Assignment 07
Gilmore describes both the US prison system and the surpluses as resulting from globalization and the “uneven development”(page 174) it causes. Though the prison system is also described as an economic and political response to both the uneven development and to moral panic.
The surpluses cross over many different aspects of our society – capital, labor, land, and the power of the state but what she is primarily pointing to is a surplus of production, it’s really the natural ebb and flow of an economy – at least a capitalistic one (I truly can’t speak on any other economies, having no experience or understanding of them).
One way the expanding prison system relates to the restructuring of the state, is the power grab by the Right in 1968, when the Right criminalized activists and activist groups individually in order to show control and progress towards order by making specific arrests. Gilmore describes this as “domestic war-making” on the part of the state (page 176) and literally means creating a racial and class war between state run police and militant activist groups, in fact militarizing the state against these groups.
These events had been set in motion earlier, at the end of WWII with the growth of the Department of War and the popularization of military Keynesianism, which meant in the most common terms that war made the country rich. The way rights were distributed at this time further entrenched the rights of the white male, particularly those in cities, while denying rights to workers, particularly agricultural workers, people of color, and women. In short, it reinforced capitalism. In the mean time and updated Keynesianism was working to decreases taxes on wealthy corporations and criminalize the welfare state.
The crisis Gilmore is describing is actually a culmination of several crises. The moral panic, the civil unrest revolving around civil rights, students and activists, racial tensions, criminalizing black communities, panic about single women and single mothers, power structures within the activism world, and economic panic on both the individual and corporate level. The new state that comes from this crises is the prison state – a surplus of defense against crime.
It really is striking that in a state as liberal as California the prison system has a budget close to that of the state university systems. Gilmore relates the prison system to a “big stick” used by the state to keep labor movements in check, and as operating behind a “wall of racism” (page 186). Demolishing the prison industrial complex is put foremost in her view, as a means of restructuring the state in a way that would be amenable to human rights activists.
