In 1931, Sigmund Freud, in response to a query from a friend concerning whether he [Freud] was in favor of “criminal justice reform,” replied: “And if, miraculously, the conviction were suddenly to arise that the reform of the criminal-justice system was to be our civilization’s next and most urgent task, what other result would ensue but that our capitalistic society would not have the means to pay for this reform’s requisite expenditures!”
This tete-a-tete came during the dying days of Germany’s Weimar Republic, that haunted, short-lived period between the end of World War I and the rise of Hitler to power. Weimar had been a liberal period, in which voices from the left (primarily Communists), which had been silenced for years under Germany’s authoritarian rightwing Kaiser regime, were freed overnight; and one of their demands was for criminal justice reform.
The argument for lightening penalties against things like theft, robbery and embezzlement was this: the inflation and Depression had left working people with no alternative other than to obtain desperately-needed money in any way they could. It was not fair, this side argued, to punish working men for acts they were compelled to perform in order for them and their families to survive in a pitiless capitalist society. Of course, all this philosophizing fizzled away once Hitler assumed power, in early 1933. But the question of criminal justice reform has never disappeared in capitalistic countries; and whenever the left—whether Communist, socialist, or some configuration of either—gains power, criminal justice reform again becomes the subject of rapt public discussion.
Freud, regardless of whether or not he personally agreed with the ideal of criminal justice reform (which was not his particular academic specialty), nonetheless recognized the unintended consequence of such reform: namely, “the means to pay for this reform’s requisite expenditures.” Criminal justice reform, like so many other ideals of leftists, is expensive. Freud did not elaborate on the specific “expenditures” criminal justice reform would require. But we can fill in some of the lacunae: a complete overhaul of criminal justice statutes, which would require a similar overhaul in a nation’s legislative processes and all that implies; a complete revision of the carceral system; a means to re-integrate formerly incarcerated persons back into normal society; and, of course, a means to redress the money that had been taken, illegally, out of the system and to offer reparations to the victims of these illegal acts.
What is it about leftists that they almost always ignore the financial implications of their ideas? To begin with, leftists generally are not wealthy. They pay little in taxes because they make little in income. They often are biased against the rich, whom they identify as anyone with more than them. To these proponents of class warfare, the right of an individual to keep his hard-earned money is outweighed by the right of society to seize that money and use it in ways the leftists desire. The only way to do that legally is through taxation; therefore leftists turn to higher taxes to pay for their schemes. That this may be unfair, or hurt innocent people, is of no concern to leftists. Their ideological demands take precedence over all other values. If innocent people are hurt through the application of leftist ideals, then so be it: either the innocent people weren’t so innocent in the first place, or they are merely eggs that need to be broken in order to make the required omelet.
We see just this sort of thinking in Oakland. It’s always been there, this backdrop of Communist-tinged acquisitive government, but never more so than today. I’ve asked the left for many years how they intend to pay for all their schemes and have never received a satisfactory answer. How many times have we heard leftists demand that Oakland build low-cost or rent-free housing for all who want it? To ask the question of “who pays for it?” may seem like being the skunk at the garden party, but someone needs to come up with the cash to pay for steel girders, concrete, glass windows, appliances and all the rest of the infrastructure, not to mention worker salaries and benefits. To this, leftists are clueless. Money is not the problem, they respond (if they bother to respond at all). Simply raise property taxes and business taxes, and all will be well. Ditto for providing wraparound services for recovering drug addicts. Psychotherapists? Hire as many as needed. Provide them with offices and staff. Healthcare? Provide it to all: pharmaceuticals, physicians, surgeons, physical therapists, and all the staff to run a hospital or clinic. Expensive? Yes, especially when the city is simultaneously raising the minimum wage and demanding that employers pay for healthcare insurance for their workers. But again, the money is there: Simply raise taxes.
That such an approach is unsustainable, and in violation of common-sense economic realities, is apparent to clear-thinking people. But when you’re a fanatic, like Carroll Fife or Nikki Bas, “clear thinking” is not your strong point. These politicians are victims of their own fantasies. They’re like people tripping on drugs who seek a phantasm in the distance and end up wandering the freeway, hit by multiple vehicles. They ask not if society can afford something; they ask if it’s needed, and if it is, then society will figure out some way to pay for it, even if that “way” means for a city to plunge deeper into debt.
In the end, I ask the same question as Sigmund Freud: from where comes “the means to pay?” If there is no rational answer then we have to conclude that the ideal is impossible of realization. If something is impossible to realize, then it’s foolish to waste time considering it. Yet this is what our City Council and mayor do: waste their time, and ours, devising schemes that have no possibility of working. There’s nothing wrong with our criminal justice system, except that it’s being slowly demolished from without. The real way to “reform” the system is for people to stop breaking the law!
Steve Heimoff