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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 4/11, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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The struggle to free Mumia Abu Jamal has helped call attention not only to the enormous injustice committed against him but to the nature of the system capable of such an action.
And what system can be so ruthless to a member of our class but the capitalist state--with its repressive apparatus of courts, prisons and cops?
What is the state? Marx said the state is an organ of class rule for the oppression of one class by another. It is the creation of an "order" that legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between the classes.
Under capitalism there is the class of the wealthy, who own the factories, the banks and the big corporations. Their only goal is to make more and more money at the workers' expense. Our class is therefore in constant struggle against the rich, exploiting class.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels' analysis of the state puts into context the increase in the incarceration rate during the last decade. According to Engels: "The public power or repressive bodies of the police and prisons grows stronger in proportion as class antagonisms within the state become more acute."
It is no accident that even though several studies have shown that in the last 20 years the rate of serious crimes has remained relatively stable, the rate of incarceration has more than doubled. Mumia Abu Jamal joins 1.12 million other inmates across the country in state and federal prisons, more than 3,000 of them on death row.
As Workers World Party Chairperson Sam Marcy showed in his book "High Tech, Low Pay," the economy has been transformed by the introduction of high technology. This increases productivity at such a rate that thousands of jobs are being permanently eliminated daily.
Great wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands; the gap between rich and poor is widening. Exploitation is intensified. This cannot go on without something breaking out.
Is it surprising then that a thoroughly repressive crime bill has been passed? Or that prisons are the fastest growing segment of the economy?
Prisons now serve as warehouses for the permanently unemployed. And many states are passing laws giving corporations access to cheap prison labor.
In Texas, for example, a small high-tech company laid off its 150 workers and moved the factory to a prison. Its owner, Leonard Hill, explains: "Normally, when you work in the free world, you have people call in sick, they have car problems, they have family problems. We don't have that here. The state pays for worker's compensation and medical care and inmates don't go on vacation."
The state's virulent racism makes African Americans and Latinos the most likely recipients of penalties. For example, drug use is a major cause of incarceration in both communities. Stiffer penalties are applied to crack cocaine possession than to the use or possession of powder cocaine.
Crack is more prevalent in African American and Latino inner-city neighborhoods, while powder cocaine is mostly used by white and wealthier people.
The result of this unequal treatment is shown in a study by the National Institution on Drug Abuse: "African Americans make up 13 percent of monthly drug users but they constitute 35 percent of arrests for drug use, 55 percent of convictions and 74 percent of prison sentences."
So we see how the cops, the courts and the prisons are there to protect the interests of the richest 1 percent of the population. The only way to construct a society where children can grow up free from racism and want, and where our basic needs are respected and fulfilled, is by abolishing the capitalist state.
[From a talk given at the Dec. 2-3, 1995, Workers World Party national conference.]
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