Beyond Punitive Liberal Capitalist Society: Toward a Syllabus

Patrick S. O’Donnell (2020)

While still working for the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany, Erich Fromm
penned two articles on the criminal justice system, “The State as Educator” (1930) and “On the
Psychology of the Criminal” (see the volume edited by Kevin Anderson and Richard Quinney,
Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive Society, 2000). In The Lives of Erich
Fromm: Love’s Prophet (2013), Lawrence J. Freidman summarizes several of the principal
arguments:

“On a … basic and psychological level … the state was referring to crime and deterrence in
order to present itself on a subconscious level as a father image. The child knew that he was
defenseless against the power of the father, particularly the capacity of the father to castrate the
child. By drawing upon unconscious fear of paternal punishment, Fromm noted, the state
sought to promote obedience to its dictates.

1
The state also used the criminal justice system to enhance itself, Freud claimed, by treating the
criminal as a scapegoat instead of confronting society’s deep social problems. In dwelling on
crime and punishment, the state manipulated society into becoming less attentive to the social
and economic inadequacies and oppressions in daily life. That is, a punitive criminal justice
system was employed to divert the anger of the masses from the oppressive social conditions
that required government remedies. In brief, the criminal rather than state policy became the
scapegoat for social ills, economic inequality, and governmental corruption and callousness.

Did the criminal justice at least deter crime? Fromm answered in the negative. Reliable evidence
consistently demonstrated that imprisonment, harsh sanctions, and even capital punishment
had no salutary effect on crime and thus did not protect the public.

Fromm’s final point linked to the others—that the criminal justice system had a decidedly class
bias. Whereas the propertied classes had opportunities to sublimate their aggressive
propensities into socially acceptable channels, the disadvantaged lacked these channels and
were consequently more likely to commit crimes. Therefore, the reform of social inequities
through the redistribution of wealth constituted a more effective plan for combating crime than
a harsh system of incarceration and punishment that offered little protection to the public. In
essence, these papers reflected Fromm’s own rather eclectic fusion of psychoanalytic
commentary and Marxian analysis to promote a view of criminal justice that was ahead of his
time.”

2
 Aertsen, Ivo and Brunilda Pali, eds. Critical Restorative Justice. Portland, OR: Hart
Publishing, 2017.
 Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
New York: The New Press, 2010.
 Anderson, Kevin and Richard Quinney, eds. Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond
the Punitive Society. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
 Beirne, Piers and Richard Quinney, eds. Marxism and Law. New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1982.
 Bissonette, Jamie. When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story in the Movement for Prison
Abolition. Boston, MA: South End Press, 2008.
 Braithwaite and Philip Pettit. Not Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990.
 Brottman, Mikita. The Maximum Security Book Club: Reading Literature in a Men’s Prison.
New York: Harper Collins, 2016.
 Burns, Sarah. The Central Park Five. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
 Butler, Paul. Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice. New York: The New Press, 2009.
 Cohen, Stanley. Against Criminology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988.
 Cole, David. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System. New
York: The Free Press, 1999.
 Davis, Angela J. Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007.
 David, Angela J., ed. Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. New
York: Pantheon Books, 2017.
 Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.
 Garrett, Brandon L. Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
 Gershman, Bennett L. Prosecutorial Misconduct. New York: Clark Boardman
Callaghan/West Group, 2nd ed., 2014.
 Gorringe, Timothy. God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
 Greenberg, David F., ed. Crime and Capitalism: Readings in Marxist Criminology. Palo Alto,
CA: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1981.
 Harring, Sydney L. Policing a Class Society. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2nd ed., 2017.
 Honderich, Ted. Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited. London: Pluto Press,
revised 4th ed., 2006.
 Karpowitz, Daniel. College in Prison: Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017.
 Kennedy, Randall. Race, Crime, and the Law. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997.

3
 Lawless, Joseph F. Prosecutorial Misconduct. Charlottesville, VA: LexisNexis, 3rd ed., 2003.
 Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe. Liberating Minds: The Case for College in Prison. New York:
New Press, 2016.
 Lippke, Richard L. The Ethics of Plea Bargaining. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2011.
 Medwed, Daniel S. Prosecution Complex: America’s Race to Convict and Its Impact on the
Innocent. New York: New York University Press, 2012.
 Murphy, Jeffrie G. and Jean Hampton. Forgiveness and Mercy. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
 Nussbaum, Martha C. Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2016.
 O’Mahony, David and Jonathan Doak. Reimagining Restorative Justice: Agency and
Accountability in the Criminal Process. Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2017.
 Sarat, Austin and Nasser Hussain, eds. Forgiveness, Mercy, and Clemency. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2007.
 Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer. Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and
Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted. New York: Doubleday, 2000.
 Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer. Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong
and How to Fix It. New York: Signet, 2001.
 Stuntz, William J. The Collapse of American Criminal Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001.
 Sweeney, Megan. Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
 Tigar, Michael E. Law and the Rise of Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2nd
ed., 2000.
 Van Ness, Daniel W. and Karen Heetderks Strong. Restoring Justice: An Introduction to
Restorative Justice. New York: Routledge, 5th ed., 2015.
 Wang, Jackie. Carceral Capitalism. South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2018.
 Zimmerman, Michael J. The Immorality of Punishment. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview
Press, 2011.

4
Basic Bibliographies (embedded links):
 Criminal Law: Municipal and International
 International Criminal Law
 Marxism
 Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory
 Punishment & Prison

Bibliographies with—weak to strong—family resemblance to this topic (embedded links):

 Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Addiction
 The Emotions
 Human Nature and Personal Identity
 Marxism and Freudian Psychoanalytic Psychology