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Soc 329 Parenti
Lockdown America – Some background
1950s and 1960s (before the binge started)
Prisons were “an ugly little corner of American society”
Affected few and did little long term damage - poor young males accused of serious crimesCheap to operate – guards major expense ***Released prisoners aged out and could get jobsPrisons mostly operated “under the radar”Some inclination to get rid of prisons completely
Soc 329 Parenti
How and why did this change?
How did the “land of the free” become the worlds leading jailer? From IR 100 +/- to 700+ today and the worlds leading torturer? Guantanamo, renditions, SHUs, etc.
(a recent ACLU report on LA County jails – routine
abuse of inmates!)
Soc 329 Parenti
Superficial view – conservative turn and “get tough” politics
Warped political response to rising crime rates in the 1960s (which had already ended – baby boomers
aged in then aged out) and the “failure of liberalism” in the
1960s
Conservative criminologist James Q. Wilson – the only thing left is to lock “them” up – “zero tolerance”
Soc 329 Parenti
Parenti offers a diff view – a radical/critical analysis --there was a bigger set of political and economic crises driving the changes over several decades
Polit: backlash against Civil Rights Movement,anti-war movement, women’s
movement,counterculture (hippies, drugs, etc.)
Econ: rising competition from Europe & Asiaplus huge cost of the Vietnam Warled to economic crisis – dropping profits
Soc 329 Parenti
Parenti focuses on changes in the Crim Just System -- but as part of the larger crisis and changes
Early changes were political (mostly racist)Later changes were economic (whole working class)Long term – development of an oppressive racist
militarized police state in the US
Sort of a modern version of the bloody code?Savage repression directed at surplus pops!
Soc 329 Parenti
Some earlier background:
Amer Civil War –beginning of end of British Empire
Germany and US catching up in indus prod
Development of industrial capitalism
Two European capitalist world wars with a massive global depression in between led to decline of Europe and a major crisis of capitalism
Soc 329 Parenti
Focusing on the US:
1870s – 1920s modern- urban- industrial- ization
1930s The Great Depression
1940s World War 2 and aftermath
1950s – 1960s post war US economic boom based on socialist policies!
Soc 329 Parenti
The Great Depression (1930s)
Increasing productivity, flat wages
Led to over-production and collapse
Surplus goods and surplus people
Nothing worked until WW2 ended the crisis(no surplus goods, no surplus people)(US played relatively minor role in the war)
Soc 329 Parenti
Post War US new depression? (1946-47)
Increased productivity + surplus of workers
Instead massive govt socialist reforms – designed to“rationalize” productivity and absorb the surplus pops
Some of the socialist changes:
Soc 329 Parenti
Social Security + beginnings of retirement systems
- Unions for workers plus benefits required by govt:- minimum wage laws, overtime rules, etc.- unemployment insurance- workers compensation and disability insurance- regulation of working conditions – safety, etc.- and many more changes benefiting wage workers
Soc 329 Parenti
Child labor banned (common before WW2)Universal public education - requiredFree or low cost higher education (e.g. Calif)Public welfare and child protection services
Public health and safety regulation -- product safety, food, water and air safety, research on diseases and health issues, etc.
Soc 329 Parenti
Infrastructure
National parks, interstate highway system, building standards (codes), emergency responses, etc.
Govt regulation itself employed huge numbers of workers in good jobs with benefits
and even military spending (cold war) had similar effects
Soc 329 Parenti
Meanwhile, the GI Bill and Veterans Admin provided (socialist) subsidies and/or resources for millions of people to buy houses and/or pursue higher education.
All of these changes combined also produced disposable income for American families, which allowed them to afford many services that had been out of reach (doctors, dentists, legal and financial services, entertainment, etc.) and these in turn provided more good jobs for workers, both professional and support staffs.
Soc 329 Parenti
These socialist changes are what generated/supported the expanding American middle class - which had
been very small before WW2 – most Americans were either farmers or impoverished factory workers before.
Regulated productivity of capitalism plus government regulation of distribution created American prosperity (and power!) that made the US an almost
unchallenged global empire for two decades – the 1950s and 1960s.
But there were serious problems ahead
Soc 329 Parenti
Because of “traditional” American racism and sexism, most of the benefits of the socialist reforms went to white males and their families – union, professional, and govt jobs, housing and higher education benefits (e.g., GI Bill benefits), etc.
Left behind were women and minorities, and also people who continued to live in small towns and rural areas plus millions of men who had been left behind and continued
to work in “unprotected” areas of the economy.
Soc 329 Parenti
Another problem was the “split in the service sector”
As professional job markets became “saturated” (slowing relative growth) the balance of new jobs
became “McJobs” - low paying, low benefit, unstable jobs.
