Transcript
Crony Capitalism: The Prison Industrial Complex and the Progressive False-Flag By: Matthew “Matt” Safrit Introduction Many people in the progressive movement are striving to undermine America’s capitalistic framework and replace it with a social-/commun-istic infrastructure. These progressive visions are often spurred by perceived social-justice issues, and their final outcome is the noble pursuit of equality for all people no matter what race, gender identification, or social class. Capitalistic business is seen by progressives as an unnecessary evil which exploits humanity for the sake of financial gain, and wars against the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) are seen as a necessary part of the dialectical tension which will bring humanity to its utopian paradise as the ‘haves’ are stripped from their ivory towers. The problem is, however, that by seeking social-/commun-istic equality in America, progressives who are seeking to overthrow constructs such as the Capitalistic Establishment and replace them with Marxists Political Structures are actually ushering into the free world the very prison system which they are trying to destroy. The PIC operates in a capitalist society; however, the measures by which it controls its prisoners are socialist, communist, and totalitarian. By understanding how Marxist philosophies lead to human enslavement, and making a distinction between the PIC-in-commerce versus the PIC-inside, readers will see that while the PIC is something which must be changed, implementing social-/communistic change in the larger sectors of the world will only serve to keep alive the beast which so many of us are trying to slay. Marxism Karl Marks was strongly influenced by George W.F. Hegel. Hegel posited that history is guided by a metaphysical, Universal Mind which is bringing humanity to its freedom at the end of history by a push-and-pull process known as the ‘dialectical’ (Van Doren 1991, 258, 174). Marx stripped Hegel’s claim of metaphysical guidance from the dialectical, replacing it with a concrete materialism wherein class struggle is the end-all be-all of each epoch of time that all culminate in a Utopian totality of equality which abolishes all privately-owned property (Ibid., 258). The back-and-forth of dialectical class struggle has been refined and implemented by the likes of people such as Saul Alinsky, whose CommunityOrganization movements sought to lift up marginalized people groups and place them into a better standard of living (Alinksy 1941, 797-808; cp. Alinsky 1971, 4). It is the goals of Alinsky’s brand of Marxism which have helped give Marx’s philosophy the airs of nobility in the minds of progressives; however, the sought-for-ends of a human equality preserved in a society which promotes humanity’s intrinsic worth is not the only direction which Marxism can go. The world of power-politics is governed by two things: human self-interest, and control. Since the days of the Ubaid period (ca. 4,500 BCE), and presumably even earlier, the ‘upper crust’ of society has manipulated the worldviews and sentiments of its people in order to ensure that the elite maintain their positions, and that the status quo was always met (Mieroop 2007, 14, 24). Until the Enlightenment era, most means of control in the West were constructed around a religious framework; however, with the metaphysical death-knell sounded by Immanuel Kant, and the closing of God’s casket by Friedrich Nietzsche, the Western world’s long-held ideological starting-point of humans being made in “God's image” crumbled away just in time for the German National Socialist Party (commonly known as the ‘Nazis’) and Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks (which moved from Social Democracy to Communism in 1918) to gain control of their respective spheres of influence using nihilistic Marxism. Nihilistic Marxism is an ideological view which seeks to give purpose to a world that means absolutely nothing. Because the gods are no longer a factor in human affairs, and hence the world is stripped away from any intrinsic meaning which a Creator may have formed it with, life’s purpose is subjugated to the realm of subjectivity, and is ultimately determined by majority opinion through the willto-power. Because life’s meaning is now subjective, people can determine for themselves what value things in the world possess. This self-determination of value is fine to an extent, for all human behavior is ultimately motivated by the subjective opinion that a person has for any given thing (Grison & Gazzaniga 2019, 337ff.). However, when the powers that be determine “the infinite malleability of man and the negation of human nature” (Camus 1991, 237), people are stripped of their worth, and become the coal which keeps alive the government machine of total domination. Rather than the government for the people, it is now the people for the government because the ever-expanding will-to-power is ultimately harnessed in the new metaphysical apparatus known as the State. Moreover, because “the future is the only kind of property that the masters willingly concede to the slaves” (Ibid., 194), what were once the divine promises of an “all-benevolent” Overlord are now humanity’s exploited dreams of a future peace on earth, now stripped of human dignity, and serving as the all-encompassing goal which justifies any means to get to its end while taking every possession from its human ‘cogs’ save for the dream it promises them. In this way, the human has become an object whose sole purpose. is to perform its required task (which is what the State determines it to be), and those in power increase their strength as their tyrannical enforcement enslaves the masses—the logical conclusion of the Marxist power structure. Prison Much has already been written about the PIC’s exploitation of inmate labor to serve their own capitalistic purpose. What is more, one need only pickup books such as North Carolina’s Criminal Law and Procedure to see how General Statues (NCGS) such as §148-133 fix Correction-Enterprise inmate- wages to no more than three-dollars per day unless otherwise mandated by State or Federal law. Indeed, where I am currently housed, Nash Correctional Institution of North Carolina, inmate labor is used to run multi-million-dollar eye-glass and paper-printing shops which only pay its workers approximately twenty dollars (or less) per each forty-hour work week. Moreover, these products produced by said labor are, under NCGS §148-134, subject to a price-fixing and inter-governmental monopolization which is essentially corporate nepotism at its finest. Because cash is king, the