Prisons: The Ultimate in "Social Spending"

In many ways the New Deal was one of the worst things that has ever happened in the history of humankind. That is a strong statement, unless you consider the possible alternatives. Capitalism was collapsing in the 1930's. If you believe, as I do, that much of the pain and suffering that the world has endured since is directly because of the prevailing economic order, then you can blame FDR.

What? He's your liberal hero of the century? 

Why?

The people who marched and struggled and bled for the eight hour day, the weekend, minimum wages, and an end to child labor were unionized laborers. FDR did what he had to to preserve the system as much as he could given the immense amount of social unrest in light of capitalism having begun to crumble. And it was a victory for the elite.

How? The welfare state.

And now we find ourselves with the second great economic collapse in the history of Capitalism. And despite what the media might have you think, the reasons are clear:

Productivity is the amount of "stuff" made per hour. If you understand that in order for Capitalists to make money, that stuff cannot just be produced--it has to be purchased. Ultimately, wage-earners in the United States are expected to buy up most of that stuff (and they mostly did during the "Fordism" era of Capitalism). But when you have wages plateau and productivity continues to rise, the workers can no longer afford all that stuff. If workers cannot afford to buy up all that surplus stuff since the 70's by relying on their wages, then how is it getting bought up? How is the inevitable drop in aggregate demand avoided?

That's a 2 part answer: debt, and the State. Mostly everyone is familiar with the former of these answers and the mumbo jumbo that goes with it: credit default swaps, sub-prime mortgages, credit cards, etc. But few seem to understand the latter, especially among liberals and the left.

When each worker produces this much more than can be affordability consumed by society, it leads to a whole lot of junk left over that is sitting in a warehouse somewhere and a whole lot of labor that isn't being translated into capital for the boss. This is what Marx termed "overproduction" or "over-accumulation." When this happens, the capitalist needs 2 things to happen,

(1) Some productively employed people need to stop producing for society, and

(2) The level of consumption needs to be preserved.

If only (1) happens, then the amount of people taking in cash to be able to consume drops even more, which  leads to a further drop in aggregate demand. If only (2) happens, that is, if people are just given more money by the boss so that they can consume more, then the cut the bosses get from increasing productivity goes to the workers instead. So what does (1) plus (2) equal? The state, buying a lot of stuff for people who are kept unemployed, or unproductively employed.

Below is a graph of US government spending. It's almost creepy how much this graph has in common with the one above:

Liberals like to pretend that all this spending is helping us. You know, social safety net, make the poor not as poor, pay for it using all that wealth of the rich.

Except the more "social spending" we seem to do, the bigger the gap between the rich and the poor becomes. So who exactly is all this spending helping? You might expect a group of people who crash land on a desert island would have a higher quality of life then the people being "helped out" by our urban projects and welfare roles. And then you have success stories like education:

And then you have all the countless government jobs, the kind that add nothing of value to our society. I am not picking on the unfortunate souls who happen to find themselves in these jobs.

So what is the real effect of all this spending? The real reason is there's is a lot of stuff out there that the leisure class needs to be bought up, and they are happy to have the government to buy it for us when we're not able. That's why we've built fighter jets that the melt in the rain, "bridges to nowhere," and why we've subsidized for corn that gets thrown in a barn somewhere to rot. People act like federal spending is somehow charity for "lazy social leeches" or, the liberal alternative, "those poor people who just can't seem to be able to help themselves." But you don't make anyone richer by buying them food, prescription drugs, or even DVD players. The people who get rich from all this are the people who get paid: capitalists.

There is no better example this then the prison-industrial complex.

Angela Davis wrote "Are Prisons Obsolete," in 2003, aiming at prisons as the next major focus of American abolition. Michelle Alexander's recently published "The New Jim Crow" demonstrates the undismissable links between our racial caste system and the emergence of our prison state. Experience, for those who have it, and simple reflection for those that don't, tells us that the term "corrections" is laughable given the contemporary prison system. Our system is not about treatment or rehabilitation. It is not even about punishment (though this is often how it is sold to the more fearful or zealously law-and-order types among us. It is about profit.

Prison combine the two most important functions for government during overproduction. It prevents workers from producing, and it leads to huge amounts of consumption.

It costs more money to lock up someone for a year in New Jersey then to send them to Princeton. Check out this great graphic by publicadministration.net, which describes the outrageous bill that the State is willing to pay to "protect" us. From whom? Non-violent drug offenders, mostly of color, mostly poor. Alexander  lays out in horrifying detail the policing practices that turn a social problem that effects every race almost equally (drug use) into a "war" that is a form of racialized social control not unlike Jim Crow. It is this racist system that leads to such high rates of imprisonment for people of color: in 2007 the rate of incarceration for white men was 773 per 100,000, for black men 4,618 per 100,000, despite the fact that rates of drug use and sales among whites and blacks are more or less the same.

