A little bit of utilitarianism does you good

This is a very nice little essay about someone I've never heard of but now think I should probably read. There are a lot of loud echoes of Plato in here.

Europe was at that time a profoundly hierarchical society, where a few privileged people ruled over the entire population with an arbitrary and unaccountable authority. Enlightenment philosophers took inequality to be the germ of social injustice. Beccaria had the ambition to radically reform his society, the institutions and the laws... Mindful of the interest of the many, Beccaria formulated a motto: the greatest happiness shared among the greater number, which was subsequently adopted by the English utilitarian thinker Jeremy Bentham. Beccaria saw this maxim as a fundamental tenet of a new science, whose object was human society and whose name was ‘the science of man’, echoing Hume’s project in that phrase. 

I've set out my objections to utilitarianism here (skip to the section of that title). For me, it's not so much wrong as it is incomplete. You can't really numerically quantify happiness, so you can't know if giving everyone a kitten creates net happiness (through cuddly kitties for many) or sadness (through the allergies of the few). And there are actions which are morally wrong but cause no actual suffering, like humanely murdering hermits. But while I don't think that utilitarianism is much of a guide to what is moral or just, I think that as a general guideline, it's a jolly good idea to strive for the combination of maximum happiness and minimum suffering. If it could be modelled mathematically, it would probably not be a simple linear sum of the two, but something that would preferentially minimise suffering first and consider increasing happiness only within that restriction.

Under the social contract, people agree to pool together a minimum portion of their freedom so as to guarantee its protection under the unified power of an authority: they swap their natural freedom in the state of nature for political freedom in the civil order of the state. 

The social contract is not a moment of celebration. People grudgingly agree to sign a pact with each other, and they are frequently tempted to break that pact to pursue their own advantage. What moves them to stick to the pact is the feeling of uncertainty, which makes it impossible to enjoy their natural freedom to act according to their immediate passions. The uncertainty as to how to exercise natural freedom leads everyone to accept a basic necessity: something has to be given away in order for everyone to enjoy genuine political freedom. 

Everyone’s minimum portion of natural freedom constitutes the public deposit of sovereignty which is the basis for the right to punish those actions that are injurious to the human society. The right to punish is a necessary evil that is exercised by the sovereign in order to respond to the radical uncertainty created by the unfettered exercise of natural freedom.

One of the greatest mistakes of the current era is, in my view, the notion that we should strive to maximise "freedom to", and not "freedom from", in any and all circumstances. Freedom by itself is neither innately good nor bad. It's certainly nice to be able to make one's own choices, but only insofar as they don't conflict with the same rights of others. Beccaria seems to agree :

"Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law."

A further utilitarian aspect comes when considering how to make the punishment fit the crime :

In order that punishment should not be an act of violence perpetrated by one or many upon a private citizen, it is essential that it should be public, speedy, necessary, the minimum possible in the given circumstances, and determined by the law.

So the smallest possible punishment for the greatest possible gain. That's a utilitarian philosophy I can get behind. While there are an awful lot of similarities with Plato thus far, here's a key difference :

To justify punishment using reason meant to reduce – even to minimise – the quantity and quality of violence within the society. Not only the violence attached to crimes, but also the violence entailed by the reaction to crimes by private parties and by public authorities. Beccaria’s goal was to regulate the right to punish, and eradicate from its practice all forms of vengeance and religious beliefs.

Plato believed that punishment should be used primarily (or even entirely) as a method of instruction and correction, never for the sheer joy of retribution. But whereas Beccaria sought to remove the religious, mystical, irrational aspect of punishment, and set out to deliberately minimise violence, that wasn't Plato's goal at all. He modelled his ideal societies firmly on the idea that people had to be controlled and manipulated, that religion was a key part of the state, and that violence was a legitimate (if undesirable) tool. He would have seen using violence as a failure, but nowhere does he express any sentiment that it should be minimised. Many of his punishments used violence which was strongly disproportionate to the violence of the crime (e.g. punishing bribery with death).

Because the intervention of criminal law is limited by necessity, the state can use criminal law only as a final resort. If there are other means to prevent crimes, they should be used. This part of Beccaria’s thought is often ignored by those who consider him the forefather of utilitarianism in England or the ancestor of law and economics in the United States. This is so because Beccaria asks for the least penal intervention, and for the maximum provision of social services as part of the same package. It is criminal law that must be kept to a minimum, not the state. Beccaria requires a robust intervention of the state to redress inequality and to prevent crimes by educating and assisting people, not by repressing them.

To me the key difference between modern, progressive, European socialism, and the old-style approach of Communism, is choice. The primary role of government should be to help the residents of the state. "Help" inherently requires a choice, that in large part they can opt-out of the state's preference. Hence the NHS doesn't infringe choice because everyone is free to choose paid healthcare if they wish. An affordable and effective state-run service does not preclude the existing of private alternatives.

But of course there are many much trickier situations as to what constitutes "help", which in some case necessitates removing choice. Imprisoning murders is generally reckoned to be helpful. What about imprisoning people who illegally download movies ? I don't think that's at all helpful, I think that simply increases the power of corporations, leading to ever-more extreme inequality of power and wealth to the point where there's no longer a fair and level playing field. Even if someone does have a powerful moral argument, they can all to easily be dismissed because they're seen as just not important enough.

What hurts our society more? Should we invest endless amounts of resources tracking petty thieves and minor infringements, or should the system focus its attention on grand-scale criminality?

Cesare Beccaria's radical ideas on crime and punishment - Lorenzo Zucca | Aeon Essays

On 12 April 1764, the citizens of Milan witnessed the brutal killing of Bartolomeo Luisetti. He had been condemned to death after being accused of sodomy. Luisetti was killed by asphyxiation and then burnt at the stake in front of the crowd.