Comments on: Mass Incarceration, Prison Labor in the United States

By: Vaska

Vaska — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 00:02:40 +0000

In reply to ChrisB. I think it was the other way 'round, to be fair. It was capitalism that came up with the Poor House concept way back before anyone had yet thought of socialism as an alternative to it.

By: ChrisB

ChrisB — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 13:09:11 +0000

Who says capitalism can’t learn from socialism?

By: Dcembre

Dcembre — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 12:50:32 +0000

Reblogged this on Chez Dcembre and commented: The U$ would have to be the most corrupt country on the planet!...

By: John

John — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 10:40:01 +0000

The US used to employ workers to produce goods that economically effective consumers could buy.
No longer. Today, most former worker-producers are utterly marginal.
Individual purchasing power has also been in decline for many decades now.
In a growing era of robotization and artificial intelligence, the time will come when most of the former worker-producers will be completely unnecessary. Then what?
Then – now – it becomes necessary to pen-up the former workers into institutions where they are under control.
This costs money to achieve so the inmates have to contribute towards the costs of their own incarceration.
All the corporations and their employees are able to exploit the imprisoned work force very cheaply.
What were formerly workers have now become literally just factors of production.
They are no different to the raw materials and energy consumed in production activities.
Thoroughly de-humanising for them and also the society they exist within.
And it is all just for a buck or two. America has sold its birthright for a mess of potage.

By: Bryan Farrow

Bryan Farrow — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 06:40:20 +0000

In reply to Cloudslicer. Cloudslicer - $252,414,987 million. Is that the U$ national debt?

By: Bryan Farrow

Bryan Farrow — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 06:36:36 +0000

In reply to BigBG.

The U$ would have to be the most corrupt country on the planet.
From the arms industry and their back-pocket politicians profiting from never-ending ‘conflicts’ around the globe, to a private, paid-by-prisoner prison system that provides kick-backs to the judiciary, local law enforcement and local government to ensure that a never ending supply of people are being incarcerated for the most petty of ‘crimes’.
I’ll probably live to see the day where it will be a crime to be poor, punishable by a prison sentence of course.

By: BigBG

BigBG — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 09:21:32 +0000

Sending your military forces abroad to conquer inferiorly armed countries (Afghanistan); ‘greenlighting’ the growing of heroin; protecting the farmers and the crop from the bad guys (that you also employ); transporting the goods back home in military aircraft (?); distributing to street dealers in the poorest and most under-privileged communities; arresting your unwanted citizens to prevent social unrest or an uprising of a broad based civil rights movement; incarcerating – (as opposed to educating or otherwise aiding); often for life (‘Three Strikes’) – for relatively minor misdemeanours: to create captive human capital for the profit of the likes of CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) and GEO; creating a penal code to ensure the prisons are always full: and those who are most alienated and disenfranchised are always off the streets (homelessness and mental illness are also considered ‘criminal’ – not quite yet – but soon)… At least an entire (otherwise uneeded) ‘underclass’ are being profitably utilised…
Welcome to the Capitalist Heartland utopia: the land of the free; home of the brave – where only the (relatively) innocent and undeserving go to prison – and the (relatively more) guilty and deserving get to work in Langley, VA; the Pentagon; Wall St; or on Capitol Hill. One of the most deserving gets nominated every four years to live in a big White House: where, as Chomsky has said – (if the Nuremberg principles were applied) every incumbent since 1945 would have been guilty of capital crimes – and should, by rights, have been executed. Now that’s what I call a more progressive attitude to crime!

By: Dead World Walking

Dead World Walking — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 23:49:37 +0000

The prison industry, like the military industrial complex, is just another form of taxpayer handouts to the the one per cent.
When enough people wake up to it, there might be change.
I’m not holding my breath.

By: bevin

bevin — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 18:28:16 +0000

Slave labour is what capitalism is really all about. There is a constant dialectical tension between the advantages of ‘free’ labour-which can be jockeyed into accepting below subsistence pay levels- and slave labour, whose subsistence and shelter has to be charged to the capitalist, though they need not-as the Auschwitz capitalist laboratory showed- be pitched to a level any higher than that needed to milk the last drops of labour power from the victims.