by Matt
Black Agenda Report: “Prisoner rights advocates will converge for what aims to be the largest abolitionist demonstration in U.S. history, [Saturday, August 19], in Washington D.C. The Millions for Prisoners’ Human Rights March is centered around the demand that the exceptions clause, which allows for slavery to continue in United States prisons, be removed from the Constitution’s 13th Amendment.”
Since we’re in a period of heightened consciousness about slavery and its legacies, this is an especially important time to talk about compulsory prison labor, or, more bluntly, prison slavery; enslavement of incarcerated people.
I have no desire to break down the components of the moral case against slavery, but must at least partially do so to point out how enslavement of the incarcerated is an especially nefarious kind of human exploitation.
Labor produces value. Prisoners’ compulsory–or even very-low-paid–labor facilitates the production of value for privileged entities (the state, private corporations who get in on the action) and extracts that value, working the body and mind of people at their most vulnerable. Not even the weak justification for the wage system (people are free to walk away and find other work, live in other labor communities) is present in the context of incarceration. I believe this all amounts to something foundationally evil and unjust, which bypasses whatever moral judgment may fall on the prisoner. I’m betting most people reading this believe the same.
Nazism, the Confederacy, China’s authoritarian capitalism, all have slave labor as their material foundations (so does Classical Greece, but that’s another post). That’s the backdrop of Nazis in Charlottesville, and prison labor is another head of the Hydra.
The Black Agenda Report piece by Kyle Fraser summarizes the corporate and governmental profiteering that steers the prison labor ship, and is a good starting read. Last year’s Think Progress piece by Carimah Townes is a longer and more detailed read, definitely worth the time.
Confederate statues should be removed because they are non-living remnants of slavery. Prison labor, on the other hand, should be abolished because it’s a *living* remnant of slavery.
Cowboys on the Commons 