Between the Lines: State Murder, USA (1992)

The Between the Lines Column from the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

State Murder, USA

In sixteenth-century Geneva a deranged character by the name of Jacques Chapellaz confessed to cursing God and trying to eat the devil, though finding it hard to swallow his horns. The poor man was condemned to having his tongue cut out. That was then: dark, ignorant, religiously confused times. Panorama (BBC1, 9.30 pm, 3 August) was about how the USA claims to be a rational society which has surpassed the excesses of Old Testament morality. The programme showed how false is such a claim. In the cells of Death Row in Huntsville, Texas there are 358 men who have been sentenced to be murdered by the state. That is just one of the waiting rooms for death in the 50 states of the USA. Amongst those awaiting the legalised murder which “justice" has condemned them to are several who are clearly so mentally deranged as to have little control over their actions. For example, one condemned prisoner was interviewed who was described by a psychologist as having a mental age of ten and as compulsively agreeing with whatever is asked of him in order to please people. Obtaining a confession of murder from such a pathetic person was hardly difficult.

A new and highly conspicuous pressure group is called VOCAL: Victims of Crime and Leniency, comprising people who want courts to sentence more "wrongdoers" to death. Many of these advocates of callous vengeance were themselves bereaved as a result of murder. They have become bitter and irrational. But now they have won the right for victims' families to testify in courts in order to explain to juries how only an eye for an eye will satisfy them. The unreasonableness of expecting just responses to emanate from angry, vengeful relatives of those who have been murdered is obvious; their inclusion into the US “justice" system is proof that the objective of criminal punishment is largely revenge.

The reverse side of this thirst for revenge in the form of dead bodies, which turns “justice" into organised murder to show the murderers the validity of violence as the highest ethic, is fear. The reason for disgusting pressure groups like VOCAL, made up of wretched, hurt workers, is that they live in a society where almost everyone is scared. The victims are afraid, and their relatives are afraid that the criminals will be punished too little, and the criminals are made afraid by the threat of state murder. What way of running a society is such mutual fear? How dare the US leaders preach of new world orders and civilised values and human rights. In a socialist society, where anti-social behaviour will no longer be stimulated by the relationships of property, we shall not seek to solve problems (and problems there surely will be) by threats, either of confinement or murder.

The members of of VOCAL shown on Panorama would do well to read William Morris's News From Nowhere wherein Old Hammond, speaking from the vantage of a moneyless, propertyless, stateless socialist society, explains how the response to anti-social acts has changed:

'The punishment of which men used to talk wisely and act so foolishly, what was it hut the expression of their fear, since they - i.e. the rulers of society - were dwelling like an armed band in a hostile country. But we who live amongst our friends need neither fear nor punish. Surely if we, in dread of an occasional rare homicide, an occasional rough blow, were solemnly and legally to commit homicide and violence, we would only be a society of ferocious cowards."

In the USA today 80 per cent of people polled favour state murder; a decade ago less than half did. More fear, more cowardly revenge and more prisoners condemned to lives waiting for execution. Surely there is a wiser course for humanity.

Who is the savage?

Early Travellers in North America (BBC2, 9.10pm, 6 August) presented a series of accounts from nineteenth-century travellers who encountered the North American Indians. European orthodoxy at the time was that these people were savages, racially sub-human. In fact, visitors such as Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope and Robert Louis Stevenson were impressed by the dignity of the co-operative native Americans and horrified by the way in which they were cast into prison-like reservations and often killed. Coming only a few days after the Panorama documentary two points emerged forcefully: Firstly, there were no eases of native American Indian Death Rows; secondly, how many of the current "justice" officials owe their power to those before them whose prestige and wealth was obtained by organising the violent attacks upon and killings of defenceless Indians? If justice was about revenge - and both are terms from the vocabulary of capitalism - might not some of the great capitalist families of the Land of the Free be rotting in death cells instead of hopeless wage slaves, many of whom will be killed for crimes that they did not even commit but lack the money or the wit to prove their innocence?

Steve Coleman

Voice From The Back: Outdated Marxism? (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Outdated Marxism?

A gap of over a 150 years separates the following two quotations, but they surely give the lie to the notion that Marxism is now outdated. “Paris: Junior doctors in France went on an indefinite partial strike in protest at their long working hours. Members of the ISNTH union, which represents 8,000 junior doctors, said they will refuse night shifts or be on call at home until demands are met.” The Times (20 November, 2001) “The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.” Communist Manifesto 1848

The wasteful society

Socialists are always arguing against supporters of capitalism that it is a wasteful and destructive society. A recent item from the Herald (26 November) illustrates our point very well. “Every time a single B2 Spirit stealth bomber makes the gruelling 34 hour round trip from its base in rural Missouri to unload its precision-guided payload over rural Afghanistan half a world away, it costs the American taxpayer more than £2.5m in fuel for the mission. Each laser-guided bomb dropped adds another £50,000 to the bill.”

The fearful society

It is often said by sociologists that social trends that first surface in the USA eventually appear in the UK. If such were to prove true about crime and punishment then the future is very gloomy indeed. According to the journalist Simon Jenkins writing in the Times (28 November) the US have a real problem. “What is known is that America now imprisons a staggering 700 people per 100,000, against 124 in Britain and 89 in France. One in three young black males in American inner cities is in prison or on parole . . . Meanwhile, half a million Californians feel they must live in armed and gated estates.”

Progressing backwards

Amidst the phoney euphoria of the Labour Party’s electoral victory of 1997 the British working class were promised an end to poverty or “social exclusion” as Labour prefer to call it. But what is the reality today? David Plachaud of the London School of Economics in the current issue of the Political Review is quoted in the Guardian (26 November) as remarking: “Child poverty remains higher than it was in 1979.” and “Britain still has the highest child poverty rate of any major industrialised country apart from the United States.”

The unhealthy society

In a revealing article in the Observer (2 December) it was shown that so pathetic is Labour’s running of the NHS that one in eight of the population now have private medical insurance, and that even those without private insurance won’t use the NHS. “Even those without medical insurance boycott the NHS in record numbers. Last year, more than 200,000 people jumped NHS waiting lists by paying for private operations – double when Labour came to power.” The most revealing aspect was the reason put forward for many employers providing health cover. Surprise, surprise it wasn’t the bosses concern for the workers they exploit; it was a commercial one. “Fergus Kee, managing director of BUPA’s UK insurance business, said: “Companies are increasingly recognising the value of medical insurance to get sick employees back to work faster.”

For my next trick

The Rev. Andrew Thompson is concerned about falling Church of England attendances, so he has come up with a super wheeze. He has written a booklet “Gospel Magic” that advocates flaming torches, trick guillotines and disappearing handkerchiefs to get the punters back to church. This has aroused a lot of opposition from more conservative elements in the church but it is difficult to sympathise with them. After all, their main man the Cunning Carpenter was reputed to have been a dab hand at conjuring tricks like water into wine and fish teas for the five thousand.

Bought it fair and square

In last month’s issue we reported that Michael Bloomberg had bought the office of Mayor of New York for $60 million; we were wrong. The official figures are now out and reported in the Times (5 December) – he spent $68,968,185! Even by American standards this is a phenomenal election expenditure for such an office. President Bush spent $193 million on his presidential campaign against Al Gore’s $133 million and Hillary Clinton spent $29.9 million, a record in New York, to become a Senator. Bloomberg spent more than five times his Democratic Party opponent Mark Green, in fact it is reckoned that he spent $92.60 for each of his 744,757 votes. The really staggering aspect of this corruption of democracy is that the Times can report it boldly, under the headline” $69m buys election as Mayor of New York” and that Mr Green’s campaign manager Richard Schrader could say: “He bought it fair and square. By spending a historic amount on television ads, he controlled the airwaves and altered people’s perception of reality.” Capitalism has reduced everything to the cash nexus. Why don’t they just dispense with voting altogether and have an auction for all the offices of power between the capitalists and their puppets? The whole thing has become a farce and has no claim to the term “democracy”.

Capitalism’s facelift?

