Two NYPD cops killed

[Red Commissar]

A 28 year-old, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, shot and killed the two police in Brooklyn while they were in their squad car, then fled into the subway where he killed himself. He left posting(s) online that he had intended to kill police- he had earlier shot his girlfriend in Baltimore before posting such a message on his instagram.

The police union and other such groups in NYC have taken the opportunity to attack the Eric Garner and other protests against police brutality, and even calling out the mayor for somehow enabling this because he had appeared sympathetic to the protestors.

Unfortunately as can be expected police and their apologists have taken full advantage of this to fit their narratives.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/21/us-usa-newyork-police-idUSKBN0JY0N820141221


Bratton said the gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, took a shooter's stance on the passenger side of the squad car and opened fire with a silver semi-automatic handgun.

He then fled into a nearby subway station and died there from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Bratton said.

Brinsley had shot and seriously wounded his girlfriend in Baltimore County, Maryland, early on Saturday before traveling to Brooklyn, where he had connections, the police chief said.

[flaming bolshevik]

Police had that coming, justice is being served.

[Sinister Intents]

I was in NYC almost a week ago...

[Palmares]

earlier shot his girlfriend

This bit seems unusual. Did she disagree with him of his opinion of cops? Or did they get in an argument about what he was going to do? Perhaps we'll never know. But this certainly gives more weight to the fact that, as Red Commissar said, police and their apologists have taken full advantage of this to fit their narratives.

[The Intransigent Faction]

I was in NYC almost a week ago...

My parents were there almost two weeks ago. Needless to say it was intense.
I can't think of anything much to be said about this that hasn't been said in similar threads about cops getting shot, or about a bourgeois politician dying (not that the two are equivalent).

[consuming negativity]

not all cops got killed

continue shitting on the others

[Loony Le Fist]

Let me put it this way: this should continue until police brutality has the opposite meaning it has today. /end rant

[Loony Le Fist]

Police had that coming, justice is being served.

If I could thank this post twice, I would. Though it wasn't done for political reasons, I hope it would be.

[Loony Le Fist]

Fuck them!

MDC-Dead Cops/America's So Straight

MDC-Dead Cops/America's So Straight

[synthesis]

There is a side of me that thinks we're ceding the moral high ground to cops when we cheer on stuff like this, and then there's the other side that doesn't give a fuck about that.

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

lool are you for real? happy cops are being killed?

[Sinister Intents]

lool are you for real? happy cops are being killed?

Yeah, they're the bulldogs of the state and they defend private property, private interests, and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

[Sinister Intents]

There is a side of me that thinks we're ceding the moral high ground to cops when we cheer on stuff like this, and then there's the other side that doesn't give a fuck about that.

Same, it's shitty people die, but fuck the state and its creatures

[G4b3n]

I am skeptical of the shooter first of all (what the hell made him shoot his girlfriend?) I would be all for it had it been in a more appropriate context such as a mass demonstration, labor struggle, or anything but what appears to be an attack by some psycho.

[Per Levy]

justice is being served.

so shooting a woman is justice being served? i could care less about the cops being killed but the guy killing his girlfriend is fucking shit and make me think of the guy who did as not much different than the cops he killed.

[Lily Briscoe]

so shooting a woman is justice being served? i could care less about the cops being killed but the guy [shooting] his girlfriend is fucking shit and make me think of the guy who did as not much different than the cops he killed.

Who cares about some trifle like domestic violence when it comes to revleft posters' vengeance fantasies? It's not remotely surprising that people here find something to cheer on in this.

[DOOM]

Yeah, they're the bulldogs of the state and they defend private property, private interests, and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

So does a fair part of the population do and if I remember rightly, you too. Killing a cop for being a cop without a possibly revolutionary context is just stupid.

[DOOM]

Who cares about some trifle like domestic violence when it comes to revleft posters' vengeance fantasies? It's not remotely surprising that people here find something to cheer on in this.

revolutionary edgyness it is. This killing won't help our cause at all. It's just a stupid isolated killing of two cops, which has happened a thousand times. I don't even want to explain how this is wrong.
It's only getting more attention than other cases because of the Garner protests. The cops and media are obviously trying to link this to the recent protests and some people here are helping them without even knowing.

[Rosa Partizan]

Yeah, they're the bulldogs of the state and they defend private property, private interests, and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

I'm pretty sure the murderer thought the same, like "I'm gonna be part of the revolution and kill the authorities of the bourgeoise, fuck yeah, fuck private property!"

Come on guys, be real about it. This is just some asshole without any political motivation killing his girlfriend and 2 guys that happen to be policemen. Now police is gonna press this into some scheme to fit their idea of someone deliberately killing cops for political reasons. But enjoy your edgy police murder wet dreams, yawn.

[synthesis]

[Police Commissioner William Bratton] said police would investigate whether Brinsley had been part of protests in New York and in Atlanta, his last place of residence, over the Brown and Garner killings.

So much ugh to this.

I'm not gonna join the tut-tut chorus about "edgy wet-dreams" or whatever - and this was definitely not apolitical - but seriously, try to look at the big picture here. Don't let this turn into catharsis; that makes it easier for things to go back to normal tomorrow.

[The Feral Underclass]

he had earlier shot his girlfriend

Ugh.

This totally ruined what should have been a very happy moment.

[Bala Perdida]

So does a fair part of the population do and if I remember rightly, you too. Killing a cop for being a cop without a possibly revolutionary context is just stupid.
There's a big difference between owning a shop and beating minorities for walking away from you. I don't particularly like store, owners or managers/bosses either, but their power ends when I leave the facility. They aren't gonna stalk me for two blocks because of my race. They exploit within their walls. Cops abuse without boundaries.
I really see no reason to sympathize with police. If they're scared to wear their badges, then good. Now they know how it's like when we see them. I don't think cop killing is particularly smart for anyone's personal interests, but if they're willing to do it for a good cause then okay.
This, however, is not a good cause. I won't defend this person as some sort of class hero or something.
But condemning them for cop killing isn't really helping anyone. Condemning him for killing in general, go ahead.

[Chaos316]

Are people (mostly white people who probably don't live in America) passing judgment on someone because they didn't hold on to your political views? You people aren't even doing anything so I don't think you can pass judgment on someone who is actually doing something. Respectability politics isn't going to get anything done. Yes, the dude shot his girlfriend, a wrong move. But until you people can actually do something, maybe you shouldn't shirk the responsibility of someone who actually did do something. Try to show them how it is done? You people are probably the same people who rag on reactionary groups because they destroy imperialist proxies, yet you people just sit on your asses, not doing anything. Whatever. We'll do it your way, and wait for the communist Jesus to come out of the woodwork.

[Mr. Piccolo]

I'm pretty sure the murderer thought the same, like "I'm gonna be part of the revolution and kill the authorities of the bourgeoise, fuck yeah, fuck private property!"

Come on guys, be real about it. This is just some asshole without any political motivation killing his girlfriend and 2 guys that happen to be policemen. Now police is gonna press this into some scheme to fit their idea of someone deliberately killing cops for political reasons. But enjoy your edgy police murder wet dreams, yawn.

Exactly. Now this incident will be used to smear all peaceful protesters and become an excuse for more draconian security state measures against any dissent and especially against the anti-police brutality movement.

[Palmares]

communist Jesus

I got some nails and a cross waiting for that guy.

[Loony Le Fist]

lool are you for real? happy cops are being killed?

I am beside myself in terms of happiness. Of course, it's bittersweet. I know the pigs will use this as an excuse. Taking on the state where they are most powerful is always a bad idea--despite how awesome murdering pigs is.

[Loony Le Fist]

so shooting a woman is justice being served? i could care less about the cops being killed but the guy killing his girlfriend is fucking shit and make me think of the guy who did as not much different than the cops he killed.

It's fucked that he killed someone other than the pigs. But I can't help but be happy that some pigs are dead, frankly. I wish it was political. He should have just murdered the cops. The girlfriend was unnecessary. Take it out on the pieces of shit that deserve it.

[Loony Le Fist]

Come on guys, be real about it. This is just some asshole without any political motivation killing his girlfriend and 2 guys that happen to be policemen. Now police is gonna press this into some scheme to fit their idea of someone deliberately killing cops for political reasons. But enjoy your edgy police murder wet dreams, yawn.

The cops wish that shit was political. The day it is political, they are going to be running for their lives.

[jullia]

What are the motivation of the shooter?

[Jimmie Higgins]

this killing won't help our cause at all. It's just a stupid isolated killing of two cops, which has happened a thousand times.i agree this doesn't mean much in the big picture, but I doubt that 1,000 cops have been killed by people who were simply angry at cops. While nobody hears more than a news blip if anything when cops shoot someone*, it's a big fucking deal when cops are shot... And usually they are shot because someone is trying to flee them, not because they hate them.


The 2012 data reports that for “police and sheriff’s patrol officers,” the Fatal Injury Rate — that is, the “number of fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers” — was 15.0.

That includes all causes of death — of the 105 dead officers recorded in the 2012 data, only 51 died due to “violence and other injuries by persons or animals.” Nearly as many, 48, died in “transportation incidents,” i.e., crashing their cars.

Here are some occupations with higher fatality rates than being a cop:

Logging workers: 129.9
Fishers and related fishing workers: 120.8
Aircraft pilots and flight engineers: 54.3
Roofers: 42.2
Structural iron and steel workers: 37.0
Refuse and recyclable material collectors: 32.3
Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers: 24.3
Electrical power-line installers and repairers: 23.9
Farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers: 22.8
Construction laborers: 17.8
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 16.2
Maintenance and repairs workers, general: 15.7
And for good measure, some more that approach the allegedly terrifying risks of being a police officer:

First-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers: 14.7
Grounds maintenance workers: 14.2
Athletes, coaches, umpires, and related workers: 13.0


*since Oscar grant was killed, within a mile of my apartment cops have shot 4 people (that I know of!)

One was a homeless man who supposedly had a box-cutter and was ranting. He was killed, it was on the news for a couple of days because it was Bart police and it was only a year and a block away from when/where Oscar grant was killed.

One was guy was pulled over and shot. This was not on the news as far as I know.

Another homeless guy shot outside of a store I was in. I came out with groceries and tons of people were gathered on the corners. The story I heard was that the guy was approached by cops for peeing on a fence and didn't stop when the cops approached and accidentally pissed on a cop... Struggle ensued and he was shot but not killed. I tried to find more news later, but couldn't find anything in the media.

