Police

[The Jay]

What is the police's relation to their means of production, and what is their means of production anyway. I'm having trouble deciding whether it's taxation in partnership with the IRS or the people they "catch" due to the quota system. Which one or third option is it?

[mrmikhail]

As Petit-bourgeois the police class' purpose is to serve the interest of their Capitalist masters, they themselves lack a means of production, but only serve to preserve the means of production of others.

[The Jay]

Anybody?

[The Jay]

As Petit-bourgeois the police class' purpose is to serve the interest of their Capitalist masters, they themselves lack a means of production, but only serve to preserve the means of production of others.

That seems to be outside the means of production entirely. Are the police truly outside the means of production or just insulated by it through taxes? This seems to be a common problem for the entire gov't.

[mrmikhail]

That seems to be outside the means of production entirely. Are the police truly outside the means of production or just insulated by it through taxes? This seems to be a common problem for the entire gov't.

They do not produce anything so are not technically workers, so they are more outside the means of production than anything. The same goes for all government workers, they are all in the Petit-bourgeois class of society, they don't produce anything, they just serve the ruling class' interests

[Rusty Shackleford]

This article does a lot to explain the role of police in our society. Written in response to, and for distribution at Occupations. Written by the PSL. Its too long to post, but its definitely a good read for an introduction to the issues of police and police brutality in American society.


Are the police forces part of the 99% or tools of the 1%? (http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/are-police-part-99-percent-ows.html)

[mrmikhail]

Great article there, really says where the police stand. Nothing more than the arm of the ruling class that keeps everyone else down.

[Die Rote Fahne]

The police are not proletariat. They do not produce. They are the protectors of capital, the defenders of the ruling class. The hired thugs of the bourgeoisie.

Which is why, they are to be replaced by professional investigators, as opposed to those who "police". The workers' militia could handle the possibility of a violent criminal, such as a psychotic who is murdering people.

[xub3rn00dlex]

Police? Fuck the police.

[The Jay]

Could you give me your definition of producing? Secretaries technically don't produce anything in the sense of making something. They provide a service, so do the police, whom they provide it too is a different question from what their relation to the means of production is. Police may very well be the tools of the bourgeoisie, but that may be said of factory workers as well.

My red best,
LiquidState

[Die Rote Fahne]

Could you give me your definition of producing? Secretaries technically don't produce anything in the sense of making something. They provide a service, so do the police, whom they provide it too is a different question from what their relation to the means of production is. Police may very well be the tools of the bourgeoisie, but that may be said of factory workers as well.

My red best,
LiquidState
That's a good question. By producing, we see that the service sector also does not produce in the traditional sense of the proletarian idea. I will try to give you a decent answer within the night.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The police are the tools of the oppressors, and unlike those who serve in the army, they are there absolutely by choice, and we should remember this in our dealings with them.

Also can we refrain from the 99% and 1% talk. It's working class and ruling class. I know it's one and the same but let's not talk about percentages when we don't know the accuracy of our statements and have no means of validating this 'we are the 99%' stuff.

I'm all for neighbourhood/community policing as a revolutionary improvement on what has effectively become a state-led institutional apparatus of (sometimes) willful terror.

[CommieTroll]

As Petit-bourgeois the police class' purpose is to serve the interest of their Capitalist masters, they themselves lack a means of production, but only serve to preserve the means of production of others.

How are they considered Petit-Bourgeois? Technically they are proletarians but because they serve the interests of the Capitalist state they are class traitors, not petit-bourgeois

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

How are Police anything other than petit-bourgeois? They CANNOT be proletarian, for they are not wage slaves and they produce nothing. They freely enter into a salaried contract (in the UK I know they start on more than most graduates!), are not exploited in terms of having a surplus being created out of the difference between the value of their labour and their remuneration, and they happily do the bidding of the ruling class.

They are not class traitors, they are just bastards.:thumbdown:

[Grigori]

Okay fuck the police, but what type of law enforcement would you have with a successful revolution? Reasons for crime would be down, but sadistic bastards will always exist until the second coming.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Okay fuck the police, but what type of law enforcement would you have with a successful revolution? Reasons for crime would be down, but sadistic bastards will always exist until the second coming.
Police would be replaced by investigators, and workers militia.

The presence of police on the street won't stop a psychotic person from murdering someone. However, the militia will respond to put him down or capture him.

[Die Neue Zeit]

How are Police anything other than petit-bourgeois? They CANNOT be proletarian, for they are not wage slaves and they produce nothing.

Class relations have expanded since Marx's time. There are no longer just three or four major classes.

The police are in the wage labour system, but unlike proletarians they do not perform productive work (whether in the framework of surplus value, directly or indirect sustaining the workers' consumption bundle, quantitatively and/or qualitatively contributing to the development of society's labour power and its capabilities, or some other framework). Meanwhile, the petit-bourgeois own small-scale means of production.

The police are in the same class or group of classes as private- and public-sector factory workers producing weapons for the arms trade.

[Grenzer]

Class relations have expanded since Marx's time. There are no longer just three or four major classes.

The police are in the wage labour system, but they do not perform productive work (whether in the framework of surplus value, directly or indirect sustaining the workers' consumption bundle, quantitatively and/or qualitatively contributing to the development of society's labour power and its capabilities, or some other framework). Meanwhile, the petit-bourgeois own small-scale means of production.

The police are in the same class or group of classes as private- and public-sector factory workers producing weapons for the arms trade.

Interesting idea, but why do you classify them with arms producers?

It seems obvious that the bourgeoisie treats the security apparatus in a completely different manner than other public sector workers. This is apparent in both historical and contemporary contexts. I am reminded of the strike of the bobbies during the First World War, and the British Government's haste in meeting their demands. In a more contemporary sense, I immediately think of the the union smashing in Wisconsin. The police were left completely untouched, no coincidence I think.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Interesting idea, but why do you classify them with arms producers?

This paper provides the framework for that assertion:

http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/unprod3b.pdf

[RED DAVE]

The police are in the same class or group of classes as private- and public-sector factory workers producing weapons for the arms trade.That is some really dumb shit.

You are classifying one of the "special bodies of armed men" that Engles declared to be the essence of the bourgeois state in the same category as embers of the industrial working class.

Here's Lenin on this issue:


Engels elucidates the concept of the “power” which is called the state, a power which arose from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command.

We are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men, because the public power which is an attribute of every state “does not directly coincide” with the armed population, with its “self-acting armed organization".

Like all great revolutionary thinkers, Engels tries to draw the attention of the class-conscious workers to what prevailing philistinism regards as least worthy of attention, as the most habitual thing, hallowed by prejudices that are not only deep-rooted but, one might say, petrified. A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power. But how can it be otherwise?

From the viewpoint of the vast majority of Europeans of the end of the 19th century, whom Engels was addressing, and who had not gone through or closely observed a single great revolution, it could not have been otherwise. They could not understand at all what a “self-acting armed organization of the population” was. When asked why it became necessary to have special bodies of armed men placed above society and alienating themselves from it (police and a standing army), the West-European and Russian philistines are inclined to utter a few phrases borrowed from Spencer of Mikhailovsky, to refer to the growing complexity of social life, the differentiation of functions, and so on.

Such a reference seems “scientific”, and effectively lulls the ordinary person to sleep by obscuring the important and basic fact, namely, the split of society into irreconcilable antagonistic classes.