“All companies must strive to give capitalism a name that doesn’t result in riots. Capitalism is good. But benevolent capitalism is better!” Sir Richard Branson. Yorkshire Post (1 December).

Voice From The Back: Patents and Profits (2007)

The Voice From The Back Column from the January 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Patents and Profits

“Poor people are needlessly dying because drug companies and the governments of rich countries are blocking the developing world from obtaining affordable medicines, a report says today. Five years to the day after the Doha declaration – a groundbreaking deal to give poor countries access to cheap drugs – was signed at the World Trade Organisation, Oxfam says things are worse. … The US has pursued its own free trade agreements with developing countries, tying them into much tighter observance of patent rights than anticipated at Doha ‘The USA has also pressured countries for greater patent protection through threats of trade sanctions’, the report says.” (Guardian, 14 November) The message is clear – patents and profits mean more than people inside capitalism.

Housing Madness

The journalist Nick Cohen recently quoted a couple of property experts about house prices in London. “Lulu Egerton of the Lane Fox agency tells about putting a house in Chelsea on the market last week for £4.5m. She assures me it wasn’t a mansion, just a roomy town house …. Within hours, she had an offer of £5.25 m. … I ask Mira Bar-Hillel, the property editor of London’s Evening Standard, if she has a favourite example of irrational exuberance; an anecdote or statistic people will recall if a crash comes … She sighs and says : ‘Take your pick. I’m coming up with them every week. Russian oligarchs who don’t even ask the price of the homes they view, the average price of a flat in central London reaching £1m, garages selling for £150,000 and parking spaces selling for £100,000.’” (Observer, 19 November) The prospects of a bus driver, clerk or railway worker getting their feet on the so-called housing ladder at these prices is extremely remote, but perhaps if they saved up they might be able to unroll their sleeping bag in a highly desirable parking space.

Hollywood and Reality

We are all aware of the Hollywood fantasy where happy families sit round the dining table at Thanksgiving or Christmas time. It is all part of the Hollywood “feel good” factor, but unfortunately it is a complete fiction for many US families. “As America gets ready for Thanksgiving dinner, a new report says hunger is on the rise in New York City. One in six New Yorkers – roughly 1.256 million people – could not afford to buy enough food, the New York City Coalition Against Hunger reported yesterday, citing US Department of Agriculture data from 2003 to 2005. The hungry population jumped 112,000 people in that period compared to 2000 – 2003.” (New York Metro, 22 November) If any Hollywood mogul is thinking of a new treatment for the “feel good” element, how about Honey, I Starved the Kids!

Land of the Free?

Home of the brave and land of the free sing the proud American patriots, but the reality is somewhat different. “A record 7 million people – one in every 32 American adults – were in jail, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to figures released by US Justice Department yesterday. US prisons held 2.2 million inmates, an increase of 2.6 per cent over the previous year. More than 4.9 million adult men and women were on parole or probation, an increase of 27,000 over the previous year.” (Times, 1 December) Home of the brave we can understand but land of the free? Difficult concept.

Growing Old Disgracefully

In pre-property societies the old were valued as experienced hunters and food gatherers. In such societies to be old was considered honourable and they were respected and indeed venerated. The opposite applies in modern capitalism. “The Help the Aged survey conducted by GfK NOP, showed that 5 per cent, or 500,000 of those over 65 said that they had to cut back on basic food to pay council tax bills. Eight per cent, or 800,000, turned down their heating. More than a third of people over 65 living on the lowest household incomes spent 10 per cent on meeting the payments, the study showed.” (Times, 2 December) Our grannies and granddads are suffering, what are you going to do about it?

Another Aspect of Globalisation

A great deal of prominence has been given by the media to the amazing development of capitalism in India and much publicity to the growth of industry and commerce within that country. There is one aspect of this development that has received little attention and that is the strains and problems that this development has meant to members of the working class. “An estimated 4,000 students commit suicide in India each year because of exam failure or fear of failure in a society where there is intense pressure to succeed academically.” (Times, 2 December) Kids are killing themselves for capitalism, it makes us feel sick, how about you?

And Another

A global study by the World Institute for Development Economic Research of the United Nations has recently revealed how unequal a society capitalism is today. “The richest 1% of adults in the world own 40% of the planet’s wealth. … The report found the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total of global assets. Half the world’s adult population, however, owned barely 10% of global wealth.” (Guardian, 6 December)

A Look Round. (1905)

From the October 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Registration Courts are being held, and many citizens of this “free” country are striving to secure or to retain that very questionable advantage, under present conditions, the vote !

* * *

The Liberals tell us they are in favour of the franchise. They claim to have been foremost in extending it and to desire to still further extend it. The depth of their sincerity may be gauged by the fact that their paid agents are striving at the present moment to keep men off the Register !

* * *

I have frequently commented upon the flabby-ness of the speeches and election literature of some candidates claiming to be Socialists. Even the Labour Leader is now compelled to protest. It says ”The contrast between the substance of the teaching at the innumerable propaganda meetings of the I.L.P., where the power of the movement is created, and the substance of the addresses by some of our candidates claiming to be Socialist and Trade Unionists, is as between an honest dinner and a dish of skilly. Constant complaints reach us on this matter. So cautious to timidity, so practical to the utter iteration of commonplace vestry politics, have the deliverances of many of our candidates become, that quite frequently the speeches of their capitalist opponents are the more inspiring of the two.”

* * *

As most of these “Socialist” candidates have their eyes longingly fixed upon the loaves and fishes of the L.R.C., they are more concerned about becoming M.P.’s than creating a class-conscious Socialist army. Let it be clearly understood that none of them is a member of the S.P.G.B.

* * *

The Trade Union Congress led one of the capitalist sheets to discourse upon the number of “Labour” journals in existence, specially mentioning The Labour Record and Review, edited by F. W. Pethick Lawrence. A few days after Mr. Lawrence was announced to speak at Holmwood, under the auspices of the Home Counties Liberal Association. Is his “Labour” paper edited in the interests of Liberalism or of Labour?

* * *

“What is wrong?” The discussion upon this will doubtless continue until Parliament re-assembles or the space is required for other gas. One of the participants writes, “When we practise true Christian Socialism—’What I have I give unto thee’—all that is now wrong will become right.”

* * *

So that the social problem is to be solved by everybody who has anything giving it to somebody else, then the givers will have nothing and the given-to something which they can give back to those who have nothing, and so on to the end of the chapter. This may be Christian but it isn’t Socialism.

* * *

I am reminded of a lecture upon “Christian Socialism” once delivered by the Rev. Stewart Headlam for the Fabian Society, in which he quoted the saying of Christ “Sell all thou hast and give to the poor” as a proof that Jesus was a Socialist ! All that was wanted was the universal adoption of this teaching real Christianity—and Socialism would be here. When asked who would buy, supposing all became “real” Christians and proceeded to sell all that they had in order to give to the poor, he gave it up.

* * *

Socialism is an economic transformation, desired by those who wish to remove all hindrances to human development. It is concerned with the material things of life because “the basal factor determining the constitution of society is its material and economic condition.” It is neither “Christian” nor “Atheist.”

* * *

Messrs. Rowntree, of York, are “considerate” employers. They run what the Clarion terms a “cocoa oasis in the desert,” and, be it noted, advertise in the Clarion. The firm admit that their considerateness “pays,” and I presume their advertising also does. Most of the employees, they state, are on piece work, and if one is found not to be earning a reasonable minimum, special investigation is made into his case, and a remedy discovered. There are many employees working upon piece who, for want of arrangement, or help, or stimulation of some kind, would go on year after year, earning a comparatively low wage, although they are perfectly capable of earning a higher wage if the necessary help be given by the employer, and this without any alteration in the piece rate.

* * *

In the dining rooms cheap meals are provided, and large numbers use them. The firm lose by this considerably, but they say. “Some material return for this expenditure is no doubt obtained, inasmuch as employees who have had a nutritious dinner in a comfortable and well ventilated room are more vigorous and fit for their work than they otherwise would be. The advantage which the firm derives from this circumstance must be considerable.”

