A fact that is little broadcast by our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is that it was the “abolition” of slavery, (we all know that it didn't really get abolished, just transformed), that gave a tremendous boost to the industrial revolution. As the slave owners were obliged to release their slaves, they were richly compensated by tax payers money for their loss. As they found themselves with buckets full of cash, they looked around to see how they could make it grow. So the the new industrial era got under way. This little map gives you some idea of the money that flowed into the pockets of the genteel folks of Edinburgh, who had their hands well dipped in slave ownership. This avalanche of tax payers money to slave owners, was repeated across the UK and elsewhere.
In support of the ongoing US prison strike, 325 has an interesting article that explains how today’s US prison system is more or less a continuation of the slave system that built empires. During the European imperialists expansion, slavery and indentured servitude were the backbone, the fertiliser, of capitalist growth and imperialist expansion. Little has changed, capitalism still thrives on slave labour, allied to cheap labour.
Prisons in the USA – The dark side of slavery in American society
Continue reading:In order to be in the position to understand the importance and necessity of the us prisoners’ struggle, we first need to analyze the role of slavery in the foundation and evolution of the american state and its historical and integral ,until today, link with the capital.
Slavery in its many forms was actually the foundation on which the omnipotence of american overlordship was gradually built. The root of this phenomenon can be traced back in the era when the christian empires of europe started a race to conquest unknown lands, founding colonialism regimes, in the era of brutal genocides of the indigenous populations and the slave trade of the non-white african population. Since then and until today, the social and political circumstances have rapidly changed, mainly because of a heavy blood tax that has been paid from beneath, towards the direction of the total shaking off of slavery as an institution. However, it continues up until today, more or less covered.
Today’s prisoners’ class and racial composition, the spreading of private prisons, the institutionalization of enforced labor as a form of criminal sanction, the exploitation of prisoners by big companies highlight the fundamental connection between state-capitalism-slavery and prison.
Slavery in the first colonial systems
During the first years of the “new world’s” colonization and until the early 18th century, most of the settlers were not free but were under a status of an idiotype slavery, known as “indentured servitude”, which aimed in equipping the colonies with cheap workforce. The “indentured servant” signed a contract according to which she/he was mortgaging her/his freedom and provide her/his work to a master for a period between 5 to 7 years and, in exchange, the latter covered her/his transportation expenses to the colony. In practice, it was happening by the signature of the contract between the “indentured servant” and the ship owner and the subsequent transferring of the contract to the new master, as soon as the ship arrived to the “new world”. The institution was initially introduced in 1619 through Virginia Company. It has been calculated that 80% of the refugees in the american colonies before american revolution were under this status, while only 40% managed to survive. “Interventured servants” consisted of three categories : -----------