Were it not for this split, the “self-acting armed organization of the population” would differ from the primitive organization of a stick-wielding herd of monkeys, or of primitive men, or of men united in clans, by its complexity, its high technical level, and so on. But such an organization would still be possible.

It is impossible because civilized society is split into antagonistic, and, moreover, irreconcilably antagonistic classes, whose “self-acting” arming would lead to an armed struggle between them. A state arises, a special power is created, special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, shows us the naked class struggle, clearly shows us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving the exploited instead of the exploiters.(emph added)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s2

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

That is some really dumb shit.

You are classifying one of the "special bodies of armed men" that Engles declared to be the essence of the bourgeois state in the same category as embers of the industrial working class.

All I'll say in response to your hasty conclusion is: read the PDF above.

[RED DAVE]

The police are in the same class or group of classes as private- and public-sector factory workers producing weapons for the arms trade.
That is some really dumb shit.

You are classifying one of the "special bodies of armed men" that Engles declared to be the essence of the bourgeois state in the same category as embers of the industrial working class.
All I'll say in response to your hasty conclusion is: read the PDF above.I read it, and the only reference to the police is in the following:


In modern capitalist economies the more obvious unproductive sectors are public administration and the police-military apparatus, but also capitalist activities such as armaments, private guards, whole- sale trade, advertisement, financial and juridical services, luxuries etc.This is an argument about productive and and unproducted sectors of the capitalist economy, not about the class membership of cops and industrial workers.

You are bullshitting. There is no justification for a Marxist to group munitions workers and cops together.

RED DAVE

[Hiero]

Which is why, they are to be replaced by professional investigators, as opposed to those who "police". The workers' militia could handle the possibility of a violent criminal, such as a psychotic who is murdering people. I have come to realise how ridiculous "worker's militia" sounds. It sound so simpleton.

[mrmikhail]

I have come to realise how ridiculous "worker's militia" sounds. It sound so simpleton.

Yes, that would essentially amount to vigilante justice...so I don't think that's a go.

On the other matters, I do not see police and arms workers in the same class....arms workers produce an actual product while the police produce nothing and only serve as the internal weapon of the bourgeois. Thus they cling onto, and support, their system in hopes they will be rewarded by them for doing so.

[Hiero]

Yes, that would essentially amount to vigilante justice...so I don't think that's a go.

Well the way Die Rote Fahne explained it, a "worker militia" is no different to a police force. Unless there is more to it, but generally people on this website just say "we will have a worker's militia" and that is about it. I have never really seen any clear answers, "worker's militia" chasing psychotics around town is basically what police do.

People say "the police are the gaurdians of capital" but people rarely explain the complexities of police in a capitalist society. One would get the idea that police sit around guarding the fortress of "capital" from workers. When infact they are the micromanagers of discipline in society by having special power (the ability to use force, trespass, arrest etc).

Capitalist society is uneven in its distribution of all forms of capital, cultural, social, symbolic and econonmic. Some communities through poverty, particular race based structures and the deindustrialisation in the West become depleted of the structures neccssary to uphold the moral codes capitalist society. That is they can not follow the protestant work ethic, the ideal Western family structure, the conventional boureois concepts of social space (the different rules for private and public space). Hence they constantly transgress the laws of capitalist societies. Infact communities can embody the transgression a dangerous habitus (an underclass habit).

I would imagine the point would be to make the police force productive. I think you should still have a police force, but that engages with the community through it's production of services for the community. Then a recalculation of laws that are not based on Western universals, but localised laws that fit the lifestyles of the community.

Maybe have an elected member of the community act as a magistrate. Someone who is away of the local social dynamic, someone who understands the kinships, family and relations. That way people who are arrested face a a magistrate known to them, so you don't just judge someone based on the assualt they commite, but your are aware of the social-history (their family, kinship) and can come to a conclusion based on the community interests.

Worker's militias sounds like some primitive clan based force of punitive action.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Well the way Die Rote Fahne explained it, a "worker militia" is no different to a police force. Unless there is more to it, but generally people on this website just say "we will have a worker's militia" and that is about it. I have never really seen any clear answers, "worker's militia" chasing psychotics around town is basically what police do.

People say "the police are the gaurdians of capital" but people rarely explain the complexities of police in a capitalist society. One would get the idea that police sit around guarding the fortress of "capital" from workers. When infact they are the micromanagers of discipline in society by having special power (the ability to use force, trespass, arrest etc).

Valid points.

I always think that merely saying "guardians of capital" isn't capturing the police in their complexity. Yes, they're certain guardians of capital, but they also engage in methods of social control which one can't draw clear connections between said control measures and the protection of capital/profit. For example, why have attitudes in regard to policing change within many American departments regarding how proactive cops were in preventing crime? Before the latter decades of the 20th century, cops would mostly just sit around and wait for calls...that's not really how it works anymore. Why did the William Bratton approach take hold?

These are interesting questions.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Class relations have expanded since Marx's time. There are no longer just three or four major classes.

The police are in the wage labour system, but they do not perform productive work (whether in the framework of surplus value, directly or indirect sustaining the workers' consumption bundle, quantitatively and/or qualitatively contributing to the development of society's labour power and its capabilities, or some other framework). Meanwhile, the petit-bourgeois own small-scale means of production.

The police are in the same class or group of classes as private- and public-sector factory workers producing weapons for the arms trade.

What are you on about?

How can salaried, non-manual professional workers be in the wage labour system?

The petit-bourgeois don't always own small-scale means of production. Lawyers (non-partner/non-director level) are members of the petit-bourgeoisie, for a start.

Police are in no way in the same league as factory workers producing weapons. That is the proletariat, of which the police have no part in.

Coppers are not in any way related to factory workers, DNZ, no matter what your bumbling posts say.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I read it, and the only reference to the police is in the following:

This is an argument about productive and and unproducted sectors of the capitalist economy, not about the class membership of cops and industrial workers.

You are bullshitting. There is no justification for a Marxist to group munitions workers and cops together.

RED DAVE

Indeed, unless all munitions workers are bastards....:rolleyes::thumbdown:

[kashkin]

I always thought that cops were members of the working class. They sell their labour to the state to maintain its control over the rest of the working class. This obviously makes them class traitors.


The police are the tools of the oppressors, and unlike those who serve in the army, they are there absolutely by choice, and we should remember this in our dealings with them.

While armies in the past have turned on their officers and the state, I don't see why we should consider the army and the police any different until the army does turn sides.

[mrmikhail]

What are you on about?

How can salaried, non-manual professional workers be in the wage labour system?

The petit-bourgeois don't always own small-scale means of production. Lawyers (non-partner/non-director level) are members of the petit-bourgeoisie, for a start.

Police are in no way in the same league as factory workers producing weapons. That is the proletariat, of which the police have no part in.

Coppers are not in any way related to factory workers, DNZ, no matter what your bumbling posts say.

Thank you! Someone else who will help me put forth my point that the police are members of the petit-bourgeois.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This is an argument about productive and and unproducted sectors of the capitalist economy, not about the class membership of cops and industrial workers.

You are bullshitting. There is no justification for a Marxist to group munitions workers and cops together.

Look at the mathematical functions presented in the PDF.

The ramification is that only productive workers can be proletarian. The problem, of course, is: how does one define productive work?

In a post above, I presented frameworks from Marx, Cockshott, and myself on the matter, but those are just starters.


[A]rms workers produce an actual product while the police produce nothing and only serve as the internal weapon of the bourgeois.