* * *

Messrs, Rowntree, Cadbury, Lever and Co. are farsighted capitalists who see that it is an economic advantage to them to palliate the evils of the capitalist system. But their workers are still slaves, can still be dismissed and turned out to starve at the will of their masters. And owing to the better conditions under which they work they are enabled to do better work and hand over more surplus value to their employers, thus intensifying the problem of unemployment.

* * *

Sir John Gorst is also another farsighted member of the capitalist class. He advocates the provision of free meals to some starving children because “England and Germany have a friendly rivalry in trade and manufactures, and how can we expect to carry on that rivalry with success unless very speedily such a social reform is carried out in this country as would put us on something like a footing with Germany ?”

* * *

There are none so blind as those who cannot see, except those who will not.

* * *

In spite of all the efforts and self-sacrifice on the part of many men and women during the past 150 years, the position of trade unions to-day is by no means an enviable one. They are constantly being called upon to maintain conditions of labour which our forefathers obtained, and the fight grows more difficult every year.—Charity Organisation Review.

* * *

The terrific slaughter wrought in every country by consumption is— at least in the main—the inevitable result of the exploitation of helpless human lives for money profit, the inevitable result of over-work, lack of nutrition, and over-crowding. Talk of “alcoholism.” The drinking bar is largely the refuge from the depressing, debasing surroundings of the so-called home.—Daily News Paris Correspondent.

* * *

Official figures show that 877,057 persons were employed in the mines of the United Kingdom last year, and that 698,967 of this total worked underground. Out of 9,544 children under fourteen years of age employed 6,818 worked underground. The fatal accidents numbered 1,158, involving a loss of 1,202 lives. Compared with the previous year this was an increase of 7 in fatal accidents, and of 10 in the number of lives lost.

* * *

Extracts from a series of articles from the pen of Mr. Collis Lovely on the subject of prison made American shoes, are published in American Shoemaking. Mr. Lovely’s remarks are said to be based on personal observation made in different American prisons, while acting as special agent to investigate the operation of penal institutions under the Department of Labour of the State of Missouri. The investigations were made following his appointment, on March 2nd, 1905.

* * *

Mr. Lovely found 4,258 convicts were employed in shoemaking, at an average wage of 48 cents a day, turning out approximately 8,000,000 pairs of shoes annually, or probably about one-thirtieth of the entire annual production of the factory-made shoes of the United States. Of course, the prison output is disguised, the goods going upon the market as regular lines.

* * *

Kentucky branch penitentiary, at Eddville, supplies the Kentucky Shoe Manufacturing Co. with 175 men at 45 cents per day, and the Frankfort Shoe Co. with 400 men at 50 cents a day, in addition to shop room, water, and light, free of charge. In connection with the Maryland penitentiary, Baltimore, the state supplies the Baltimore Boot and Shoe Manufacturing Co. with 225 men at 45 cents a day, with free shop room, light, water, and power. One of the most impressive examples of the extent that prison labour may be employed by a single firm in the manufacture of boots is, says Mr. Lovely, that of the Davis Boot and Shoe Co., Boston, who make their shoes under a prison contract with the Virginia penitentiary at Richmond, Va. The company employs 901 male convicts at 42 cents per day, and 56 female convicts at 30 cents a day, or a total of 1,017 persons, of which 16 are employed in making shoe boxes. The company’s average output is said to be 5,000 pairs per day, or an average of five pairs per day, per person. Mr. Lovely adds, “I know of no firm employing free labour and making this grade of shoe, whose output exceeds five per day per person employed, and surely none who get their labour at 42 cents a day. This firm uses no machinery in the lasting department, and the task ranges from 36, 42, and 48 pairs per day, or an average of 42 pairs per day, lasted by hand. The task for McKay sewers is 480 pairs per day, edge trimmers 480 pairs per day, and so on all along the line. The above figures will reveal the fact that the total labour cost, exclusive of foremen, to the Davis Shoe Co., is 8 cents and a fraction per pair.”

* * *

The Giesecke Boot and Shoe Manufacturing Co., of Jefferson City, made a contract in December, 1898, with the Missouri State penitentiary, at Jefferson City, for the convicts of that institution to be employed in the manufacture of footgear. This contract put thousands of dollars in the coffers of the company. The State, now, however, exacts 150 instead of 50 cents per day. Not only has this firm been furnished with shoe machine operators for 50 cents a day, but it has had free water, has paid absolutely nothing for rent, has been furnished with power from a 145-horse power engine, which would cost a manufacturer outside of a prison at least 500 dollars a month on payment to the State of only 100 dollars a month. In Missouri the task of a convict is based upon and usually equal to what a free labourer can perform. The penalty for a convict who fails to perform the task set for him is the whippingpost. From ten to thirty-nine lashes are usually given, and the strap used is made of heavy harness leather, 2m. wide and 18in. long, fastened to a wooden handle 12in. long. The strap will bring out the blood with every blow if the warder so desires.

* * *

There is no doubt that America is the “land of the free,” and if such atrocities were perpetrated on the Congo or on the Rand, wouldn’t the Nonconformist conscience shriek ?

J. Kay

50 Years Ago: Black liberation – George Jackson and political violence (2023)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

George Jackson’s crime was not that he complied in the theft of 70 dollars, but that in prison he could not accept the ignominious terms on which the authorities might have released him. For this crime he was imprisoned for eleven years, seven-and-a-half in solitary confinement, and eventually in August 1971, shot to death.

In prison, in spite of the limitations of his personal background, Jackson began to read seriously, gradually seeking an explanation for the forces, social and historical, underlying his plight. Eventually, he devoured such left-wing and Marxist literature as he could get hold of. Jackson did not become a Socialist. It is doubtful whether his views would fit neatly into any political category. He became an inspiration to the civil rights movement in America, and also to the Black Power movement. Although there is much that is perceptive in Jackson’s views as expressed in The Prison Letters of George Jackson, his understanding of economic relationships and social and political institutions, fall short of a Socialist understanding. If George Jackson was anything, he was a black nihilist.

Jackson claimed to be opposed to capitalism. “The principal enemy must be isolated and identified as capitalism. Our enemy at present is the capitalist system and its supporters.” However, closer analysis would show that in fact what Jackson was opposed to was American-style private enterprise. Jackson sympathized with China and the emerging African states. So he ignored the fact that capitalism is a world mode of production where the means of wealth production are monopolized and controlled either by private owners or a political bureaucratic élite. (…)

Jackson considered that political democracy was a fraud. “Of what value is quasi-political control if the capitalists are allowed to hold on to the people’s whole mode of subsistence?” He believed in leadership and elevated violence. “The people who run this country will never let us succeed to power. Everything in history that was of any value was taken by force.”

There is no doubt that if in some time of crisis Jackson’s views on leadership and violence became practical action, this would lead to disaster. It would compound crisis with death and violence with no possible hope of getting anywhere towards Socialism.

(Socialist Standard, May 1973)

Black Liberation - George Jackson and Political Violence (1973)

From the May 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1960 when George Jackson was eighteen, he was convicted of second-degree robbery for driving the getaway car whilst his friend robbed a petrol station of 70 dollars. For his part in this offence he was sent into the state prison system with a sentence of “one year to life”. Technically, George Jackson was liable to imprisonment for life. In practice it meant that he would serve a minimum of one year and would thereafter appear annually before a parole board who would consider his “fitness to be released”.

The preface of the book Soledad Brothers — The Prison Letters of George Jackson states: “Under this system parole is granted on the basis of the prisoner’s record within the prison, but the prisons themselves are brutal humiliating places where violent racism is commonplace; if a black prisoner resists this degradation he will be penalised and lose parole. Jackson was denied parole year after year. His friend was released in 1963.”

In January 1970 after Jackson had been in prison for ten years, seven-and-a-half of them in solitary confinement, three black prisoners who were at exercise in Soledad Prison and known to be political activists were provoked and shot dead by a prison guard. The guard was exonerated as having committed “justifiable homicide”. Shortly after this was announced, a white guard was thrown to his death from a tier of the prison where Jackson was held. He and two others who came to be known as the “Soledad Brothers” were charged with murder and faced the death penalty.

