increase in attention to violent crime? Is it connected to the fact
that there’s been a considerable decline in income for the large
majority of the population, and a decline as well in the opportunity
for constructive work?
But until you ask why there’s an increase in social disintegration,
and why more and more resources are being directed towards the
wealthy and privileged sectors and away from the general
population, you can’t have even a concept of why there’s rising
crime or how you should deal with it.
Over the past twenty or thirty years, there’s been a considerable
increase in inequality. This trend accelerated during the Reagan
years. The society has been moving visibly towards a kind of Third
World model.
The result is an increasing crime rate, as well as other signs of
social disintegration. Most of the crime is poor people attacking
each other, but it spills over to more privileged sectors. People are
very worried—and quite properly, because the society is becoming
very dangerous.
A constructive approach to the problem would require dealing
with its fundamental causes, but that’s off the agenda, because we
must continue with a social policy that’s aimed at strengthening the
welfare state for the rich.
The only kind of responses the government can resort to under
those conditions is pandering to the fear of crime with increasing
harshness, attacking civil liberties and attempting to control the
poor, essentially by force.
Do you know what “smash and grab” is? When your car is in traffic
or at a stop light, people come along, smash in the window and grab
your purse or steal your wallet.
The same thing is going on right around Boston. There’s also a
new form, called “Good Samaritan robbery.” You fake a flat tire on
the highway and when somebody stops to help, you jump them, steal
their car, beat them up if they’re lucky, kill them if they’re not.
The causes are the increasing polarization of the society that’s
been going on for the past twenty-five years, and the marginalization
of large sectors of the population. Since they’re superfluous for
wealth production (meaning profit production), and since the basic