For the most part, it's not a product not consumed by the working class or the rest of the civilian economy.


I would imagine the point would be to make the police force productive. I think you should still have a police force, but that engages with the community through it's production of services for the community.

What kind of services did you have in mind?


What are you on about?

How can salaried, non-manual professional workers be in the wage labour system?

Wage labour doesn't have to be based on hourly compensation. :glare:


The petit-bourgeois don't always own small-scale means of production. Lawyers (non-partner/non-director level) are members of the petit-bourgeoisie, for a start.

Ah, but as I wrote, class relations have become more complicated since Marx's time. See, the typical petit-bourgeois is productive through ownership of small-scale MOP. Mid-level lawyers, while salaried, do not perform productive work.


Police are in no way in the same league as factory workers producing weapons. That is the proletariat, of which the police have no part in.

My implication is that private- and public-sector factory workers producing weapons for the arms trade are not proletarians. Not every "industrial worker" is performing productive work; therefore, not every "industrial worker" is proletarian.

[Smashcapitalists]

We do not need pigs, they dont produce jack shit. They just guard the local chamber off commerce and most cops are neo nazis and skinheads specially the bald white ones.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Wage labour, in its most exploitative form, is where surplus is created by paying workers less than the full fruit of their labour.

Now, DNZ, unless you're saying that oppressing internal opposition (including the left/working class) is worth more than the very good salaries PCs currently earn, you really don't have a point.

Police are members of the petit-bourgoisie, and that is an end of it.

Kashkin: if we are talking about non-officer ranks, then there is a clear difference: culturally (in the UK at least), many people go into the army because their parents went into it and/or because they do not have the requisite skills/qualifications to go into many other jobs. This is in contravention to those who join the police, who clearly do so because they believe in the police as an institution, in its current format.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

DNZ, are you trying to say that the police take part in productive work? What exactly is productive about policing the working class on behalf of the ruling class?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Wage labour, in its most exploitative form, is where surplus is created by paying workers less than the full fruit of their labour.

Yeah, and?


Now, DNZ, unless you're saying that oppressing internal opposition (including the left/working class) is worth more than the very good salaries PCs currently earn, you really don't have a point.

My point was that factory workers working in arms trade jobs are not proletarians. The goods they produce are not consumed by the working class or by civilian society at large.

The same goes for cops. They're not proletarians.


Police are members of the petit-bourgoisie, and that is an end of it.

Police aren't proletarians, but they're not petit-bourgeoisie. "That is the end of it" reeks of reductionism.

[xub3rn00dlex]

My point was that factory workers working in arms trade jobs are not proletarians. The goods they produce are not consumed by the working class or by civilian society at large.

The fuck? Factory workers are proletariat, considering they are producing a surplus value and are exploited by capitalists who own their means of production. You know this DNZ, and it doesn't matter whether they're producing munitions or tubs of silly putty. Their relationship to the means of production are no different.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Most factory workers produce goods that are consumed by the working class or by civilian society at large. These are proletarians. Some, however, don't.

[xub3rn00dlex]

Most factory workers produce goods that are consumed by the working class or by civilian society at large. These are proletarians. Some, however, don't.

ThEre's no dispute with that claim. But you're saying that workers who produce goods not consumed by the working class or 'civilain society' are not part of the proletariat which is fucking ridiculous. Has the definition of what t means to be proletariat gone over your head? They don't own the MoP. Could their labor e shifted elsewhere, absolutely. But they are still proles.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Most factory workers produce goods that are consumed by the working class or by civilian society at large. These are proletarians. Some, however, don't.
Tell me where Marx has said this?

Kautsky's revisionism is plain as day in you.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

My point was that factory workers working in arms trade jobs are not proletarians. The goods they produce are not consumed by the working class or by civilian society at large.

The same goes for cops. They're not proletarians.



Police aren't proletarians, but they're not petit-bourgeoisie. "That is the end of it" reeks of reductionism.

1. That's absolutely bollocks. Class is determined by your relationship to the means of production, not by your relationship to the demand curve!

There is revisionism, and then there is revisionism. Who consumes what plays absolutely NO PART in someone's relationship to the means of production, and therefore their class.

Stop trying to revise Marx's strongest point - his critique of Capitalism and of social structure. It is well accepted, even by non-revolutionaries, that there are 2/3 classes - the bottom, the middle and the top, with whatever epithet you want to attach to each class/layer. Marx wasn't always right, but on this he was absolutely spot on: society is divided into the rulers and the ruled, and those who fall in between. The police fall in between. There is no need to create a new 'lower-middle' layer for the police, unless you want to change our attitudes towards the police, which I do not think is necessary.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Class is determined by your relationship to the means of production, not by your relationship to the demand curve!

You've got a one-dimensional view of class. Class is determined by one's relationship to the production process, of which relationships with the MOP are but one part of that process. This was the point Marx was trying to make in Capital, not in earlier works.


Marx wasn't always right, but on this he was absolutely spot on: society is divided into the rulers and the ruled, and those who fall in between.

This was the Marx of the earlier works.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

No, I have a Marxian view of class. Stop trying to be clever. What about goods like the Bugatti Veyron car, which will never be consumed by the working class and have been consumed by something like 0.00001% of wider civil society. Are the workers who produced that one proletarian or not?

You are, essentially, chatting out of your backside on this one. If you admitted to not being a Marxist, then perhaps we could take this new theory of yours into a new discussion, but stop trying to pretend that Marx's own views on class are somehow different to what he, Engels and pretty much every leftist (but you, it seems!) has interpreted class to be for 150+ years.

If you don't believe that society is divided, essentially, into the ruled and the rulers, then what are you doing here?

[Die Neue Zeit]

No, I have a Marxian view of class. Stop trying to be clever.

Why don't you aim your criticisms directly at the authors of the PDF, then?

[kashkin]

Wage labour, in its most exploitative form, is where surplus is created by paying workers less than the full fruit of their labour.

Now, DNZ, unless you're saying that oppressing internal opposition (including the left/working class) is worth more than the very good salaries PCs currently earn, you really don't have a point.

Police are members of the petit-bourgoisie, and that is an end of it.

Kashkin: if we are talking about non-officer ranks, then there is a clear difference: culturally (in the UK at least), many people go into the army because their parents went into it and/or because they do not have the requisite skills/qualifications to go into many other jobs. This is in contravention to those who join the police, who clearly do so because they believe in the police as an institution, in its current format.


I understand what you are saying about the army, but obviously, wouldn't many soldiers go into the army believing in the army and what it does? Obviously for many it is a good way to get education and a job, but some (many?) would support it as an institution. What I meant was that many militaries have led right-wing coups over history. While these were led by generals or other upper officers, they obviously had support of the rank and file. I don't think we can be too soft on the army until they actually do change sides. We have seen that they will attack civilians. Also, many people might go into the police force believing that they might actually do some good and help people(hopefully they'll realise they are not).

Also, you classify the police as petty-bourgeois because they aren't wage slaves in the way factory workers are (to use the comparison); then wouldn't nurses, teachers, accountants, etc be petty-bourgeois? They don't produce a product, but they keep capitalism functioning. I would think the police are workers as they sell their labour for a wage. Obviously they are class traitors and a tool for repression, but still workers. Earning a good salary doesn't automatically make a person bourgeois, mine workers here make quite a bit (compared to the national average).

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Why don't you aim your criticisms directly at the authors of the PDF, then?