In August 1970, Jackson's younger brother Jonathan held up a Courthouse and took a judge amongst five hostages under the demand “Free the Soledad Brothers”. In the ensuing violence, both Jonathan and the judge were shot dead. In August 1971, in circumstances which have never been made clear, George Jackson was amongst a group of persons which included prison guards, who were shot dead in prison. Subsequently his co-defendants on the murder charge were acquitted.

This record of violent events which built up over eleven years against the developing political consciousness of its victims exemplifies the crude viciousness of modern American barbarism. These events cut right through the American hypocrisy and its pretensions to be the egalitarian “land of the free". They expose with murderous clarity a system where privilege is maintained by ignorance, hatred and brutality as a conscious instrument of social policy. The prolonged incarceration of George Jackson and his eventual destruction was rooted in the entire fabric and structure of American capitalism. It is both convenient and popular to see his imprisonment and death in isolation from the whole social and economic context, as something unrelated to the general pattern of society. In reality the privileges of the American rich and their monopoly of wealth and power are erected on the squalor of the American poor and where necessary, without hesitation, on the atrocity of a George Jackson’s death.

There are Crimes and Crimes

By any standards, George Jackson was a remarkable individual. He was brought up in the black ghettoes of Chicago and Los Angeles. His family background was not political. His father was a conscientious person, ill-educated himself, struggling hard as an unskilled worker to provide for his family in material surroundings typical of the unrelieved ugliness of those urban slums. This is an atmosphere which produces cynicism as a brittle response to the glaring inequalities of life. These areas after all are the concentration camps for those who are socially and economically rejected, patrolled and held down by armed policemen, and when necessary, the national guard.

More than most, American capitalism glamourizes the ownership of things and accords prestige to personal wealth. At the same time, the opportunities of millions of Americans are restricted by the economic and social conditions of the urban ghetto. In these circumstances, it is difficult for young men to avoid hostile encounters with the police. Like many others, George Jackson was one such young man, and at eighteen, found himself in prison for theft.

The general aim of the state prison regime in America is, through the application of physical and psychological terror, to force the inmates to passively accept their rôle in American society. The aim is to reduce the individual to a state of despair and insignificance. As Jackson himself put it:

This is in keeping with the overall prison conspiracy, i.e. you have no will, you have no choice or control, so be wise — surrender. There’s a sign everywhere your eyes may happen to rest, begging: 'O Lord, help me to accept those things I cannot change.’

With a sentence of “one year to life” for petty theft, the authorities combine two savage pressures. The first is the day-to-day punishment of imprisonment combined with physical assaults and personal humiliation. The second is the blackmail in saying “this year provided you behave, you may be released on parole, or next year” or the year after that, and so on for life.

George Jackson’s crime was not that he complied in the theft of 70 dollars, but that in prison he could not accept the ignominious terms on which the authorities might have released him. For this crime he was imprisoned for eleven years, seven-and-a-half in solitary confinement, and eventually in August 1971, shot to death.

Short of Understanding

In prison, in spite of the limitations of his personal background, Jackson began to read seriously, gradually seeking an explanation for the forces, social and historical, underlying his plight. Eventually, he devoured such left-wing and Marxist literature as he could get hold of. Jackson did not become a Socialist. It is doubtful whether his views would fit neatly into any political category. He became an inspiration to the civil rights movement in America, and also to the Black Power movement. Although there is much that is perceptive in Jackson’s views as expressed in The Prison Letters of George Jackson, his understanding of economic relationships and social and political institutions, fall short of a Socialist understanding. If George Jackson was anything, he was a black nihilist.

Jackson claimed to be opposed to capitalism. “The principal enemy must be isolated and identified as capitalism.” “Our enemy at present is the capitalist system and its supporters.” However, closer analysis would show that in fact what Jackson was opposed to was American-style private enterprise. Jackson sympathized with China and the emerging African states. So he ignored the fact that capitalism is a world mode of production where the means of wealth production are monopolized and controlled either by private owners or a political bureaucratic élite. In world capitalism, although the systems of administration in different states vary, basic economic relationships are essentially the same. This applies to China and the emerging African states. Wage labour is exploited, wealth takes the form of commodities marketed with a view to making profit and capital is accumulated by a minority from the surplus wealth produced by the working class. Moreover, in China and Russia, as much as in America, the capitalist system is held down by a State machine which includes the armed forces and police and prisons.

Jackson considered that political democracy was a fraud. “Of what value is quasi-political control if the capitalists are allowed to hold on to the people’s whole mode of subsistence?” He believed in leadership and elevated violence. “The people who run this country will never let us succeed to power. Everything in history that was of any value was taken by force.”

Futile to Confront

There is no doubt that if in some time of crisis Jackson’s views on leadership and violence became practical action, this would lead to disaster. It would compound crisis with death and violence with no possible hope of getting anywhere towards Socialism. The most that might be achieved on the basis of an immediate worsening of conditions would be that the political controllers might change. Modern history is littered with examples of political power being changed through violent means. But all these examples relate to States where capitalism is undeveloped. Without exception the replacement governments have all embarked on the continued development of capitalism. In the real world where capitalism dominates as a mode of production there would be no other practical alternative. In states where capitalism is more developed, political administration is stabilized either through a state capitalist regime such as Russia, or through political democracy as in Western Europe; in either case the chance of a militant minority confronting or replacing the government through violent means is nil.

The principal facts are these, that in the complex organization of modern industrial States, no government is viable unless it rests upon at least the acquiescence if not the general support of the majority. This would apply to any militant minority attempting to wrest political power. Apart from the difficulty of defeating the existing State machine in open confrontation, they could never hold power because their writ would not run. The only practical test of whether the exercise of political power is possible or not in a developed capitalist State is the degree of acquiescence or support a government can carry.

Apart from this, any movement which is going forward on a basis other than democratic action cannot be a Socialist movement. The equality that Socialists aim for is not only the equality of all men about the means of producing wealth but equality in all the processes of social organization.

Get it Right

The crucial factor which allows the establishment of Socialism is the conscious action of a majority of Socialists. Until there exists a majority of Socialists, only capitalism is possible, regardless of the form of its administration. When that majority is achieved, then it can be assumed that the establishment of Socialism will be politically straightforward.

What Jackson ignored was the regrettable fact that capitalism in America rests upon the political support of the whole population, including the millions of negro voters. His call for violent struggle may well have been an expression of his bitter frustration, but as a useful idea in creating a better world, it was a political irrelevance. It was a mistake stemming from a faulty reading of Marxism for the Black movement to draw inspiration from Chinese state capitalism. Significantly, they are not enthusiastic about Russia, yet there was a time during the earliest phase of the state capitalist revolution when it enjoyed sympathy amongst protestors throughout the world. Just as the capitalist nature of the Russian state has become more obvious year by year, it is inevitable that the same development will take place in China.

The Black Power movement will have to learn that negro workers can only achieve their emancipation along with the emancipation of all mankind.

Pieter Lawrence

Inside the System (2023)

Book Review from the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform, and America’s Punishment System. Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka Kurti. Reaktion Books, £15.95.

The US is characterised here as a carceral state (where ‘carceral’ is connected to words such as ‘incarcerate’ and means ‘related to prison’). More specifically, it is ‘a particular form of capitalist social order managed by a state which prioritizes punishment and repressive social control to safeguard and reproduce itself.’ The US prison system is the largest on the planet, mass incarceration having increased massively since the 1970s (as it has in other countries too). This is not a response to any increase in crime rates, and it is mostly aimed at young black men. It is not just a matter of imprisonment but also covers probation, house arrest, mandatory drug treatment and so on.