Not too far from there, the Sherrifs shot a corpse. Someone reported hearing a gunshot from an apartment and the cops went in guns blazing only to find out later that the guy had shot himself as a suicide because he was being evicted. There was a story about this in the news but I think because it's morbid and unusual.

A little further east of me some guy shot at a cop who had pulled him over without cause. The guy had a weapon and just got out of jail so he freaked and shot the cop and ran. The cops had a huge operation, took over the guy's sister's whole apartment building and broke down her door and shot him dead. It was a huge news story for a month, the funeral was a huge story, etc.

[Sinister Intents]

It changes the whole thing knowing he killed, or tried to kill his girlfriend, I think my mom said she survived when I brought it up to her? I'm not compelled to go read the article.

[consuming negativity]

>the fatal injury rate for cops is 15 per 100,000

the homicide victimization rate for being black in the US is 17.51 per 100,000

you're more likely to be murdered as a black person than to die for any reason in "the line of duty" as a cop

in case you're curious, the homicide victimization rate for all americans is 4.44, and for white americans it is 2.64 (http://www.vpc.org/press/1401homicide.htm)

if you ask me, we should start a national program to give black people the same access to guns that cops have. i mean, it helps to keep the cops safe, right? so why not do the same for an even more lethal 24/7 occupation?

[Loony Le Fist]

>the fatal injury rate for cops is 15 per 100,000

the homicide victimization rate for being black in the US is 17.51 per 100,000


Yeah, the stupid pigs are always talking about how tough their job is. The death rate for being a plumber (my profession) is about the same as being black. 17/100k. So boo fucking hoo to the fucking cops.



if you ask me, we should start a national program to give black people the same access to guns that cops have. i mean, it helps to keep the cops safe, right? so why not do the same for an even more lethal 24/7 occupation?

I say just get rid of the cops altogether. I've never been in a situation where the cops getting involved improved the situation. I'd like to hear of a situation someone has been involved in where calling the cops made the situation better.

My friend recently was beaten down by the police and pepper sprayed because my other friend called the cops on her. Let's just say I'm no longer as tight with him as I was before this incident.

She had bruises all over her arms and shoulders. I sat down and put compresses on her, and I got residual pepper spray in my eyes taking care of her. They pepper sprayed her and beat her again in jail for singing. Of course the police apologists would say, "Well stop singing!" without questioning the logic of beating someone's ass for singing. Fucking assholes! Fucking pigs! I want to waterboard the fucking disgusting pigs that did that to her. The only thing that stops me is the fact that I want to be there for my family and friends. If I let my anger out on the police, I wouldn't be able to be there for them.

[Rosa Partizan]

I always wonder why someone wants to be a policeman. Like, is there some inherent desire to be in a position of authority? So when someone tells me they're cop I immediately question their personality. @ Loony: Once I called the police when some guy threatened me to come to my city and kill me. He was previously convicted and couldn't allow himself to get into more trouble, so the police in his town got informed and they visited him and I haven't heard of him again ever since. I know horrible police stories from antifascist friends and acquaintances, but I guess, it's way worse in the US when it comes to police brutality and arbitrariness.

[jullia]

The death rate for being a plumber (my profession) is about the same as being black. 17/100k. So boo fucking hoo to the fucking cops.


:confused: How the hell it can be so dangerous to be a plumber? I should never imagine that rate.

[Loony Le Fist]

:confused: How the hell it can be so dangerous to be a plumber? I should never imagine that rate.

Trades in general are pretty dangerous. Old houses have all kinds of dangers in them. We are also exposed to raw sewage. Our rate of job related illness is also way above average. At least cops have their little pea shooter. :laugh:

[Loony Le Fist]

Once I called the police when some guy threatened me to come to my city and kill me. He was previously convicted and couldn't allow himself to get into more trouble, so the police in his town got informed and they visited him and I haven't heard of him again ever since. I know horrible police stories from antifascist friends and acquaintances, but I guess, it's way worse in the US when it comes to police brutality and arbitrariness.

I'm glad things worked out for you. Unfortunately in every case I've known, calling the cops always escalated the situation. The pigs came and provoked people into an arrest just to bump their numbers.

[motion denied]

What is the expected backlash? What will this justify (in the future and retroactively)?

[Tim Cornelis]

Are people (mostly white people who probably don't live in America) passing judgment on someone because they didn't hold on to your political views? You people aren't even doing anything so I don't think you can pass judgment on someone who is actually doing something. Respectability politics isn't going to get anything done. Yes, the dude shot his girlfriend, a wrong move. But until you people can actually do something, maybe you shouldn't shirk the responsibility of someone who actually did do something. Try to show them how it is done? You people are probably the same people who rag on reactionary groups because they destroy imperialist proxies, yet you people just sit on your asses, not doing anything. Whatever. We'll do it your way, and wait for the communist Jesus to come out of the woodwork.

'Doing something' =/= doing something effective. Emotional reasoning stunts discussion about the effectiveness of what is done and what is to be done. It's a lame argument.

'Wrong move' is also a huge understatement.

[Loony Le Fist]

'Doing something' =/= doing something effective. Emotional reasoning stunts discussion about the effectiveness of what is done and what is to be done. It's a lame argument.

You are right. Even though I feel like murdering pigs, doesn't mean it's an effective strategy. I've said it before: taking on the state where they are strongest is a bad idea. Cops are like red ants: you kill a few of those annoying fuckers, then more come pouring out.

The state has tons of resources when it comes to raw force. It also tends to grant the state's counter attack a certain credibility (rightly or wrongly) when you attack them directly in this manner. The only way to attack the state is through infiltration and destruction from within, coupled with a withdrawal from systems of power. Attacking those systems of power directly is what they want you to do. The state is itching to have some justification to bring about martial law.

[Loony Le Fist]

I always wonder why someone wants to be a policeman. Like, is there some inherent desire to be in a position of authority?

I've always thought that if I became a police officer I would strive to protect and serve the community. That would be my desire--the authority has no appeal to me. Then I wonder how many officers enter the profession with that mentality and become a bunch of jaded sadistic assholes.

[Loony Le Fist]

There's a big difference between owning a shop and beating minorities for walking away from you. I don't particularly like store, owners or managers/bosses either, but their power ends when I leave the facility. They aren't gonna stalk me for two blocks because of my race. They exploit within their walls. Cops abuse without boundaries.


Good point.



I really see no reason to sympathize with police. If they're scared to wear their badges, then good. Now they know how it's like when we see them. I don't think cop killing is particularly smart for anyone's personal interests, but if they're willing to do it for a good cause then okay.


Yep. Killing cops is stupid. You are attacking the state where they are strongest. Not only that, but it tends to give them more credibility to crack down even harder. It makes revolution that much harder.



I won't defend this person as some sort of class hero or something.


^ This.



But condemning them for cop killing isn't really helping anyone. Condemning him for killing in general, go ahead.

Agreed.

That reminds me of that exchange between Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) and Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) in Reservoir Dogs.



Mr. Pink: You kill anybody?
Mr. White: A few cops.
Mr. Pink: No real people?
Mr. White: Just cops.

[jullia]

Yep. Killing cops is stupid. You are attacking the state where they are strongest. Not only that, but it tends to give them more credibility to crack down even harder. It makes revolution that much harder.


Killing a cop for the princip of killing a cop is stupid. Maybe it's a good guy who go in police to help and protect other people and who trully beleive in this value. I know it's make laught a lot of you, but think to it.
Maybe it's a random guy who finish by hazard in police because he just need a job. He don't know what to do. Somebody told him: you like sports? Join police you will see it's fun. I know someone who go in school police exactly like this. He gives up before the end.

Anyway a random cop isn't a valuable target for revolution. You must shoot somebody who gives the order. I don't know the english words for them, but the officer or politicians.

[synthesis]

Killing a cop for the princip of killing a cop is stupid. Maybe it's a good guy who go in police to help and protect other people and who trully beleive in this value. I know it's make laught a lot of you, but think to it.
Maybe it's a random guy who finish by hazard in police because he just need a job. He don't know what to do. Somebody told him: you like sports? Join police you will see it's fun. I know someone who go in school police exactly like this. He gives up before the end.

Anyway a random cop isn't a valuable target for revolution. You must shoot somebody who gives the order. I don't know the english words for them, but the officer or politicians.

I don't dispute that it's not a valuable target, not in the way that this guy did it. People would unfortunately have to be way, way angrier at cops for this to spark something.

But I think it's really, really dangerous for anyone with communist politics to start buying into the mythology of "the good cops." Sure, a lot of them might actually think they're "doing good in the world" - I'd argue that tends to make them even worse because they stop questioning their actions, but whatever - but they're the enemy soldiers in relation to the class struggle, and yes, I realize that sounds like dollar store discount Rafiq right there, but it's true. They won't bother with humanizing us; they'll just be "doing their job."

[Loony Le Fist]

I don't dispute that it's not a valuable target, not in the way that this guy did it. People would unfortunately have to be way, way angrier at cops for this to spark something.


I would say that when cops are running away from angry mobs of people that's when I'll call it progress. :laugh:

[GaggedNoMore]

Someone upthread asked if anyone was "happy" that these cops got killed.

I'll say that I'm not happy. But I'm not particularly sad either.

In all honesty, I have a hard time feeling bad and mustering much sympathy for those cops. Cops kill people, especially young men of colour, in cold blood all the time and rarely, if ever, face any consequences for it. The cases of Eric Garner and Darren Wilson are just another grim reminder of this. I see this as karma just doing its work and biting them in the ass.

And besides if you choose to make a career of being an agent of violence and repression for the state...well that's a choice one makes. Better be prepared to suffer the consequences.

[Creative Destruction]

Someone upthread asked if anyone was "happy" that these cops got killed.

I'll say that I'm not happy. But I'm not particularly sad either.

In all honesty, I have a hard time feeling bad and mustering much sympathy for those cops. Cops kill people, especially young men of colour, in cold blood all the time and rarely, if ever, face any consequences for it. The cases of Eric Garner and Darren Wilson are just another grim reminder of this. I see this as karma just doing its work and biting them in the ass.

And besides if you choose to make a career of being an agent of violence and repression for the state...well that's a choice one makes. Better be prepared to suffer the consequences.

This about roughly where I'm at. I'm more pissed that this might cause the police to come down hard on protesters; but if you're the police and you treat people like you're in a war with them, then I'm not sure you shouldn't expect a response back in-kind.