Because you are the one who has been trying to revise Marx's exceptionally solid analysis of class and class relations, so i'm just informing you why your revisionism is wrong, not to mention stupidly annoying.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I understand what you are saying about the army, but obviously, wouldn't many soldiers go into the army believing in the army and what it does? Obviously for many it is a good way to get education and a job, but some (many?) would support it as an institution. What I meant was that many militaries have led right-wing coups over history. While these were led by generals or other upper officers, they obviously had support of the rank and file. I don't think we can be too soft on the army until they actually do change sides. We have seen that they will attack civilians. Also, many people might go into the police force believing that they might actually do some good and help people(hopefully they'll realise they are not).

Also, you classify the police as petty-bourgeois because they aren't wage slaves in the way factory workers are (to use the comparison); then wouldn't nurses, teachers, accountants, etc be petty-bourgeois? They don't produce a product, but they keep capitalism functioning. I would think the police are workers as they sell their labour for a wage. Obviously they are class traitors and a tool for repression, but still workers. Earning a good salary doesn't automatically make a person bourgeois, mine workers here make quite a bit (compared to the national average).

Surely everyone who goes into any job (unless it's totally dead-end!) will, to some extent, believe in that job. Again, someone's attitude to their job doesn't really affect their class relations.

I mean, I want to be an Air Traffic Controller, because i'm not doing the right degree to become a teacher and i'm not intelligent enough to become a lecturer/academic. Air Traffic Controllers, though well paid, are obviously proletarians: they 'produce' a ridiculously high level of safety and efficiency in terms of airline travel, which could not exist without them. Whether I 'like' thet idea of becoming a fairly well paid proletarian in the future doesn't really change the fact that it is still a proletarian job, you see.

Nurses 'produce' healthcare benefits far in excess of their salaries (hence exploitation of wage labour, hence they are working class). Teachers i'm not so sure about. It's the same principle as the nurses, they 'produce' educational benefits, though i'm not sure if they are 'exploited', per se.

Accountants - like lawyers - are part of the classic, non-stock owning, petty-bourgeoisie. The classic example, in fact, as long as they don't own stock/shares in a business and are not at director level.

Police don't sell their productive labour for a wage, finally. They enforce the will of the ruling class - often gleefully, otherwise they'd quit, surely! - and are well remunerated for it. They produce nothing valuable, unlike my examples of nurses and air traffic controllers, who do still technically 'produce', albeit in a non-traditional way of thinking, outside of the factory.

[CommieTroll]

and they happily do the bidding of the ruling class.

They are not class traitors, they are just bastards.:thumbdown:

It's not that simple, they have to find a means to provide for and support themselves and their families like the working class. The don't willingly do the job just to enforce the will of the ruling class even though it is a major part of their jobs. Cops are like most groups, some nice people and a whole lot of bastards

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Yeah, tell that to Ian Tomlinson's family.

I'm not saying every single PC on his beat enjoys beating down the working class, but there are certainly a large enough number of cops in the UK that do, for me to suppose that their job is not mere 'wage slavery'.

Also, to become a PC in the UK, I know that you have to do voluntary work experience for sometimes months on end, and then the (unpaid) training lasts several months as well. So let's not pretend that people enter the police to make ends meet.

I don't care whether someone is nice/not nice in terms of their personal character, but whether what they do directly impacts negatively on the working class, and whether they have a choice. In the case of the police, here in the UK, they become policemen/policewomen by choice, and they have a very, very negative impact, generally on ordinary working people.

And I haven't even started on the institutional racism that has been prevalent in the police for god knows how long.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Because you are the one who has been trying to revise Marx's exceptionally solid analysis of class and class relations, so i'm just informing you why your revisionism is wrong, not to mention stupidly annoying.

Marx had several frameworks of class and class relations, ranging from the crude to the sophisticated. Also, where did you get this absurd idea that I'm some sort of "revisionist"? :rolleyes:

[Die Neue Zeit]

Which is why, they are to be replaced by professional investigators, as opposed to those who "police". The workers' militia could handle the possibility of a violent criminal, such as a psychotic who is murdering people.


I'm all for neighbourhood/community policing as a revolutionary improvement on what has effectively become a state-led institutional apparatus of (sometimes) willful terror.


Maybe have an elected member of the community act as a magistrate. Someone who is away of the local social dynamic, someone who understands the kinships, family and relations. That way people who are arrested face a a magistrate known to them, so you don't just judge someone based on the assualt they commite, but your are aware of the social-history (their family, kinship) and can come to a conclusion based on the community interests.

Worker's militias sounds like some primitive clan based force of punitive action.

Comrade Kiev Communard had this to say re. the regular police (and many thanks to theredson for inserting the wiki link):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/security-forces-dotpi-t146182/index.html


As for so-called "typical police", it is rather complicated question. I would propose using late-Soviet experience of creating "people's militias" (narodnye druzhyny (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_People%27s_Druzhina) in Russian, as opposed to practically police-like "official" Soviet militsiya) for conducting patrol/traffic surveillance activities, perhaps, with the assistance of former members of professional police force.

There are alternate names to describe additional functions than the crudeness presented by "workers militias," "neighbourhood watch," etc. Cuba's Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committees_for_the_Defense_of_the_Revolution) might be another model.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

1. Cuba's CDRs are not meant to - nor fit to - replace the 'policing/neighbourhood watch' function.

2. Marx's basic premise of class was simple. The world, essentially, is divided into rulers, ruled and those in between (the petit-bourgeoisie). I ask you again, if you don't believe this is the case, then what are you doing on a forum that is all about the emancipation of one class?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Also, where did you get this absurd idea that I'm some sort of "revisionist"? :rolleyes:

:lol::lol::lol:

That's cute.

[Die Neue Zeit]

1. Cuba's CDRs are not meant to - nor fit to - replace the 'policing/neighbourhood watch' function.

Why not?


2. Marx's basic premise of class was simple. The world, essentially, is divided into rulers, ruled and those in between (the petit-bourgeoisie). I ask you again, if you don't believe this is the case, then what are you doing on a forum that is all about the emancipation of one class?

I am merely criticizing the flimsy definition of "petit-bourgeoisie" used by you and others on this board.


:lol::lol::lol:

That's cute.

The framework of Orthodox Marxism is quite anti-revisionist.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Why not?



I am merely criticizing the flimsy definition of "petit-bourgeoisie" used by you and others on this board.



The framework of Orthodox Marxism is quite anti-revisionist.

1. The CDRs are not full-time units. They meet weekly/bi-monthly, and are composed of some (I don't think all) members of a block. They are rather inward-looking, they are (fairly) concerned with the welfare of their own block, night-time patrols etc. They are not meant to perform a national, regional or even city/town-wide policing function, and they seemed to me, when I was in Cuba, to be of less practical importance in peoples' lives than some fetishise on here.

2. If my definition of petit-bourgeois is 'flimsy', then my definition of a proletarian is rock-solid, and the police don't come into it. Any sound Marxist will agree with me. You're just trying to pretend that you're not a third-rate, irrelevant theorist, and in this particular instance more than others, you're coming across as absurd.

[Die Neue Zeit]

1. The CDRs are not full-time units. They meet weekly/bi-monthly, and are composed of some (I don't think all) members of a block. They are rather inward-looking, they are (fairly) concerned with the welfare of their own block, night-time patrols etc. They are not meant to perform a national, regional or even city/town-wide policing function, and they seemed to me, when I was in Cuba, to be of less practical importance in peoples' lives than some fetishise on here.

