prisons are a way to extract slave labor¶

I too once fell into the trap of "prisons are a way to extract slave labor." It feels like such an elegant explanation, since it provides an answer to the glaring question of "Why does the US imprison people at such astronomical rates?” https://t.co/L99eZCveJR I too once fell into the trap of "prisons are a way to extract slave labor." It feels like such an elegant explanation, since it provides an answer to the glaring question of "Why does the US imprison people at such astronomical rates?” But even before I became a "real Marxist," something always felt off about the whole thing. Particularly in the way my "fellow progressives" would talk about prison labor as just another bad policy in need of reform. I heard everything from "inmates should be paid at least minimum wage" to "private prisons shouldn't be a thing, it should all be state-owned" to "we need to end drug war sentencing policies," etc. All of it focused around pressuring the state to ease up on the harshest policies. I think that was my first experience of "wtf are you liberals yapping about??? This clearly can't be reformed." I could see with my own eyes the way the prison system was explicitly designed to ravage entire communities -- and it was obvious which communities were the targets. It doesn’t take much digging to learn that the amount of revenue generated by prison labor is orders of magnitude less than the amount the US spends on policing, trying, and imprisoning. The prison population is 100 times smaller than the total labor force. The prison system is structurally incapable of ever hoping to be “profitable,” in the same way that the US military is not profitable. It’s not meant to be – even if the state funnels its money through capitalist firms to allow them to profit off fascism. The reservation system isn’t designed to turn a profit. Migrant detention centers aren’t designed to turn a profit. Nazi labor camps weren’t designed to turn a profit. Killing and cutting off the hands of Congolese slaves wasn’t designed to turn a profit. We call this systematized brutality “terror.”

Depending on the context, you might specify “state terror,” “white terror,” “mass terror,” etc., but the key feature to pay attention to is the use of force to repress and fracture resistance. Terror in and of itself is a value-neutral term. You can use terror to crush revolutionary organizing, or you can use terror to crush counter-revolutionary organizing. You can use terror to conquer and enclose land, or you can use terror to liberate it. Understanding the role of terror in establishing, maintaining, and overthrowing hegemonic structures is crucial to building a coherent ideology that is capable of accomplishing any real, society-wide objectives. The bourgeois-led imperial regime under which we live has developed its mastery of terror to such a staggering extent that it can wield it equally as easily as either a sledgehammer or a scalpel. It has such a hegemonic grip on the culture that this terror is seen as the default. In the Americas, the terror began almost the instant settlers arrived in the hemisphere. As colonies began to be established, terror was used to encroach on every corner of the “new world,” killing, maiming, and enslaving the populations of three continents. In the process of establishing this massive abattoir of capitalist production, an increasingly sophisticated system of terror was developed. It was – and is – an impressively scientific approach to mass repression, complete with experimentation, data analysis, and peer review. Prisons, and the “criminal justice” system writ large, are a key component of the reproduction of this terror, replacing more primitive methods like frontier justice, lynch mobs, and slave patrols. Although they still exist, they are now incorporated into the modern framework. (For more in-depth analysis on the interplay between systematized “law enforcement” and extrajudicial fascist organizing, you can check out this article I wrote for the Red Clarion a while back: https://t.co/s4dqdJZIyT) Forays into a more scientific application of terror to ghettoize and immiserate the nationally oppressed – such as redlining, segregated schooling, and various methods of disenfranchisement – were deemed too vulnerable to counter-organizing, and reworked to be less explicit. To this day, those same repressive tactics remain in force, but without even needing to spell it out for people. On every metric of social well-being, from health outcomes to education to nutrition to housing security, segregation is alive and well, and is strictly enforced. By releasing themselves from explicitly defining their operating terms, these more “neutral” methods of oppression are able to be applied flexibly and liberally, to an ever-expanding precariat, without as much risk of inciting organized resistance. The terror becomes invisible. And to be clear, it is still terror. Most of the death and disease and dismemberment and the resultant despair have simply become “negative externalities,” the unfortunate byproducts of a system “in need of reform.” In truth, the system is working exactly as intended. Every death and injury from exposure, malnutrition, lack of healthcare, gendered violence, overdose, infrastructural collapse, natural disaster, and more is a weapon wielded by a terroristic regime that has fine-tuned its operations. The despair drives expropriation. The regime is predicated on this simple logic: enrich the bourgeoisie and you will be rewarded. Fail, and you will perish. This logic is pummeled into the minds of the labor aristocracy and oppressed peoples alike through the use of both passive and active terror. The former group is instinctively drawn to defend bourgeois hegemony: they see the terror visited upon the latter group and are either grateful to avoid it, or see it as the “just punishment” for some imagined failing. The latter, meanwhile, is violently crushed into submission. (In case it wasn't obvious, instinct is not destiny, and it remains within the power of any individual to overcome their class instincts and become a revolutionary.) “Criminal justice,” then, is the most visible way of simultaneously affirming the class instincts of the Elect and reminding the oppressed that they have no right to rebel. They are barred from even the “right” to enrich their oppressors, and brutalized for this “defiance.” The national and gender oppressed are relegated to a systematic failure to meet their rubber quotas, and have their hands cut off by a mechanized terror apparatus. This is the role of prisons, and it is worth infinitely more than the piddling profits made off slave labor. (While I have your attention, I highly recommend checking out @probablykaffe, who consistently has great insight to share on this and related topics.)