Capitalism, unemployment and mass incarceration

[marmar]

from the Party for Socialism and Liberation:



Capitalism, unemployment and mass incarceration
PSL editorial

January 11, 2012


As we go to print, the Occupy arrests counter has reached 5,861. Nearly every Occupy site in cities across the country has been evicted and blockaded—mostly under the direction of Democratic Party mayors in coordination with federal authorities.

If arrests on this scale had taken place in Syria or Iran—countries whose governments the U.S. government wants to subvert and overthrow—the leading corporate newspapers would be running front-page sympathetic articles and crafting the most sensational headlines based on nameless sources and unverified speculation.

But on a social movement just a phone call or short drive away, they have either fallen silent, distorted the movement’s message, or called for a more rapid crackdown.

The nationwide assault on civil rights and civil liberties carried out by U.S. police and other security forces receives no such critical evaluation. This was made clear in the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for the indefinite detention without due process of any person (including U.S. citizens) deemed terrorist suspects. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Democratic Party White House. What was missing from the bourgeois coverage, which discussed the “potential” for civil rights abuses, was the extent to which the national security state is already a dominant feature of our society. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/capitalism-unemployment-and.html

[socialist_n_TN]

1. These laws are the main reason I'm still in the camp

of socialists who feel the need for a democratic centralistic vanguard party. A vanguard can keep a revolution alive when we're driven underground and with all these laws this article enumerates, the possibility of being driven underground is real.

Now I will hasten to add that my conception of a vanguard is NOT one that orders everybody around from above, but just one that provides shape, form, strategy, and tactics for the class war. A vanguard that takes the aspirations of the working class rising from below and shows how to attain those aspirations.