PIC’s ultimate end is capital; thus all prisoners, per Article 13 of the United-State’s Constitution, are subjected to a legal form of modern-day slavery for the main purpose of completing the self-centered ends of the corporate fat-cats. Now, while all of the above appears to blatantly expose the fact that the Prison System is no more than a slave-driven tool of crony capitalism, one must look past this false-flag to understand what is really at work here: In the NC Prison System, it is said that I own “personal property.” My “personal property” involves things such as books, hygiene, a radio, a watch, and so-on and so-forth. I pay for these things with either the money I work for in prison, or the money my friends and family send me. However, if an old radio I “own” breaks and I decide to take out its capacitors and place them in a new radio I buy in order to improve the new radio’s sound quality, I am then served with a ten-dollar write up for damaging State property if the wrong officer sees it. Moreover, this write up may bring with it hole time, loss of visitation rights, canteen restrictions, loss of phone time, and loss of merit days I have earned to work my time down to my mandatory minimum. I paid for the first radio, and I paid for the second. Somehow, however, this radio is still the State’s property, and not something which I privately own. The abolition of property is a Marxist ideal; however, in practice it turns the State into an obsessive-compulsive entity which crushes you with policy, and will not tolerate a person tampering with its things. Prisoners in North Carolina are all mandated to wear a uniform. This uniform consists of a grey tshirt and a brown pair of work pants. Both of these clothing articles are made in North Carolina’s Enterprise clothing factories by inmates working up to forty hours a week at approximately two-dollars per day. The fabric is presumably cheap, and a “new” clothing line has just started wherein some shirt’s length is a mere foot and a half, with matching width, and sleeves which may be eleven-and-a-half inches long. Because my personal identity has been subjugated to an anonymous number trapped in the government machine, these ill-fitting clothes are perfect to continue the State’s psychological war against my individuality and self-expression. Moreover, because those clothes are “given” to prisoners “for free,” inmates who become institutionalized come to be pacified by their newly-issued clown-clothes and see this clothing as something that is “theirs.” Will Durant, quoting Aristotle, notes that Soviet Russia had to learn the hard way that “when everybody owns everything nobody takes care of anything” (2015, 169)— the State would do well to pay attention to this. The clothing which is “given” to prisoners is often used once and thrown away because, in all honesty, it is trash. Moreover, t-shirts might be used as cleaning rags, and things coming out of the laundry must necessarily be inspected to see 1) if they were even washed; 2) if they have any unsightly holes in obscure places; and 3) if any bodily fluids have caused permanent damage to what a person is about to put on. In a prison where people worked hard for normal societal wages (as they do in free-market, capitalistic America) and were allowed to own their own personal clothing, there would both be a better quality of life for prisoners, and the State would save its “precious” income because its hostages would actually be emboldened to do better for themselves rather than wear State-issued clothing. Nevertheless, because human’s who are wards of the State are objectified by the Machine, each individual is subjugated to the affairs of corporate fascism, and the power-elite within this construct rule by a totalitarian ‘divine fiat’ while promising their captives a freedom which, for some, may never come. All things have been justified by promises of freedom and rehabilitation, but no one is exempt from exploitation. The ‘haves’ stay on top, the ‘have-nots’ stay oppressed, and Marx, the “prophet of production” (Camus 1991, 204), guides his believers into an Industrialized Eden made of iron bars and razor wire. Conclusion: The State apparatus known as the Prison System operates in a capitalist society. However, the Machine Itself operates using a system which is clearly social-/commun-ist and totalitarian. This Marxist device is clearly a threat to humanity, for if this government apparatus ever stretches its control over the sector of larger society, it will have drastic consequences on everyone it affects because it will subject them to slavery and the potential loss of human individuality/value. The progressive fight is one which claims to support human flourishing, equality, and over-all goodness for the human race. It rightly sees constructs such as the PIC being an enemy of humanity; however, in seeking to implement Marxistchange in society, it is inevitably placing the world on a trajectory headed towards enslavement. Progressives need to understand that the “problem of capitalism” is not the fault of capitalism itself, it is the problem of people. As long as people who are not educated in the ways of virtue and appreciation/compassion for humanity are allowed to hold positions of power while being left unchecked, the world in general, and the prison population specifically, will forever be at war with a system, no matter what name it takes, which dehumanistically subjugates its people to an enslavement which seeks to satisfy the governing people’s self-interest—no matter what that end may be. However, by enacting positive change in the individuals who operate in the capitalistic system, the progressive agenda will be accomplished in a way which does not run the risk of enslaving us all, and doing so in a way which gets the results it seeks—one of which being to restore the dignity of incarcerated individuals who, just like you, reader, are people too. References: Alinsky, Saul. 1941. “Community Analysis and Organization” in The American Journal of Sociology. May 1941. Vol. 46. ----- 1971. Rules for Radicals. NY: Random House. Camus, Albert. 1991. The Rebel. NY: Vintage. Durant, Will. 2015. Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God. NY: Simon & Schuster. Grison, Sarah & Michael S. Gazzaniga. 2019. Psychology for Your Life. 3™ ed. NY: W.W. Norton & Co. Mieroop, Marc Van de. 2007. A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000-323 BCE. 2™ ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. North Carolina Criminal Law and Procedure 2016. Charlottesvile, VA: Lexis Nexis. Van Doren, Charles. 1991. A History of Knowledge. NY: Ballantine.
