Capitalism, Debt Imprisonment, and the Early American State

James Parisot, University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley

This paper explores the gradual and uneven elimination of imprisonment for debt in the American north in the early to mid 1800s. Rather than focusing on ‘informal’ market relationships, it draws from a wide range of records including, for instance, the records of the Prison Discipline Society of Boston, to argue that transforming class relations precipitated changes in state form, shaped by the gradual conquest of capital over social and political life. These developments encouraged a transformation in social attitudes regarding criminality, debt, and politics. Highlighting the role of contingency in the history of capitalism, I also argue there is no ‘internal’ or ‘necessary’ relation between capitalism and types of class punishment, but transforming class relations, especially the formation of a national bourgeoisie and gradual creation of a dependent working class, re-shaped early American systems of imprisonment. The paper also highlights the way the creation of the supposedly more modern US system of imprisonment was racialized from the start, as well as a system designed to recycle deviant subjects back into the US proletariat. This paper, in this sense, is both explanatory and a defense of historical materialist interpretations of history. It engages with questions of structure, causality, and contingency at different layers of history, as explores the way structural transformations in modes of production shape the contours of decision making and possibility. But it also highlights the explanatory power of historical materialism to engage with localized contingent factors such as the creative thinking, religion, and morality of those who designed early prisons.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 142. Class, Colonialism, and Empire in US History