The United States of America has the biggest prison population in the world and the highest rate of prisoners per capita of all countries. China, with one-party rule and a population that is 4.5 times larger than the US population, has 30% fewer total prisoners than the US. China’s per capita rate is a small fraction of the US rate.The US prison population per capita is three times higher than that “axis of evil” country Iran. One out of every 142 Americans is in prison (and this does not include military prisons or Immigration and Naturalisation Service detention centres)....
Read more »
The case of the ‘Rogue’ French Bank trader, Jerome Kerviel, underscores many observations about capitalism made by socialists. Most importantly, it shows how “social” capitalism has become. The more capitalism grows, the more connected we are to the actions of everyone else. If the accusations are true, one minor 31 year old French bank trader can cause the potential impoverishment of many. We are all tied together, and capitalist rugged individualism is an illusion. the scary fact is that while capitalism has bound us to each other, it is anti-social in it’s structure. This case also shows how capitalism’s...
Read more »
Millions of human beings around the world are forcibly detained, their liberties removed by governmental authorities. Anyone who takes seriously the immediate potential for replacing capitalism with a world of real abundance and freedom knows already that the great majority of crimes are either crimes against property or involve the illegal trafficking of property – or are the likely direct result of living the -restricted and stressful life of a wage-slave. While there are those who justify the existence of laws on moral and ideological grounds, the defenders of the status quo must always argue their case referring to...
Read more »
So Scott Peterson will be executed for the murder of his wife and unborn child. Another family (Scott’s) will be victims of an another untimely death- this time done in your and my name. Just because he is a murderer doesn’t mean he is not a son, brother, friend and human. Another mother will have to do the unthinkable and bury her own child. Woohoo, the world’s a better place now isn’t it? Surely our streets will be safer because Scott Peterson will no longer be around. And our lives more full and rich. Why is it, that in...
Read more »
Few institutions illustrate the oppression of people in capitalism better than prisons. Millions of people, almost completely members of the working class, in the United States and around the world, are presently wasting away for violations of the laws of private property or for crimes that stem from residing in a society based on want for some and privilege for others. There is no question that the vast majority of crimes today for which individuals are incarcerated are crimes of property. The Crime Index for 2001 makes it clear that somewhere in the region of 84 to 90 percent...
Read more »
(The Western Socialist, No.1 – 1967) The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 1965, editorially chided President Johnson for “permitting his enthusiasm to run away with his judgment (in his pledge) not only to reduce crime but to banish It.” We must have a “new approach to crime,” wrote the editor. And he quite properly pointed out that: “Crime is not committed in a vacuum. It is only a product of the environment which this generation and its predecessors have created.. .The crime commissions are likely, therefore, to find themselves wrestling (our emphasis) with the basic social problems of the age.”...
Read more »