[jullia]

I don't dispute that it's not a valuable target, not in the way that this guy did it. People would unfortunately have to be way, way angrier at cops for this to spark something.

But I think it's really, really dangerous for anyone with communist politics to start buying into the mythology of "the good cops." Sure, a lot of them might actually think they're "doing good in the world" - I'd argue that tends to make them even worse because they stop questioning their actions, but whatever - but they're the enemy soldiers in relation to the class struggle, and yes, I realize that sounds like dollar store discount Rafiq right there, but it's true. They won't bother with humanizing us; they'll just be "doing their job."

You only see the worst repression side of the police and voluntery ignore the good thing they made. What about the rapist and the pedophile, the police stop?
For me the basic policeman is just a tool who is use against revolution but nothing said that this tool can't be use to support.
There are many events where the police/army refuse to shoot on a crowd.
For exemple there is the carnation revolution.

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

I always wonder why someone wants to be a policeman. Like, is there some inherent desire to be in a position of authority? So when someone tells me they're cop I immediately question their personality. @ Loony: Once I called the police when some guy threatened me to come to my city and kill me. He was previously convicted and couldn't allow himself to get into more trouble, so the police in his town got informed and they visited him and I haven't heard of him again ever since. I know horrible police stories from antifascist friends and acquaintances, but I guess, it's way worse in the US when it comes to police brutality and arbitrariness.
To protect the community? because it's a job and it beats no job? I'm sure most cops don't even care they are tools as long as they have a paycheck at the end of the month.

I'm still a bit preplexed about some comments here, I just hope it's comments coming from Americans, because the situation with cops there is way worse than most of Europe. Police in my country is really badly paid, and reports of police brutality aren't a daily ocurrence.

[Sabot Cat]

"The proletarian revolution requires no terror for its aims; it hates and despises killing. It does not need these weapons because it does not combat individuals but institutions, because it does not enter the arena with naïve illusions whose disappointment it would seek to revenge. It is not the desperate attempt of a minority to mold the world forcibly according to its ideal, but the action of the great massive millions of the people, destined to fulfill a historic mission and to transform historical necessity into reality."

-Rosa Luxemburg, What Does the Spartacus League Want?

[synthesis]

You only see the worst repression side of the police and voluntery ignore the good thing they made. What about the rapist and the pedophile, the police stop?
For me the basic policeman is just a tool who is use against revolution but nothing said that this tool can't be use to support.
There are many events where the police/army refuse to shoot on a crowd.
For exemple there is the carnation revolution.

I can't find anything about police refusing to shoot on agitators during those events. It is almost always soldiers, not cops, that refuse to shoot or side with revolutionaries, and I think most of us, or at least a significant percentage, would acknowledge the revolutionary potential of rank-and-file soldiers.

Cops know who pays their bills, and it's not the working class - not the way they see it, anyway. Their job is to preserve class rule, framed by them as "the law." Just as with the bourgeoisie, there might be redeemable individuals in the group, but they will never, ever, ever have any revolutionary potential as an institution. And the revolutionary potential of those individuals is not worth ceding a single inch to the police or bourgeoisie as institutions.


I'm sure most cops don't even care they are tools as long as they have a paycheck at the end of the month.

And this is supposed to be in their defense?


"The proletarian revolution requires no terror for its aims; it hates and despises killing. It does not need these weapons because it does not combat individuals but institutions, because it does not enter the arena with naïve illusions whose disappointment it would seek to revenge. It is not the desperate attempt of a minority to mold the world forcibly according to its ideal, but the action of the great massive millions of the people, destined to fulfill a historic mission and to transform historical necessity into reality."

-Rosa Luxemburg, What Does the Spartacus League Want?

Again, I think most of us would agree with what Luxemburg is saying in context, but nobody is saying that this is an act of proletarian revolution. It's an organic, spontaneous expression of anger against police repression, accompanied by a despicable act of misogyny.

[Per Levy]

To protect the community? because it's a job and it beats no job? I'm sure most cops don't even care they are tools as long as they have a paycheck at the end of the month.

I'm still a bit preplexed about some comments here, I just hope it's comments coming from Americans, because the situation with cops there is way worse than most of Europe. Police in my country is really badly paid, and reports of police brutality aren't a daily ocurrence.

the police still will arrest you, beat you and kill you if you ever start to rebell, as it will with any worker. the police is there to keep the status quo intact and that means keeping the state and capitalism alive and well. that makes them, all of them, enemies of the working class and the comming struggles against capitalism.

btw im still quite sad that the murdered girlfriend seems to be glossed over by some people here, like it is nothing, like "well its bad he killed his gf but hey, 2 cops dead, all is fine".

[Bala Perdida]

I don't think cop killing is a bad decision because it makes the state crack down on you. That's going to happen anyway, revolutions aren't easy. It's just a hell of a thing to live with, ending up like Assata Shakur in exile. I don't know enough about the case to say weather she killed the cop or not, but if she did that would be a supportable revolutionary context. The problem too is that people don't hold our political views. They don't see how destroying businesses and clashing with cops on the streets is good because they don't want to dismantle property and authority. These things are all necessary steps for some sort of revolution, but don't go out doing them if you're not prepared for the state and popular backlash.
Also cop killing is bad. I have to say that because internet, but still seriously the risk is not worth it.

[jullia]

So you think all police should be delete? What about the criminals?

I don't think i'am the only one who loss relative in silly circumstances who can be avoid.

[synthesis]

So you think all police should be delete?

Again what about the criminals?

There are a million reasons why this question is beside the point.

First, revolutionaries will all be "criminals," no matter how non-violent they might claim to be.

Second... well, I'm not sure I need a second, but if we do away with the police, it can be replaced with propagation of community self-defense, which is what most working class communities have to do now anyways.

Third, there's an assumption that the "crimes" that cops go after are the crimes that affect us most negatively. Their goal is improving their own statistics and the scoring of political points for their bosses. Why do you think serial killers who only target prostitutes get away with it for so much longer than serial killers with more affluent targets? I'll just give you the answer: it's because the life of a sex worker is negligible to a policeman, just like the life of all workers and oppressed groups, because of their paucity of political sway.

If you need me to keep going, I will. But let me stress again that I think that there can be individual cops with revolutionary potential, certainly much more so than people who insist on defending the police as an institution.

[Lily Briscoe]

Again, I think most of us would agree with what Luxemburg is saying in context, but nobody is saying that this is an act of proletarian revolution. It's an organic, spontaneous expression of anger against police repression, accompanied by a despicable act of misogyny.

I think even saying this is a stretch. He shot and seriously wounded his girlfriend before he went after the police. It seems just as likely that this is some manipulative asshole who, realizing he was going to be in for it after putting a bullet in his girlfriend, decided to kill some cops to try and create some high-profile subversive legacy for himself before he committed suicide.

Personally I'm not shedding any tears over policemen, but it's honestly pathetic how desperate some people are to find something to cheer for no matter how fucked up the context of what they're cheering for is.

[consuming negativity]

I've always thought that if I became a police officer I would strive to protect and serve the community. That would be my desire--the authority has no appeal to me. Then I wonder how many officers enter the profession with that mentality and become a bunch of jaded sadistic assholes.

when i was a kid (talking like 13 or 14), i really wanted to be a cop because of the community service aspect as well. but in retrospect, i think it it really was about distinguishing myself in a "hey look i do this difficult but important job for the community and the world is better because of it" sort of way

extrapolating from my own beliefs i can get an idea of the mentality there: they actually believe that they're doing something difficult but important. then it goes to their head and they think they deserve respect because they're doing something that other people can't or won't do - they're important. and then when it doesn't happen, their life still sucks, and people don't respect them as if they're better than anyone else, they power trip like fuck. in their minds, the only people who don't respect them are people who are disrespectful (ie. who do not have any valid reason to not "respect mah authoritah") and so they deserve any mistreatment they get because it will supposedly engender respect*

generally speaking, if i see a cop just chilling around somewhere i'll usually say "hey" and wave like i would to anyone else. they're still people and i still want them to be happy, but when it comes crunch time, their job is quite literally to enforce state-sanctioned abuse of the general public.

to get freudian as fuck, and actually i'm not sure i even think this (just popped into my head), but you could definitely draw a line between the police as disciplinary father figures and the rest of us as children. i mean, think about it like this: when dad doesn't want the kid to do something he spanks the kid to punish them. and that violence is supposed to be justified by the fact that the kid "needs to learn how to act". cops do the same thing and the same justification is given: if they didn't want to get the cops on them, they shouldn't have fucked up. *respect comes through fear of reprisal rather than out of any genuine respect or understanding of the situation. "this is how it is and get in line or get smacked down"

./ramble as fuck

[synthesis]

Personally I'm not shedding any tears over policemen, but it's honestly pathetic how desperate some people are to find something to cheer for no matter how fucked up the context of what they're cheering for is.

Well, let's explore this. Would you still call it pathetic if he hadn't shot his girlfriend? If so, why?

[jullia]

There are a million reasons why this question is beside the point.

First, revolutionaries will all be "criminals," no matter how non-violent they might claim to be.

Second... well, I'm not sure I need a second, but if we do away with the police, it can be replaced with propagation of community self-defense, which is what most working class communities have to do now anyways.

Third, there's an assumption that the "crimes" that cops go after are the crimes that affect us most negatively. Their goal is improving their own statistics and the scoring of political points for their bosses. Why do you think serial killers who only target prostitutes get away with it for so much longer than serial killers with more affluent targets? I'll just give you the answer: it's because the life of a sex worker is negligible to a policeman, just like the life of all workers and oppressed groups, because of their paucity of political sway.

If you need me to keep going, I will. But let me stress again that I think that there can be individual cops with revolutionary potential, certainly much more so than people who insist on defending the police as an institution.

1 You already know that i don't talk about this kind of "criminals".

2 And everything will be better by giving authority to random people without formation.

3 It's totally true. But you really think it's the choice of the basic policeman? Of course not. The problem is the guy who give the order, it's the organisation.

I can continue to. But let me remember you, that at the start, we were talking about killing random cop on the street.

[Loony Le Fist]

So you think all police should be delete? What about the criminals?

I don't think i'am the only one who loss relative in silly circumstances who can be avoid.

In the strictest sense of what I generally refer to as police. According to Wikipedia a police force is:



Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police)
... a constituted body of persons empowered by the state to enforce the law, protect property, and limit civil disorder.[1] Their powers include the legitimized use of force.


