Quanto vale a pena? A relação capital-trabalho e a escravidão contemporânea no sistema prisional

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the capital-labor relationship within the prison system as a space for the exercise of contemporary slave labor through State mediation. We approach the subject from the critique of Karl Marx's political economy and we discuss how the mediation of the State in the social relations within the penal system criminalizes and transforms part of the working class, once active or reserve army, into reserve army incarcerated fit to be exploited under conditions analogous to that of slavery, a process which tends not to restrict only to the incarcerated, as it reproduces and intensifies the terrible working conditions to the agents, managers and professionals within the prisional units. The method used to encompass our analysis was the historical materialism, in order to understand the essence of social relations observed during the eight months of on-site research and semi-structured interviews. During the analysis it was showed how the conditions and labor relations, the oppression and exploitation put under a capitalist society reproduce in prison, and how the state, through the state and federal governments that manage the prison units, neglects basic needs of persons deprived of their liberty, especially regarding the possibility of selling their workforce to reproduce their own existence. Faced with this scenario, the struggle for the constitution of class consciousness is an urgency of our social formation, and this will be possible if it is concomitant to the struggle for human emancipation.