The difference between Alabama and adjoining states is that it is willing to go further down this track. Recently, John McMillan, agriculture commissioner, proposed that the farm work left behind by immigrant workers be supplied with inmate labor. Decatur, a private detention center about 50 miles to the north-west of Alabama, which had been unable to find jobs for inmates, has now witnessed record numbers of requests for labor (for an estimated 150 detainees a day).
So, here is how it goes. First, the state passes a harsh immigration law. Then, it detains large numbers of immigrants. Third, private prisons (LCS, CCA, GEO) receive fresh inmates. And finally, the artificially created labor shortage is supplied by the new inmates. Does this sound like modern-day slavery to anyone?
It has been well observed that the American prison industry is huge. The justice system is a racist system, the cutting edge of a racist society, disproportionately punishing ethnic minorities. Work is effectively forced. Slavery has effectively been restored.
But the relation of work to compulsion and control. We are all wage slaves. We don't need a whip, merely an alarm clock to make us fall into line. We don't have to work for anyone in particular, but we have to work for someone. What the capitalist class wants is, in effect, labour like water. It can turn the tap off and on as and when it needs to.
The capitalist class's plan, it's only plan, for dealing with the current depression is to hold down costs, especially wages, and export. Individually this makes sense, as a collective this is madness, but competitive accumulation drives this system, the first point of view must dominate. Racist laws such as the one passed in Alabama are not just an attack on a people but a class, an experiment in setting a new, lower baseline in working class life. A portion of the working class will go from working for next to nothing to all but nothing, a further downward pressure on all working people, at least in Alabama. It is another illustration why the working class, if it is to be a class for itself, for its own interests, must be staunchly anti-racist.