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'Crime and Utopia: Socialist and Anarchist Projections in Britain

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'Crime and Utopia: Socialist and Anarchist Projections in Britain 1 ‘Crime and Utopia: Socialist and Anarchist Projections in Britain, 1870-1914’ Jonathan Baldwin Royal Holloway, University of London Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2 I, Jonathan Baldwin, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: __________________________ Dated: ___________ 3 Abstract This thesis examines the meeting between the conceptualisations of crime and the varied formations of utopian projections in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialist discourse in Britain. Beginning with a survey of the epochal explosion of literary socialist utopias and their dystopian counterpart, I scrutinise how ideas on anti- sociality, deviance, and immorality interacted with imaginations of fundamental social reorganisation. These imaginary places allowed for profoundly different approaches to the matter of crime and its prevention, and the measures found therein could edge past the bounds of possibility in the author’s time, beyond both the practical and ethical. Such radical approaches to crime would be satirised and criticised in the anti-socialist dystopia, which are also analysed. I then contend with the thought of four figures occupying prominent positions in the British socialist scene, each of whom directed considerable attention to criminological enquiry. H. G. Wells, Havelock Ellis, Peter Kropotkin, and Edward Carpenter addressed the matters of the criminalisation of the poor, moral degeneracy, and repressive Victorian mores in their distinct critiques of the sociopolitical order. In their thought, as in the literary utopias/dystopias, I bring to light how the treatment of crime in socialist imaginations of reorganised society was fraught with paradoxical problematics. On the one hand, though projections of the socialist state could promise to eradicate the roots of crime by providing equality, justice, and well-being for all, the extent to which ‘benevolent’ force could be directed against those who continued to threaten society complicates such images. On the other, diminishing the state along anarchist lines might result in the ascent of ungoverned social harmony, but this is unsettled by the conception of individuals portraying anti- social physiological tendencies who would need to be prevented from harming the community. This thesis critically examines how such projections of socialist reorganisation contended with and articulated such uncertainties, as I uncover the relationship between these crime-free utopias and their unstable foundations. 4 Contents Acknowledgments 5 Introduction 6 1. Crime in the Socialist Literary Utopia/Dystopia 33 2. H. G. Wells 63 3. Havelock Ellis 93 4. Peter Kropotkin 121 5. Edward Carpenter 151 Conclusion 178 Bibliography 186 5 Acknowledgements Royal Holloway, University of London has been an inspiring environment in which to study. Those in the research-led Department of History have greatly influenced my work. My supervisor Professor Gregory Claeys’ thoughts have been integral in the formation of this thesis. At the same time, he provided the necessary space to allow me to develop my own ideas. It has been my pleasure to work with him. Professor Dan Stone’s insight and challenging questions during my upgrade helped me at the early stage of research to re-examine my approach where needed. Professors Daniel Pick and Vincent Geoghegan held a stimulating viva, and their interrogation of my thesis and thought was a valuable experience. The feedback I received from the European Utopian Studies Society encouraged me to consider new perspectives of my work. Dr. Matthew Johncock in Royal Holloway’s Department of Classics helped to untangle and articulate my thought on a daily basis. The ideas of Dr. Richard Morgan have been crucial, and the thesis is largely a product of our discussions. Lastly, I would like to express my thanks to my family and friends who have helped me, in various ways, throughout this period of study. In particular, my gratitude goes to Andy and Ro, and to Anna and her wonderful family. Most importantly, I acknowledge that my work could have neither been commenced nor completed without the support from Sally. 6 Introduction There is a history of the professional discipline of criminology […] but there is a need for a complex history of ‘thinking about crime’. That would include the debates around the rise of the positivist school […] that would include the debates about social biology at the end of the nineteenth century, that would include interventions by Fabians, and H. G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw, as well as other fields over time. If you look at it in this way, rather than in a disciplinary sense, then you conclude that there is a long history and debate about crime questions.1 Anonymous interview, quoted in Reece Walters, Deviant Knowledge: Criminology, Politics and Policy (2003) The site where criminological discourse intersects with socialist and anarchist thought in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain is suffused with complexity. Therein, the social issues of crime, criminality, punishment and prevention intermingled with wider political motives, Enlightenment conceptions of freedom and reason sat uncomfortably alongside contemporary notions of rehabilitative incarceration and criminal insanity, and inconsistencies within individual approaches all make such a history of ‘thinking about crime’ as propounded by the criminologist speaking to Walters appear incoherent. Although profound critique of the sociopolitical contours of the Victorian age spawned visions of vastly improved societies, such futures were often undermined by calls for practical reform, crime-free utopias were corrupted by the means with which they were built, and the organisation of communities could be gravely complicated by the organisation of the human body. This thesis examines such an unstable domain of criminological discussion in Britain between 1870 and 1914, specifically focusing on the contributions of four figures with socialist and anarchist politics, exploring how they read and inflected theory from across the sciences to form perspectives on crime, criminality, the management of offenders, and the object of judicial law. Not only did these authors make a number of observations over their careers on the problem of the British criminal, they also penned or contributed to a seminal text that addressed this figure. Such texts are subjected to a 1 Anonymous interview, quoted in Reece Walters, Deviant Knowledge: Criminology, Politics and Policy (Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2003), pp. 50-51. 7 critical reading in the respective chapters. Consulting historical and contemporary approaches, both foreign and domestic, these four figures occupied a terrain dominated by the paradigm of biological and social evolution, themes of which permeated the countless texts of fiction in which the progress of humankind was questioned. Amongst these texts, such sociobiological themes were frequently embodied in the fictional reflections of present-day society wherein the ills of the human condition were articulated by writers such as Émile Zola (1840-1902) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). But they also featured heavily in projections of the non-present, in the utopias of fin-de-siècle Britain. Therein the failings of society, often presented as the cause or result of socially or physiologically debased populations, were vanquished in the ‘good’ and ‘just’ utopian ones, the organisation of which was fundamentally different from their real-life counterparts. Within the utopian genre itself there existed considerable interaction with socialist and anarchist theory, presented in the main as either the ideological foundations of the ideal organisation of populations or as that which leads to a deplorable, dystopian future. Alternative approaches to crime and anti-social behaviour are frequently proposed in these utopias, the criminal often assumes a different character, and the measures taken in the treatment of whom are untenable to the author’s society. This literary perspective of criminological discussion is herein situated alongside that of the four authors, and they are both treated as contributing towards a shared discourse. This thesis begins with a survey of the criminological discussion found within the anarchist and socialist literary utopias and their ideologically-opposing dystopias, itself starting with a brief history of the genre as a whole (specifically in relation to its presentation of crime and the criminal) before attending to the utopias penned during the covered period. There then follows my analysis of the criminological thought of our socialist and anarchist protagonists in the following order: H. G. Wells (1866- 1946), Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), émigré Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), and Edward Carpenter (1844-1929). Though considerable focus is placed on what I consider to be each figure’s key ‘criminological’ texts, such works are placed amongst the author’s broader literary output, and ideas are contextualised by being located within both the passage of their thought over time and the specific cultural settings in which they appear. As they approached criminological topics these figures did not make excursions into separate disciplinary domains, but considered such questions on territories with which they were familiar, their wider sociopolitical and philosophical 8 perspectives interacting with
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