Do the CDRs themselves have organs under them? Perhaps I confused the former for the latter?


2. If my definition of petit-bourgeois is 'flimsy', then my definition of a proletarian is rock-solid, and the police don't come into it. Any sound Marxist will agree with me. You're just trying to pretend that you're not a third-rate, irrelevant theorist, and in this particular instance more than others, you're coming across as absurd.

Not at all. Your definition of "proletarian" is too inclusive, since it ignores the divide between productive and unproductive work.

[OTOH, the ortho-Marxist definition of "proletarian" was too exclusive, focusing almost exclusively on the so-called "industrial proletariat" (leaving aside the problem of industrial workers in unproductive work).]

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The CDRs are mere block units, and I don't think they have any practical importance anymore, as I said before.

There is no such thing as an unproductive factory worker. The very existence of their employment creates the conditions for wage slavery, exploitation and thus surplus, therefore capital accumulation. It's not a difficult economic concept, comrade!

Besides, this is Capitalism we are living under. What the worker produces is of no concern to me, the fact that they are wage slaves is. You are coming at this from some sort of Social Democratic/ethical angle, which has nothing to do with Marxism.

[kashkin]

Surely everyone who goes into any job (unless it's totally dead-end!) will, to some extent, believe in that job. Again, someone's attitude to their job doesn't really affect their class relations.

I mean, I want to be an Air Traffic Controller, because i'm not doing the right degree to become a teacher and i'm not intelligent enough to become a lecturer/academic. Air Traffic Controllers, though well paid, are obviously proletarians: they 'produce' a ridiculously high level of safety and efficiency in terms of airline travel, which could not exist without them. Whether I 'like' thet idea of becoming a fairly well paid proletarian in the future doesn't really change the fact that it is still a proletarian job, you see.

Nurses 'produce' healthcare benefits far in excess of their salaries (hence exploitation of wage labour, hence they are working class). Teachers i'm not so sure about. It's the same principle as the nurses, they 'produce' educational benefits, though i'm not sure if they are 'exploited', per se.

Accountants - like lawyers - are part of the classic, non-stock owning, petty-bourgeoisie. The classic example, in fact, as long as they don't own stock/shares in a business and are not at director level.

Police don't sell their productive labour for a wage, finally. They enforce the will of the ruling class - often gleefully, otherwise they'd quit, surely! - and are well remunerated for it. They produce nothing valuable, unlike my examples of nurses and air traffic controllers, who do still technically 'produce', albeit in a non-traditional way of thinking, outside of the factory.

Huh, I thought petty-bourgeois were small business owners, they make their income by living off their ownership of capital, but they don't hold large amounts or employ large numbers of people. Also, say a worker decides to buy some stock or a house to rent out for some extra cash and/or to help with his/her retirement, would that make him/her petty bourgeois? Or would it matter what percentage of his total income came from the stock/property?

You say that nurses 'produce' health care benefits, one could say in the same vein that accountants and lawyers 'produce' a sense of security for capitalists, they minimise risk. I thought that 'professionals' (i.e. lawyers, accountants, engineers, etc) are workers, but obviously of a different type/level/classification/something then your classical (is that the right word?) proletariat.

Also, in my experience (by this I mean most other communists I've talked to) teachers are generally considered part of the proletariat. I would argue that the work they have to do far outstrips their wages.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Professionals are petty-bourgeois, because (though this isn't always the case at partner/director level!) they generally are not exploited for their productive labour, yet do not own the means of production, thus do not fall within either the proletariat or bourgeoisie.

Of course, the petty bourgeoisie also includes small business owners, since they do not really have the muscle to 'control' the means of production.

[Hiero]

When I was in Cuba the Santaigo De Cuba CDRs were responsible for organising street parties.

[Ocean Seal]

What is the police's relation to their means of production, and what is their means of production anyway. I'm having trouble deciding whether it's taxation in partnership with the IRS or the people they "catch" due to the quota system. Which one or third option is it?


As Petit-bourgeois the police class' purpose is to serve the interest of their Capitalist masters, they themselves lack a means of production, but only serve to preserve the means of production of others.
I would just like to clarify that the police aren't petit-bourgeoisie. They are workers. Workers whose job it is to protect private property and serve the ruling class. They also have a bad habit of beating the shit out of other workers. Effectively, their institutional consciousness is a reactionary one rather than a revolutionary worker's one.

[Charlie Watt]

It's not that simple, they have to find a means to provide for and support themselves and their families like the working class. The don't willingly do the job just to enforce the will of the ruling class even though it is a major part of their jobs. Cops are like most groups, some nice people and a whole lot of bastards

While I don't disagree I'd say the nice cops are vastly in the minority and largely to be found in rural areas. The vast majority of pigs that I have encountered fit the class-traitor boot-boy cliche.


Yeah, tell that to Ian Tomlinson's family.

I'm not saying every single PC on his beat enjoys beating down the working class, but there are certainly a large enough number of cops in the UK that do, for me to suppose that their job is not mere 'wage slavery'.

Also, to become a PC in the UK, I know that you have to do voluntary work experience for sometimes months on end, and then the (unpaid) training lasts several months as well. So let's not pretend that people enter the police to make ends meet.

I don't care whether someone is nice/not nice in terms of their personal character, but whether what they do directly impacts negatively on the working class, and whether they have a choice. In the case of the police, here in the UK, they become policemen/policewomen by choice, and they have a very, very negative impact, generally on ordinary working people.

And I haven't even started on the institutional racism that has been prevalent in the police for god knows how long.

That sums up what I think of the bastards quite nicely, particularly the lengths they have to go to in order to kick fuck out of poor people for a living. As I said, I've no doubt that occasionally someone joins up for what they perceive to be altruistic reasons, but they're dwarfed by the violent tooled up thugs that simply like the social standing and the ability to tell people what to do, under penalty of a fuckin hydin.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

When I was in Cuba the Santaigo De Cuba CDRs were responsible for organising street parties.

I was in Havana only. I'd love to visit Santiago, though.

[Luís Henrique]

They do not produce anything so are not technically workers, so they are more outside the means of production than anything. The same goes for all government workers, they are all in the Petit-bourgeois class of society, they don't produce anything, they just serve the ruling class' interests

The proletariat isn't the class that produces things, it is the class of those who haven't anything to sell except their labour power. Otherwise the unemployed, the students, the retired, or even those on vacations, would not be proletarian.

The proletariat also is not a moral condition: there are proletarian pricks, idiots, and criminals as well, and they don't cease to be proletarians because they are rapists, homophobes, scabs, or fascists.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Because you are the one who has been trying to revise Marx's exceptionally solid analysis of class and class relations

To be honest, I don't see many actual Marxist views in this thread. I mean, police are not workers because they don't "produce"? Teachers, bank clerks, shop assistants, do not produce, are they not proletarians? Police are not workers because they are bastards? That's absurd petty bourgeois moralism, since when the working class is made of angels, and since when being bastards or not has anything to do with social classes?

Luís Henrique

[Die Neue Zeit]

Public-sector teachers aid in the social reproduction of labour power. I consider comrade Cockshott's view on productive labour to be as Marxist as mine or Marx's original surplus value emphasis.

His paper was aimed at contrasting the most basic examples of the public-sector teacher vs. the private- or public-sector factory worker producing weapons for the arms trade.

