The Marxist view of the jury system. And alternatives for it.

[Gileson]

The Ferguson Trial and others such as George Zimmerman's have been making me doubt jury system. I suspect that too much of the populace is prejudiced or would be pushed by distrust or contempt for a victim or suspect, and isn't qualified to decide a verdict.

I'm wondering what the current Marxist view of the jury system is. And the suggested alternatives for it.

[Q]

Marxists have been traditionally very much in favor of juries as opposed to professional judges as it brings in a democratic aspect into matters of justice.

The problem with the American (and indeed most other) justice system is that it is highly stratified:
- Laws are written with a ruling class bias built in.
- Most lawyers and judges are very much ideological defendends of the system.
- You need an exhorbitant amount of money to get your way.

On average the system works in such a way that the more money you have, the higher the probability will be that you'll win. It is this that Marxists criticise.

Juries on average also fall within the logic of the system as the main ideology of society is as yet unchallenged. So, juries will find it hard to withstand the logic presented by professionals in this 'business'.
Programmatically then the demand ought not to be to demand their abolishment which is likely to worsen the situation, but instead to found judicial educational and counciling collectives that juries may use.

[RevUK]

So, you want a democratic system but there's only one outcome that you'll accept.

You'll need to only allow jurors who you know will agree with your point of view. Or hand independent jurors your pre-determined result and have them sign off on it.

[contracycle]

I've done jury service; I found it a fascinating experience. The first thing was that the other members of the jury completely exploded into action without any prompting. We had the kind of discussion that probably most people never have in their lives, feeling the weight of responsibility as well as the empowerment, for once, to make a decision that actually mattered. The second thing was that bit was quite disciplined without being organised; people who tried to dominate the conversation where shut down, the quieter members were explicitly asked to express themselves.

Juries may not be perfect, in the sense of always getting to the truth, but nothing is. It's better than leaving things to judges IMO; the evidence that most people find most convincing is as good as we can ask for.

[ckaihatsu]

Leaving *process* aside for a moment we need to first take a step back and look at what any process is *for*.

From the *Marxist* perspective we could readily look to see if the issue at-hand is more about 'civil society' -- strictly in the sense of person-to-person, physical- and interpersonal-type situations, or is it more about the 'superstructure', as with matters of private property ownership, government procedures, and other such 'higher-level', 'competitive' activities.

The reason to look at it *this* way is because if disputes and conflicts are strictly interpersonal, as with personality differences at a particular moment in space and time, this kind of thing is *far different* from the capitalist-based institutions and practices pertaining to ownership and government favor.

As Marxists we argue that the vast majority of the world's population has *zero* vested interests in property of any kind, and its management. So, aside from some inevitable interpersonal situations, the entire *system* of state-administered decision-making (policy, judgments), is simply *moot* at best to working-class interests, and its status quo continues to uphold the systematic *exploitation* of labor on a daily basis.

Yes, a post-capitalist, Marxist type of social order would have to have a collectivist-oriented solution to matters of everyday civil society, but overall it would be more concerned with societal matters of *collectivist mass production*, which is the whole point of a revolution to overturn private property relations.

Ostensibly there's a democratic representative system of popular elections for the sake of legislation / policy-making, and the analogue for the process of judgment-making would be the jury system, but we still have no 'democratic' means of decision-making over what society *produces*, even though the Industrial Revolution began at least 200 years ago.