You will notice that there is nothing there about protecting citizens. That came as a surprise to me the first time I read that. Also notice one of the things police are empowered by the state to do is limit civil disorder. So in other words, police are a repressive force to prevent rebellion against the existing order. By definition, revolution requires widespread civil disorder. Therefore police, strictly speaking, are not allies to revolution.

This doesn't mean that people causing harm will be allowed to freely wreak havok. Most people are actually generally good. It will be up to these generally good people to stand up and stop those that are causing harm. There doesn't need to be a specialized police force for this.

[jullia]

In the strictest sense of what I generally refer to as police. According to Wikipedia a police force is:



You will notice that there is nothing there about protecting citizens. That came as a surprise to me the first time I read that. Also notice one of the things police are empowered by the state to do is limit civil disorder. So in other words, police are a repressive force to prevent rebellion against the existing order. By definition, revolution requires widespread civil disorder. Therefore police, strictly speaking, are not allies to revolution.

This doesn't mean that people causing harm will be allowed to freely wreak havok. Most people are actually generally good. It will be up to these generally good people to stand up and stop those that are causing harm. There doesn't need to be a specialized police force for this.

Like somebody already said before, the situation can be very different in Europe than in USA.
I check in my native language, and the first sentance (sorry for the bad translation) is "... to assure the safety of persons"

[synthesis]

1 You already know that i don't talk about this kind of "criminals".

Well... I don't know that, actually. You didn't specify if we're talking about police in bourgeois society or after the revolution, although you seem to be implying that it doesn't matter. The same cops that are supposed to deal with "criminals" under bourgeois class rule will be equally empowered to repress and brutalize revolutionaries.


2 And everything will be better by giving authority to random people without formation.

You're saying we'll always need a state, even at the highest phase of communism, in order to deal with "criminals"? Who else would we give authority to?

(I'd dispute, empirically, that community self-policing is or would be "without formation," considering I see it all the time in communities where the police are distrusted, but that's opening up the "organization versus hierarchy" debate that's been recurring constantly for decades, if not centuries.)


3 It's totally true. But you really think it's the choice of the basic policeman? Of course not. The problem is the guy who give the order, it's the organisation.

It doesn't matter whether or not it's the individual cop's choice. If they could decide what laws they wanted to enforce, they wouldn't be cops. Well, actually, they obviously do decide what laws they want to enforce - especially when it comes to other cops - but those decisions almost always skew towards reaction. I guess I'm not really sure what your point is here, so I'll let you explain further, if you like.

[Lily Briscoe]

Well, let's explore this. Would you still call it pathetic if he hadn't shot his girlfriend? If so, why?

I'm in a rush, so this isn't going to be super articulate. The fact that people are celebrating an incident that began with a guy shooting his girlfriend definitely gives it an additional element of pathetic, but even if that hadn't been part of the equation, celebrating the killing of a couple random cops would still be pretty stupid.

It's been said a million times, but individual violence like this doesn't serve any purpose in terms of aiding the self-organization of the working class, it just creates a backlash and sates the bloodlust of some leftist hardmen. Which doesn't mean there aren't plenty of circumstances where you might be sympathetic to what would drive somebody to lash out against the police like this, but the political consequences of this kind of violence are not in any way favorable (which is a criticism of leftists with a hardon for individual violence more than a criticism of random individuals who snap). There is also something pretty morbid about celebrating people getting murdered, regardless of the fact that they are cops.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I could potentially see how people would be "sympathetic" to the action, I don't necessarily see it as a deep flaw because it's understandable, watching the conduct of police (or being the recipient of the justice system's tender mercies) puts a lot of hate and resentment in a person's heart. It's a challenge to not let that color your political perspectives to the point where you see a distorted picture of reality.

Desperate acts by isolated individuals have been the catalyst for pretty dramatic events (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi) but this isn't the case here, the vast majority of people in this country don't support this kind of violence even if they harbor a distrust or even an animosity towards the police. The fact that the large majority of a population doesn't crave retributive violence is something that many political movements have "struggled with", from the narodniki in Russia, to the revolutionary anarchists of the late 19th century, to some of the revolutionary groupings of the later half of the 20th century for whom revolutionary violence was a central part of their program.

On a related note, this incident kind of reminded me of that shooting in Washington state a while back, which was similar in circumstance (police ambushed by gunman who had some sort of political motive, part of which was anger at police brutality)

[Lily Briscoe]

I could potentially see how people would be "sympathetic" to the action, I don't necessarily see it as a deep flaw because it's understandable, watching the conduct of police (or being the recipient of the justice system's tender mercies) puts a lot of hate and resentment in a person's heart. It's a challenge to not let that color your political perspectives to the point where you see a distorted picture of reality.

I think it's understandable not caring that police got killed. I don't think it's 'understandable' being sympathetic to an 'action' that involved a guy shooting his girlfriend just because some police got popped too. If some racist shot a black guy and then killed a couple of cops, I don't think anyone here would have to struggle not to sympathize with it.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I quoted this in another thread involving the killing of police by a self-described revolutionary group, so was more directly relevant to the question of revolutionary violence than this case, which was probably committed by some wack-a-doo with vague political beliefs & a desire to die dramatically, but it's probably worth quoting again.


For revolutionaries it is psychologically quite difficult, if not impossible, to raise their voices against the futile application of 'revolutionary justice' by terroristic groups and individuals. Even Marx, who despised all forms nihilistic actions, could not help being elated by the terroristic feats of the Russian 'Peoples’ Will.' As a matter of fact, the counter-terror of revolutionary groups cannot be prevented by mere recognition of its futility. Their perpetrators are not moved by the conviction that their actions will lead directly to social change, but by their inability to accept the unchallenged, the perpetual terror of the bourgeoisie unchallenged. And once engaged in illegal terror, the legal terror forces them to continue their activities until the bitter end. This type of people is itself product of the class-ridden society and a response to its increasing brutalization. There is no sense in forming a consensus with the bourgeoisie and condemning their activities from proletarian point of view. It is enough to recognize their futility and to look for more effective ways to overcome the ever-present capitalist terror by the class actions of the proletariat.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I think it's understandable not caring that police got killed. I don't think it's 'understandable' being sympathetic to an 'action' that involved a guy shooting his girlfriend just because some police got popped too. If some racist shot a black guy and then killed a couple of cops, I don't think anyone here would have to struggle not to sympathize with it.

That guy who flew a plane into the IRS building in Texas had some "support" on this site, so who knows.

[Lily Briscoe]

God, I remember that.

[BIXX]

I fail to care about this situation, period, if I'm entirely honest. I just, I guess yay cops are dead but at the same time I just am not interested- I have nothing to learn from this and more than anything it sounds like the dude might have just snapped. I suspect it was just that he was a broken man that was the result of societal bullshit. I guess I just don't see it as special in any way- he wasn't attacking society, he wasn't doing anything that made this interesting, a and while yay dead cops, I feel that the same thing happens every day and this time it was just a random chance that this time it was a cop that was killed rather than burning himself or killing his whole family or whatever. I mean, he killed his girlfriend too which says to me that most likely he was just breaking rather than anything I'd find interesting.

Yay a few cops negated. But not special. Just like its not special or especially horrifying to me that his girlfriend ended up dead- it happens all the damn time and while it sucks I have a hard time giving much of a fuck.

Best wishes to her family. Wonder how they're doing.

And I feel like a discussion of "is this to be supported" or whatever misses the point. Because this isn't even an action that warrants or explicitly doesn't warrant support- it just is.

I'm kinda rambling but what I guess I'm trying to say is why do we give a shit that we have another few names to add to the long list of victims of civilization? We aren't offered anything new, or anything that gives us tools, we are seeing symptoms of society.

[Palmares]

'Doing something' =/= doing something effective. Emotional reasoning stunts discussion about the effectiveness of what is done and what is to be done. It's a lame argument.

It's true. In our struggles, theory and practice should be inseparable. That's how we get strategy.

Nevertheless, this reminds me of a funny scene from the film, Waking Life. I've embedded it below, and you can guess for yourself which character(s) I think is more like revleft and which is more like the cop-killer from the OP.

Dj_b3QOEFYU

[BIXX]

It's true. In our struggles, theory and practice should be inseparable. That's how we get strategy.

Nevertheless, this reminds me of a funny scene from the film, Waking Life. I've embedded it below, and you can guess for yourself which character(s) I think is more like revleft and which is more like the cop-killer from the OP.

Dj_b3QOEFYU

I like it. Cool.

[jullia]

Well... I don't know that, actually. You didn't specify if we're talking about police in bourgeois society or after the revolution, although you seem to be implying that it doesn't matter. The same cops that are supposed to deal with "criminals" under bourgeois class rule will be equally empowered to repress and brutalize revolutionaries.


I told in a previous post i was talking about rapist and pedophiles.



You're saying we'll always need a state, even at the highest phase of communism, in order to deal with "criminals"? Who else would we give authority to?
(I'd dispute, empirically, that community self-policing is or would be "without formation," considering I see it all the time in communities where the police are distrusted, but that's opening up the "organization versus hierarchy" debate that's been recurring constantly for decades, if not centuries.)


It doesn't matter whether or not it's the individual cop's choice. If they could decide what laws they wanted to enforce, they wouldn't be cops. Well, actually, they obviously do decide what laws they want to enforce - especially when it comes to other cops - but those decisions almost always skew towards reaction. I guess I'm not really sure what your point is here, so I'll let you explain further, if you like.

We were talking about killing random cop in the street in our actual society. Not in the final phase of a revolution who is totally theorical and might take century.
I don't know if you voluntary troll myself because i'am a new member but i really feel like you want to trap me or change my word.

[human strike]

Maybe they shot themselves. People shoot themselves in cop cars all the time, even when handcuffed.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

That's a good point, plus their own unhealthy lifestyles would have caught up with them eventually. Take some personal responsibility piggies.

[The Disillusionist]

Holy hell.... this is an interaction between three HUMAN BEINGS we're talking about, three human beings who all died. Ideologies don't shoot each other, people with lives and families do. Discussions like this make me sometimes want to completely separate myself from radical leftism.

You people really think this kind of aimless hate would EVER result in a successful society, under any kind of political system? Keep dreaming. A lot of you are no better than the right-wing nutjobs who believe that killing black people is ok, as long as they are on your property.

[human strike]

A lot of you are no better than the right-wing nutjobs who believe that killing black people is ok, as long as they are on your property.

Yeah, killing black folk is totally the same as killing cops. Cool story, comrade.

