Walter, your example essentially shows that capitalist gov't uses the legal system against labor. Well, what else is new? After all, property rights is a legal ways of labor exploitation.
What I had in mind, however, that contrary to what many lefties believe, our jails are not filled labor activists, political prisoners , or simply working class people asserting their rights against the "system." There are filled with criminals, thiefs, rapists, murderers, drug dealers, who at best have no "use value" for political struggle the left is trying to fight. Granted, some of those poeple, especially small time drug users, might have got a raw deal, they should have been in a drug treatment program instead, but that does NOT make them political prisoners. Defending those people serves no labor interests - it should be left to assorted do gooders, philanthropists and bleeding heart liberals.
Carrol Cox wrote:
>If I understand Wojtek's arguments in past posts correctly, he argues that
>the oppressions and exploitation that blacks suffer is due to *class* not
>racial oppression. Now he argues that the police power of the state is not
>being used for the repression of labor. I don't understand.
Carrol, I think that you as well as scores of assorted "pwogies" miss an important point - that the people who are in jail are there not because they are black, or political activists, or labor organizers, but because they were convicted of crimes in the court of law. Few reasonable people would argue against that, a few instances of the miscarriage of justice notwithstanding. The "system" does not operate in such a crudely oppresive manner anymore - while it is still unfair, it is also much more sophisticated in maintaining its non-repressive, democractic character to a substantial degree.
As I wrote to Charles B. - portraying corporate capital as ruling by crude force might be a dramatic rhetorical device - but is essentially false. And it has no appeal value outside the narrow circles of cultish left what value such theatrics. Perhaps the biggest irony of corporate capital is that it rules WITHOUT the use of crude coercion - it somehow manages to make people follow it voluntarily, even thoughg they might not be perfectly happy with the deal that got. Thus, most people in inner cities complain not about the police overzealous law enforcement, but about doing too little and too late (try to call the cops from an "inner city" zip code, esp. about things like domestic violence or petty crime, and see when they show up, if they show up at all) - professional grievance manufacturers notwithstanding.
So contrary to what you claim, the class realations did change under corporate capital. That is to say, there are still classes, hut the way the class tructure is maintaoned to the advantage of the ruling class is much diffrent than say, a 100 years ago. For the most part, that class structure might be unjust, but it is seen as legitimate and thus the ruling class does not need crude coercion to maintain it. Thus, the acts for which people serve time in US jails would also be punishable under ANY criminal justice system, including a socialist one. Portraying crimionals as "victims of capitalist" oppression is not a very effective mobilizing strategy against capitalis, to say the least.
wojtek
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