Now, from the Police thread in History (which I don't know why it wasn't merged with this one in the Theory forum):



^^^ And unproductive workers, comrade, aren't proletarians. [Leaving aside the debate re. Marx vs. Cockshott vs. myself vs. others on "productive labour"]That's not Marx's definition of proletarian or proletariat. Care to prove your claim?

Marx had several definitions of "proletariat," so his views evolved over time. At least one of these was related to the (wrong) ortho-Marxist fetish for the "industrial proletariat," and Lars Lih's Circles of Awareness diagram on p. 77 places this group inside a larger circle of "Labouring Classes" (Social Democracy -> Worker Movement -> Proletariat -> Labouring Classes).

I know you have comrade Macnair's view with respect to "the whole social class dependent on the wage fund, including employed and unemployed, unwaged women ‘homemakers’, youth and pensioners. It does not just mean the employed workers, still less the ‘productive’ workers or the workers in industry." As I quoted exactly that here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/workforce-and-pensionersi-t154871/index.html

That's a start for worker-class political organization, but later on this needs refinement. Cops are fully "dependent on the wage fund," yet already I think there should be a left policy excluding them. That, plus the discussions on productive work in Capital, should raise the question of who really is proletarian in the modern sense. Today, there are two productive work-related classes (proletarians and coordinators), and there are two or more unproductive work-related classes (proletarii, to which arms trade workers belong, and that class of cops, private security guards, judges, etc.).

[It's ashame my own Circles of Class Consciousness (http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=66&pictureid=493) was made at a pamphlet-eering time when I didn't examine unproductive work in greater detail, when the term "prole classes" wasn't coined yet. :( ]

[Jose Gracchus]

Police aren't petit bourgeoisie. Marx's class analysis was not sociology. There does not be an 'ideal box' for every fraction of modern society. The police are an agent of the bourgeoisie and the state. They are not proles, not bourgeois, not petit bourgeois. They are just a subsidiary of capital's dictatorship, a part of society which exists ipso facto under the rule of capital for its maintenance.

Class in Marxian terms is not some game of ideally placing every segment however marginal, subsidiary, or tiny, of society, into some well-fitted class 'category'. It has to do with analyzing bourgeois society as a totality, and observing the immanent tendencies and movements intrinsic to it.

[A Marxist Historian]

To be honest, I don't see many actual Marxist views in this thread. I mean, police are not workers because they don't "produce"? Teachers, bank clerks, shop assistants, do not produce, are they not proletarians? Police are not workers because they are bastards? That's absurd petty bourgeois moralism, since when the working class is made of angels, and since when being bastards or not has anything to do with social classes?

Luís Henrique

What is the social function of the police, bottom line, in Marxist economic terms?

In capitalist society, the working class creates value greater than the value of its labor power, and the surplus value is extracted by the ruling class.

The purpose of the police is to facilitate that process and make sure the lower classes do not rebel against this situation. To aid in the extraction of surplus value from the working class. And to protect private property, and maintain as they put it "law and order."

So they are tools of the capitalist class, human instruments in the process of exploitation. Therefore they identify with the process of exploitation and capitalist class rule as much if not more than the capitalists do themselves, because that is what they are trained to do and how they make their living.

And they naturally imbibe into themselves, at least after they have been cops for a while, all the unpleasant features of class society, as they are the *enforcers* of all those unpleasant features. Which is why they are brutal, racist, hate immigrants, hate poor people, hate practitioners of nonconventional sexuality, etc. etc. Not because they have were nasty children when they were growing up or something, but because keeping the oppressed down is what their jobs require, and being determines consciousness.

Teachers, bank clerks, shop assistants, doctors, nurses etc. all provide useful and valuable functions for society, and for the working class. Whether they are working class or members of the petty bourgeoisie depends on whether they work for wages or are independent businessmen. Police are another matter altogether, as their function is to oppress society in general and the working class in particular, on behalf of the ruling class.

-M.H.-

[Luís Henrique]

So they are tools of the capitalist class, human instruments in the process of exploitation.

Every proletarian is exactly that, a human tool in the process of capitalist acumulation.


And they naturally imbibe into themselves, at least after they have been cops for a while, all the unpleasant features of class society, as they are the *enforcers* of all those unpleasant features. Which is why they are brutal, racist, hate immigrants, hate poor people, hate practitioners of nonconventional sexuality, etc. etc. Not because they have were nasty children when they were growing up or something, but because keeping the oppressed down is what their jobs require, and being determines consciousness.

Teachers, bank clerks, shop assistants, doctors, nurses etc. all provide useful and valuable functions for society, and for the working class. Whether they are working class or members of the petty bourgeoisie depends on whether they work for wages or are independent businessmen. Police are another matter altogether, as their function is to oppress society in general and the working class in particular, on behalf of the ruling class.


That's granted. In no way the police are working people just like any other workers, and this is due to their specific job, and to their specific form of labour organisation. Their function is different from those of all other workers, as it is fundamentally repressive, and this heavily impacts their worldview, their practices, their ideology, and consequently their individual and collective political positions, which are obviously much to the right than those of any other particular group within the working class.

But it is a delusion to believe that the working class is homogeneous, or that the functions of all other workers except the police are "useful and valuable" to the "society" in abstract. The society we live in is a capitalist society, so it is impossible to be useful and valuable within it without being useful and valuable to capitalist acumulation, in one way or another. Many other categories of workers do have repressive functions, too, as it is obvious in the case of teachers, for instance; the difference here is a matter of degree. Also the police aren't homogeneous themselves; traffic cops certainly perform repressive tasks, but in a completely different level compared to anti-riot squads or political police spies.

In a revolutionary situation, every sector of the working class is going to split. Granted, the overwhelming majority of welders or graphic workers will be for the overthrow of the capitalist system, and the overwhelming majority of police will side with reaction and repression. But there is no particular group of workers that is absolutely immune to right wing ideologies.

Luís Henrique

[Misanthrope]

Their purpose is to fund the capitalist class through tickets, ect and to forcefully carry out the capitalist's interests.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Police aren't petit bourgeoisie. Marx's class analysis was not sociology. There does not be an 'ideal box' for every fraction of modern society. The police are an agent of the bourgeoisie and the state. They are not proles, not bourgeois, not petit bourgeois. They are just a subsidiary of capital's dictatorship, a part of society which exists ipso facto under the rule of capital for its maintenance.

Class in Marxian terms is not some game of ideally placing every segment however marginal, subsidiary, or tiny, of society, into some well-fitted class 'category'. It has to do with analyzing bourgeois society as a totality, and observing the immanent tendencies and movements intrinsic to it.

I think you're probably right regarding Marx not really providing anything more than a framework for social structure, rather than a detailed sociological model.

[wildjap]

I agree, although the police do not produce anything they help provide security to the people (99%). A service that is necessary to prevent vandalism, theft and to generally help society function, else it would be anarchy.
It is unfortunate, however, that the capitalist masters(1%) have exploited them into being their own iron fist! They are needed in any society, like it or not!

[Jose Gracchus]

Why should we accept police as workers because they collect a salary and do something in capitalist society? That's so broad as to be meaningless. Virtually everyone except the idle rich living purely off capital gains and shopkeepers becomes 'workers' under that rubric. By that reasoning there were only 'workers' in the USSR. I mean Brezhnev collected a salary, and did something for his capitalist state, did he not?

