The Criminalisation of Political Dissent

The Criminalisation of Political Dissent: Huckstering the Law | Critical Legal Thinking.

Excerpt:

“Of course it would be just if the State were to stop crim­in­al­ising polit­ical protest­ors, and this is neces­sary, at a min­imum. But polit­ical trans­form­a­tion lies in chal­len­ging the nature of private own­er­ship that per­vades the very form that law takes. In the Eco­nomic and Philo­sophic Manu­scripts of 1844, Marx writes that the “huck­ster­ing with landed prop­erty, the trans­form­a­tion of landed prop­erty into a com­mod­ity, con­sti­tutes the final over­throw of the old and the final estab­lish­ment of the money aris­to­cracy.” Huck­ster­ing, Marx tells us, is what defines the very essence of own­er­ship (whether it’s feudal or cap­it­al­ist, of land or money).

“Per­haps huck­ster­ing is also an apt and ana­log­ous term for the use of law to crim­in­al­ise polit­ical dis­sent. What we are being offered here (what is being peddled) is a ver­sion of the law that deems it crim­in­ally improper to dis­rupt the enti­tle­ment of the wealthy to enjoy sport, to assert a noisy, vis­ible pres­ence in pub­lic space, to chal­lenge the increas­ingly private own­er­ship of our uni­ver­sit­ies. Per­haps one place to begin in recon­cep­tu­al­ising a law of pub­lic harm is to ima­gine laws that are not tied to the pro­tec­tion of prop­erty in all of its glor­i­ous diversity, but con­ceives of pub­lic harm as that which dam­ages the life chances of that major­ity liv­ing on the mar­gins of socio-​economic privilege.”

Brenna Bhandar is Lec­turer in Law, Queen Mary, Uni­ver­sity of London.

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Poor Richard’s Comment:

The article contains some interesting legal information and history, but I wish we could all get past Marx one of these days. Brenna says “Huck­ster­ing, Marx tells us, is what defines the very essence of own­er­ship (whether it’s feudal or cap­it­al­ist, of land or money).”  NO, huckstering defines one kind of ownership, and indeed only one kind of private ownership. The proper cause of complaint is not against private ownership — it is against extreme or excessive ownership (excessive accumulation, monopoly,  idle assets, waste, destruction,  externalities, absenteeism, etc.) regardless of whether the ownership is private or public, capitalist or socialist.

I don’t know how Marx and property got dragged into this article about the  perversion of law in order to stifle dissent anyway. It seems totally gratuitous and beside the point.

Agree? Disagree?

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