Police & the Working Class

[The Vegan Marxist]

When the topic of the police come in terms, I know plenty who would merely say "fuck the police" & use that as their defense against such. Although I do find myself saying the same thing at times, especially around the areas that I've been through, but what I'm wondering is if the police can be classified as workers?

I have a family with an entire history of police force & military, & if there's anything that they talked about more it would've been the dirt-shit wages they'd get for their work. And it's no secret that police are treated like shit by their bosses just like every other worker. Around where I lived, there was this one cop that I knew who was the best in the force, had great ratings as one. But he ended up missing one meeting & got fired for it. Though, it came to find out that it wasn't the real reason. The chief's cousin was looking into getting a job with the police department, but couldn't get in because no spots were available. And, of course, the day after the cop that I knew got fired, the chief's cousin filled his spot. The cop then became a bread man, who, according to him, gained just as much wages as one as he did as a cop.

So yes, I know the arguments against cops. They exploit the working class & beat on innocent civilians. Etc etc. But the IRS exploits workers as well, but they're still workers. So can the police be considered as the working class as well?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I consider police to be more like lifers in the military - although they are similar in their relation to production to teachers, I think cops and prison guards are a breed apart in the way they are treated by the state.

While California has been giving pink slips to teachers and trying to increase class sizes, Oakland wants to add more cops (despite the crime rate actually dropping). In the Oakland PD, the starting salary is $70,000 a year not including benefits and cops do not have to pay for their schooling. Oakland teachers on the other hand would have to pay for their own schooling, and even if they have a Masters degree, the starting salary is about half the starting salary of Oakland cops. When I did some research on the OPD a few years back I also read something about how only 10% of Oakland cops live in Oakland. I could be wrong about the specific percentage, but I remember being surprised by how low the percentage was. Meanwhile Oakland teachers have a 30% turnover rate.

Again, during the "budget crisis" that saw cuts to universities and public education, increases in tolls and parking fines, California had no money - but they did have money to contract a new multi-million dollar death row for San Quentin prison.

So I think the ruling class goes out of its way to separate cops, court officials, and prison guards from the working class. Cops are also basically given a blank check by the state to break the law - this also helps secure their loyalty to the state. A cop getting arrested for brutality is almost unheard of and even when they get caught for corruption or planting evidence or whatnot, their reaction tends to be completely indigent and they act like CEOs who are being put on trail for cooking the books. From an induvidual perspective it probably is the same sort of feeling: the individual cops like a crooked CEO are thinking - hey I had to do this because it was expected of me and not doing it would have cost me my position.

The result of being favored by the state is that cops never have solidarity with other striking workers (even though cops are technically unionized) unless it is just an individual cop who for whatever personal reasons feels sympathy for the workers. Cops rarely go out on strike and if they do, the state doesn't hesitate to meet their demands as the ruling class rises up in a chorus of complaints that there will be chaos unless cops are put back to work. Compare that to education - the state was more than happy to hire anybody off of Craigslist to get scabs for a 1 day Oakland teacher strike last month!

A portion of my family are cops too - Irish immigrants, go fig - their children for the most part became bureaucrats and lawyers while most of the rest of my family stayed in industrial and office jobs over the last two generations. So while they were probably paid less than cops today are paid (relative to average working wages over the years) they always seemed to be doing pretty well to me. But they were in San Francisco and so maybe it's different if you are a city cop verses a suburban or small town cop.

[mikelepore]

So can the police be considered as the working class as well?

Class isn't determined by beliefs or behaviors. The reason the police are in the working class is because the source of their income is wages acquired by getting jobs, that is, the source of their their income isn't profits returned by owning stocks, bonds, apartments, etc.

[RebelDog]

Class isn't determined by beliefs or behaviors. The reason the police are in the working class is because the source of their income is wages acquired by getting jobs, that is, the source of their their income isn't profits returned by owning stocks, bonds, apartments, etc.

It isn't just determined by economic factors either. The police are not working class. They have power over the working class and enforce the state through force. When workers occupy a factory the police come to the aid of the bosses to remove them or they attack pickets. Just because people have to sell their labour does not always mean they are working class. There is a power relationship in play also. My manager sells his labour to the same company as me but he is not working class. He has decision making power and an empowering position over the working class. In my opinion these things are important because the removal of such power over the working class is a key element in our emancipation and ability to practically apply concepts like self-management of the economy.