There are little to no consequences for cops who shoot black people dead. You never know, retaliatory violence could be a powerful motivator.

[The Disillusionist]

Yeah, killing black folk is totally the same as killing cops. Cool story, comrade.

There are little to no consequences for cops who shoot black people dead. You never know, retaliatory violence could be a powerful motivator.

Killing any person without an extremely good reason is the same as killing any other person without an extremely good reason. Killing people isn't a "motivator," that is so naive I can't even completely process it.

[motion denied]

From 2009 to 2013 the police in my country killed 11.200 (eleven thousand and two hundred) people. While it doesn't make me happy, even less that this guy killed his girlfriend, I'm not dropping the tears for the policemen either.

[The Disillusionist]

From 2009 to 2013 the police in my country killed 11.200 (eleven thousand and two hundred) people. While it doesn't make me happy, even less that this guy killed his girlfriend, I'm not dropping the tears for the policemen either.

That really, really sucks. But in 2012, Brazilian civilians killed 64,000 other civilians. I suppose it be justified to just start killing off Brazilian people, especially men (men commit most homicides), because they kill their own neighbors? I could make the same argument about the US, or any other country with a relatively high violence rate.

I'm aware that being a police officer puts one in a position of authority, which makes it easier for that person to murder. However, so does being a man, in the majority of world cultures. That doesn't mean we should just start killing off men because some men murder. That's naive and reactionary thinking.

[PhoenixAsh]

The police are the arm of the state specifically tasked to serve the interest of the state and consequently the ruling class. It is an organization that is specifically tailored to continue class society and the modes of oppression resulting from it. To do so it has been granted the monopoly of violence against citizens which is used on a regular basis.

This means that ALL members of the police serve this structural purpose.

The police are NOT civilians...(not even by the bourgeois own standards)...and comparing the institution and members of that institution to civilians or sections of the civilian community is making an extremely flawed comparison and is a huge misunderstanding of the nature and role of the police within society.

And to address the point about civilian violenc: Yes we do advocate that women have the right to selfdefence; up to and including using violence or even lethal violence when they do so.

The difference here is that the police is structurally and directly contributing to the continued oppression of people in order to protect a system which has cultivated the modes of oppression in place including the notion of patriarchy...as part of its core purpose.

[PhoenixAsh]

Killing any person without an extremely good reason is the same as killing any other person without an extremely good reason. Killing people isn't a "motivator," that is so naive I can't even completely process it.

No...it isn't. And "good" and "evil" are subjective interpretations that won't hold up under scrutiny.

When it comes to the police we do have a very "good" reason though. The police, like I said above, are directly operating against the class interest of the working class and are there specifically to maintain class society and controll the lower classes in order to facililtate the unobstructed perpetuation of the modes of production and continued exploitation.

That in itself makes the cops our class enemy....a class enemy which has been granted the monopoly of violence and has been given judicial reprieve of the normal laws they enforce on the community in order to use that violence as they see fit. Which they have done so repeatedly and systematically.

[The Disillusionist]

No...it isn't. And "good" and "evil" are subjective interpretations that won't hold up under scrutiny.

When it comes to the police we do have a very "good" reason though. The police, like I said above, are directly operating against the class interest of the working class and are there specifically to maintain class society and controll the lower classes in order to facililtate the unobstructed perpetuation of the modes of production and continued exploitation.

That in itself makes the cops our class enemy....a class enemy which has been granted the monopoly of violence and has been given judicial reprieve of the normal laws they enforce on the community in order to use that violence as they see fit. Which they have done so repeatedly and systematically.

I could also say that the upper class are the class enemies of the middle and lower classes, and the middle class are the class enemies of the lower classes, and the lower classes are the class enemies of third world workers, and third world workers are the class enemies of their own children. Men could be considered the enemies of women, whites could be considered the enemies of blacks, and tall people could be considered the enemies of short people.

A movement based on this kind of mindless hate will only disintegrate into mass violence, because murder can always be justified, if you think about it hard enough. By disagreeing with you, I could be portrayed as a police sympathizer, and thus a class enemy, and thus it would be totally justified to murder me. Your thinking would make Stalin very proud.

[PhoenixAsh]

I could also say that the upper class are the class enemies of the middle and lower classes,

Yes...and we plan to use violence to overthrow them. You know...revolution...where we will forcefully remove them as the upper class.



and the middle class are the class enemies of the lower classes,

Unless they side with the proletariat...they indeed are. And they will also be removed from a position of privilege through force...otherwise known as the concept of revolution.

So far you have excellently summarized the systemic nature of class society. Because this is the core concept of class analysis.



and the lower classes are the class enemies of third world workers,

That would be Maoist Third Worldism...which is ultimately a warped ideological position based on faulty analysis.

First world workers benefit indirectly because of the exploitation of the third world....they are not instrumental in this exploitation. Again...this would be the upper classes...or...in revolutionary terms: the bourgeois.


And from this point on...your entire list of continued examples are no longer systemic...so basically useless:


and third world workers are the class enemies of their own children.

That is just silly. Are you being racist and saying that third world workers abusse their children and aren't good parents?


Men could be considered the enemies of women,

Actually...in many cases they are. And like I said...in those cases where women are threatened with violence we think they have the right to defend themselves.



whites could be considered the enemies of blacks,

Again...white behaviour are the direct result of the systemic nature of racism and white supremacy. Which is perpetuated by the state, bourgeois...and per extend the cops.


and tall people could be considered the enemies of short people.

Well..this is just plainly not true and are slanderous lies!! It is entirely the opposite. Those crafty little buggers always make us trip and fall and hurt ourselves...they are the spwan of the devil.



A movement based on this kind of mindless hate will only disintegrate into mass violence, because murder can always be justified, if you think about it hard enough. By disagreeing with you, I could be portrayed as a police sympathizer, and thus a class enemy, and thus it would be totally justified to murder me. Your thinking would make Stalin very proud.

Well that is just it. The hate is not mindless and it is not hate. It is the nature of the system. And as a result that system systematically oppresses and exploits and kills in order to maintain itself.

Violence against the state or state institutions and violence against class society and the bourgeois are not mindless but are self defence.

And yes...you are a police sympathizer.

I would make Stalin proud? Aside from a few useful idiots and tools for the liberal bourgeois who advocate pacifism....all revolutionaries have basically this same analysis.

[The Disillusionist]

Well... you get busy killing all those people, and we'll all see how well it works out for you.

By the way, when I mentioned third world workers being the enemies of their children, I was referencing Marx's claim that capitalism turns children into labor to be exploited by their parents.

[human strike]

TD, I'm not suggesting anyone go out and pick off cops for the sake of it, but if people are going to do that anyway we might as well look at the positives. The police are absolutely legitimate targets.

[The Disillusionist]

TD, I'm not suggesting anyone go out and pick off cops for the sake of it, but if people are going to do that anyway we might as well look at the positives. The police are absolutely legitimate targets.

I disagree, though I doubt we'll come to an agreement.

I believe that the murder of another person is really only justifiable in the case of immediate self-defense. There have been a lot of police attacks that would have been legitimate cases for self-defense, in my opinion, but I absolutely disagree with killing people just because they are police officers. A lot of young people become cops trying to do some good and to help the community, and many of them really have helped their communities a lot. It is the position, and the system they are in, that gives them too much authority, and that system should be blamed, not individual cops themselves, unless they personally do something to be blamed for.

[PhoenixAsh]

I disagree, though I doubt we'll come to an agreement.

I believe that the murder of another person is really only justifiable in the case of immediate self-defense. There have been a lot of police attacks that would have been legitimate cases for self-defense, in my opinion, but I absolutely disagree with killing people just because they are police officers. A lot of young people become cops trying to do some good and to help the community, and many of them really have helped their communities a lot. It is the position, and the system they are in, that gives them too much authority, and that system should be blamed, not individual cops themselves, unless they personally do something to be blamed for.

Ah...So lets apply this logically to something else.

Members of the Military Junta in Greece aren't really to blame....unless they did something personally.

Nope...really doesn't fly. At all.

[The Disillusionist]

Ah...So lets apply this logically to something else.

Members of the Military Junta in Greece aren't really to blame....unless they did something personally.

Nope...really doesn't fly. At all.

If a person could be a member of a Military Junta without doing anything that would warrant them being killed in self-defense, then I would think that trying to pursuade them to switch sides, or just ignoring them, would be more efficient. A lot of people in Nazi Germany, some of them technically "Nazis," risked their necks to save people from the Holocaust. Sometimes, people get put into groups based on their cultures, or their positions in society, despite the fact that they want to help people.

[Red Commissar]

This bit seems unusual. Did she disagree with him of his opinion of cops? Or did they get in an argument about what he was going to do? Perhaps we'll never know. But this certainly gives more weight to the fact that, as Red Commissar said, police and their apologists have taken full advantage of this to fit their narratives.

Like you said, we probably won't know but it really seems that what ever happened to his girlfriend was unrelated to this. According to what's coming out about the individual it doesn't really seem he was emotionally or mentally stable to begin with- he probably wanted a way to get attention considering the media's coverage on the trial and subsequent protests, or act like he was somehow striking back against the system even though he abused his girlfriend to fit what ever fantasy he was living in. It was not like however he was an active participant in these protests much less groups against police violence before hand.

Unfortunately though this case is being played up for full effect to smear the protests and legitimatize them, as well as attacking the usual suspects. Al Sharpton of course becomes the leader somehow of all this.

Unsurprisingly, when we had two militia nutbags go and execute two cops back in Las Vegas just a few months ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/us/couple-in-las-vegas-killings-embraced-anti-government-ideology.html) with a clear agenda, there wasn't this kind of persecution complex from the police, much less condemnation of the tea party and other figures who encourage that ideology. The idiots in that case left a long line of political rants and even covered up the corpse of one of the cops they killed with a Gadsden Flag, which the Tea Party and other nutters in the states have appropriated for their cause.

What's more absurd about this in my opinion is that with all the cops' grandstanding about not inciting violence, their complaining that the mayor (among others) have "blood on their hands" is precisely that.

I'll say one thing about the police union though- if only we had that kind of protection afforded to other unions! I mean god damn, the union itself already has set up very generous protections for its members, and the media and other people make a hundred excuses for it and applaud them for being valuable members of society, which isn't how they treat other unions of course. I mean if another union boss was speaking like the NYPD's is right now over one of their members being murdered and pointing the blame clearly at people they don't agree with, they'd be criticized by the media for stoking tensions.