Another potential problem was the high tax rates needed
to support the govt regulation - and the growing size of the govt itself – conflicts with capitalist culture
Soc 329 Parenti
Also among the overall outcomes of the changes was a new
class system in America consisting of
Capitalist Class (1% - live off inherited wealth)Business/Professional Class (10% - high salaries/benefits)Stable working class (30% - medium wages/benefits)Unstable working class (40% - low wages/benefits)The poor (20% - low to no wages/benefits)
The class system is reproduced across generations by family access to education, housing segregation, etc.
Soc 329 Parenti
Capitalists and the falling rate of profit
As a group (class) capitalists also benefited greatly from
the socialist modifications – for several reasons;
1. Workers could now afford to buy their products2. US capitalists dominated global markets3. Govt projects/programs provided large scale
investment opportunities with low/no risk
Because of these and other factors, profits spiked
Soc 329 Parenti
By the end of the 1960s, though, capitalist profits were returning to normal levels as global competition recovered (mainly Europe and Japan), workers wages began to level off along with consumption of goods and services, and profits from govt growth began to level off.
Marx had written a century earlier about a “tendency” of the long term rate of profit to fall and now caps were falling off of a spike (with elevated expectations and more wealth to invest) and moving back toward a “normal” falling rate of profit.
Soc 329 Parenti
Further, much wealth had shifted from capitalists to workers – higher wages meant workers got to keep
more of what they produced - and this kept wages high and pressed down on profits
And tax rates were high, which further sapped away profits on investments (and thus inherited wealth).
Soc 329 Parenti
So the post world war period – and especially the 1960s –
was the heyday of American wealth and power as both millions of American families and the owners of wealth benefited from the mix of capitalism and socialism
and our political culture set out to eliminate poverty and
even the wild idea of abolishing prisons seemed doable
Soc 329 Parenti
Then, in the 1970s, things began to go very wrong
Europe and Japan recovered and became competitors further threatening already-dropping profits
White males (traditional head of family) besieged by rejection of culture and demands for equality and change (women, minorities, young).
And Vietnam – maybe America’s biggest disaster ever
Soc 329 Parenti
This is where Parenti begins – with this complex crisis
Crisis then Police then Prisons
Note – Parenti doesn’t discuss the role of the courts in the changes that followed the crisis
From “normal” (doing justice) to the imp binge
Soc 329 Parenti
Chapter 1
Page 3-4 -- a very vivid description of the beginnings of the complex crisis – to elites a world coming apart
Police were brutal and repressive, but ineffective
Nixon’s race/drug war based on racism + drug hysteria
First wave of the response - “Nixon’s little war”
Soc 329 Parenti
Two parts of the strategy:
LEAA and policing
communication and arms enhancement – paramilitary
+ outreach to communities – propaganda
(this was similar to Vietnam War policy at the time)
Note Foucault’s focus on surveillance!!
Soc 329 Parenti
After Nixon’s fall (Watergate, etc.), the failure of policing changes and repression in general
and the failure of “outreach”
Most of Nixon’s strategy was abandoned
“Stalemate” of the Ford and Carter years (1970s)
(note – these strategies failed in Vietnam too)
Soc 329 Parenti
Chapter 2 -- the second wave begins with Reagan admin
(the 1980s)
Key response was to the (much bigger!) economic crisis of capitalism – decreasing profits
Focus was “rollback” of post-WW2 socialism and containing further expansion of the middle class
(2011 - focus now is on decreasing the middle class!)
“entitlements”
Soc 329 Parenti
In Marxist terms (and in reality) the post war socialist changes had raised the wages of workers (they got to keep more of what they produced) – but as workers became more prosperous two things happened – the rate of profits began to drop (capitalists got a smaller share) and saturation of markets led to over accumulation making it harder to market products which also reduced profits.
So the problem (from a cap point of view) was how to reverse the trends of increasing wages and the falling rate of profit – how to reverse post war socialism.
Soc 329 Parenti
Alan Budd quote – how to weaken the working class
A new class warRe-engineering the economyDisciplining the working class
Engineering an economic recession which then becomes
rationale for tax cuts, deregulation, weakening unions, and later, what would become known as outsourcing
P 44. Summary of “Reaganomics”
Soc 329 Parenti
Chapter 3 see p 45 summary
Reversing the growth of the middle class has been subtle
- tax cuts, deregulation, destruction of unions, etc.
But the destruction “trickles down” to the unstable wc and the poor
Generates large surplus populations – “social junk” and “social dynamite”
Soc 329 Parenti
The problem that this poses for the cjs is what Parenti calls “policing the new rabble”
First through the “war on drugs” (dealers to users)Then the war on petty crime – “zero tolerance”Then a new war on immigrants.
This is all a byproduct of economic changes, and this is what drives the imprisonment binge
Soc 329 Parenti
In Part 2, Parenti turns to an analysis of the changes in policing in the 1980s and 1990s as economic
restructuring leads to chronic crime and disorder in the inner cities (urban “second rings” of cities).
“Zero tolerance” and paramilitary policing lead to high levels of arrest even as serious crime rates are
dropping (because of demographics – baby boomers aging out)