This prison industrial complex, which is traded on the stock market, offers maximum profits at the expense of the exploited prison proletariat. This proletariat forms "an incoherent mass" of workers that is for the most part unaware of the ramifications of the prison labor system. Prisoner workers do not realize that without their labor the prison system would be coerced to pay higher wages to laborers from the streets, which would reduce the profits of prison industry. The prison proletarian must utilize this critical conceptual truth to his/her advantage. Those involved in the Attica rebellion realized this, when they demanded to receive the standard minimum wage for their labor. The prison insurrection was annihilated for being so impudent.
As Karl Marx stated in The Communist Manifesto: "The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers."
-- an Illinois prisoner, January, 2003
MIM responds: Extraction of labor from prisoners is part of Amerika's gross hypocrisy, which sanctions prison slavery within u.$. borders, yet for years blocked China's World Trade Organization membership on the excuse that that country employed forced prisoner labor. Prisoner labor is more about social control than it is about making money for the prison system. Amerikan prisons are not yet a profitable industry, though private companies are allowed to expand their profits when they hook up with the state in a proto- fascist arrangement to exploit prisoners. Trade in corrections corporation shares on the stock market can be profitable, but that is betting on the future of the industry and those profits are not dependent on the prison system making money.