On the right to steal for dignity and the preservation of life
Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
-Emma Goldman
Often one hears liberals say of someone who stole ‘well you must understand that he was very poor’. Usually this is meant as a sort of mitigating factor in a loose, wishy washy way that liberals are so fond of- give him two years imprisonment instead of five. I want to go beyond that, and argue where it is necessary for dignified existence, one has the right to steal, at least in the sense that the government has no right to stop you.
This position is pretty modest in historical terms. Aquinas argued need can justify theft sometimes. Many moralists have acknowledged such a right for a long time. Although the law in common law countries has been extremely reluctant to accept necessity caused through poverty as providing a defense to theft, I think it’s time for a reconsideration.
I’d put forward the following claims:
Conditional on society and government being in a position to provide it, society ought to ensure everyone has access to at least dignified subsistence. What dignified subsistence means will vary from culture to culture and on the basis of the level of economic development, but in general, it means a level of income sufficient the necessities of survival, reasonable recreation, community participation and any other matters clearly necessary for dignified, fully human life. It also means the capacity to acquire this level of income in a reasonable amount of time (a meagre income does not count if it takes 60 hours a week to get it). Note that providing access to dignified subsistence does not necessarily mean giving subsistence, for example, the government could offer everyone a job, as an employer of last resort.
The government is, in fact, in a position to provide dignified subsistence at least in most or all OECD countries but the government has not done so in most-perhaps even all- OECD countries.
Where A) the government has the means to provide dignified subsistence but has not done so, and B) where the government cannot establish, to the standard of criminal proof, that an act of theft was not an attempt to obtain the means necessary for a dignified life, then except in special circumstances (special circumstances like cruelty in the commission of the theft or a target known to be especially vulnerable) the government cannot legitimately convict anyone of theft. In this narrow sense- that the government may not morally convict- there is thus a right to steal to achieve dignified subsistence.
I take this to establish, in some sense, a right to steal to achieve dignified subsistence. I do not regard this right as exhausting all cases the right to steal, there may well be a right to steal in other cases, I’m simply outlining a very narrow (but in my view not uncommon case) where such a right exists.
A few restrictions on this right are worth being clear on:
A) The theft must be proportional to the need.
B) The theft must be non-violent.
C) The theft must be from someone who clearly has a lesser need of the thing than oneself, and if possible, a much lesser need.
D) The theft must not be more cruel, destructive or disruptive than it needs to be.
We will refer to theft to achieve dignity as TAD.
Why on earth are you doing this philosophy bear
I’m writing this article, fundamentally, as a protest. Our society has the capacity to ensure there is literally zero involuntary poverty- e.g. by acting as an employer of last resort. We have not done so and this is a titanic crime.
You don’t have to be a Rawlsian to think it is a dreadful wrong to force people to obey the rules of a society without caring about them enough to ensure they have access to decent life. If we do not care about someone living in our society enough to ensure they do not go without the means of life through no fault of their own, then it’s frankly indecent to think we have the moral highground to tell them what to do. However this is especially true when it comes to taking what they need to live.
I want to make my opposition to this grotesque order plain, and to urge any reader who finds themselves on a jury to consider these arguments. We should put pressure on the government by trying to prevent it from enforcing an unjust order.
SJ without the parents- a brief case study in necessity
I had thought it was commonplace that some people are not obtaining a dignified life through no fault of their own. Recently, though, I encountered someone of a broadly progressive persuasion, who was arguing that under conditions of effectively full employment, there is no excuse for people who have been caught shoplifting numerous times.
I know someone very well. I will not name this person for reasons but if you’ve been following this blog for a while you might be able to work out their identity and they wouldn’t mind that. We’ll call this person SJ. SJ has not stolen anything, at least not for many years. However, were SJ life somewhat different, they would be a perfect example of needful TAD. SJ is what I have previously called a klutz, a person who tends, persistently, to stuff things up.
SJ has been fired from every entry-level job they have ever worked, despite trying very hard. This is largely the result of the cumulative effect of several disabilities leading to an almost unbelievable apogee of absentmindedness. However, these disabilities would not qualify SJ for a disability pension. SJ is fortunate. SJ has the support of their (working class) parents, as a result of that support they’ve never needed to steal anything and have been able to get non-entry level jobs through university study.
However, if SJ, didn’t have supportive parents, it’s unlikely they’d be able to get by and avoid homelessness without theft.
While SJ himself fortunately has supportive parents and can now access jobs he can work as a result, henceforth when we refer to SJ, we will be referring to a hypothetical version of SJ who didn’t have those supports.
