Re: [Marxism] On Barry and Baseball

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sayan writes: "The criminal justice system is an example of class injustice
at least as much as it is an example of racial injustice!"

This is demonstrably false.

More than 10% of Black men ages 25-29 are in prison. Among whites the figure
is 1.2%. Overall, Black men are incarcerated at a rate more than seven times
that of whites. If you do a back of the envelope calculation, excluding,
say, the top 30% of whites, to exclude the non-working class component of
the white population, we have a ratio of four whites for every Black; yet
Blacks outnumber whites in prison by a ratio of four to three.

The problem with Sayan is he does not understand that the "criminal justice
system" is not mostly about controlling anti-social elements or enforcing
the rules of the capitalist game. The criminal justice system is
overwhelmingly about the ruling class maintaining social control.

The task of maintaining social control over the white population, even the
white working class, is decidedly different and easier than over Black
people. For all intents and purposes, Black people represent a colonized
nation under foreign military occupation. This is a direct, immediate threat
to ruling class hegemony in the country. The level of repression in the
Black community therefore is qualitatively higher than that directed against
white workers -- if we quantify it by means of statistics like the
incarceration ratio, we see that it approaches an order of magnitude.

The working class, including white workers can, at times, represent just as
much or more of a threat to capitalist control as a colonized people.
However, that has been only a theoretical potentiality in the United States
for the last half-century; in fact, whites workers are kept in check by
their internalized Americanism, which is not just the product of propaganda
but of propaganda + real and substantial material and moral privileges over
the rest of the population of this country and the majority of the peoples
of the world. Hence the much-reduced need for repression against the working
class generally. AS A CLASS, it does not move.

Joaquín


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