[Bala Perdida]

If a person could be a member of a Military Junta without doing anything that would warrant them being killed in self-defense, then I would think that trying to pursuade them to switch sides, or just ignoring them, would be more efficient. A lot of people in Nazi Germany, some of them technically "Nazis," risked their necks to save people from the Holocaust. Sometimes, people get put into groups based on their cultures, or their positions in society, despite the fact that they want to help people.
Are you saying that every German was a Nazi? Or that the Nazis actually had good intentions? Either way, the way you're carrying your argument is known as a slippery slope. You just, inadvertently I hope, said that it would have been wrong to kill Nazis just for the fact that they were Nazis. Condemning any attempt at uprising against Nazi rule.
If that was intended, then I have no idea what attracts you to revolutionary politics.

[The Disillusionist]

Are you saying that every German was a Nazi? Or that the Nazis actually had good intentions? Either way, the way you're carrying your argument is known as a slippery slope. You just, inadvertently I hope, said that it would have been wrong to kill Nazis just for the fact that they were Nazis. Condemning any attempt at uprising against Nazi rule.
If that was intended, then I have no idea what attracts you to revolutionary politics.

No, I'm saying that of those who were members of the Nazi party, a FEW of them risked death to prevent other Nazis from murdering people. I'm just trying to bring in a little perspective here. People don't deserve to be killed just because they have been labeled a certain way, they should be judged on their own actions. A LOT of people were killed in World War II who didn't deserve to be killed, on both sides. In violent conflicts, efforts should always be made to keep casualties to a minimum, and to direct violence as much as possible at the small percentage of people who truly deserve it.

[human strike]

I think it's weird how you're talking about "deserve" like violence should only be some kind of punishment. I'm not very interested in punishment or revenge - I'm interested in revolution, provoking change and ending police violence. I agree that we should always treat human life with respect and never take it lightly, but I do believe there are circumstances beyond "direct self-defence" that justify violence against the police.

[Loony Le Fist]

I know this wasn't directed at me, but I felt compelled to chime in. I hope that's ok. :grin:



I believe that the murder of another person is really only justifiable in the case of immediate self-defense. There have been a lot of police attacks that would have been legitimate cases for self-defense, in my opinion, but I absolutely disagree with killing people just because they are police officers.


I think self-defense beyond immediate concerns. By definition the police are the enemy of revolution. However I also disagree with killing people because they are police officers too. Not because I have any sympathy towards them, but rather because I don't think it helps the revolution. There are more effective ways to combat the state and corporate power elites.



A lot of young people become cops trying to do some good and to help the community, and many of them really have helped their communities a lot. It is the position, and the system they are in, that gives them too much authority, and that system should be blamed, not individual cops themselves, unless they personally do something to be blamed for.

I'm not entirely convinced that cops have really helped their communities a lot. The police are there to maintain the existing order. I don't see that as helping. In a pragmatic sense, a reduction in crime would be beneficial. However, it's only curing symptoms, since it doesn't address the fundamental class issues and isolationism that to a large part lead to these problems.

[PhoenixAsh]

All cops are required to participate in controlling demonstrations, breaking up strikes, attacking civilians....consistently.

They may have the right intentions of helping the community...but they CHOSE to accept the job of repression.

I am sure most of the guards at the concentration camps in North Korea have the best of intentions for the community as well. And I hardly think the military junta thought they were bringing evil to the land. Nor do I think the death squads in Brasil or El Salvador were motivated by anything else than what they thought was the best interest of the community.

These were not misguided people.

These were people who chose the wrong side in the class divide and knowingly and willingly became tools of the state and of the bourgeois in order to repress the working class and contribute to their exploitation and the resulting death because of that exploitation.

They consistently stand between us and the bourgeois and actively and violently WILL repress any form of revolution as a given.

This is not a minority...it is the vast majority of all police personal that are actively repressing and violating class interests.

In Ferguson...not only the local police was violently repressing protesters...also state police and cross state police were called in. So no...we are not talking about a few police who are rotten apples. Its their job to betray the working class consistently on a day to day basis.

[The Disillusionist]

I think it's weird how you're talking about "deserve" like violence should only be some kind of punishment. I'm not very interested in punishment or revenge - I'm interested in revolution, provoking change and ending police violence. I agree that we should always treat human life with respect and never take it lightly, but I do believe there are circumstances beyond "direct self-defence" that justify violence against the police.

I don't believe in "revolution" in the sense that many people talk about it on this site. I used to, but I've become "disillusioned" with the whole idea. This kind of mindless violence doesn't provoke the kind of change that you are wanting, it just provokes reaction and alienation. Change is a social process that starts with the people themselves and then grows into a real ground-up movement that can change society on a structural level.


I know this wasn't directed at me, but I felt compelled to chime in. I hope that's ok. :grin:

I think self-defense beyond immediate concerns. By definition the police are the enemy of revolution. However I also disagree with killing people because they are police officers too. Not because I have any sympathy towards them, but rather because I don't think it helps the revolution. There are more effective ways to combat the state and corporate power elites.

I'm not entirely convinced that cops have really helped their communities a lot. The police are there to maintain the existing order. I don't see that as helping. In a pragmatic sense, a reduction in crime would be beneficial. However, it's only curing symptoms, since it doesn't address the fundamental class issues and isolationism that to a large part lead to these problems.

I'm not talking about "cops" as a group. Many individual police officers have helped their communities through their individual actions. That's one of the problems here, I think, is that people think of "police" as a separate population of concepts, rather than humans who become cops for different reasons and have differing motives. You are talking about "police" as a system, I'm arguing that the system is bad, but that the members of the system shouldn't be sentenced to death just because of their participation in that system, because they are people who can make their own choices.

[DAN E BOY]

I don't won't to be perceived as overbearing as this is only my second post, but i think your points are some what extreme.

you are comparing modern day police forces with inhuman concentration camps. Apples and oranges.

Realistically,what would happen without some form of order,ground rules and general peace keepers for when things get ugly? the police are just half-wits following orders. It's the people who issue the commands who are truly accountable.


All cops are required to participate in controlling demonstrations, breaking up strikes, attacking civilians....consistently.

They may have the right intentions of helping the community...but they CHOSE to accept the job of repression.

I am sure most of the guards at the concentration camps in North Korea have the best of intentions for the community as well. And I hardly think the military junta thought they were bringing evil to the land. Nor do I think the death squads in Brasil or El Salvador were motivated by anything else than what they thought was the best interest of the community.

These were not misguided people.

These were people who chose the wrong side in the class divide and knowingly and willingly became tools of the state and of the bourgeois in order to repress the working class and contribute to their exploitation and the resulting death because of that exploitation.

They consistently stand between us and the bourgeois and actively and violently WILL repress any form of revolution as a given.

[human strike]

This kind of mindless violence doesn't provoke the kind of change that you are wanting, it just provokes reaction and alienation.

What mindless violence? The violence we're talking about isn't mindless at all. All our resistance provokes reaction. And alienation from what exactly?

[The Disillusionist]

All cops are required to participate in controlling demonstrations, breaking up strikes, attacking civilians....consistently.

They may have the right intentions of helping the community...but they CHOSE to accept the job of repression.

I am sure most of the guards at the concentration camps in North Korea have the best of intentions for the community as well. And I hardly think the military junta thought they were bringing evil to the land. Nor do I think the death squads in Brasil or El Salvador were motivated by anything else than what they thought was the best interest of the community.

These were not misguided people.

These were people who chose the wrong side in the class divide and knowingly and willingly became tools of the state and of the bourgeois in order to repress the working class and contribute to their exploitation and the resulting death because of that exploitation.

They consistently stand between us and the bourgeois and actively and violently WILL repress any form of revolution as a given.

This is not a minority...it is the vast majority of all police personal that are actively repressing and violating class interests.

In Ferguson...not only the local police was violently repressing protesters...also state police and cross state police were called in. So no...we are not talking about a few police who are rotten apples. Its their job to betray the working class consistently on a day to day basis.

This is a flawed argument. You think that everyone who makes the CHOICE to buy from Walmart is actively choosing to oppress the third world workers who likely made the product they bought? You think that everyone who chooses to live in the United States is condoning U.S. imperialism?

The majority of police officers have never suppressed a riot, or even fired their guns once while on duty. The majority of police officers retire without firing a single shot while on duty. Most police officers spend their time scolding shoplifters, getting cats out of trees, and helping old people get up after they've fallen. In the vast majority of cases, it's a very boring job, really. This idea that the police are some kind of extremist military force, separate from the people and governed directly by the ruling elite, while it has some basis (especially in recent years), is primarily just radical delusion. Radicals just have to have somebody to tag as their enemy, otherwise they don't know where to direct their hate, and so they end up just pacing up and down their living rooms muttering about the old lady next door, and her vile bourgeois oppression of her cats.

Making the comparison between police officers and death squads just doesn't work. Death squads are actively putting themselves in situations that would warrant self-defense. They wouldn't be death squads if they weren't. A death squad full of guys who retired without firing a single shot would be a pretty ineffective death squad...

[The Disillusionist]

What mindless violence? The violence we're talking about isn't mindless at all. All our resistance provokes reaction. And alienation from what exactly?

The violence we're talking about is a crazy dude flipping out and killing his girlfriend and two cops. That kind of violence just gives the police justification in the eyes of the public (who have been alienated from whatever cause the nutjob was supporting) to increasingly militarize themselves.

[human strike]

The violence we're talking about is a crazy dude flipping out and killing his girlfriend and two cops. That kind of violence just gives the police justification in the eyes of the public (who have been alienated from whatever cause the nutjob was supporting) to increasingly militarize themselves.

So counter their argument. They will always find excuses to criticise and attack us, even when we do nothing. The fact that they attack us for fighting back is the poorest excuse for inaction.

This "nutjob" didn't espouse a cause.

[consuming negativity]

>cops knowingly and willingly oppress the working class
>cops seek justification for militarization to protect the ruling class

y'all give them way too much credit. they're just dumb assholes who need a paycheck and think being a cop isn't what it actually is. yeah you don't let someone go around massacring black people because they're too stupid to understand what they're doing and why, but it also doesn't mean we should be cheering on their deaths - not that doing so is inherently wrong. i completely understand why we enjoy seeing bad shit happen to the people who do bad shit to us. but, in the end, directing hatred at the police is evidence - to me - of forgetting that the police are just pawns of circumstance like the rest of us. they have no idea what role they're actually serving; they're not evil, even though what they do is wrong.