"Our research shows that blacks comprise 62.7 percent and whites 36.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prison, even though federal surveys and other data detailed in this report show clearly that this racial disparity bears scant relation to racial differences in drug offending. There are, for example, five times more white drug users than black. Relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In large part because of the extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses, blacks are incarcerated for all offenses at 8.2 times the rate of whites. One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 in the United States is in state or federal prison, compared to one in 180 white men." -Human Rights Watch

The left in this country has been off track for a long time. They have come to believe that the state will protect the vulnerable from the excesses of capitalism. They have confused a workers' state with a welfare state. But the state's role in capitalism, regardless of the form of that state, is not to protect us; it is to serve the rich. Administer the affairs of the ruling class. And in a welfare state society like the United States or Europe, the state is meant to protect consumption when it is threatened by capitalists' own avarice. Not seeing this, many on the left have embraced state charity, instead of helping to organize working class people to take care of their own needs, resist their oppressors, and find empowerment. They have looked to above for salvation instead of working to build it from the ground up. And they have been complicit in giving the rich the biggest possible tool--in the form of the state--to use against us all. And it's getting bigger all the time. Think about it: if a big state could or would protect us from capitalism, then why is corporate power, and the gap between the rich and the poor, worse now then ever?

A Dream

Tell me if this sounds idealistic and immature:

It is my belief that a racist white working class man from, say, South Boston, and a young black woman who has only know white people in the context of discrimination and prejudice who is from, say, Roxbury, could find themselves fighting side by side for their mutual salvation at an Occupy protest, could lock arms in defiance of the police state that has oppressed them both, and in a moment of co-empowerment find solidarity that transcends prejudice. It is my conviction that such moments are all that can really meant by "smash racism." And, it is my hope that the revolutionaries of the Occupy movement will embrace these moments, as opposed to preventing them before they can happen.

Talk, As Long As You Don't Incite

"Little in the way of expression is outlawed under the United States Constitution, but an act which incites a lawful forceful response is unlikely to pass as expressive speech."
-Justice Frances A. McIntyre 

I'm not a lawyer. But this line is truly terrifying. It seems to me that the only sort of free speech that needs protection by the Bill of Rights is speech that incites an otherwise "lawful" forceful response. This interpretation seemingly gives any legislative body the right to pass laws legalizing a forceful responses to any speech they see fit, and thus strip said speech of any First Amendment protection. The question is not whether the Constitution "outlaws" expression; the question is whether it prevents local and state executives and legislatures from outlawing expression. According McIntyre, it doesn't. Meaning, there is no utility to the Bill of Rights at all.

Also, I remember there being something about "assembly" in the First Amendment as well, though McIntyre seems to have neglected to mention that in his decision (you can read the entire thing here).

 The fact is everyone should have realized that the courts would side with Menino regardless of the merits of the case. This demonstrates that the system is corrupt whenever the rights of ordinary citizens are concerned, particularly when they are taking part in activities that threaten the system itself (even if those actions only consist of speech and assembly). If you search your feelings, I am confident that you will come to the same conclusion I have; in this case, the law meant nothing. Which begs the question, why have the law at all? Why have these courts? Why should we ask for something (protection) from a corrupt system instead of doing it ourselves? If the system has made it explicitly clear, yet again, that rights are only afforded to those that either have a lot of money or don't expect anything to change, then why are we pleading with that system instead of trying to bring it down?

"I Worked Really Hard to Get Where I Am"

I hear this all the time. It is meant to somehow be proof that the meritocracy is real.

I think it mostly has to do with people feeling threatened that you are taking something away from them by suggestion that "hard work" isn't actually the key to success that people pretend it is. As if you are accusing them of cheating. Or maybe people are still steaming about lazy co-workers they had somewhere down a few rungs on the ladder. Either way, it is not at all relevant.

Imagine for a second that each number stands for a kind of person. 1s are people that have worked really hard and have been rewarded with upward mobility; they have "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps." (Ignore for a second that no one ever does this all by themselves.) 2s are people that are rich but don't work very hard, and so on.

When people claim that they belong to group 1, and that that somehow proves we live in a meritocracy, what they are saying is "If there is anyone who is a 1, then the meritocracy is real." But that's not true. We only have a meritocracy if groups 2 and 3 don't exist. There can be a handful of people in group 1, and of course, there is. But there is a TON of people in groups 2 and 3 as well. As a social worker, I work everyday with people in group 3. Most of our country is actually inhabited by group 3.

