Law and society
Socialism will be a system of society where the mass of formal rules and regulations which now govern human conduct will disappear. There will also be none of the trappings which inevitably accompany any advanced legal system.
The crushing environment of capitalist society helps to instil in people the idea that the law is some sort of external norm governing human behaviour and that those individuals administering it are a breed of superior beings. The foolish notion that judges and lawyers are somehow of a better moral or intellectual fibre than the rest of us, should not need debunking in the 1970s. Shakespeare did it over 350 years ago. King Lear says, “. . see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief . . . change places and handy dandy which is the justice which is the thief.”
More recently Belfort Bax in The Religion of Socialism said:
“. . . it is an undoubted truth that no judge can be an honest man . . . and why? Because the aspiring member of the bar when he accepts a judgeship knows that in doing so he deliberately pledges himself to functions which at any moment compel him to act against his conscience and wrong another man . . . He lays himself under the obligation of administering a law which he may know to be bad on any occasion when called upon merely because it is the law. He makes this surrender of humanity and honour for what? For filthy lucre and tawdry notoriety. Now I ask can we conceive a more abjectly contemptible character than that which acts thus?”
But the Socialist’s attitude to the role of law in society is not based on exposing the fallacy that those who administer the law are a nobler breed of men. It is reasoned on the basis of the law’s function in present day society. Although academic lawyers divide the realm of law into hundreds of different branches, when looked at from the point of view of society as a whole, there are really four main areas of law. These are state, criminal, contract and what is sometimes known as welfare law but is usually more accurately described as poverty law. An examination of these four branches of law shows their bases in capitalist society and how they will be totally irrelevant and unnecessary in Socialist society.
State law is the area of the legal machinery which deals with the individual’s right in society as against the machinery of government and its armed forces. States only exist in capitalist society as arbitrary boundaries, defining areas of competing capitalist interests. Internal state law is the legal machinery used as the front to back up the armed control of the capitalist over wealth produced by the workers. A world community where everything is owned in common will have neither place nor need for laws to keep one section of society in subjection.
Now let’s take criminal law. The vast bulk of this area is concerned with offences against recognised property relationships. All wealth in capitalist society is owned by definite individuals or bodies (e.g. companies or governments). The law takes no notice of how it came about that X owns vast estates and Y owns nothing. Criminal law is there to preserve those relationships that currently exist. The shareholder’s title to his shares is protected by the law (backed up by the armed force of the state); the landlord’s title to his land is likewise defended by the law. The criminal law takes no notice of the social robbery that is a fact of everyday life, i.e. that the land, factories, mines etc. are owned by a small minority. Clearly in a society where all wealth is owned by the whole of mankind, i.e. Socialism, there will be no part to be played by a system or rules to enable robbers to hold on to their booty.
The rest of the criminal law, which is not directly related to the defence of private property is largely concerned with state control of production and distribution. Factory legislation and road traffic legislation set a standard (usually the absolute minimum) for controls in the interest of the whole of the capitalist class. Lorries going at 80 m.p.h. are a danger to other products on the road; men working more than a certain number of hours at a stretch driving these lorries are also a danger to other commodities on the roads. They also risk damaging the goods of their own employer.
It is fairly well known that legislation protecting workers from dangerous machinery and processes is ineffective. Firstly the number of factory inspectors is totally inadequate. Secondly the penalties that are imposed for the breaches that are discovered and brought before the courts are derisive. Many employers find it cheaper to pay the penalty fines that are imposed for hazarding workers’ lives by, for example, unfenced machinery, than foot the bill for complying with safety regulations. In a Socialist society the needs of those involved in the productive processes will not be swept aside by the insane drive for profit.
The final part of the criminal law deals with ‘‘offences against the person’’. In terms of the legal machinery of capitalism it occupies a small part in the whole process. The majority of crimes in this category (often inter family disputes) are traceable to frustrations and problems caused by private property in society. When father comes home having worked a ten-hour day, doing a simple, boring, degrading, mind destroying process, to a wife cooped up in two rooms with three children, it is hardly surprising that domestic violence sometimes results. Other crimes of violence are generally linked with theft in some way or other though a recent ugly development has been political violence. The hooliganism of the football match and the thuggery of the tubes and street corners are only a reaction to the horrific conditions the majority of people face in private property society. In a society where material deprivations have been left behind the need for legal restraint will be found to be obsolete.
The third main area, contract law, covers an enormous field, from buying a joint at the local supermarket to property “developers” buying slag heaps. Quite obviously the majority of workers have little contact with this area of the law or the courts that administer it. Disputes over the amount to pay for a loaf of bread seldom reach the somber pomposity of High Court Judges. On the other hand a dispute over the correct price of a shipment of copper from South America could involve millions of pounds. The capitalist class needs the Civil Courts to sort out their property disputes. The only times the average worker has any real contact with this area of the law is when he is buying a house) of course on mortgage so it is really the building society or the local authority that is buying it); or if he fails to meet his instalments on the h.p. or the fridge. But it is a brief look, and many workers do not even have this glimpse into the mysteries of the workings of the law. Need it be added that when all wealth is owned in common, laws of contract will be as relevant as a horse and cart at the motor show.
Which leaves poverty law. The area embraces the law dealing with state benefits of whatever sort, local authority benefits (e.g. subsidized housing) and certain areas which are known as social law. It is an area where most lawyers know little and care less. After all there is no money to be made for the lawyer in explaining to the pensioner how he can obtain an allowance of 2p off the cost of his butter. It is, however, the area of the law with which most workers make some contact. In 1972 over 10 million received some sort of regular state “benefits”, out of a total population of 56 million. (Social Trends 1973 published by the Central Statistical Office). That is a high proportion of the adult population. The distribution of the pittances that are given to the members of the working class, unable to keep even their abysmal standard of living afloat (£16 per week for a married couple not a pittance?) is surely evidence of the appalling failure of capitalist society to produce an answer to poverty. This despite the Lloyd Georges, the Beveridges and the mile upon mile of statutes dealing with poverty.
The vast complicated structure for measuring the subsistence allowances that are doled out to workers only has a place in a world that allows a small minority to live in luxury and forces the vast majority to live in poverty.
Finally, under this general heading of poverty law might be included “family law”. The Law Society is responsible for administering the civil Legal Aid system in this country. That is the fund to enable people who cannot afford legal advice or assistance to have it paid by the state in certain circumstances. (This fund is different from the one relating to Legal Aid in criminal cases.) The Law Society calculates that the majority of its funds are used in proceedings relating to divorce, maintenance or custody of children. With the greater pressures that capitalist society bring on personal relationships the divorce courts (which have the task of rearranging the poverty of the working class when family situations get out of hand) are the courts that workers increasingly enter.
In Socialist society where there will be no buying and selling and therefore no money, there will be no financial pressures on human beings, adults or children. The relationships between the sexes will not be complicated by the irrelevant considerations which are of such importance to-day. If people who were formerly living together wish to separate there will be no financial or “moral” pressures to prevent them doing so, and no humiliating proceedings to be endured as a result.
When Socialism is introduced amongst many of the vast changes in human existence will be the following:
Wealth will be produced in the abundance necessary to satisfy man’s physical wants. This is technically possible now, but production is limited to what can be sold at a profit on the market.
There will be free access for all in society to the goods produced. In these circumstances laws defining people’s property relationships will be as unnecessary as they are useless. When poverty is abolished, who needs poverty laws? When private property is abolished, who will want contract and criminal laws defending it?
RAW