[PhoenixAsh]

This is a flawed argument. You think that everyone who makes the CHOICE to buy from Walmart is actively choosing to oppress the third world workers who likely made the product they bought? You think that everyone who chooses to live in the United States is condoning U.S. imperialism?

I think there is a huge difference in living in a system and actively chosing to protect that system at the expense to the working class by consistently repressing the working class.


The majority of police officers have never suppressed a riot, or even fired their guns once while on duty.

They have however consistently arrested people for protesting or enforced laws that directly prevent people from living a normal live.



The majority of police officers retire without firing a single shot while on duty. Most police officers spend their time scolding shoplifters, getting cats out of trees, and helping old people get up after they've fallen.

No...they don't. Here:

http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/06/why-police-arent-on-our-side

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3053387?sid=21104918935081&uid=3738736&uid=2&uid=4

http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2002-03-01/friend-or-foe-marxism-and-the-police





In the vast majority of cases, it's a very boring job, really. This idea that the police are some kind of extremist military force, separate from the people and governed directly by the ruling elite, while it has some basis (especially in recent years), is primarily just radical delusion.

No...it is not and this is even addressed by the government itself as well as the military. How...hard is it to follow current events?


Radicals just have to have somebody to tag as their enemy, otherwise they don't know where to direct their hate, and so they end up just pacing up and down their living rooms muttering about the old lady next door, and her vile bourgeois oppression of her cats.

Aha...so you are a liberal and not a revolutionary. Well....this is hardly a surprise.


Making the comparison between police officers and death squads just doesn't work. Death squads are actively putting themselves in situations that would warrant self-defense. They wouldn't be death squads if they weren't. A death squad full of guys who retired without firing a single shot would be a pretty ineffective death squad...

Yes...beacuse most death squads consist of law enforcement officials or are actively supportted by the police.

So it actually works quite well.

[The Disillusionist]

So counter their argument. They will always find excuses to criticise and attack us, even when we do nothing. The fact that they attack us for fighting back is the poorest excuse for inaction.

This "nutjob" didn't espouse a cause.

Nobody was "fighting back" in this case. Some guy just executed two other guys without cause.

Also, this kind of violence pretty much eliminates your ability to counter their argument, because it makes you the aggressor. Until there is a sufficient public movement (in which case this kind of violence wouldn't be necessary), the public will not support this kind of violence. By doing this kind of thing, you become the aggressor, and you give MORE authority to the authority figure. Look at Palestine and Israel, Israel is the oppressor there, but the Palestinians are seen as the bad guys and Israel is receiving even more military aid, because the Palestinians' acts of violence have gotten them labeled as terrorists.

[PhoenixAsh]

Nobody was "fighting back" in this case. Some guy just executed two other guys without cause.

Also, this kind of violence pretty much eliminates your ability to counter their argument, because it makes you the aggressor. Until there is a sufficient public movement (in which case this kind of violence wouldn't be necessary), the public will not support this kind of violence. By doing this kind of thing, you become the aggressor, and you give MORE authority to the authority figure. Look at Palestine and Israel, Israel is the oppressor there, but the Palestinians are seen as the bad guys and Israel is receiving even more military aid, because the Palestinians' acts of violence have gotten them labeled as terrorists.

And when the Palestinians do nothing they will still be oppressed. Staying complacent is not a solution. Peaceful protests are not a possibility nor provide a solution.

[synthesis]

The violence we're talking about is a crazy dude flipping out and killing his girlfriend and two cops. That kind of violence just gives the police justification in the eyes of the public (who have been alienated from whatever cause the nutjob was supporting) to increasingly militarize themselves.

It's not surprising in the slightest that you buy into this respectability politics bullshit.

[The Disillusionist]

I think there is a huge difference in living in a system and actively chosing to protect that system at the expense to the working class by consistently repressing the working class.


No there isn't. By buying your computer you actively chose to participate in the capitalist system, thus helping to protect that system at the expense of the working class.



They have however consistently arrested people for protesting or enforced laws that directly prevent people from living a normal live.


Police enforce laws, yes. They don't make laws. They enforce those laws under threat of losing their jobs, being shamed, and potentially being sent into destitution. It would be far more productive to try changing laws than to try to attack policemen.



No...they don't. Here:

http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/06/why-police-arent-on-our-side

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3053387?sid=21104918935081&uid=3738736&uid=2&uid=4

http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2002-03-01/friend-or-foe-marxism-and-the-police


None of these articles have anything to do with what the average policeman spends him time doing, they're all just Marxist analyses of the police system as a whole.



No...it is not and this is even addressed by the government itself as well as the military. How...hard is it to follow current events?

How hard is it to keep an open mind, rather than just eating up whatever suits your prexisting bias? Even with the militarization of police in recent decades, the majority of police have boring jobs and never fire a single shot. SWAT teams have been the groups of police that have benefited most from the militarization, and they are the ones that most often participate in violent raids and the like. SWAT teams are being used more and more in recent years, but the majority of police officers are never members of such a team. Actually, SWAT teams have made the life of the average police officer more boring, because stuff that normal police officers used to do, like serving papers, is now being done by SWAT teams.

But even SWAT teams are heavily restricted in what they can do, and what purposes they serve, and their activities are strictly monitored. They are not death squads.

Again, this idea that the police are our enemy is naive make-believe for the violence junkies. Reality is much, much more complicated than that.



Aha...so you are a liberal and not a revolutionary. Well....this is hardly a surprise.


Do you even know what a liberal is, or do you just apply it to everyone who doesn't agree with it? I would say that I'm probably more of a revolutionary than the violence junkies, because I actually know how to make revolution happen, without hurting the cause so badly.



Yes...beacuse most death squads consist of law enforcement officials or are actively supportted by the police.

So it actually works quite well.

Not in the US they aren't. Again, this isn't a comparison you can really make.

[BIXX]

Lantz, that's all easy to say when you've never been threatened by the cops, seen them hurt your friends, been followed, etc...

They are the enemy.

[The Disillusionist]

And when the Palestinians do nothing they will still be oppressed. Staying complacent is not a solution. Peaceful protests are not a possibility nor provide a solution.

Violent protests are not a possibility nor do they provide a solution either, they just give Israel another excuse to kill Palestinians. Hamas has hurt the Palestinian cause to such a degree that it almost seems that they are working for Israel. If Israel ever loses its control over Palestine, it will be for economic or political reasons, not violent ones.


It's not surprising in the slightest that you buy into this respectability politics bullshit.

You mean common sense? You would have to completely ignore reality to believe otherwise.

[The Disillusionist]

Lantz, that's all easy to say when you've never been threatened by the cops, seen them hurt your friends, been followed, etc...

They are the enemy.

I see the same argument made against black and latino people, all the time. And again, the same argument could be made about men in general, in relation to women.

[PhoenixAsh]

No there isn't. By buying your computer you actively chose to participate in the capitalist system, thus helping to protect that system at the expense of the working class.

Again...completely different.


Police enforce laws, yes. They don't make laws. They enforce those laws under threat of losing their jobs, being shamed, and potentially being sent into destitution. It would be far more productive to try changing laws than to try to attack policemen.

The fundamental aspect of police work is specifically to maintain the status quo. They work directly for the state and the bourgeois in order to perpetuate their continued unobstructed existence.

Now...you talk about changing laws.

Perhaps you have failed to misunderstand the fundamental aspect of class society in that the laws can not and never will be altered to directly harm the interests of capitalism...but that instead our aim is to overthrow capitalism and enact communism.

The police directly, actively and violently oppose us in that goal on a daily basis.

What is it about this that fails to elude you?



None of these articles have anything to do with what the average policeman spends him time doing, they're all just Marxist analyses of the police system as a whole.

Yes...and funny thing...police systems consist of policemen doing their jobs.



How hard is it to keep an open mind

Not very hard at all. Yet...this position is not something that is in any dispute here and your position is a tired, tried and ultimately flawed and already exhausted liberal drivel of some notion that cops are our brothers. Something which is evidently disproven by daily action of the cops, globally...for centuries.



, rather than just eating up whatever suits your prexisting bias?

It is not a preexisting bias. It is an daily observable fact...and has been for decades. Every now and again some liberal idiot comes by and repeats exactly the same nonsense you are spewing...ultimately theior position is akin to arguing that humans do not need to breath in order to survive...but of course...we need to have an open mind.

Now...either you are young, naive...new to revolutionary politics and praxis...and perhaps you have some relatives or friends who are serving as part of the police force...and you quite like them.,...and you now think you have some misguided obligation to defend them

Or...you actually truely believe what you are arguing here....and are grossly unaware of a little thing called reality. Now...I would do a quick google search about the role of the police in preventing revolutions.



Even with the militarization of police in recent decades,

A militarization that has been going on for decades? Are we talking about the same militarization that a post or two ago you said about that it was really a radical illusion?


the majority of police have boring jobs and never fire a single shot.

No...the police have jobs which DIRECTLY and consistently uphold the status quo. MOST of the cops are active in preventing riots either directly or in a supporting role. When they are not doing that they are consistently harrassing people.

The reality is that only a minority of cops directly benefit the community.


SWAT teams have been the groups of police that have benefited most from the militarization, and they are the ones that most often participate in violent raids and the like. SWAT teams are being used more and more in recent years, but the majority of police officers are never members of such a team. Actually, SWAT teams have made the life of the average police officer more boring, because stuff that normal police officers used to do, like serving papers, is now being done by SWAT teams.

But even SWAT teams are heavily restricted in what they can do, and what purposes they serve, and their activities are strictly monitored. They are not death squads.

Yeeeees...you have really let a privileged sheltered live haven't you?

Ok...I am going with liberal asshat cop apologist. So basically our discussion ends here.



Again, this idea that the police are our enemy is naive make-believe for the violence junkies. Reality is much, much more complicated than that.

No...it actually isn't at all and your entire line of argument is consistently belied by...hmm...lets say...the entirety of history of police.

Yes...they are most definately our class enemy. Yes they have consistently proven to do so. No the police have consistently in the vast majority taken a position against the working class and have in vast majority stayed loyal to regimes, states and class society in opposition of revolutions.



Do you even know what a liberal is, or do you just apply it to everyone who doesn't agree with it? I would say that I'm probably more of a revolutionary than the violence junkies, because I actually know how to make revolution happen, without hurting the cause so badly.

Owww yes...you know how to make revolution happen. So tell me....why haven't you?