Of the many killings by police officers in the US, the best known is the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. This and other deaths led to what the authors refer to as the George Floyd Rebellion, which involved attacking and burning police stations and police cars. It was, they say, not just an attack on the carceral state but ‘the proactive rejection of an entire way of life’, as the carceral state ‘is inextricable from the capitalist division of labor’. The Rebellion died out, partly because of violent state response, but also, it is suggested here, because it became co-opted into ‘the framework of liberal democratic participation’ (though the claims on this point are not very clear).

There have been various attempts to reform the US criminal ‘justice’ system, though many of these just involve making mass incarceration cheaper. In addition there have been moves that the authors regard as more revolutionary, such as defunding or abolishing the police. One activist is quoted as saying, ‘You’re not going to be able to end policing without ending capitalism’, while another argues that defunding campaigns point towards a post-capitalist society, and another refers to the abolition of class society. Sadly, such remarks do not give rise to fuller discussion.

The book’s conclusion points to the alleged advantages of combining abolitionism’s critique of the carceral state with the militant tactics of the George Floyd Rebellion. But it is not clear how setting fire to police stations makes any kind of contribution to the establishment of a democratic world based on co-operation. This volume gives an informative and depressing account of the vicious punishment system in the US but, apart from a few passing references, says little about how to put an end to it.

Paul Bennett

Tiny (URL) Tips (2009)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

 Who would have thought a wee little packet of fake blood could threaten to unravel an entire culture. But so great is the threat of the “Artificial Virginity Hymen” — a kit that helps women fake their virginity — that prominent Egyptian conservatives are calling for an all-out ban. Not only that, they are also demanding the exile of anyone who traffics it.

[Link.]

  

“What creationists believe about human origins we get from the Bible,” said David Menton an acclaimed anatomist and also a creationist. “The creation of the world takes place on page one of the Bible. If you throw out the first page of the Bible you might as well throw out the whole thing. If you can’t live with the first page then pitch out the remaining thousand pages.”

[Link.]

  

The gap between wealthiest 10 percent and the rest of America is worse than at any time on record. Two thirds of all income gains from 2002-7 went to the top 1 percent. The Walton family alone is worth more than the bottom 100 million Americans combined. Wal-Mart is a major player in the “dead peasants insurance” game; it’s alleged that dead peasant insurance payouts are used for executive bonuses:

[Dead Link.]

  

Amnesty International has highlighted a case of a man facing execution in Texas. The human rights group has revealed a Texas man faces execution after jurors at his trial consulted the Bible when deliberating his fate:

[Dead Link.]

  Israel is making preparations to carry out military attacks in Iran after December, a French magazine reported overnight Wednesday:

[Dead Link.]

  

That Haiti needs the attention cannot be overstated. Unemployment hovers at around 70 percent, experts

say, and over half of the population lives in extreme poverty. Violence broke out in June as students demanded an increase in the minimum wage to $5 from $1.75 — which were daily rates, not hourly ones. Haiti’s extremely low labor costs, comparable to those in Bangladesh, make it so appealing:

[Link.]

  

When the Berlin Wall crumbled, East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism. About the same time a new Russian proverb was born: “Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about Capitalism turned out to be the truth.”

[Dead Link.]

  

We are fast approaching the time of the next great battle over evolution. The Neo-creationists will be corporations, and they will argue that they could not possibly be descended from human beings…The rape case of Jamie Leigh Jones was just a logical step forward in the long-standing Republican effort to lock Americans out of the nation’s courthouses, an effort undertaken on behalf of corporate supremacy. A woman is gang-raped by her fellow employees at government contractor KBR. The company says her contract prohibits her from seeking justice in court.

[Dead Link.]

The Great US Presidential Election Show (2000)

From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

US workers, who are getting poorer and working longer, settle in for another edition of the great US presidential election show

Like an over-extended series of sequels that have long outlived the originality and vitality of the original blockbuster, so comes the current edition of the US Presidential Election. When looking at the scripted positions of the extended cast of four candidates (yes four, count ’em) registering in national popularity polls an apt title for this sequel would be “Mission Impossible 2000”.

But first the plot as hyped by the current administration and fully supported by the media. It goes something like this. The United States of America is on a roll of the longest uninterrupted period of prosperity in its entire history. This unforeseen and unprecedented prosperity has positioned the United States in the prime spot to be the economic and political dynamo for the entire new century. The question is who is best to maintain this phenomenal convergence of conditions which America has carefully crafted and is benefiting from.

It sounds like an old story and it is. Like any tired sequel the plot gets weaker, more porous the closer one watches and actually thinks about the drama unfolding before one’s eyes.

The CNN.com web site on August 29 2000 featured a story based upon a Justice Department study that showed nearly 1.5 million children in America had a parent in prison in 1999. That is an increase of over 500,000 to be added to this unfortunate class from 1991. Children with mothers incarcerated rose a startling 98 percent over the past eight years. The prison population as a whole grew by 62 percent from 1991-1999. A rather peculiar trend to parallel the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth, one would think. President Clinton himself unwittingly let a cat out of the bag at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. He announced the findings of a study he commissioned on as to why voter participation was steadily declining. The finding was “Lack of time. People just don’t have enough time now to go and vote.”

We the audience can logically conclude that both of these trends are due to the population’s effort to make ends meet. Thus crimes are committed and jobs worked at for longer hours so increasing the extent of not being able to care for one’s own children or participate in the political process. A most flimsy and inconsistent plot indeed. When one looks at the stars and their dialogue this sequel takes a real nosedive.

Bore and Gush

Vice President Al Gore of the Democratic Party plays the role of the dashing lead actor. “I will fight for you!” is his signature line in this year’s political drama. With his book Earth in the Balance and anticipation of the elimination of the internal combustion petroleum engine in his lifetime, he brings a depth and insight not usually found in such a role.

At the 1988 Democratic Convention he gave a heart-wrenching speech about his sister dying of lung cancer after years of smoking cigarettes. It was later revealed that Al Gore himself was a generous recipient of blood money from the same evil interest that he railed against at that convention. His most infamous line, in a typicaly ridiculous hammy fashion of an overgrandiose actor on the political stage, is: “I took the initiative to invent the internet”.

He opposes the Republican Party plan of a $250 billion tax cut saying it would “benefit the rich”. He instead proposes to use the money for paying for prescription pills for the elderly. Now after the elderly have purchased $250 billion worth of prescription medicine guess who will pocket the money? Yep, the rich pharmacutical companies. The same with food stamps, subsidised housing, whatever, they are all about subsidies to the rich. His signature line should be: “I will fight for you to hand over all the money you created to the rich!” Then again this is political theater, not reality, so you will never hear an actor utter such a line in capitalist politics.

It is interesting to note that both lead actors represent a clash between contemporary political oligarchies. Al Gore picked up the mantel of political power from the same political district that his father held in the State of Tennessee. His arch-rival George W. Bush is the son of the recent American President of Gulf War fame.

As the Republican Party arch-rival in the cast, George W. Bush’s signature line is: “I am a uniter not a divider”. This has to be one of the most laughable and politically naive lines ever uttered by a capitalist politician, particularly coming from an actor who as Governor of the State of Texas, has presided over 300 executions in his state and has vigously defended each one of them, including the execution of a retired grandmother. The cold reality is we live in a class-divided society and, like his father, George W. Bush’s means of “uniting” involves being prepared to slaughter people who pose a “problem” for it, whether they be an Iraqi soldier or an American citizen. The Bush family oligarchy has shown a most sinister means of “uniting” people.

In college he was noted for cocaine use and once dancing nude atop a table at a frat party. That alone tells you what an absurd sequel this election has become. His signature line should be: “I am a death presider and class divider”. But alas, such real life preformaces will not be found in the theater of American politics.

Peculiar populist

It is significant that for the first time ever four different candidates are registering in a national poll on the eve of a US Presidential election. This is because two other parties are starting to gain national support, another indicative trend amidst eight years of so-called unprecedented, uninterrupted prosperity. The American voter is starting to look beyond the two major parties for political solutions.

