A few weeks ago lots of Black folks were celebrating Juneteenth,
which they claimed was about the banning of slavery in the U.$. Say
what? Apparently none of these folks have read the actual 13th
Amendment, which only banned plantation slavery, while opening up far
more slavery with its Exclusion Section, which basically said “slavery
as punishment for a crime is just peachy.”
…how about you get the May 2021 issue of Prison Legal News
and read the main article, “The Punishment Economy: Winners and Losers
in the Business of Mass Incarceration.”
A fact not mentioned in the article was that businesses (owners) in
many foreign countries are making money “servicing” U.$. prisoner
needs.
Until just a couple of weeks ago, me at 75 years old, with various
health problems, was forced under threat of write-up to work as a
kitchen slave. So I get to read the labels on the products used
there.
Oranges and mixed vegetables from Mexico. Cut carrots from Spain.
Franks (weenies) from Canada. Cucumbers from Mexico. Broccoli from
Mexico. Pineapple from Indonesia. Heat sealed plastic gloves from China.
White plastic “sporks” from Vietnam.
Do you think the owners of these businesses make donations to U.$.
politicians that always vote for more laws, more prisons, and more money
to cops?
Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: We share this
writer’s concerns about prisoners being used as a source of exploited
value by capitalists. When Third World countries begin to delink from
the united $tates economically, Amerikans will face serious crisis and
imposing fascism on segments of the u.$. population in the form of
slavery is a likely outcome as we saw fascist Germany do.
However, we think the concern about foreign companies selling cheap
produce to u.$. prisons is misled. In fact, most of the value created in
producing that food in the Third World is stolen from those who make the
food and realized in the First World (see our recent review
of John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century).
Even those Amerikans reaping the profits on these food sales to Amerikan
prisons are not likely backing prison construction. Food is about $2.1
billion of the $182 billion spent on mass incarceration each year in
this country.(1)
But what about this question of prison labor? The persyn above has
written us numerous times to challenge our line on prison labor. In 2018
we did a survey of ULK readers to further research this
subject. And we have extensive articles on the economics
of the U.$. prison system available to those interested. But we are
always keeping an eye out for new info, so let’s look at this Prison
Legal News article.
As it turns out, this article does not offer much information on
prison labor at all, far less than our research does. The article is a
thorough documentation of many ways that companies are making money by
offering services to the government related to prisons and to families
of prisoners; what we might call profiteering or even extortion in the
case of fees charged to families.
1 in 8 U.$. jobs
rely on prisons - Big if True
Daniel Rosen doesn’t cite the source of this one in eight jobs
estimate towards the beginning of eir article. Regular writers for
ULK have long called Amerika a pig nation. Then why does Rosen
turn around and ask, “are we just producing greater corporate profits at
American families’ expense?” It is Amerikan families who are getting
payed labor aristocracy wages to work these 1 in 8 jobs that relies on
this system of punishment. Meanwhile, the majority of people suffering
from the injustice system are members of internal semi-colonies, not
Amerikans. And this is the exact contradiction we try to bring to light
every time we get into this debate.
After citing the exorbitant amount spent on staffing prisons, Rosen
offers a section on how employees are underpaid. In states like
California, prison guards start at salaries that most reading this
newsletter will never see in their lives. To make eir point sound
reasonable, Rosen claims “pay for starting prison guards is usually in
the range of $25,000-$35,000.” This range actually represents the lowest
10% of prison guards in the country, with the median actually being at
$45,000 per year starting salary.(2) Is this underpaid? As regular
readers of our work will already know, employed Amerikans are generally
in the top 10% income earners globally, including those that make
$25,000 per year. An individual living on $45,000 per year is in the top
2%.(3) And as many of our readers know, overtime and hazard pay are a
regular occurrence in that line of work, easily putting annual prison
guard salaries into six figures.
Our writer contacted us about prisoner labor, not prison guard labor.
The reason this is relevant though is that it represents the economics
of those who see prisons as a product of corporate interests. It often
comes hand-in-hand with those who see $50k/year pigs as the oppressed
and exploited opposed to the corporate interests. Even if they’re in the
top 2%, they are still in the bottom 99% that the left wing of white
nationalism sees as allies. This idealism wants to see all people come
together for a common cause, ignoring the different material interests
of different groups in the world today. We focus on prison organizing
because there is a greater consciousness in prisons that these pigs are
part of the imperialist system and that they serve the enemy because
they benefit from that system.
