TL;DR: The US has the highest incarceration rate on Earth. With over 2 million behind bars and forced to work for pennies, it's a polished, privatised echo of the Soviet gulag – but in capitalist cosplay. #MassIncarceration #PrisonLabour #Snarchy #Anarcos

Ask most people what a ‘gulag’ looks like, and you’ll get a montage of Siberian snowfields, Stalinist guards, and starving political dissidents digging canals with their bare hands. But if we update that image — swap the snow for a chain gang in Arizona, the starvation for 23-cent-an-hour labour, and the KGB for prison-industrial conglomerates like CoreCivic — we might just be staring into the polished glass walls of the American penal system.

The United States, land of the free and home of the world's largest prison population, currently cages over 2 million people. That’s more than any other nation, authoritarian or otherwise. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. accounts for 25% of global prisoners.

And those prisoners aren’t just wasting away in cells. They're working. Making furniture, farming food, sewing uniforms, running call centres. They clean, cook, stitch, haul, and dig. They maintain the prisons they’re locked inside. They do it for private companies and public departments. They are, quite literally, a captive workforce.

Legally, it's all blessed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The same amendment that abolished slavery also provides an escape clause: “except as a punishment for crime.” So, while chattel slavery ended on plantations, it continued in the prisons, wrapped in legalese.

This isn't a bug in the system. It's the system.

The American prison machine didn’t spring from nowhere. It evolved directly from post-Civil War Black Codes, vagrancy laws, and convict leasing. Newly emancipated Black men were swept up, jailed en masse for loitering or unemployment, and leased to railroads, mines, and farms. The state made a profit. The workers made nothing. Many never made it out.

Fast forward to 2024. The names have changed. The logic hasn't.

Today’s prisoners, disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and poor, are still working for scraps. Some are paid less than a dollar a day. Others get nothing. Meanwhile, corporations save millions outsourcing low-skill labour to prisons instead of paying minimum wage. States rake in billions. The prison telecom industry alone is worth over $1.4 billion, gouging families for the crime of wanting to hear a loved one's voice.

Compare this to the Soviet Gulag. Between 1929 and 1953, Stalin’s forced labour system imprisoned around 18 million people, peaking at around 2.6 million in camps at any one time. Sound familiar? The U.S. currently incarcerates around 2.1 million. The Gulag was built to crush dissent and feed industrialisation. The U.S. system is built to manage surplus populations, enforce racial hierarchies, and supply cheap labour — all while generating enormous profit.

And while the Soviets had central planning, the Americans have private prison contracts, lobbyists, and shareholders. Welcome to neoliberal gulagism.

🏚️ COMPARISON TO THE SOVIET GULAG

The machinery is smooth. The surveillance total. The moral clarity murky.

Most prisoners today aren't murderers or rapists. They're low-level drug offenders, parole violators, the mentally ill, and the homeless. They're inside because they couldn’t afford bail. Or because of mandatory minimums. Or three-strikes laws. Or because someone made money locking them up.

The modern U.S. prison complex doesn’t wear jackboots. It wears a smile. It's efficient, data-driven, and branded as justice. But it churns out the same results: broken lives, broken families, and a permanent underclass stripped of rights and dignity.

All while Amazon, AT&T, Whole Foods, and the Pentagon quietly benefit from prison labour at some point in their supply chains.

There are no execution squads, no gulag commandants shouting in Russian. Just spreadsheets, contracts, consultants, and biometric scans. But the result is the same: human beings crushed into data points, work units, and ghosted identities.

In a world that constantly brags about liberty, it's worth asking: what kind of freedom is this?

What do you call a system where the free world cages more people than any dictatorship in history?

Call it what you like.

Just don't call it justice.

🏚️ Comparison with the Soviet Gulag

Differences:

• Scale: The Soviet system imprisoned and killed far more people, often for political reasons.

• Ideological motivation: Stalinist repression targeted class enemies, dissidents, national minorities.

• State-centralised: Gulags were integral to Soviet economic planning and infrastructure.

• In the U.S., forced prison labour was regionalised and racialised, not centrally managed, and functioned as social control rather than total ideological dominance.

Similarities:

• Forced labour was a core part of both systems.

• Racial or ethnic targeting was systematic.

• Both systems used imprisonment to support economic production (timber, roads, mining, agriculture).

• Legal justifications masked moral atrocities (13th Amendment in the U.S., revolutionary law in USSR).

• Denial of humanity was central: prisoners were seen as expendable tools.

#Snarchy #Anarcos #MassIncarceration #PrisonLabour #Decentralisation #IWW #Gulag

GLOSSARY

abolition (UK: /ˌæbəˈlɪʃ(ə)n/) n. [uncountable] – the act of officially ending or stopping something, especially a system or practice

incarceration (UK: /ɪnˌkɑːsəˈreɪʃ(ə)n/) n. [uncountable] – the state of being imprisoned

vagrancy (UK: /ˈveɪɡrənsi/) n. [uncountable] – the criminal offence of living without a settled home or job

telecom (UK: /ˈtelɪkɒm/) n. [uncountable] – services involving the electronic transmission of data and voice

surplus (UK: /ˈsɜːpləs/) adj. – more than what is needed; excess

neoliberal (UK: /ˌniːəʊˈlɪb(ə)rəl/) adj. – related to a political approach that favours free-market capitalism and deregulation

mandatory (UK: /ˈmændət(ə)ri/) adj. – required by law or rules

parole (UK: /pəˈrəʊl/) n. [uncountable] – the conditional release of a prisoner before the full sentence is served

telegraph (UK: /ˈtelɪɡrɑːf/) n. [countable] – here used metaphorically to describe early warning signals or hints

ideology (UK: /ˌaɪdɪˈɒlədʒi/) n. [countable/uncountable] – a system of ideas or ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory

surveillance (UK: /sɜːˈveɪləns/) n. [uncountable] – close observation, especially by government or authority

carceral (UK: /ˈkɑːsərəl/) adj. – relating to prisons or the conditions of imprisonment

underclass (UK: /ˈʌndəklɑːs/) n. [countable] – a group of people in society prevented from participating fully due to poverty or marginalisation

cryptocurrency (UK: /ˌkrɪptəʊˈkʌrənsi/) n. [countable] – digital currency using decentralised systems for secure payments

FOOTNOTES 

1. Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow. The New Press.

2. Davis, A. (2003). Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press.

3. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (2023). Correctional Populations in the United States.

4. Eisen, L.B. (2017). Inside Private Prisons. Columbia University Press.

5. Wang, A.B. (2018). "Slavery by Another Name: The 13th Amendment Loophole." The Washington Post.

6. Thompson, H.A. (2012). The Prison Industrial Complex. The Nation.

7. ACLU (2021). "Captive Labour: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers." aclu.org.

8. Graeber, D. (2013). The Democracy Project. Spiegel & Grau.

9. CoreCivic & GEO Group Annual Reports (2023). Investor Relations.

10. Deaton, A. (2022). "The True Cost of Incarceration." Princeton University Press.