“The two-party system has become a delusion. On foreign and trade policy, open-borders immigration and corporate influence, Republicans and Democrats are carbon copies of one another. Neither offers voters a real choice. Both parties backed the illegal war in Kosovo. ”

No, the above quote did not come from the World Socialist Party of the United States but was from an internet release by the Reform Party. What was once considered off-the-wall assertions are now gaining currency in the commonsense of American political thinking.

The Reform Party though trots out a most peculiar populist in former Republican lesser player Patrick Buchanan. He is a former speech writer for Presidents Richard Nixion and Ronald Reagan and now fancies himself a wannabe “Peoples President”. True, in the 1996 Republican primary he referred to Senator Bob Dole as “a bell hop for the business round table”. What with those dark suits Dole wore, it was an apt description.

Buchanan decries the loss of jobs in America to overseas factories, giving rise to his “America First” slogan. But, as a vigorous defender to this day of the Nixon administration, he seems to forget about a trade agreement signed under it that dumped cheap China cotton on the American market forcing the closing of dozens of textile factories in the south-eastern United States. But then those commercial interest were prone to donate money to the Democratic Party. And one can also suspect such motives in Al Gore’s crusade against the tobacco industry closely associated with key Republicans. Using state power to wreck the financial backers of one’s opposition party is an accepted scorched earth tactic in American politics. Thus one can see why such a man as Buchanan would strike fear in the two major parties should he attain the White House.

It is only in this context could he be seen as anything remotely resembling a “populist”. Otherwise, he has perfected divisiveness to an art form and generally strikes fear into most everyone else’s hearts as well. This odd populist opposes a woman’s right to an abortion and homosexuals in general. He is also an ardent defender of the 1950s racially-segregated Washington, DC, that he grew up in. To top it off, Patrick Buchanan has raised the alarm that America itself is becoming “balkanized”.

One can plainly see that, far from an alternative to the two major parties, he himself is just another supporter of capitalism having his doubts.

Saving capitalism

This brings us to another doubting supporter of capitalism, Ralph Nader and his Green Party. Unlike Buchanan who relies on cultural observations to express his doubts, Nader in his acceptance speech of his party’s’ nomination has facts to support his doubts. And plenty of them come from this professional “consumer advocate”:

• Consumer debt is at an all time high, totalling over $6 trillion.
• American workers are working an average of 163 more hours per year than 20 years ago.
• Over 20 percent of children were growing up in poverty over the last decade.
• A majority of workers are making less now, inflation adjusted, than in 1979.
• The top one percent of the wealthiest people have more financial wealth than the bottom 90 percent of Americans combined.

Nader correctly proclaims “we can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both“.

And what is his scheme to defend democracy?

“Pluralistic democracy has enlarged markets and created the middle class. Yet the short term, monetized, minds of corporatists are bent on weakening, defeating, diluting, diminishing, circumventing, coopting, or corrupting all traditional countervailing forces that have saved American corporate capitalism from itself.”

Ah! To save American corporate capitalism from itself! Why has not anyone else thought of that? Or is he really that naive as to the other parties political agendas?

Well, at least he knows his role in this madcap, absurd sequel. Ralph Nader, in his quest to save corporate America from itself, is himself the nadir of struggling actors in “Mission Impossible 2000”.

Hopefully this silly series will soon end to give way to another blockbuster like . . . World Socialist President. If the World Socialist Party of the United States at some point in the future were to run a candidate for President and won, their mission would be to abolish the very office they were elected to. A socialist society would have no need for the United States of America or any other nation for that matter. Much less of a head of state. Such an episode would be a sequel to the real hit watched all across America and the world: WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN THE FORMER USA!

Wesley J Lawrimore

(World Socialist Party of the US)

Voice From The Back: The farce must go on (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The farce must go on

Executions continue while work is in progress at Huntsville Prison, Texas, in renovating the spectators’ salon in front of the execution chamber. For reasons of economy, the prison authorities are having the work done by the inmates, who are engaged in making seating more comfortable and spacious for the spectators, and enhancing visibility. Le Monde, 19 September (translated).

Melt-down

Azerbaijan is a former Soviet republic located in a disagreeable spot just south of Russia and just north of Iran. It is know for nothing except oil . . . Scholars who believe that history ended with the collapse of Communism should visit Baku, because in Baku, nothing is settled. Who could predict the future of a country that many in Moscow—volatile, feverish Moscow—believe shouldn’t be a country at all, but instead a province of a reanimated Russian empire. In Teheran, Azerbaijan is seen as an unforgivable contradiction: a secular Shiite sate, a country ripe for Islamization. In ten years’ time Azerbaijan could be an Islamic state, or a new-Communist state, or a capitalist democracy, or a capitalist autocracy, or even part of Russia. New York Times, 4 October.

Relentless pressure (1)

Stress at work is on the increase, with three quarters of health and safety officers saying it is the biggest workplace hazard, according to a TUC survey published today. Guardian, 23 September.

Relentless pressure (2)

On Tuesday the Environment Agency will consider an application from BNFL to increase its emissions of radioactive gases. Mail on Sunday, 18 October.

Be happy!

Revolutionary anti-suicide glass screens are to be introduced for the first time in Britain on London Underground’s £2.7 billion Jubilee Line extension from central to east London. Suicide attempts on the Underground currently average almost three a week. Guardian, 15 October.

Breakdown

“The challenge to the international community is immediate. We can’t wait around. This isn’t going to go away. It’s here, it’s now and it’s urgent.” It was the Prime Minister’s strongest admission so far that the capitalist system may be on the verge of collapse. Sun, 8 October.

Blasphemy!

A top Manchester lawyer is to complain to the advertising watchdog over posters that “encourage people to skive off work,” Paul Nicolls, head of employment law at Dibb Lupton Alsop, is increased by the campaign by the outdoor clothing firm Karrimor. It’s bright blue posters, plastered on the back of some buses in Greater Manchester say: “Phone in sick—Karrimor, the great British mountains company.” Mr Nicolls said: “This is irresponsible marketing, encouraging people to take time off work on the pretext of illness at a time when British businesses are losing the equivalent of £13 billion a year through sickness absenteeism.” Manchester Evening News, 31 August.

Religion + nationalism = murder

Marija Bistrica, Croatia—Pope John Paul II over the weekend beatified the 1940s archbishop of Zagreb as a martyr to “the atrocities of the Communist system”. Beatification is the final step before canonization as a saint. By paying such homage to Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, who was imprisoned by the Tito government as a Nazi collaborator, the Pope stepped into one of the bitterest disputes that linger between Croats and Serbs . . . They [Serbs] have long viewed Cardinal Stepinac as a wartime sympathiser with the pro-Nazi government of Croatia, which killed tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies—a regime that many here see as the precursor of today’s independent state. New York Herald Tribune, 5 October.

And persecution

[With independence] “Everyone from the former USSR was considered hostile,” recalls Janis Kahanovics, vice director of the Naturalisation Council. The Riga authorities only accorded citizenship to those already in the country between the wars, and to their descendants. From one day to the next, more than 700,000 immigrants who had arrived during the Soviet occupation found themselves stateless. Referring to a “violation of human rights” in Latvia, Russia refuses to normalise relations and has enforced economic sanctions. The dispersal by force of a demonstration by the elderly, for the most part Russian speakers, and a parade of Latvian Waffen-SS veterans through Riga in March, have contributed to the straining of bilateral relations. Le Monde, 3 October (translated).

Nice little earner

The government is to press on with controversial plans to privatise the state agency that owns Porton Down biological warfare unit. Despite opposition from UK arms manufacturers, the Ministry of Defence is about to appoint financial advisers to review how best to handle a sell-off. Financial Mail on Sunday, 18 October.

Voice From The Back: The Terminator Terminated? (2010)

The Voice From The Back Column from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Terminator Terminated?

