What are Abbott's political beliefs, and how do you think these beliefs developed?

In his time in prison, and especially his years in solitary confinement, Abbott has used book reading as a way to challenge his mind and understand the world in absence of being out in the world to directly experience it. In his wide reading of many philosophers and philosophical systems, he has become most closely attached to Communism, especially the works of Karl Marx. He claims Communists are the ones who fight for prisoners' rights, hiring them attorneys and organizing letter—writing campaigns. Communists are the only ones who will report the true state of the American prison system.

Abbott is also attracted to Communism because he believes it most accurately describes human nature and history. Like Marx, he sees the progress of history as a series of class struggles. Classism creates inequality, which begets anger and eventually violence. Without class distinctions there would be no such cycles of violence and thus no police state. The police and prison state is a direct result of classism and inequality. Abbott feels Communism can also be accurately applied to the racism he sees infecting American and its prison system. History in this view is a series of attempts by whites to assert superiority over non-whites. Guards in prison encourage racial animosity and use race issues to manipulate prisoners.

Abbott sees himself as a Communist revolutionary and dreams of a day when he can walk side by side with his fellow "comrades" to effect major change in the world, as someone like Lenin did. He is encouraged (writing in the mid 1970s) by the spread of Communist influence as in Cuba and elsewhere. Worldwide revolution will only be possible, in Abbott's view, when the workers ally with the peasants to topple the bourgeois.