerful, or from the majority.

La Lubu: Rad geek, the argument you present privileges wealthier drug users. Because let’s face it, most heroin addicts are not going to be capable of holding down an average, everyday job.

La Lubu, I’m not suggesting that heroin addiction is a good idea, or that it’s not a problem. I’m denying that heroin addicts should not be thrown in prison for using heroin. If people claim to be concerned about the welfare of addicts then they should not suggest restraining them and locking them in a cage with a population of violent criminals. If people claim to be concerned about the welfare of people other than the addicts (e.g. victims of street crime, or victims of violence or neglect in the home, or whatever), then the issue for the legal system to address is theft, battery, neglect, etc., not the drug use.

It’s certainly true that many people cannot afford rehab on their own. That’s a damn shame, but it is not a justification for forcing rehab on them against their will. It’s a good reason to try to make it available to poor people (through financial aid, sliding-scale programs, etc.). It’s not a good reason to (a) lock them in prison or (b) threaten to lock them in prison unless they participate.

Your suggestion that I’m unfamiliar with the violence involved in drug trafficking, or with the the way that people are victimized by drug users in their family, is unfounded, and it’s frankly shitty of you to presume otherwise without any knowledge of me or my family. I’m well aware of the former, and my own family has far too much personal experience with neglect, abandonment, and physical abuse that was tied to alcoholism and other drug addictions. I’ve nowhere claimed that irresponsible drug use isn’t a problem; what I’ve claimed is that the massive government violence involved in drug prohibition isn’t a reasonable response to those problem.

Robert:

Nonsense. They have legitimate authority through the assent of the governed, not because of some intangible (and empirically unprovable) characteristic of their policies.

The “assent” of an electoral majority is certainly not sufficient for legitimacy. Even if the majority of the electorate approved of, say, the Nuremberg Laws, or the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, that would be absolutely no argument for the legitimacy of the Nuremberg Laws or the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. And it would be no argument for enforcing either of them. Unless you are willing to accept a totalitarian theory of political authority, then you are, I’m afraid, stuck with recognizing that there are in principle some limits on what a government can enact, even if that government is backed by a majority of the electorate. (It does not matter whether the authority consists of 535 legislators, or of 50%+1 of the voting public; the point is that there are things that nobody at all has the right to do to other people.)

Now, you could claim, if you wanted, that some policies are more monstrously unjust than others, and only the really really monstrous ones should be refused on the grounds of their injustice. But then you’ll have to give some argument for why the massive violence involved in drug prohibition (including the violence of arrest and incarceration, and also the violence that results from driving the market underground) is only on “merely unjust” rather than “monstrously unjust” side of the ledger. Or you could claim, if you wanted, that any atrocity that’s backed up by an electoral majority under a democratic constitution really is legitimate, no matter how unjust it is. But if you want to argue that, then you’ll have to explain where you think that electoral majorities get the right to treat dissenters that way.

Me:

Demanding that “the people,” or the government, stop imposing their will on nonviolent drug users, does not involve overriding the decisions that they have made for themselves. It involves overriding the decisions that they have forced on innocent third parties, but those are “decisions” that neither “the people” nor the government had any right to make.

Robert:

But it does. They decided to elect a certain set of representatives, and those representatives made certain laws, …. And so saying drug laws are invalid because we find them unjust — when the populace disagrees — is an attempt to override the legitimate choices of other people.

You’ve missed the point. You’ve also seriously misunderstood, or misrepresented, my position.

Your rhetoric about overriding the decisions of others is plausible only insofar as you’re referring to the decisions that people make concerning themselves. It would be, for example, presumptuous of me to try to override your decisions about what sort of education you should get, or where you should work, or what size of a family you should have, or how you should decorate your living room. I have no business making you change your plans about these things against your will, even if you would end up with a better education, or a better job, or a more rewarding family life, or a more attractive living room, as a result. But I have every right to “override” decisions that you are trying to make for me: if you are trying to force me to go to the college that you prefer for me, or take the job that you prefer for me, or decorate my living room the way you want me to decorate it, then I have every bloody right to “override” that decision, because you have no right to make the decision for me.

You cannot sensibly posture as wanting to let people alone to make their own decisions here while also endorsing the enforcement of drug prohibition. Drug prohibition just means interfering, by the use or threat of physical force, with people’s decisions about how to spend their own time and what to put into their own bodies. When I suggest that drug laws should not be enforced, the only decisions I am “overriding” are the decisions that the governing majority wants to impose on peaceful third parties against their will. And I don’t give a damn about whether or not the governing majority is left alone to push innocent third parties around. That’s not something they have the right to expect.

Further, I’d like to note that I did not claim that any law is void because “we” find it unjust. The claim is that laws are void if they are actually unjust, whether or not anyone finds them so. If I thikn the laws against slavery are unjust, and so defy them by enslaving my neighbors, that does not mean that the laws are void, and does not making enforcing them illegitimate. It just makes me monstrously wrong about the moral status of the laws in question. The issue has to do with how a law actually treats the people subjected to it, not how third parties look on happen to react to that treatment.

