Published on 01/13/22
William I. Robinson's concept of global capitalism explores the evolution of the global capitalist system and its correlation with increasing surplus populations, leading to a rise in prison numbers, a trend often described as hyper-incarceration. His theory suggests that in response to the 1970s crisis, capitalism went global, breaking free from national constraints. This shift resulted in immense wealth accumulation for a tiny fraction of the population, exacerbating global inequality. Consequently, over half of the world's wealth is owned by the top 1 percent, while the bottom 80 percent holds less than five percent, thereby swelling the ranks of the surplus and precarious populations.
At this juncture, it is crucial to highlight the work of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher and critic of Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. Gramsci refined the concept of hegemony, referring to the fusion of coercion and consent within the capitalist system. Consensual dominance is wielded in civil society, while coercion is exercised at the state level. The restructuring of the 1980s and beyond was a response to the challenges posed by mass uprisings in the 1960s and 1970s to hegemonic classes. In the United States, civil rights organizations, including the Marxist-Leninist Black Panther Party, evolved into anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist movements. In reaction, the state escalated repressive mechanisms, including hyper-incarceration.
William I. Robinson, in his work on global capitalism, delves into the birth of global rebellions in the 1960s and the crises of the 1970s, which compelled transnational capitalists to initiate capitalist globalization. This was a project designed to quell global resistance, rejuvenate global accumulation, and restore lost legitimacy. Hence, capitalist globalization, or the restructuring of global capitalism, expanded the ranks of surplus humanity in the United States and across the world. Robinson introduces the concept of the global police state, emphasizing the connections between the proliferation of surplus humanity and systems of social control, including hyper-incarceration and reintegration.
One of the central facets of the global police state is the convergence of social control, suppression, and marginalization with the economic imperative for accumulation in the face of crisis, whether it be stagnation or overaccumulation. One method to address overaccumulation is through militarized accumulation. In this mode, the global elite is invested in significant capital ventures tied to war, conflict, and systems of social control. The war on drugs, the threat of terrorism, immigrant detention centers, gang injunctions (targeting only impoverished Black and Brown communities in California), border and containment walls, prison industrial complexes, and police militarization have all become sources of capital accumulation.
Consequently, hyper-incarceration in the United States has advanced in conjunction with capitalist globalization. To understand this link, we turn to Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work in her book "Golden Gulag," which underscores the extensive expansion of California's prison system. The economic crises of the 1970s resulted in persistently unemployed surplus populations, abandoned as manufacturing jobs vanished, leaving surplus finance capital seeking new investments. Simultaneously, the farming industry experienced multiple blows, including a severe drought in the late 1970s, leading to surplus land. The militaristic Keynesian state form also faced declining legitimacy, resulting in surplus state capital.
Returning to the structural challenges faced by formerly incarcerated individuals during reintegration, the prison reentry industry (PRI) emerged as a byproduct of the era of mass incarceration in the United States. The PRI is a form of structural violence wielded by the state to perpetuate the control and subjugation of society's most marginalized groups. Coined as transcarceration by John Lowman and others, it refers to the "neoliberal reorganization of prison facilities through a consolidation of both capital and the state's captive nation." Transcarceration pertains to the non-prison programs that have been privatized in recent years, serving as part of the broader agenda of global capitalism to sustain the prison industrial complexes.
Today, the prison system has embedded itself in the economic, political, and ideological fabric of American society, and its influence has extended globally. Consequently, the criminal justice system's impact extends beyond the walls of prisons and jails, infiltrating correctional communities, the labor market, transnational corporations, media outlets, laws and policies, and the overarching framework of global capitalism. Thus, an abolitionist approach to the criminal injustice system demands the development of alternative strategies to dismantle global capitalism, the root of these social injustices. This requires an emphasis on decarceration and alternatives to incarceration, encompassing demilitarizing schools, establishing universal accessible healthcare, ensuring full employment, and resisting the privatization of education.
From this vantage point, it is paramount to recognize that the abolition of hyper-incarceration is intricately linked with the disintegration of the broader structure of global capitalism. Hence, we must revive radical criminology, which scrutinizes the structural processes of inequalities and critiques capitalism. As massive movements continue to unfold globally, it falls upon intellectuals to spearhead a counter-hegemonic movement that combines racial and class struggles, underpinned by a revolutionary critique of class exploitation and global capitalism. This necessitates a departure from the prevailing post-narratives that dominate today's economic, political, and ideological landscapes. Anything short of a revolutionary shift may prove inadequate as more individuals descend into the ranks of surplus humanity, subjected to increasingly repressive and militarized systems of social control.
References
Robinson, William I. Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity. Cambridge University Press, 2014. [Online]. Available: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067&context=purduepress_ebooks.
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. University of California Press, 2007. [Online]. Available: http://racialcapitalism.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Gilmore-Golden-Gulag_Intro-and-Ch-2.pdf.
Soto, Oscar Fabian. "Global Capitalism and the Struggle against Hyper-Incarceration." University of California, Davis, [Online]. Available: https://escholarship.org/content/qt2xf1t6kx/qt2xf1t6kx_noSplash_68633c14226bc6ac9e3ba0ec543daef3.pdf?t=s05j99.
Chancel, Lucas. Global Income Inequality, 1820-2020: The Persistence and Mutation of Extreme Inequality. World Bank Group, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/206293abe6ad06f4dc8c2fb541a3b93b-0330272022/original/Chancel2022WB.pdf.
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