"The weight of our criminal justice experiment continues to fall overwhelmingly on communities of color, and particularly on young black men. … Mass incarceration … cannot end soon enough." – NYTimes, 5/25/14

"What's up when you and the leading US imperialist mouthpiece have the same line?" a Red Flag reader asked a Stop Mass Incarceration organizer. 

Some will see this as a victory.  They will use reform of drug laws, the release of elderly prisoners, etc. to suggest that "the system" can work if we fight long and hard enough. Some will also claim, paradoxically, that reform victories help build an anti-capitalist revolutionary movement. 

We disagree.  You can't build for revolution by fighting for reforms.  You can't build communist consciousness or communist society by mobilizing around capitalist ideas. This was a mistaken strategy of 20th-century communist organizers on the job and elsewhere. 

Their strategy involved a "united front" between workers and "lesser-evil" capitalists to fight the "extreme right."  It meant not talking openly about getting rid of the capitalist system altogether.  It turned communist movements into patriotic reform groups and contributed big-time to the restoration of open market capitalism in Russia and China.

Capitalism imprisons us in a thousand ways, from wage slavery to the chains it puts on our minds.  (See "Racist Capitalism Is the Real Criminal," Red Flag Vol. 4 #22)  The forms change, but harsh repression and racism are inescapable in capitalism. 

And so is world war.  Therein lies the contradiction.  To avoid defeat at the hands of competing capitalist nation-states, capitalists must field an army of those they have so viciously repressed and exploited – and hope we don't rebel. 

That's why US imperialist leaders are uniting for "Criminal Justice Reform."

(See Red Flag v. 5 #9).

A recent Brookings Institution conference on mass incarceration featured former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (now co-chairing the Council on Foreign Relations.)  Rubin declared that "our current policy regime, with respect to incarceration … is socially and economically counterproductive, socially and economically destructive."

The chief World Bank economist, George Stiglitz, wrote that "in the eyes of the rest of the world and a significant part of its own population mass incarceration has come to define America."  He urged that "it is not too late to restore our position in the world and recapture our sense of who we are as a nation." (NYT, 6/29/14)

These rulers build reform movements against inequality and mass incarceration in order to strengthen their racist system and prepare economically and politically for World War III.  We must take the opposite path:  Mobilize the masses for communism. 

Communism Will End Capitalist Prisons and Wage Slavery

Communism will end private property and the laws protecting it.  It will destroy the exploiting class that uses its state (police, courts, prisons, etc.) to intimidate and suppress us.  Ending the wage system and money itself will destroy the material basis of the anti-social attitudes and habits that capitalism teaches us, including racism, sexism, and selfishness.

We will mobilize the masses to struggle ruthlessly against class enemies who fight to restore capitalism, and to struggle sharply but patiently with comrade workers who go astray.   We will unlearn capitalist social relations that lead us to see others as objects to be used. 

Fighting for and building communist society teaches us new ways of working and living collectively, cooperatively, and with mutual respect.      

Billionaire Supports "Radicals": Who's Selling Out?

The billionaire George Soros dedicated his life to currency speculation and anti-communism.  He's a crucial link between US imperialism and the supposedly grass-roots movement against mass incarceration. 

Critical Resistance got Soros money.  Angela Davis got her Soros fellowship in 2003.  Michelle Alexander wrote The New Jim Crow on hers.  Soros funds the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and CIVIC, which opposes mass incarceration of immigrants.

Right-wing bloggers think Soros is a communist who has betrayed his class.  No way!  He's an influential member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He aims to save capitalism from its own contradictions.  In 2012, Soros made headlines predicting social crisis, class war, and riots in the US streets. 

When a comrade brought up these facts at a dinner party, one friend remarked, "At least he's doing some good." Another disagreed:  "You have to suspect his motives." 

But the main issue isn't Soros's sordid personal history.  It's the strategic choice facing the working class:  Ally with "lesser-evil" capitalists and get co-opted or smashed as they lead us into imperialist war?  Or lead the masses in building the communist road to a world that meets our needs and allows us to realize our aspirations!