ABOLISH PRISONS OR PRISON SLAVERY (2025) By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

I approach the question gravely,
Do we abolish prisons or prison slavery?
As long as class struggle exists,
There will always be this:
Military police and prisons,
Eliminating either is a far off vision
All three form the basis of state power
And serve as weapons in our
Struggle in arms
To repress bourgeois harms
And enable socialism to flower
There are levels to this class fight,
That require both near and far sight
The aim to abolish the state
While the sentiment is great
Is a strategy whose time must wait
Until the class struggle is complete
We cannot right away state power defeat
For the state is a weapon of classes
Used for or against the masses
Wielded by whichever class has this
Control in its hand
Through which it commands
Social relations and makes its demands
Prisoners rose against the 13th Amendment
Demanding that prison slavery be ended
But the slogan was coopted
By those in society who so opted
To change our mission
From abolishing slavery to abolishing prisons
The contradiction between
The workers and bosses may seem
Purely arbitrary
But on the contrary
There can never be peace between
These two opposing poles
Hence state power is used to control
The one out of power
Until that hour
When one or the other exists no more
So long as class struggle burns hot
The need to remove some from society will not
Be eliminated
But how we treat the incarcerated
Is what distinguishes
A worker’s state from this capitalist rot
Prisons under socialism will heal
Not brutalize abuse and kill
But so long as we fight
Against the capitalist right
The need for state power will exist still