SJ isn’t eligible for existing disability support payments in Australia, and even if he were, they are arguably below a level necessary to guarantee dignified subsistence. Much the same, on both counts, would likely be true in America.
SJ is just one example, a partial list of people who may well need to engage in TAD includes:
Some people with certain types of disabilities.
Some people with large medical expenses.
Some people with children, especially, but not exclusively, single parents.
The temporarily ‘down on their luck’
(Ironically) formerly incarcerated people unable to find work
And doubtless many others. In a highly priced city like San Francisco like Armand is talking about, it’s really not hard to imagine getting into a situation where shoplifting gives you your best or only access to life with dignity.
Here are some pretty undeniable examples of people who have no (legal possibilities)- as inferable from their revealed preferences. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/11/canada-cases-right-to-die-laws
Why believe in a right to access to dignified subsistence?
Why do I think that people have a right to dignified subsistence when it is possible to provide them with such?
It’s worth being exceedingly clear that when the government doesn’t provide access to dignified subsistence for everyone, this is an act, not an omission on its part. The state, through its laws and enforcements, creates the order of property rights and the economic order generally- the whole thing runs on their legal software and military and police hardware. To the extent that someone is left out, that is through the positive action of the state in the assignment of those rights. The state’s mistake isn’t analogous to a failure of charity, it’s morally more like a choice to exile someone to a barren wilderness.
I’m a consequentialist, so my main reason for thinking there is a right to dignified subsistence is because, as a principle, it would maximize human welfare, which is an important component of the good as I see it. Thus I think the government should provide the means to dignified subsistence
If I were not a consequentialist though, I would look at society through the lens of a social contract. People give up an enormous amount by when they enter society, and some people gain an enormous amount from that agreement. Especially when we consider that prior to the state, no one could claim property and wealth on the scale, and with the security, that they do. Property rights themselves is a massive imposition on our freedom, we are forbidden the right to touch, use, or walk upon most of the world. To consult my favorite academic paper of all time Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State:
What is the government doing when it protects a property right"? Passively, it is abstaining from interference with the owner when he deals with the thing owned; actively, it is forcing the non-owner to desist from handling it, unless the owner consents. Yet Mr. Carver would have it that the government is merely preventing the non-owner from using force against the owner. This explanation is obviously at variance with the facts-for the non-owner is forbidden to handle the owner's property even where his handling of it involves no violence or force whatever
The destitute person is like a sailor who, surrounded by water, finds he has not a drop to drink. Only the problem is not that the water is salty, it’s that everything around him has been tied by an invisible thread to an owner by the state’s law and force. Poverty in the midst of plenty.
When you look at the world as a series of decisions about property assignment, market design, etc. etc. the nature of destitution as a form of internal exile becomes very clear. The fact that the state allows the transmission of rights by markets (markets which it effectively designs, maintains and defends) is not particularly relevant. The state chooses the broad outlines of possession and dispossession, actively defends the existing order, and has the power to change it ad libitum. Certainly the state is restricted by economic tendencies and laws, but not to such a degree that it would be impossible to guarantee decent subsistence.
While one could argue the details in a number of ways I don’t think the social contract is a good enough deal if some people have fabulous wealth, often for nebulous reasons with little to do with their own merit, but the contractually established state chooses to deny SJ access to the things needed for dignified survival. SJ doesn’t have to be irrational to reject the imposition of that contract. Ending up like the sailor from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, surrounded by untouchable plenty, isn’t good enough. A contract forced on people that’s not in their best interests is extortion.
Okay, but what if you respond ‘look, the social contract isn’t great for people who can’t secure dignified subsistence, but if they’re not literally dead, it’s still better than a state of nature.”
To this I would reply:
It’s not clear to me that if you put a button in front of a person they can press- and if they press it society will collapse into anarchy and we will role the dice on building a new one- they wouldn’t be better off pressing it if they are destitute.
Even if would be better off not pushing that button, a contractual arrangement that -very avoidably- puts some people in opulence and some people in marginal squalor is indecent, and it is unjust to expect people to accept it, and unreasonable to enforce it. Remember, the distribution of property and the rules for rearranging distribution are part of the contract.
An acquaintance of mine at Sydney Uni is interested in ‘virtue politics’. Here, I think, the case is very clear. A virtuous polity simply does not create economic conditions under which some people lack dignity. It’s a violation of both justice and compassion, perhaps the two most fundamental political virtues. To the extent the state puts people in a poverty trap, it undermines not only its own institutional virtue, but the individual virtue of everyone directly involved, and even, to a degree, all of its citizens.
