Today, lets examine one of the most maligned aspects of extant socialism, and compare it to the experience of her capitalist counterparts: the prison system. For brevitys sake, well stick with the two most discussed examples, those of the United States and the Soviet Union. And this post shall by no means be comprehensive, but will be more of a starting point for those curious about the subject, or intimidated by horror stories of extreme communist repression. Lets start with a few striking facts about US prisons, courtesy of Business Insider. Namely: we have a greater percentage of our population behind bars than any other country, anywhere. We spend almost 600 billion dollars a year running the system. Incarceration rates are up, crime is down. There are currently 7.2 million people caught up in the system, a larger population than the state of Washington. In fact, the prison population has tripled in the last thirty years. Almost half of all prisoners return to their institutions within three years of their released. One in thirty of our young men have been jailed, including one in nine young black men. As one astute observer has put it, we either have the worst people in the world, or the worst system; which is more likely? It hardly needs mentioning to anyone here, but our prison and legal systems are major reproductive factories for the class struggle, with horrific drug laws and biased sentences predominantly impacting poor people of color, effectively criminalizing poverty, criminalizing oppressed nationhood. We also have a substantial amount of prisons run FOR PROFIT, and all the vile lobbying that entails, and slavery remains constitutionally permitted so long as it occurs behind bars. This is merely a taste of the issue, and barely even touches upon the school-to-prison pipeline so important to me as an educator, but when those who lavish praise upon the US condemn socialist countries on this score, well, you know what they say about those who dwell within glass houses. Lets turn our eyes to the Soviet Union. Even at the height of the gulag, the soviet union never held this many people in its punitive grasp, and they were in the midst of virtual civil war, with nazi germanys invasion imminent and sabotage a real threat to millions of lives. Less than two million people ever inhabited the gulags at any one time, and it was often even less than a million, with the rates of release being quite high. Also, the logic of their prison system stood the one running most of the world on its head, as those hailing from oppressed nations and classes finally saw themselves UNDERrepresented behind its walls, and those of privilege and power finally had a glimpse into what its like living under somebodys boot. Not as much as you might think, though: the living conditions in the gulags far exceeded those of free tsarist Russia, and rather than focus on punishment, they revolved around rectification and self-criticism. Finally, gulags ran their own publications, and the amount of censorship exercised against them remained minimal. While its easy to condemn their mistakes with modern hindsight, there was a radical reversal in the logic of incarceration here, and that should be lauded. In addition, the gulags ceased to exist in the post-Stalin period, so its worth exploring how the Soviet prison system functioned afterwards. From USSR: 100 Questions and Answers, [In our prison system], there, too, both work and rest are subject to the general labor laws. Work is paid for in accordance with the amount and quality, under rates and quotas accepted by the countrys economy. [The prisons] have a network of vocational coursers that enable convicts to learn various trades or improve their skills. In addition, convicts are allowed to elect their own self-administrative councils. Wall newspapers and radio programmes are made. Every penal colony has either an eight-year school or a secondary school. Eight-year schooling is obligatory for all convicts under the age of 40. Undoubtedly, no prison system has been, or perhaps could ever be, perfect, especially not in regards to mental disability or the death penalty. Nevertheless, the notion that socialist countries have been exceptionally poor in this regard holds little water, both in terms of the quantity of those imprisoned, the conditions of incarceration, and the logic guiding the legal system. The worst proletarian rule trumps the best capitalist rule, after all, and this has been reflected in prisons that emphasized reintegration and improvement, rather than punishment and the reproduction of national oppression.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 00:33:21 +0000
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