[NecroCommie]

Cops are the violence bureau of the state. Their job can be divided into three categories.
1) Using violence to force people into obeying the state.
2) Threatening people that if they don't obey the state then the police will resort to category one.
3) Finding out who has violated the will of the state, or is in risk of doing so, and then resorting to categories 1 and/or 2.

They can use number two in seemingly polite ways. The entire bureucracy of the police is ridicuously naive in it's belief about "neutrality". Even the bourgeoisie name for cops proves my point. "Law enforcement", meaning something that enforces the will of the bourgeoisie state.

RebelDog is also right. As long as workers don't enforce their own will, they cannot be entirely free.

[Black Sheep]

To give a practical example, in greece the austerity program has been passed, cutting wages and bonuses off of everyone.



...


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except the cops. :D

[theblackmask]

Here in Chicago, the police are getting more and more overtime hours, consistently get pay increases, and are generally well taken care of, although I have lived in smaller towns where much less resources are put into police funding. I think how well police are compensated really varies locally, but even if they are paid shit wages, they still retain the perks of being a cop, and are generally placed above the laws they are supposed to enforce. Police are exploited to a lesser degree than the rest of the working class, but they are exploited.

I used to hang out at this bar that was frequented by a lot of cops, and some of them hate the system as much as I do, while others relished their position above the rest of society.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Here in Chicago, the police are getting more and more overtime hours, consistently get pay increases, and are generally well taken care of, although I have lived in smaller towns where much less resources are put into police funding. I think how well police are compensated really varies locally, but even if they are paid shit wages, they still retain the perks of being a cop, and are generally placed above the laws they are supposed to enforce. Police are exploited to a lesser degree than the rest of the working class, but they are exploited.

I used to hang out at this bar that was frequented by a lot of cops, and some of them hate the system as much as I do, while others relished their position above the rest of society.

Would you say that, because of that personal experience of such, that police could be converted to our cause, to be used as a defensive tool? I remember Roosevelt doing something similar for the working class as well.

[theblackmask]

Would you say that, because of that personal experience of such, that police could be converted to our cause, to be used as a defensive tool? I remember Roosevelt doing something similar for the working class as well.

Honestly, no....not in the current climate. Most police are conditioned to view the left as a bunch of punk kids, even the ones that will admit to having issues with capitalism. Also, there is also the pressure of losing one's job for collaborating with "the enemy." As long as the left remains a bunch of fringe groups, and no mass movement exists, I don't see any police officers changing sides.

[choff]

To substantiate some of the above claims, the town I live in recently halved the education budget to avoid cutting into the police budget. There is next to no crime rate in my town (unless you count middle school and high school age students wandering around town at night, which is the only thing you see cops called for in the paper's reports), but they were still issued new cars and a motorcycle (anyone care to explain why any police force requires a motorcycle?).

The inflation of local law enforcement budget while the arts and public education decay around us is disgusting. Anyone who stands up and voices any concern about this though is immediately blasted with the argument that ANY cut to law enforcement will result in widespread chaos.

A body such as the police receiving such overwhelming preferential treatment over the working class can - in my opinion - be considered nothing if not mutually exclusive.

[scarletghoul]

Economically obviously they are workers, but their social role means they are our class enemies as they actively enforce bourgeois property relations and oppress us. A distinction must be drawn between the main working class and what George Jackson called the "pig class". Similarly the very well paid "middle class" workers cannot be considered on our side either.

Class enemies and friends cannot be determined just by their economic relation to the means of production; their social role has to also be taken into account, and when it is its clear that the pigs are our enemies

[mikelepore]

It isn't just determined by economic factors either. The police are not working class. They have power over the working class and enforce the state through force. When workers occupy a factory the police come to the aid of the bosses to remove them or they attack pickets. Just because people have to sell their labour does not always mean they are working class. There is a power relationship in play also. My manager sells his labour to the same company as me but he is not working class. He has decision making power and an empowering position over the working class. In my opinion these things are important because the removal of such power over the working class is a key element in our emancipation and ability to practically apply concepts like self-management of the economy.

The purpose of defining classes is to show the major parts of a system. Like the major systems in the body are respiration, circulation, digestion, etc. The way you define classes doesn't serve that purpose very well.