Why believe that the state has no right to stop us from stealing if we do so to achieve dignified subsistence?
Okay, but one could maintain that while the state is required to give me the means of a dignified life if they don’t, you have no individual recourse, and the state can legitimately stop you.
The question of whether you have a moral right to individual recourse is an interesting question (I think yes), but it’s not the one I’ll get into directly here. Instead, I want to concern myself with the question does the state have a right to stop you?
Here, I want to make a appeal to ethical intuition. While the state is failing its obligations to me, if I’ve taken non-violent and proportional action to redress that, meeting the conditions I described above, and that action is necessary to secure dignified existence, it would seem extraordinarily cruel and inequitable for the government to prosecute me while it is not keeping it’s end of the bargain, and I am acting out compulsion.
I would challenge anyone to think of a circumstance in which Bob has a right to retaliate against Julia when:
Julia’s action was necessitated by Bob’s wrongful actions
Julia’s action was proportionate, non-violent and forced
One way to look at it is that either Bob will stop the wrongful action that necessitated Julia’s action going forward, or he will not. If he stops the wrongful action going forward, then why not let bygones be bygones and only retaliate if Julia continues with her actions? If he does not stop his wrongful action going forward then what high ground could he possibly have over Julia.
Okay, but most TAD isn’t from the government- this theft will affect third parties. Yes, and I would definitely counsel a rule that, except in the most difficult of circumstances, one should only steal from those much better off than one.
Ultimately, though, while the people one steals from may be blameless, they are the beneficiaries of unjust enrichment in a society which has made them wealthy, but has made others destitute. Whatever right they have to complain about about a reduction in wealth is outweighed by necessity and their complaints would be better addressed to the government that forced the action.
Besides of which, even if you have wronged third parties, we are only trying to establish that the government has no right to prosecute that wrong. The government has an alternative mechanism to prevent TAD, after all, and the damage TAD does to third parties, provide access to the means of dignified life. If the state wants to stop harm to third parties caused by TAD, they need only to offer alternatives.
Afterword
I wanted to make a few points that, in hindsight, weren’t clear enough.
My first point, and the one I really want to drive home, is that this is a strategy. If we can get lots of people to agree that stealing is valid in these circumstances, if we can create a culture of skepticism around theft prosecutions where TADS is possibly the reason, than that puts pressure on the government to create alternatives to poverty. This isn’t just an abstract moral point, it’s a program to pressure government to change its ways, a program you can join in. Ultimately a state of affairs where most of the public agree that a lot of thefts are morally valid is probably unsustainable, so adopting this belief can be a way to try force the government to mend its ways.
Secondly, I think there are other of circumstances where theft is morally permissible, I just take the case I outlined as being particularly interesting and worthy of explication. I know I said that in the piece, but I wanted to reiterate it- this is an attempt at an argument by construction that an important class of thefts are morally valid- it says nothing about other thefts, good or bad.
Finally, I don’t necessarily support job guarantee policies (or oppose them). It’s just an example of an alternative to poverty.
"Our society has the capacity to ensure there is literally zero involuntary poverty- e.g. by acting as an employer of last resort. We have not done so and this is a titanic crime."
This is not true. The government creating make-work jobs in order to give poor people something to do so that they could earn wages would not cause there to be more of the things that poor people want to buy with their money, so the material scarcity that causes them to lack things would not change, the government would merely be redistributing things and covering it with a 'jobs program.'
How do you respond to the objection that the state does provide the means of subsistence via welfare programs? My response is simple: Such provision is generally selective, insufficient, and tied to conditions that undermine dignity. The first two points are easily targeted by your arguments: if welfare doesn't cover your case, then there's simply no provision of means of life; and if it isn't enough to cover your needs, then it doesn't count either.
The third point is less obvious, but I think it does establish grounds for TAD. Let us assume that there is universal welfare sufficient to meet the needs of all who receive it, but that it is tied to a set of indignifying conditions. For the sake of argument, let's make these conditions far worse than those typically imposed by Centrelink in Australia: mutual obligations, daily check-ins, surveillance of expenses, controlled spending, mandatory drug tests, invasive medical checks, etc. (Essentially the program of policies imposed by the NT Intervention.)
In such a situation, is there a right to steal to achieve dignified subsistence? I think so. Put differently, there is a right to opt out of universal welfare and prefer theft instead where the conditions attached to that welfare degrade your dignity. As you put it, the basic right here is for dignified subsistence – which is a step further than mere subsistence.