Prison Abolitionism as a Humanism

• In Event: Foundations of Democratic Socialism

Abstract

In response to the rise of mass incarceration, a significant strain of left organizing in the past thirty years has structured itself in opposition to the carceral state. Prison abolitionism, in particular, has become a dominant framework for identifying the goals and genealogy in these movements. An express feature of prison abolitionism is the idea that until the prison is no longer to be considered an option, imagining another world is forestalled. But abolitionism is also envisioned as a larger political project, such as in the work of Angela Davis and Joel Olson, where abolition might be understood as a refusal, a fundamental orientation against institutions and cultures that foreclose liberation. This paper seeks to consider abolition, and specifically prison abolition, in relation to socialist humanism as discussed in the works of Marx, Fromm, Marcuse, and Fanon. As both socialist humanism and abolitionism seek, paraphrasing Fromm, to create a world in which humans will be free to pursue the unfolding of their full potentialities, it seems that a richer understanding of the possibilities of both abolitionism and humanism might be possible from reading them against each other.

Author

• Wendy Wright, William Paterson University