Robert:

The point is that among the population of drug users who are also criminals (other than the “crimes” they commit in the ordinary process of getting and having their drugs), there is a big chunk who don’t want to stop using. For this group, sending them to rehabilitation (the point of this thread) is worse than useless – not only do they not want to be there, not only are they going to interfere with the progress of the people who do want to be there, but they are going to go out and commit more crimes while they’re in/around the non-lockup rehab process. For this group, locking them up is the only interventionist approach that makes any sense. The reason we need to lock them up rather than rehab them is that if we put them in rehab, they will continue hurting people outside the system.

Yes, Robert, but that’s a reason to lock them up for theft, or robbery or whatever crimes against person or property that they have been committing. It has nothing at all to do with the proper punishment (if any) for drug use.

But it’s punishments inflicted for drug use that Amp was addressing in his cartoon. I can’t find any plausible reading of the cartoon on which it would be suggesting that you shouldn’t imprison thieves or robbers who also happen to be drug addicts.

Robert,

Certainly there is: to maintain the validity of our system of government.

A system of government is not more important than millions of innocent people’s lives and livelihoods. If maintaining the “validity” of the former requires destroying the latter, then the system of government deserves to be ignored, altered or abolished.

If democratically-elected legislatures pass laws, and those laws are not odious to the constitution under which they operate, then the laws should be enforced regardless of whether they are reasonable or just.

Why?

Enforcing an unjust law means using violence against innocent people in order to secure an aim that is unworthy of securing. Neither electoral majorities nor Constitutions have total authority over the people subject to them, and if they have legitimate authority it is only because of the justice of the policies they endorse. Laws or constitutions that endorse unjust violence against innocent people have stepped outside of the boundaries of their legitimate authority, and are no more legitimately binding than criminal compacts or pirates’ codes.

To do otherwise is to imbue some unelected body with the power to override the decisions of the legislature on matters specifically entrusted to the legislature.

It’s not a matter of an “unelected body” having some kind of special authority to veto the acts of the legislature. It’s a matter of the legislature not having any special authority to commit injustice against the innocent. Everybody — not as a “body,” but as free individuals — has the right to ignore or defy so-called laws that the legislature has no legitimate authority to enact: an “unjust law” is no law at all, and the idea that anyone is obliged to carry out an admitted injustice against innocent people is an affront to conscience.

I consider myself smarter and more informed than you. What decisions do you make for yourself, that I should get to override and change in your life, on the basis that I think your decisions are unreasonable?

Is this some kind of joke?

You have things exactly backward. Drug prohibition is founded on the premise that one group of people, who consider themselves smarter and more informed (the government, and perhaps the electoral majority behind them) are entitled to override the decisions of another group of people (drug users), on the grounds that the drug users’ decisions are unreasonable. Not only do they claim to be entitled to override drug users’ decisions about their own lives; they claim to be entitled to force drug users to comply with their judgments.

Demanding that “the people,” or the government, stop imposing their will on nonviolent drug users, does not involve overriding the decisions that they have made for themselves. It involves overriding the decisions that they have forced on innocent third parties, but those are “decisions” that neither “the people” nor the government had any right to make.

Robert:

I generally agree that drug use ought not be illegal.

But since it is, then the justice system needs to treat it like other things that are crimes.

Why?

There is no virtue in rigorously enforcing laws admittedly unreasonable or unjust. Hypocrisy may be a vice, but that doesn’t mean that consistency in evil is a virtue. It is merely relentlessness.

Robert:

Locking them up for the individual petty or not-so-petty crimes they commit to support their habit isn’t really practical; those crimes are the symptom, not the problem.

Drugs don’t rob people. Robbers rob people.

If the existing laws against robbery are not strong enough to stop the robbers, then the thing to do is try to strengthen the laws against robbery, not to enforce a blanket prohibition against any use of addictive drugs. Some drug addicts steal to support their habit, and others don’t; if someone isn’t stealing to support her habit then the government has absolutely no business restraining and imprisoning her for the unrelated crimes committed by other drug users. That’s nothing more than collective punishment being inflicted on peaceful people who have done nothing to deserve it.

Dr. O’Skonsky:

You can’t force anyone to change, but while confined a person gets time to reevaluate their direction in life and remember just what their aspirations were before they got addicted.

It is not appropriate to imprison people as a means of career counseling. Those addicts who see that they have a problem have every right to seek treatment for themselves, and I hope it does them a lot of good. But if they are not interested in seeking help right now, the government has no legitimate right to force them participate in it against their will, or to lock them in a cage in order to try to reform their souls.

Dianne: Not to hijack the thread too much, but then there’s the associated question of why we would jail drug users who are not addicts?

For that matter, why should the government jail drug users who are addicts?

If it’s in the interest of protecting other people from crimes committed by addicts, there are (as you mention above to Robert) already laws against those crimes, without adding drug prohibition on top of it. If it’s in the interest of helping the addicts stop hurting themselves, troubled people stop hurting themselves, then restraining them and locking them in a cage with a bunch of violent criminals seems like a strange way of looking out for their welfare.

Amp,

You’re right about the foolishness of imprisoning drug users. But government-forced “treatment” (which is, in the last resort, always backed up with the threat of prison) is not much better. The whole system of drug prohibition, as such, whether enforced through coercive psychotherapy or through simple imprisonment, is institutionalized sadism against innocent people, being passed off as “for their own good.”