[cherokeetears]

The police are enforcers of the capitalist ruling class. They are the arm of the oppressors. The Black Panther Party opposed the police for this reason. The police, and military, are the enforcers of the imperialists.

They don't produce surplus value and are not proletarians.

[Luís Henrique]

Why should we accept police as workers because they collect a salary and do something in capitalist society? That's so broad as to be meaningless. Virtually everyone except the idle rich living purely off capital gains and shopkeepers becomes 'workers' under that rubric. By that reasoning there were only 'workers' in the USSR. I mean Brezhnev collected a salary, and did something for his capitalist state, did he not?

It is not because they collect a salary, but because they are not in control of the means of production. The CEO of a capitalist company may collect a salary, but his position is one of control of the means of production. So was Brezhnev's.

Luís Henrique

[Die Neue Zeit]

Marx's class analysis was not sociology. There does not be an 'ideal box' for every fraction of modern society.

[...]

Class in Marxian terms is not some game of ideally placing every segment however marginal, subsidiary, or tiny, of society, into some well-fitted class 'category'. It has to do with analyzing bourgeois society as a totality, and observing the immanent tendencies and movements intrinsic to it.

Keep in mind that "sociology" itself tends to have very flimsy definitions of "class." Early Marx and "sociology" each had kernels of the "truth." One emphasized the outer and inner core of class structure, while the other related "immanent tendencies" with "segments however marginal."


I think you're probably right regarding Marx not really providing anything more than a framework for social structure, rather than a detailed sociological model.

The foundation for a synthesis was found in Marx's Capital.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/has-capitalism-really-t65831/index.html?p=1099888 (for the mathematically inclined)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/simplification-class-relationsi-t73419/index.html (for the essay-writing inclined)

[A Marxist Historian]

Every proletarian is exactly that, a human tool in the process of capitalist acumulation.

This is a good enough analogy as to make it clear where you go wrong. In the process of capitalist accumulation, with this analogy, different from the usual but nonetheless useful, workers are *not* tools, they are the raw material from which surplus value is extracted by the capitalists, using their police and other tools.[/QUOTE]




That's granted. In no way the police are working people just like any other workers, and this is due to their specific job, and to their specific form of labour organisation. Their function is different from those of all other workers, as it is fundamentally repressive, and this heavily impacts their worldview, their practices, their ideology, and consequently their individual and collective political positions, which are obviously much to the right than those of any other particular group within the working class.

But it is a delusion to believe that the working class is homogeneous, or that the functions of all other workers except the police are "useful and valuable" to the "society" in abstract. The society we live in is a capitalist society, so it is impossible to be useful and valuable within it without being useful and valuable to capitalist acumulation, in one way or another. Many other categories of workers do have repressive functions, too, as it is obvious in the case of teachers, for instance; the difference here is a matter of degree. Also the police aren't homogeneous themselves; traffic cops certainly perform repressive tasks, but in a completely different level compared to anti-riot squads or political police spies.

In a revolutionary situation, every sector of the working class is going to split. Granted, the overwhelming majority of welders or graphic workers will be for the overthrow of the capitalist system, and the overwhelming majority of police will side with reaction and repression. But there is no particular group of workers that is absolutely immune to right wing ideologies.

Luís Henrique

There is no section of the population that cannot go over to the side of the working class, as we are all human and have brains. Can cops go over to the side of the workers? Yes. But so can capitalists.

In fact, in terms of numbers, there have been quite a few ex and even current capitalists in the socialist movement, whereas ex-cops are rare and current cops, forget it, they would instantly be fired--unless of course they are infiltrating the movement. Or you have a reformist Social Democratic government hiring them. Like in Germany in 1933, where almost all the Social Democratic police, the majority of the force in Berlin, threw away their SD party badges and went Nazi without blinking an eye.

Historically, police have always been the last bastion of opposition to revolutionary and left movements, often wanting to fight on even after the ruling classes themselves have wanted to throw in the towel.

The extreme example being the Russian Revolution, where during the February Revolution, a spontaneous affair in which Bolsheviks *did not* play any direct leadership role, the workers simply killed all St. Petersburg cops on sight, and the police could only survive by hiding and laying low.

Not of course that the Bolsheviks had any problem with this!

The difference between teachers and police is 100% qualitative. Indeed teachers have often been at the heart of revolutionary movements. And when teachers go on strike in America, guess who beats them up on the picket lines? Maintaining order in a classroom is necessary and not necessarily "repressive," or rather is a form of repression that is working class repression and supportable.

Of course when the teachers are white and the students are not, you can get race conflicts, and if the teachers come from middle class backgrounds and the students are poor you can get social culture clashes on something resembling class lines. But that is another matter.

Urban firemen are sometimes given repressive functions in America, wear uniforms like the cops do. They are a big part of the cleanup squad after urban minority rebellions, and until fairly recently were all white. But they are proletarians not cops, and in times of social conflict this comes out.

Even in New York after 9/11, when the bourgeois myth was that cops and firefighters were twin fighters vs. "Islamic terror," they immediately came into conflict. For several years afterwards New York cops were being deployed against rallies by firefighters over this and that, and off duty cops and firefighters were getting into fistfights with great regularity.

Indeed, New York firefighters are the only section of the American working class where you actually have quite a few folk who believe 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy. Definitely not the attitude of the NYPD!

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

It is not because they collect a salary, but because they are not in control of the means of production. The CEO of a capitalist company may collect a salary, but his position is one of control of the means of production. So was Brezhnev's.

Luís Henrique

Police are the watchmen over the means of production. They are the instruments of control in the last analysis. So saying they are "not in control" is not meaningful.

It is true of course that they do not *own* the means of production, any more than Brezhnev did.

They are best seen scientifically in Marx's categories as component parts of the means of production. Constant capital, not variable like the working class.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I agree, although the police do not produce anything they help provide security to the people (99%). A service that is necessary to prevent vandalism, theft and to generally help society function, else it would be anarchy.
It is unfortunate, however, that the capitalist masters(1%) have exploited them into being their own iron fist! They are needed in any society, like it or not!

No, they don't provide security to the people. Haven't you ever heard the saying, a cop is never around when you need one? They protect the persons and property of the ruling classes, and everybody else is strictly secondary.

They protect "law and order," preventing anarchy. And anarchists. And socialists.

An armed fist to prevent anarchy is necessary because we live in a class society, where one class is on top and others are on the bottom. Regular police forces are actually a fairly modern invention. In New York City, for example, the police department wasn't created until the 1830s, before then there wasn't one. And yes, New York was pretty chaotic. You had private enforcers, bounty hunters and whatnot. Plus the fact that the population was armed and people would just arrest lawbreakers themselves and drag them to court.

After the revolution, will the workers form their own police force to keep the capitalists etc. in check? Of course, that was what was done in Russia. But the first thing it did was to round up all the old Tsarist cops and jail them or shoot them.

-M.H.-

[RedGrunt]

That doesn't mean they're petite bourgeois. Enemies; surely.

[Die Neue Zeit]

After the revolution, will the workers form their own police force to keep the capitalists etc. in check? Of course, that was what was done in Russia. But the first thing it did was to round up all the old Tsarist cops and jail them or shoot them.

The point that posters here are disagreeing with you is the notion of a police institution post-revolution. Nobody disagrees with either giving the Bolshevik treatment or the "Velvet" treatment (profiling, ostracizing, etc.).