In the big budget movies of some years ago Arnold Schwarzenegger often played the all-action hero. Today he is the governor of California and is finding that in an economic downturn capitalism isn’t so easy to manage. One of the causes of that state’s economic deficit is the growing number of prisoners and the consequent growth of economic deficit in the state’s budget. “The fact that 9.5% of spending now goes to prisoners while only 5.7% goes to universities – 25 years ago, prisons got 4% and universities 11% – is indeed a harsh indication of California’s fall from grace.” (Time, 13 February) Schwarzenegger has proposed three different ideas lately to deal with the problem. One is to pay Mexico to build prisons and have US prisoners in them, another is to spend more of the state’s budget on prisons and finally he proposes to privatise prisons as a cheaper way of running things. Twist and turn as they may capitalism’s politicians are finding that capitalism throws up problems that are incapable of easy Hollywood solutions. Here is one though – Capitalism? Exterminate!

US Labour Pains

Barrack Obama’s election to the US presidency was supported by many American trade unionists, but as unemployment rises much of that support is evaporating. “Richard Trumka does not mince his words. The former miner now leads America’s largest union body, the AFL-CIO, describes George Bush’s language as: ‘stolen elections, ruinous tax cuts for the rich, dishonest wars, financial scandal, government sponsored torture, flooded cities and finally economic collapse.” Barrack Obama is a huge improvement, of course, but unemployment is close to 10% and the government must do something, reckons Mr Trumka.” (Time, 13 February)  Trumka like many supporters of capitalism thinks by government intervention of $400 billion of what he calls “immediate job-creating investment” the problem of rising unemployment can be solved. He is living in cloud cuckoo land. Capitalism has periodic slumps and booms and governments know that getting the capitalist class to invest during a slump is near impossible.

£23 Million and £1 a Day

We live in society full of inequalities. We see people starving and kids dying from lack of clean water, but surely the most hardhearted of us must scream at this news item when we realise that many members of the human race must survive on less than a £1 a day. “This is a bauble that even a banker with an intact bonus would struggle to buy – the 507.5 carat, flawless white-coloured Cullinan Heritage Diamond which was sold to a Chinese buyer yesterday for $35.3 million (£23 million)… The sale to Chow Tai Fok Jewellery in Hong Kong highlights the growing importance of China in the global diamond market.” (Times, 27 February) It also highlights the madness of a society that allows some useless bastard in China to consume the equivalent in wealth of millions of kids staying alive. Capitalism sucks.

Demonic Drivel

In order to keep those collection plates full religious groups have to appear modern and “with it”. The Roman Catholic Church is no exception to this rule and compared with some American fundamentalist Protestant churches with their opposition to evolution they may appear almost scientific. It is doubtful though if even those American bastions of superstitious nonsense could outdo the Vatican’s chief exorcist. “The growing clerical sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that the Devil is at work inside the Vatican according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist. Father Gabriele Amorth said that the Pope “fully believes in liberation from evil, because the Devil lodges in the Vatican.” (Times, 11 March) In case you imagine that this is just some crazy old priest who has been indulging in too much communion wine it should be pointed out that he has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years. One of his claims is that he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession. Like all supporters of private property society the religious zealots will go to any lengths to support the status quo even calling up demonic myths to explain social problems.

Pathfinders: Locked up in lockdown (2020)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Locked up in lockdown

A US prison inmate with 12 months left on an 8-year sentence for selling crack cocaine is confined to his cell during lockdown with a cell-mate suffering from Covid-19, so in panic he smuggles a phone message out to plead for help, claiming a staff member told him half of the inmates were going to die:

  ‘So all of a sudden, out of the blue, fucking everybody just fucking dying and getting sick and shit. Like this shit serious as fuck. Like, they literally leaving us in here to die’ (LINK).

The Ohio authorities immediately deny the claims, saying the man is exaggerating and that there’s nothing wrong with his cell-mate or with the prison. But given the extent of confusion and misinformation at the moment, especially in a country with a self-proclaimed genius as president who recently announced that he had ‘tested positively toward negative’ for the virus, it’s fair to ask who has got their facts right here. One hint that it might not be the Ohio authorities comes from an LA Times report that 70% of inmates at a federal prison in California have tested positive for the virus.

Up-to-date figures for UK prison infections have been suspiciously absent from media reports, despite warnings from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in March that up to 60% of prisoners could become infected with the coronavirus (Guardian, 23 March).

The suspicion here is that while the public may have sympathy for the plight of care-home residents, there’s no such concern for prison inmates who deserve everything they get, so journalists are ignoring the subject. But as the Guardian article points out, the most dangerous inmates have single cells in maximum security conditions and are therefore not at risk, whereas for the lowest-risk inmates, jailed for often minor misdemeanours, ‘the local jails may well transform into charnel houses’.

Prisons are of course the one place that can really enforce a round-the-clock lockdown, but because of overcrowding there is little realistic chance of maintaining any social distancing. A Telegraph article in April suggested that the number of cases in UK prisons was already six times the published figure, and that lockdown was expected to continue for another 12 months, sparking fears of prison riots (Telegraph, 28 April).

In socialism one common-sense move would be the immediate release of the large majority of inmates jailed for minor property or drug-related offences. Capitalist governments tend to ignore common sense especially where prisons are concerned. Around 60,000 people are sent to prison in the UK each year, of whom nearly 70 percent are jailed for non-violent offences, and nearly 50 percent for six months or less (Independent, 21 May).

Study after study has shown that prison is the least-effective way of tackling crime, yet the UK has the highest rate of imprisonment in Western Europe, and the US and China the highest rates in the world.

But the pandemic caused a shock to the system so in April the UK Ministry of Justice proposed an early-release scheme for up to 4,000 low-risk prisoners. The scheme was soon suspended after media furore when 6 prisoners were accidentally released ‘due to human error’, despite the fact that none of these were dangerous and all returned of their own volition when asked (bbc.in/2ZwSXVV).

As we go to press, only 57 of the 4,000 have been released, and prison virus cases have reached 1,000.

Animal rights campaigners often rightly expose the brutality with which capitalism treats battery farm animals, packing them in so tightly they become sick with stress and self-inflicted injuries, yet there is little mention of how society treats its battery farm humans, many of whom experience Dickensian overcrowding conditions and where incidences of self-harming have hit record highs, with UK occurrences now averaging one every eight minutes (Guardian, 30 April).

Nice and Nasty

Some pundits are asking the obvious question, what social practices might change in a post-Covid world, due to the perceived need for continued social distancing and contact tracing? We can predict the answer to that. None. After going through the motions for a while, capitalism will revert to type, cramming people together in vehicles, workplaces, social outlets, hospitals, care homes and prisons in order to save money. Capitalism is, as they say, nasty, brutish and short-sighted.

But socialists could ponder the question of agreed social practices more broadly, by considering how viruses work. In the first place, viruses come in various strains, which compete against each other. Where potential hosts are physically in close proximity, the most virulent or aggressive strain of that virus out-competes all the other strains and spreads rapidly through the population. If a virus born in these conditions makes the species jump, it is the nasty stupid form, not the nice benign form.

If animals and people are dispersed, however, the opposite happens. The most virulent strain is stopped at the host border, just like every other strain, so it has no competitive advantage. In fact, it suffers a competitive disadvantage. Instead the advantage goes to the strain that can survive in its host the longest, which typically means the most benign strain. So the evolutionary tendency of viruses is to become less virulent with distance, until they are able to live in the host with little or no inconvenienc, like the common cold (New Scientist, 20 May).

The 2009 swine flu epidemic evolved in pig farms in Mexico and spread rapidly because the pigs were crammed in together. The Covid-19 virus similarly spread because of densely crammed animals in Chinese wet markets. Human behaviour therefore played a critical role. Capitalism is about chasing money not learning lessons, but socialism will want to ask big questions, not just about farming practices, but about social and working practices too. The more you cram organisms up close and personal, the more you are asking for trouble. That has implications for urban or rural population densities, transport, recreational activities, everything.

Nobody is ever going to stop viruses, the most abundant and successful life form on Earth, if one can even call them a life form. The human race is not going to get wiped out by this virus, and probably not by any virus. But never say never. If we’re going to minimise the likelihood of a future pandemic of truly biblical proportions we need a truly smart and benign social system to do it, not a stupid and virulent one that ignores every lesson and carries on regardless.

