The US is infamous for its overuse of solitary confinement, which is far more inhumane than prison labour. Like, can easily drive you insane and cause you to self harm and commit suicide. I don’t care how hard the work in a gulag is, it does not come close to what solitary can do to you.

I think there can be a discussion to be had about prison labor, especially in a fledgling vulnerable society that doesn’t have the means to easily accomodate food, shelter, medicine etc. for prisoners who in return produce nothing during their imprisonment.

In the whole gulag vs. U.S. prison complex discussion I think it is important to highlight the means the societies had, and in return their proportionate investment in humane treatement of prisoners. And, of course, WHO is being locked up, by what numbers, and WHY.

In the U.S., we have an insanely huge prison population made up of racial minorities and the poor, funneled into crime due to systemic poverty, given draconian sentences even for relatively victimless crimes, given no avenue for success once they leave–if anything, they are set up to fail miserable and either die or re-commit crime–with prison cultures of race war, machismo violence, and constant threat of rape, murder, and abuse from both fellow inmates and guards, all often without consequence. This is not even to mention the pay-to-win aspect of the court system, and how people like Epstein will get 1 year of prison on child prostitution charges with “work leave” for weekends in cozy suites with flat screen TVs–if they serve time at all–while the poor are given decades for any petty crime and are stuffed in hostile, unhygenic, traumatizing, neglectful environments. Not to mention terrible shit like solitary confinement like Fennekin said.

Now, I am much more familiar with all the grisly details of American prisons than I am Soviet gulags. But from what little I have heard, while of course there are always exceptions to this rule, in comparion the gulags had a much less substantial population, and was more likely to consist of actual criminals (regardless of socioeconomic or racial status), including fascists and miscellaeous anticommunist saboteurs (as opposed to the types of political prisoners America makes), and were focused more on rehabilitation and reintegration than punishment. I’ve even read how some were essentially open-air, where prisoners could interact with local townspeople on a normal basis (albeit in relatively isolated towns).

Again, not an expert, but at a glance, definitely not the torturous Nazi-esque slave camps where the good and innocent are starved and rotted like we think here in the West, and in many ways proportionally much more humane than the U.S. If someone has information to supplement or counter this, please help or challenge me here on this claim.

Not so fun fact: almost all the other states still have forced labor, too, but they pay a couple of bucks an hour or so.

Apparently the US used to think that waged work was slavery, but now they think this crap

Under socialism nazis work in labor camps

under capitalism communists do

Thats the difference