I Pay Your Salary, Buddy
Rosen starts off his article with the message that U.$. taxpayers are
paying $80 billion per year to lock people up. While there has been an
upsurge of concern about spending on incarceration in the halls of
Congress, why is it that the same “fiscal conservative” voters who don’t
want social services are quick to yell “lock them up” when it comes to
so-called “criminals”? Our explanation is that the system that is trying
to control the rebellious oppressed serves them. It serves them with
some of the highest incomes in the world, from which they pay taxes.
These incomes, and taxes, are superprofits stolen from the international
proletariat.
We know many in the prison movement are not Marxists, and therefore
may not accept the labor theory of value. With such people we are
working from different theoretical models and different terminology. It
is not a coincidence that such people are predominately reformists. We
need to be debating Marx vs. bourgeois economics. Even many
self-described “Marxists” in the imperialist countries think there is an
infinite amount of wealth to go around.
Rosen writes, “Recidivists are the primary ‘product’ of the
punishment economy and the real source of its profits.” It’s true,
unlike the military-industrial complex, there is no real product being
made here, just ancillary services like phone calls and food delivery.
But are recidivists the source of these companies profits? No, the only
source of profits is surplus value from surplus labor time. And as we’ll
reiterate here, that is coming from the Third World proletariat.
Of course, most of the concerns about mass incarceration that Rosen
mentions in this article are ones we share. One that we’ve been
discussing lately is how for-profit communication services are replacing
in-persyn visits and mail under the guise of reducing drugs. Yet the drugs
magically keep getting into prisons, and now prisoners
communications are being digitized for easier monitoring and censorship,
while valuable resources and family connections are being cut off. We’ve
also helped expose the issue of a second-class system for migrants, the
vast majority who haven’t even committed any anti-people crimes, being
stuck in poorly
run, privately-owned prisons on behalf of Immigration Customs
Enforcement (ICE).
We just don’t agree with Rosen’s economics and where it leads us
strategically.
We agree with Rosen that there is a whole slush economy around
incarceration, that’s the nature of the United $tates mall economy in
general. And in the case of imprisonment, the result is buying people
off to support it. There’s too much money, corruption and greed in this
system. But this is nothing particular to incarceration, and
incarceration is just a tiny drop in the bucket that is this problem. Do
we want to make this tiny corner of the imperialist economy a little
less gross? Or do we want to end mass incarceration? liberate oppressed
nations from imperialism? end exploitation of the proletariat? We are
aware that a majority of our incarcerated readers might lean more
towards the first option. And while we appreciate our prison reform
allies who stand with us in many campaigns, this newsletter is not a
forum to promote reformism.
Rosen writes “[t]he most important way that mass incarceration fails
prisoners is by all but guaranteeing that they’ll come back.” This is
one of the true crimes of the system. Socialist countries like China
showed the world how prisons could be used to integrate former
oppressors into a new people-focused society. Yet, “corrections” in the
u.$. has always taken a much different form, one of punishment. And this
is why we prioritize our Re-Lease on Life Program for those released
from prison to help comrades continue to reform themselves and integrate
back into society as servants of the people, and avoid getting locked
back up. Our humble program is a precursor to a system that will serve
to rehabilitate the real criminals on this continent in a socialist
future.
This country not only institutionalizes disparities between the
oppressed nations and Amerikans in the united $tates, it is a tool of
genocide in how it affects the productive and reproductive years of a
vast segment of oppressed nation men. These problems beg the solution of
liberation and independence.
Rosen closes eir article with a number of examples of progress in
reforming the ills ey discusses. We agree these are progressive things,
and yet they do not address the problem. Which is why you won’t see
these campaigns in the pages of ULK. See recent
discussions between USW comrades on how to organize prisoners in a
way that keeps our eyes on the prize. Sometimes our campaigns will
overlap with the reformers. Even then, we must promote the proletarian
line and not succumb to coalition politics.
Notes: 1. Peter Wagner and
Beradette Rabuy, 5 January 2017, Following the Money of Mass
Incarceration.
2.
https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Prison_Guard/Salary
3.https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org
