News from Nowhere · Chapter
XII: Concerning the Arrangement of Life explained
The Guest and Old Hammond discuss the absence of civil and criminal law in the new society.
What happens
The Guest and Old Hammond discuss the absence of civil and criminal law in the new society. Hammond explains that crime, especially violent crime, was rooted in private property, family tyranny, and the view of women as property. With those abolished, transgressions are rare and treated as errors among friends, not as crimes requiring punishment. Atonement is made through remorse and apology, not legal penalties. The society relies on habit and goodwill rather than coercion. Hammond also describes how market regulations exist by general consent without enforcement, and how many people find joy in administration and organization.
Themes in this chapter
Crime and Justice
Old Hammond argues that crime stems from private property and that punishment is unnecessary in a society of equals; remorse and atonement replace legal penalties.
Politics and Governance
The chapter discusses the replacement of government and law with custom, habit, and general assent, emphasizing a stateless, cooperative form of social organization.
Pleasure in Work
Hammond notes that many people find joy in making things and in administration, contrasting with the drudgery of commercial work in the past.
Characters to notice
- Guest
The Guest questions Old Hammond about the absence of law and the handling of crime in the new society.
- Old Hammond
Old Hammond explains the abolition of civil and criminal law, the roots of crime in private property, and the society's reliance on habit and goodwill.
Key passages
“Another cognate cause of crimes of violence was the family tyranny, which was the subject of so many novels and stories of the past, and which once more was the result of private property.”
Family oppression, a common theme in old novels, was another source of violent crime, and it too came from private property.
Old Hammond links domestic tyranny to the property system.
“But we who live amongst our friends need neither fear nor punish. Surely if we, in dread of an occasional rare homicide, an occasional rough blow, were solemnly and legally to commit homicide and violence, we could only be a society of ferocious cowards.”
Since we live among friends, we have no need for fear or punishment. If we responded to rare violence by legally committing more violence, we would be a society of cowards.
Old Hammond argues against state-sanctioned punishment.
“In a society where there is no punishment to evade, no law to triumph over, remorse will certainly follow transgression.”
When there is no punishment to avoid and no law to break, a wrongdoer will naturally feel remorse.
Hammond claims that without legal penalties, remorse naturally follows wrongdoing.
“We have no obvious individual exchange, as you saw this morning when you went a-shopping; but of course there are regulations of the markets, varying according to the circumstances and guided by general custom.”
There is no visible individual exchange, as you saw during your shopping, but market regulations exist, shaped by circumstances and custom.
Hammond explains that market rules are based on general agreement, not enforced law.