The police are situated at local interface between you and the class ruled system, speaking to you face to face, so they are the ones that you see immediately. You didn't see the police rule books and supervisors who instructed the police that they are required to guard capitalist property and break up the picket line. You didn't notice the conservative majority of workers who voted into office the lawmakers who required the police to do those things. You though the police had the power because they are placed right in front of your eyes.

Your subjective role for power and decision making is not enlightening. The clerk at the tailor shop says I can't get my clothes back until next week. The mechanic says my car wont pass inspection uness a tail lamp is replaced. The librarian tells me to whisper. The janitor says the soap dispenser in the bathroom will get filled soon but it won't happen this afternoon. Are they all types of ruling classes? Our dislike of being told what to do is not center of everything.

Your manager at work is in the working class right up until the day he has saved enough money that he could survive on the interest on that savings, and it has become optional for him to go to work. Your manager constantly receives orders from above: this week you have to yell at the people to work faster and increase productivity; next week you have to select six of the people to be laid off; from now on you have to say no whenever they ask for permission to leave work to go to the dentist. The orders from headquarters were not shown to you, so you thought that the low level manager had the power. But blaming the messenger who carries the bad news doesn't illuminate how society is class divided. You might as well blame the garbage collector who refuses to come until next week even if your bin may be full right now.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Cops aren't members of the working class. They're the guardians of capital; essentially, bureaucrats with firepower.

[syndicat]

Police are like supervisors. They are at the bottom end of the bureaucratic class, which controls workers, and in the service of capital within capitalism. I would advise reading Kristian Williams, "Our Enemies in Blue."

The notion of class is a hypothesis about the way power over others works in an economic arrangement. The purpose of positing class division is to explain what we see...vast differences in wealth and power, class conflicts, and so on. It's also to help us sort out who likely allies are for working class struggle, based on objective position.

Police are recruited from the working class, as are supervisors, and they often are sensitive to the way a lot of more affluent people look down their noses on them, and their job can be dirty and physical. This is why cops sometimes identify as "working class."

But that identification never goes very far. This is seen by the fact that it is extremely rare for cops or cop unions to side with other workers. They know what is required of them. Their job is social control over the working class, and especially over the poorer parts of the working class. They act as street supervisors of workers who make their living as drivers. They act as bullies to intimidate working class people, as in protests or strikes. They play a "property management" role when they evict squatters or carry out evictions.

This is why I say cops are objectively not a part of the working class. To say that they sometimes are against the system doesn't refute that...small business owners and supervisors are sometimes against the system. My manager on one job I had was a Marxist. that doesn't mean he wasn't a boss.

[Vendetta]

Cops aren't members of the working class. They're the guardians of capital; essentially, bureaucrats with firepower.

This.

Also, they keep taking my weed. :thumbdown:

[RebelDog]

Your manager at work is in the working class right up until the day he has saved enough money that he could survive on the interest on that savings, and it has become optional for him to go to work. Your manager constantly receives orders from above: this week you have to yell at the people to work faster and increase productivity; next week you have to select six of the people to be laid off; from now on you have to say no whenever they ask for permission to leave work to go to the dentist. The orders from headquarters were not shown to you, so you thought that the low level manager had the power. But blaming the messenger who carries the bad news doesn't illuminate how society is class divided. You might as well blame the garbage collector who refuses to come until next week even if your bin may be full right now.

Arguing that someone is working class until they have enough money to live of it seems subjective to me. I'm not saying my manager is a different class to me because he brings bad news or anything else. I'm saying he is part of a class who monopolise empowering work, have real power over the working class and decision making power. Michael Albert refers to this class as the coordinator class. The garbage collector clearly does not belong to this class.

[mikelepore]

Albert's "coordinator class" category is also useless. There's no such thing. The managers are not a class. Some people get jobs where they are told to stuff grocery bags, some people get jobs where they are told to sweep the street, and some people get jobs where they are told to manage the time of other workers. What has been put into the job description of the last group doesn't make them into a separate class.

[syndicat]

The bureaucratic class is not a useless category at all. It explains the fact that bosss people are subject to day to day are usually not owners. It enables us to understand how you can have a ruling class not based on private accumulation of wealth, as in the old USSR.

Class is about power over others. There are different bases of that power. Ownership of physical and financial capital is the dominant such base in capitalism, but is not the only such base.