Anyway, whatever socially necessary labour apart from directly productive labour or labour-power-reproducing labour exists, another question arises: how much should they be paid? Or should they be paid just real living wage levels (not subsistence levels, of course) but no more, since any amount above might be a surplus (or, worse, labour-aristocratic) appropriation from productive labour?

[A Marxist Historian]

The point that posters here are disagreeing with you is the notion of a police institution post-revolution. Nobody disagrees with either giving the Bolshevik treatment or the "Velvet" treatment (profiling, ostracizing, etc.).

Anyway, whatever socially necessary labour apart from directly productive labour or labour-power-reproducing labour exists, another question arises: how much should they be paid? Or should they be paid just real living wage levels (not subsistence levels, of course) but no more, since any amount above might be a surplus (or, worse, labour-aristocratic) appropriation from productive labour?

Indeed, the desirability of a workers state is exactly where Marxists disagree with anarchists, and have back as far as the 1870s when Marx and Engels were arguing with Bakunin. So those who opose Lenin's ideas about a workers state, i.e. workers' "armed bodies of men" i.e. cops, which he merely picked up and amplified from Marx and Engels, are naturally going to disagree with me on this.

And I'm glad that I've expressed myself clearly enough so that there will be no confusion, and people who disagree with me don't get sucked into agreeing with me on the wrong basis, unfair to me and even more unfair to them. Honesty is the best policy, methinks.

As for wage levels, that is a whole 'nother can of worms, appropriate for a different thread. We are talking, from my POV, about the dictatorship of the proletariat not socialism, when all sorts of concessions have to be made to capitalist norms for practical reasons.

But even in a fullblown classless socialist society with no state, no police and no private property in the means of production whatsoever, the principle Marx suggested was "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work." Which means inequalities in wages.

-M.H.-

[Luís Henrique]

But even in a fullblown classless socialist society with no state, no police and no private property in the means of production whatsoever, the principle Marx suggested was "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work." Which means inequalities in wages.

It means no wages at all, in my opinion.

Luís Henrique

[A Marxist Historian]

It means no wages at all, in my opinion.

Luís Henrique

"To each according to his work" means that if you work more and better, you get more than somebody who works less and worse. Marx is quite clear on that in the Gotha Program, that's not some sort of way of reading what he says, that is what he says.

You can call that something other than wages if you like, but it amounts to the same thing I should think. Presumably something like labor vouchers instead of money, so money, capital, interest, stocks, bonds etc. would all be abolished, but not wages.

With "to each according to his need," communism, with everybody just taking what they feel like because society has advanced to the point where that works, as the whole human race has become one happy family where bookkeeping is no longer necessary, then you don't have wages anymore.

-M.H.-

[Die Rote Fahne]

"To each according to his work" means that if you work more and better, you get more than somebody who works less and worse. Marx is quite clear on that in the Gotha Program, that's not some sort of way of reading what he says, that is what he says.

You can call that something other than wages if you like, but it amounts to the same thing I should think. Presumably something like labor vouchers instead of money, so money, capital, interest, stocks, bonds etc. would all be abolished, but not wages.

With "to each according to his need," communism, with everybody just taking what they feel like because society has advanced to the point where that works, as the whole human race has become one happy family where bookkeeping is no longer necessary, then you don't have wages anymore.

-M.H.-
Labour vouchers are not equivalent to a wage.

A doctor working 9 hours, and a carpenter working 9 hours, will receive the same amount of vouchers. As will a janitor, nurse, computer technician, etc.

[Luís Henrique]

"To each according to his work" means that if you work more and better, you get more than somebody who works less and worse. Marx is quite clear on that in the Gotha Program, that's not some sort of way of reading what he says, that is what he says.

Is it? It would seem not:


In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

So, in what you call a "fullblown classless socialist society with no state, no police and no private property", or, in Marx's terms, the "higher phase of communist society", the "principle suggested" by Marx was by no means "to each according to his work", but "To each according to his needs". And this, my friend, is indeed not a "way of reading" what is written there, but what is actually written there.

Luís Henrique

[Die Neue Zeit]

Labour vouchers are not equivalent to a wage.

A doctor working 9 hours, and a carpenter working 9 hours, will receive the same amount of vouchers. As will a janitor, nurse, computer technician, etc.

Maybe, maybe not. Even comrade Cockshott noted a few exceptions for this. If it can be concretely measured that some guy at one job put more effort per hour than another guy at another job, then the first guy gets paid more.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

No, it has nothing to do with effort, it's about productivity. Otherwise you have no economic rationale for your argument. In fact, it's this sort of thing that has turned me off of the idea of labour vouchers, really, other than as a very short-term, interim measure post-money.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Free access, gift economics, etc. simply aren't the way to go except in isolated cases.

[Rafiq]

Free access, gift economics, etc. simply aren't the way to go except in isolated cases.

Never been a fan of those two (as I have faith in more 'authoritarian' methods of running things) but what do you mean when you say 'isolated cases'? I would expect the opposite to be necessary in regards to isolation...

[Die Neue Zeit]

I was referring to things like online music, online videos, Creative Commons generally, etc.

[Rafiq]

I was referring to things like online music, online videos, Creative Commons generally, etc.

Ah, I agree.

[Chambered Word]

I think some people missed the point about the class nature of the police in earlier posts. The police force exists to uphold the capitalist institution of law and act as the executive branch of it, i.e. to defend private property and act as a physical power for the state. While they may have their own 'unions' and depend on each other to a degree to maintain their own standard of living, they represent a narrow section of the middle class because they have interests in defending capital. They may have wages, but whether they do productive work, receive wages or not etc doesn't mean they are either proletarian nor otherwise. They are obviously not capitalists themselves, but their destiny as a class is ultimately decided by whether they are able to keep capitalism running or not. Call them what you want, but they're not workers.

[Inner Peace]

iORpLPmFfHU

Police=money leechers!

[A Marxist Historian]

Is it? It would seem not:



So, in what you call a "fullblown classless socialist society with no state, no police and no private property", or, in Marx's terms, the "higher phase of communist society", the "principle suggested" by Marx was by no means "to each according to his work", but "To each according to his needs". And this, my friend, is indeed not a "way of reading" what is written there, but what is actually written there.

Luís Henrique

Why yes. The higher phase of communist society, i.e. "communism" in the usual shorthand.

But in "the lower phase of communist society," "socialism" by the usual shorthand which I employed, you do have a fullblown classless socialist society with no state, no police and no private property. Otherwise were are not talking about socialism, but merely about the dictatorship of the proletariat over a society still in transition between capitalism and socialism. A quite reversible transition, as the history of the USSR demonstrates. Russia under Lenin was not as far from socialism as Russia under Stalin or Brezhnev, but still pretty far.

But if the Russian Revolution had in fact led to world revolution and the construction of a socialist society, for quite a long time you wouldn't have had "to each according to his need" but "to each according to his work." In and of itself a difficult proposition, that would likely have taken generations to construct.

I guess I should do some of the heavy lifting here, so here is the *relevant* quote from the Critique.

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

-M.H.-

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

It is not because they collect a salary, but because they are not in control of the means of production. The CEO of a capitalist company may collect a salary, but his position is one of control of the means of production. So was Brezhnev's.

So FBI agents are a part of the working class, right? CIA spies too.

Luis has been pushing this garbage for years on this forum. It gets old.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

From the past 334,932,384 threads on the police: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2156929&postcount=46