Affirmations of Freedom.

Karl Marx's insistence that "the weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses,"[1] clearly applies to the role of Ruth Wilson Gilmore's theoretical interventions in promoting the entrance of antiprison and antipolice abolitionist ideas into mainstream discourse. The imperative to acknowledge how contemporary capitalism remains racial capitalism in no smaller degree now than during the periods of colonialism and slavery protects us from analytic myopia and its deceptive moves - for example, that racism can be excised from future history, leaving the system of capitalism undisturbed. 4 Ruth Wilson Gilmore, I Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California i (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). [Extracted from the article]