Paddy Shannon

Beggar’s belief (1999)

From the January 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Capitalism creates a mass of people who are permanently unemployed and then has to devise means to control them.

In 1728 John Gay wrote The Beggar’s Opera for the London stage. It was an attack on the corruption of Robert Walpole’s government of private men and on the self-interested motivations that were now to drive society. It featured a central character called Mr. Peachum, a turn-key (gaoler), who aided, organised and fenced for the criminal fraternity of London (representing the cut-throat selfishness of Walpole’s ministers) and then turned them in to the authorities when they were no longer profitable to him.

It is not surprising that such a play should appear with the arrival of capitalism within society, with its emphasis on mercenary personal gain replacing any notion of loyalty or community. It is also not surprising that a prison was the chosen setting, nor that the law was seen as a corrupt tool in the hands of a selfish few. What is surprising, is how durable this image from the dawn of Modernity has turned out to be.

The prison was a common feature of 18th century writing, because it was emerging as a new and devastating weapon in the class war. Under feudalism the population could be controlled by fear, by selected spectacular public executions, to keep the whole thing running. Emergent industrial capitalism, however, needed a disciplined workforce, ready to clock on and work like machines, and obey. For industrial capitalism, gory punishments and executions were wasteful, and did not create sufficient internal discipline. Other methods were required.

Thus, with the advance of capitalism, we see less and less reliance on execution as a means of social control, and more and more on the rise of the prison. It is telling that the prominent liberal philosopher Jeremy Bentham advanced, for his idea of a Utilitarian Utopia, the Panopticon, a prison/workhouse/school, wherein from a central tower an observer could see into all the individual cells, without being seen themself. The idea was that the uncertainty of not being detected would prevent the inhabitants from stepping out of line, and thus there would be no offences. This was a fantasy of the factory, perfectly compliant workers, in their place, and knowing their own duty and work. It is also an image from which capitalism has never been able to escape, because it is precisely that discipline that it needs to function. This applies not just in the workplace, but in the whole of society.

Surplus population

The big problem for capitalism is that it contains the seeds for its own discord, so whenever social discipline breaks down prison is deployed to try and patch things up. The prison remains as a solid reminder of the anti-social nature of capitalism.

Capitalism creates such social breakdown because its creates a “surplus population”. Capitalism can, to keep up the compulsion on the workers to work, only fully maintain those workers who succeed in selling their labour power. Some of the rest are maintained at a lower level as an “industrial reserve army” to be used in the event of production expanding. Beyond them is a stagnant pool of the permanently unemployed who are regarded as “unemployable”. In recent years, as economic growth has slowed and the introduction of labour-saving methods continued, the size of this pool has grown. As far as the capitalist is concerned these workers, since they are on no use to them, can go hang (quite literally in the past).

Thus Noam Chomsky has spoken of “a kind of superfluous population there’s no point in educating because there’s nothing to do with them. You put them in prison because we’re a civilized people and you don’t send death squads out to murder them” (interview with David Barsamian, 1971).

The facts for America bear this out. In California education budgets have been slashed, and prison officers earn 30 percent more than lecturers, with a massive increase in the use of prisons. In that state alone over 130,000 people were held in prison in 1995, and it was still rising then. California has allocated $3.2 billion extra to its prison budget since 1992. Nor is California alone, and nor is it the worst. In 1993 California had 607 prisoners per 100,000 population, Texas had 700, and Georgia had 730. The combined totals of the three most populated European states (France, UK, Germany) only reached 84 per 100,000 head of population in the same year. In 1997 in the USA the figure was 645.

In 1995 5.4 million Americans were within the prison system (that includes remand, on parole, in prison, etc.), which works out as about 5 percent of the adult male population. The prison system has been deployed, to great effect, both to ameliorate the unemployment statistics (all those prisoners don’t show up) and to control the “socially excluded”. Within the vast network of controls, the US poor are being restrained and disciplined. This is on top of the increasing number of restraints being imposed by the American “welfare” system.

In recent years in Britain, both under the Tories and Labour, the prison population has began to shoot up as our masters, realising the bankrupt nature of their policies, and the stagnant nature of modern capitalism, decided to copy the US model. According to Home Office Statistics for 1997, there were 61,114 people in prison in the UK, 5,833 more than the previous year, and increase of 11 percent. The prison population has increased by 37 percent since 1993 (when it was 44,570), and it is clear that it is the greater use of custodial sentences that has caused that increase. The number of prisoners per 100,000 head of population has also increased to 111 (120 in England and Wales, 119, in Scotland and 95 in Northern Ireland), second only to Portugal in Europe.

What’s more is the increasing use of private prisons, selling them to a whole bunch of Peachums, to make a profit from locking up the poor (Gay is still with us). The massive amount of spending on prisons is going to create a demand to keep the prisons full (which will be complemented by police arrest quotas), to justify the payments and swell the security firms’ profits. As the system gets more and more expanded, more firms are being allowed a slice of the prison cake. In August this year, two months after the 1000th convict was tagged for home detention (a cheap and easy modern equivalent of the Panopticon, to enable the government to extend prison control even further), the government announced the winning firms that had tendered to administer these schemes.

The Curfew Orders which necessitate tagging are a way of subtly increasing the effect of prison, and controlling the numerous “petty offenders” for whom prison is too expensive and wasteful and option

More discipline

In April, the government announced that it was going to extend its “Welfare to Work” scheme to some lucky young prisoners, to help them find work (and thus buck the 76 percent recidivism rate for young offenders). This linking (apart from being a naked attempt to try and use their “captive audience” to increase the success figure for the New Deal) demonstrates the intrinsic values of the New Con, that it is a device by which the government is trying to control the surplus population, and allocate them to work, whenever they can find it for them. Already they are embarking on making it mandatory for single mothers to attend their initial New Deal interviews. Increasingly more and more strings are attached to “welfare”. Inspectors can call round at recipients homes and look round for signs of co-habitation, with a de-facto search warrant, under threat of extra-judicial punishment (removal of benefits).

Prison is also a device by which to promote and re-enforce racial division in society (as if creating a “criminal class” isn’t divisive enough). In Britain 1.5 percent of the British male population are Caribbean, however a staggering 10.4 percent of the British male prison population are likewise Caribbean. Of the female prison population, 12.9 percent were Caribbean, while only 1.8 percent of the general female population are.

The racism aspect is worsened when one considers that some 2,720 immigrants are held in “Detention Centres” as what the Home Office euphemistically calls “non-Criminal Prisoners”, part of the government’s attempts to prevent immigrants entering the country.

Also prison was used extensively for fine defaulters, of whom some 6,300 found their way to gaol, helping victimise the poor of society even more.

It is worth remembering, that throughout the Thatcher Years, police pay awards were significantly above other public sector pay awards (such as nurses and teachers), as the government fought to secure the loyalty of the police force. The result of this can be seen in the difference between the police involvement in the Miners’ Strike (with an illegal national police force being established, and the miners’ freedom of movement restricted) and recent events in Australia, where the police refused to intervene in the dockers’ dispute telling the government straight that they should fight their own battles. Also, increasingly, local councils are reliant on Close Circuit Television Cameras (with ever increasing sophistication) to keep an eye on us and ensure we are behaving (that damned panoptic eye again). We are not judged to be responsible enough to go about our own lives.

Other attacks on basic liberties abound, police stop and search powers are increased, the right to silence is removed, the right to trial by jury is decreased, freedom of movement is restricted. The change of government has made no difference. Increasingly the state is trying to shape and control our lives through bureaucracy or through the police.

The only solution open to capitalism now, faced with social decay and chaos, is to criminalise the “surplus population”, to lock them up, to take control of them and increase discipline throughout society. Capitalism’s only solutions are brutal and barbaric, and in 1997 70 inmates of prisons killed themselves.

Socialism offers to end the social conditions that cause that breakdown and necessitate enforced discipline, offering instead self-worth, and freedom of association in production, a strong inclusive social identity. The prison is not a symbol of capitalism. Capitalism is a prison, and it is imperative for us to try and break out of it.

Pik Smeet