And, to be even clearer, groups 2 and 3 don't just exist, they are essential for Capitalism. Profit is only made by exploiting surplus labor; that is, people need to be made to work harder then they get paid for (group 3). In fact, most of the people who are actually producing value for society are not considered "successful." 

So next time someone pulls this out don't argue with them about whether its true or not. Just explain to them that that doesn't actually matter.

Two Victories Worth Being Proud Of

I have a dilemma to propose to you. There are two major victories for the Occupy movement so far that are really worth mentioning. It is difficult to tell which one is more worth being proud of.
 
Victory #1: "Outing the Ringers"
Thanks to Jay Smooth for so eloquently explaining the mess we've made for TV talking heads.



I can't say it better than Jay Smooth did, but it does bring me great satisfaction, and it should bring us ALL great satisfaction. The more ridiculous these mouthpieces start to look, and the more ridiculous their defends start to look, the less people will be willing to take them seriously. And that's a great thing.

Victory #2: "Outing the Imposters"
Victory number 2 was touched on by Chris Hedges in this recent column, as well as an interview he did down at Occupy Wall Street (around 4:19)



There are a lot of people out there who have spoken a lot of empty words and meanwhile deliberately sold out the people they pretended to represent. None are more despicable than the politicians who make up the Democratic Party. At least the GOP is honest about working for rich people day in and day out. The Democrats have always been willing to give lip service in order to channel honest grievances into a corrupt and fruitless political process for their own sakes. But Hedges is right to call out unions and Moveon.org as well, and we can add the million other faux progressive organizations to that list. Over the next few months we will watch as these hypocrites scramble to try to avoid their impending irrelevance, either by attempting to co-opt us or by simply hitching a ride: "This what we had in mind the whole time, we swear!" That's the important thing to remember--any organization that was serious in its opposition to the United States' plutocratic system could have organized a real struggle instead of just talked. Now that everyone knows what real struggle looks like, the curtain has been lifted, and these people have been revealed for what they are: complicit.

The attempts at co-optation have already begun. The other night a lackey for Alan Khazei attempted to pass a resolution at an Occupy Boston GA to bring politicians to our camp in order to build "unity" or some such nonsense. But this lackey did not identify himself as a lackey. He pretended to be a protester. And the best part? The resolution was brought to the GA when most of the rest of Occupy Boston was out marching. Alan Khazei, consider yourself outed.

I've Got a List of Demands Written on the Palm of My Hand

(Updated Below)

Why we are giving into the pressure of outsiders trying to discredit us is beyond me. Our demands aren't clear enough? And that's a problem because...?

It's a problem for the people seeking to co-opt us and/or marginalize the Occupy movement because they want most of all to get into a technocratic discussion of why we can't have what is our right as human beings to have. Of course no technical tweaks will offer any reprieve of our grievances; our collective alienation, oppression, and dehumanization are built into the system itself. And of course the powers that be know that, and as long as we are talking about specific reforms we play into their hands.

This movement is at it's best when it creates an opportunity to practice community and democracy outside the system. Our foremost demand should be to continue to do just that, and for others to do it as well. It is at it's worst when we allow ourselves to be portrayed as a party that people can shop around for. We are NOT the left wing's answer to the Tea Party. We aren't another party--we are a new party that doesn't require parties, because party systems are undemocratic.

So if people must have a list of demands, in order to show other people what we stand for, and to give common cause for others to join us, then perhaps that following list will suffice:

1. We demand the right to represent ourselves in a democratic fashion.
2. We demand the right to speak about our non-freedoms however we want, whenever we want, whereever we want.
3. We demand the right to have a dialogue with each other about how to build a better world for ourselves.
4. We demand that we and every person on the planet is guaranteed all human rights, including but not limited to:
1. Education 
2. Healthcare
3. Nutritious food 
4. Shelter befitting a human being as defined by the person themself
5. Productive work of a person's choice that is not exploited by others for profit
6. The right to love who we want, however we want
7. The right to clean wind, water, soil, and air
8. The right to associate with others as we see fit and to engage in community in ways we find fulfilling
5. We demand the right to control our own destiny and the destiny of all fruits of our labor.
6. We demand an end to alienation and economic exploitation.
7. We demand an end to all institutionalized forms of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, sizeism, islamophobia, antisemitism, or any other system of oppression which impoverishes some and grants power and privilege to others.
8. We demand a society where the good of all is placed above the profit of a few.

In short, we demand that we, and every other person on this earth, are treated with the full rights and dignity that is fitting for a human being.

"List of Demands" by Saul Williams

(note: This list is hardly exhaustive, I know. I will gladly add something if you think it belongs here).


UPDATE 10/26/11: Occupy Boston ratified this Statement of Purpose, and in my opinion it's right on track.