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Soviet cogitations: 4764
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 20 Jul 2007, 06:59 Ideology: Marxism-Leninism Forum Commissar  28 Mar 2014, 07:55
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-many ... ail-2012-3
The "War on Drugs" means that now six million people are now in jail in the United states. Quote: Currently? it has 760 prisioners per 100,000 citizens. That's over a 450% increase in three decades. Quote: The quote that is mentioned in that article comes from this article: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/a ... ntPage=all Quote: Quote:  "You say you have no enemies? How is this so? Have you never spoken the truth, never loved justice?" - Santiago Ramón y Cajal Forum Rules 28 Mar 2014, 15:03
Those are the kinds of statistics that are hard to argue with.
Of course, gulags had hard labour to death and were filled with many good Marxists so the quantity over quality problem is present. However, doesn't take away from the fact Murrika is not the land of the free and home of the brave, but a place with arbitrary incarceration based on Protestant morality. Locking people up for smoking a doobie... I'm not even super pro-drugs or anything but bloody hell! 29 Mar 2014, 03:48
I'm no fan of unrestricted access to drugs either, but it's pretty clear that US drug laws have been a very handy way to maintain class warfare (and plenty of racism too) under terms which appear much more politically neutral.
I would expect that now that political will and public support for draconian drug laws seems to be waning they'll turn towards using pretexts like terrorism and censorship to maintain both their stranglehold on Capital and the GULAG needed to protect it. The usefulness in allowing worker movements to destroy themselves with drugs is becoming evident now that other pretexts are available. It's really only going to get worse as technology makes it more and more practical for a small group to oppress a larger one. 29 Mar 2014, 14:21
Another aspect of the issue is the rise of private prison companies. These companies have an incentive to see more people locked up and this is especially true for young, non-white prisoners as they are more profitable to incarcerate.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/07/higher ... e-prisons/
Soviet cogitations: 1533
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 10 Oct 2007, 15:55 Ideology: Marxism-Leninism Party Member 30 Mar 2014, 03:08
It's a race and class issue... An example is the 100:1 crack to powder cocaine ratio, which if I recall correctly they reduced a bit.
We have beaten you to the moon, but you have beaten us in sausage making.- Nikita Khrushchev
30 Mar 2014, 09:08
What's worse is that the war on drugs has created a brutal war in Mexico, killing over 100,000 people. All in all it's such a horrible situation that I can't even imagine a way out. Even partial or complete legalization and taxation, moving resources to the medical and psychiatric fields, release of all drug-use related prisoners wouldn't resolve things; even after this war is declared a failure, it will take several generations of ruined lives to truly mitigate this problem.
"The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
30 Mar 2014, 19:08
US has more prisoners per head than Russia these days, right?
 Apparently it's doubled since 2008 as well. And imagine how many private contractor scavengers are feeding on all of this.  
Soviet cogitations: 1078
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 21 Sep 2013, 03:08 Ideology: Trotskyism Party Member 22 Apr 2014, 18:10
sans-culotte wrote: By leaps and bounds, actually. Not even Rwanda comes close, or the supposed "gulag state" Cuba. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... ation_rate 25 Apr 2014, 21:36
Wow, I remember we had a parity as the top two in the mid 00s. Something went very bad in the US since then.
25 Apr 2014, 22:09
We realized there was money to be made off of prisoners.
 26 Apr 2014, 08:55
The denial of voting rights for felons also disenfranchise a great deal of these people. The disproportionate attack on American people of color during the war on drugs, partially through that method, has enabled a kind of vertical gerrymandering on the part of capitalists most conducive for the prison industrial complex and the invokers of racism you find winning the hearts and minds of my equally oblivious and numerous compatriots. About 40-50 years of this and the problem entrenches itself to a terrifying degree.
The prison industry is built on a solid bed of AstroTurf. Judges are voted in often for their image as "tough on crime." It feels like a confirmation of Marxism to see that the principle obstacle to solving the problem is ultimately that workers aren't being reached, at least not enough. This is easily among the worst of capitalism's specific harms and among its most depressing. 26 Apr 2014, 09:13
sans wrote: In Russia's case it's a somewhat different story; there it's mostly related to the fact that as a borderline third world country, and without powerful social and moral institutions in society, crime often appears to be an attractive proposition in the 'risk vs. reward' calculation. The 'nothing to lose' principle was very powerful and accurate for many young Russian men in the 90s, and for many still is today. Of course that principle also exists in the US, since there too the allure of easy money, the constant cultural pressure toward wealth and success, the call for strong independent masculinity, these things definitely play a role in the cultivation of the criminal mindset, and naturally things have only gotten worse since the beginning of the 2008 recession/depression, when in the midst of middle and lower classes falling on hard times, the wealthy have become only more decadent. Still, unlike in the US, in Russia drug use by itself doesn't generally result in incarceration. "The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
26 Apr 2014, 09:22
Red_Son brings up an invaluable point, and probably the most interesting one out of the whole thread. Thread triumphantly won.
26 Apr 2014, 12:33
It's sick that the state would pay private prisons a extortionate amount, more than it cost to privately educate someone, than claim that they can't fund social services, due to public debts and budget deficits. The fact that most of these prisoners are not violent just makes it worse in my view. It shows how much the state has been captured by bourgeois interests.
Part of the blame lies with the public because they believe in this "tough on crime" racist BS and perpetuate crime as prison is basically a university for criminals and being shut out of the legitimate economy will make committing crimes a necessity to feed themselves. Regarding Red_Son's video, I'm glad he said that because he just discredited himself and I can't wait to see this guy six-feet under. I hope the irony is not lost on him because he has leeched from government property for decades and is more parasitical than the vast majority of blacks (suggesting that the vast majority of poor does disservice to the white working-class, who have been shafted by capitalism). |
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