I am calling everybody a liberal who talk about changing laws in order to make the system better. I am calling a liberal everybody who thinks that cops are ultimately poor misguided workers who actually wont enmasse chose to beat us up as they have consistently done on a very regular basis throughout history.

And yes...it is sooo much excusable to actually actively contribute to the deaths of thousands upon thousands and the continued repression and exploitation of millions after choosing to protect the system that is responsible....just because you are afraid of losing your job.

You know what...most cops are not really afraid of losing their job at all unless the system decides to fire them. And guess what...I don't actually care.


Not in the US they aren't. Again, this isn't a comparison you can really make.

Yes...I can. You think there is a substantial difference between cops around the globe. No...there really isn't.

You actually think and live in the illusion that cops won't increase their level of violence and repression like they themselves have consistently pushed over the decades. YOu think they were ordered against their will to increase the level of violence they use against people?

No...they haven't. They have consistently pushed the boundraries themselves. And they will continue to do so.

[synthesis]

I see the same argument made against black and latino people, all the time.

The people making that argument don't have to be "wrong," they're just our enemies, like cops. Also, what kind of people are you hanging out with?

[BIXX]

I see the same argument made against black and latino people, all the time. And again, the same argument could be made about men in general, in relation to women.
So you're saying that when someone pulls over in a car, puts their hand on a gun, and threatens to kill you, that retaliation just legitimizes that? Yeah, fuck your shit. I hope a cop makes you feel unsafe in your own home one day.

[Bala Perdida]

I see the same argument made against black and latino people, all the time. And again, the same argument could be made about men in general, in relation to women.

What the fuck does that mean? Of course men are unaware of the brutality women experience at the hands of other men.
Your police sympathizing shows a total lack of understanding and inexperience with police. The town I live in has been called one of the safest for it's size and population, and all my life I have not seen the police help the community in any way significant or otherwise. Me and my family have experienced harassment by police constantly since I was 5. Fuck them if they don't make the laws, they still very well CHOOSE to enforce them. I have never seen any of those scumbag pricks attempt to change the law. If it was really for a paycheck, they would be cleaning toilets or turning in papers like the rest of us. In fact that's what I hear from cops is the biggest deterrent for them, the fucking legal process where they turn in the documented proof that what they did was justified.
I knew a cop and he said he loved being on the field, and he loved the adrenaline rush that he got beating people. That's another thing EVERY cop does. Among those is harassing the homeless, which the former cop I knew actively admitted to doing and even laughed at. When I was driving and the car broke down, the cop who showed up didn't try to help me. He wanted to make sure I was getting the car towed away at my expense or I would get fined otherwise.
Your logic that cops are just bored underappreciated community leaders is akin to thinking that the bourgeoisie worked hard to be exploiters. No one should have the right to exploit and no one should be enforcing that right. Anyone that does should be mercilessly disposed of by revolutionary means. If you can't accept that, then you're not a revolutionary in any sense applicable to socialism.

[motion denied]

I knew a cop and he said he loved being on the field, and he loved the adrenaline rush that he got beating people.

Yeah, same. Cops will actually, to everyone's face, say: "I'll beat you the fuck out", and then proceed to do it.

Like, fuck, why are we even saying such obvious things. Astonishing thread.

[The Disillusionist]

Again...completely different.

The fundamental aspect of police work is specifically to maintain the status quo. They work directly for the state and the bourgeois in order to perpetuate their continued unobstructed existence.

Now...you talk about changing laws.

Perhaps you have failed to misunderstand the fundamental aspect of class society in that the laws can not and never will be altered to directly harm the interests of capitalism...but that instead our aim is to overthrow capitalism and enact communism.

The police directly, actively and violently oppose us in that goal on a daily basis.

What is it about this that fails to elude you?

Yes...and funny thing...police systems consist of policemen doing their jobs.

Not very hard at all. Yet...this position is not something that is in any dispute here and your position is a tired, tried and ultimately flawed and already exhausted liberal drivel of some notion that cops are our brothers. Something which is evidently disproven by daily action of the cops, globally...for centuries.

It is not a preexisting bias. It is an daily observable fact...and has been for decades. Every now and again some liberal idiot comes by and repeats exactly the same nonsense you are spewing...ultimately theior position is akin to arguing that humans do not need to breath in order to survive...but of course...we need to have an open mind.

Now...either you are young, naive...new to revolutionary politics and praxis...and perhaps you have some relatives or friends who are serving as part of the police force...and you quite like them.,...and you now think you have some misguided obligation to defend them

Or...you actually truely believe what you are arguing here....and are grossly unaware of a little thing called reality. Now...I would do a quick google search about the role of the police in preventing revolutions.

A militarization that has been going on for decades? Are we talking about the same militarization that a post or two ago you said about that it was really a radical illusion?

No...the police have jobs which DIRECTLY and consistently uphold the status quo. MOST of the cops are active in preventing riots either directly or in a supporting role. When they are not doing that they are consistently harrassing people.

The reality is that only a minority of cops directly benefit the community.

Yeeeees...you have really let a privileged sheltered live haven't you?

Ok...I am going with liberal asshat cop apologist. So basically our discussion ends here.


Lol. You know nothing about me. But whatever... I'm not gonna let you bunch of extremists turn this thread into a celebration of hate and death. I've seen enough to be sick of that crap and the people who propagate it.

First, EVERYONE serves to maintain the status quo. Participation in the system helps to maintain the status quo. We don't need cops to maintain capitalism, we are maintaining it ourselves by buying computers. Getting rid of cops would do almost nothing to help the revolution, because the ruling elite literally have their own private armies.

Second, the cops are not directly controlled by the ruling elite. This isn't a comic book, in which the league of evil controls its own army of less-than-human drones for the heroes to kill. Cops are, to a large extent, controlled by public opinion. As I said before, if extremists really did anything to sway public opinion, rather than sitting in their houses and fantasizing about murder, change could be built from the ground up.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/109955.pdf

And again, the majority of police have nothing to do with riots, and very rarely fire their guns. I don't give a damn if you've gotten one too many parking tickets, they aren't really the enemy. I don't care about your masturbatory fantasies about killing cops either, it won't help anyone's cause one damn bit.

You say I'm naive? I'm not the one arguing for a reactionary war against cops. That's completely childish.



No...it actually isn't at all and your entire line of argument is consistently belied by...hmm...lets say...the entirety of history of police.

Yes...they are most definately our class enemy. Yes they have consistently proven to do so. No the police have consistently in the vast majority taken a position against the working class and have in vast majority stayed loyal to regimes, states and class society in opposition of revolutions.


No they aren't, and no they haven't. The police themselves are members of the working class, calling them the enemy displays an extreme ignorance of the systems at work here. As I said, it's way more complicated than that, you can't just make everything black and white when it isn't. The reason that "police" have supposedly stayed loyal to "regimes, states, and class society" is because every regime/state/class society will likely have some sort of police force, even though the members of that force will likely change.




Owww yes...you know how to make revolution happen. So tell me....why haven't you?

I am calling everybody a liberal who talk about changing laws in order to make the system better. I am calling a liberal everybody who thinks that cops are ultimately poor misguided workers who actually wont enmasse chose to beat us up as they have consistently done on a very regular basis throughout history.

And yes...it is sooo much excusable to actually actively contribute to the deaths of thousands upon thousands and the continued repression and exploitation of millions after choosing to protect the system that is responsible....just because you are afraid of losing your job.

You know what...most cops are not really afraid of losing their job at all unless the system decides to fire them. And guess what...I don't actually care.

Revolution isn't a sudden violent thing. It's a process that can often be slow.

You're still sticking to this naive idea of cops as a bunch of soulless monsters too, ignoring the vast amount of controversy that occurs whenever cops do anything violent like this. As if you are the only one who sees that cops can sometimes abuse their power... As I've said, few US cops ever even fire their guns during duty before retiring. And when a cop does shoot somebody, it's a nightmare.

Your schtick about the "deaths of thousands" and the "maintenance of the system" is just short-sighted. Death by cop is relatively rare. Death by abusive husband as a result of capitalist gender structures is far, far more common. Cops are victims of the system, just like everyone else, and cops are working class, they need to eat too. You could just as easily blame the workers in the gun factories making the guns used to shoot people.

Finally, there is NO police station in the US that is directly condoning murder. Murder happens anyway, and it shouldn't, but you are the only one in this scenario who is directly condoning murder.




Yes...I can. You think there is a substantial difference between cops around the globe. No...there really isn't.

You actually think and live in the illusion that cops won't increase their level of violence and repression like they themselves have consistently pushed over the decades. YOu think they were ordered against their will to increase the level of violence they use against people?

No...they haven't. They have consistently pushed the boundraries themselves. And they will continue to do so.

There is a huge difference between cops around the globe. You just don't see that because ironically, you are priviledged enough to think that you are as oppressed as everyone else.

Also: http://benswann.com/nashville-police-chief-refuses-to-crack-down-on-ferguson-protesters-no-violence-or-property-damage-ensues/

Again, they are humans, with the capability of choice.


The people making that argument don't have to be "wrong," they're just our enemies, like cops. Also, what kind of people are you hanging out with?

I live in Idaho, one of the most racist states in the US. Also, just tagging everyone you don't like as your enemy isn't productive.

[Lily Briscoe]

I have never met an anarchist before who didn't have some semblance of an analysis of the role of the police in capitalism. Kinda confused.

[synthesis]

I'll say one thing about the police union though- if only we had that kind of protection afforded to other unions! I mean god damn, the union itself already has set up very generous protections for its members, and the media and other people make a hundred excuses for it and applaud them for being valuable members of society, which isn't how they treat other unions of course. I mean if another union boss was speaking like the NYPD's is right now over one of their members being murdered and pointing the blame clearly at people they don't agree with, they'd be criticized by the media for stoking tensions.

I think this is a pretty good point, and I wonder if there isn't a sizable percentage of left-liberals who are uncomfortable making electoral movements towards crippling and gutting police unions - among the most reactionary organizations in the U.S. and probably the single biggest obstacle to reformist efforts to rein in the police - because they'll be seen as "anti-union." It might help them to promote some sort of terminological differentiation so that police unions can be targeted for demolition without real unions getting caught in the crosshairs, so to speak.


This idea that the police are some kind of extremist military force, separate from the people and governed directly by the ruling elite, while it has some basis (especially in recent years), is primarily just radical delusion. Radicals just have to have somebody to tag as their enemy, otherwise they don't know where to direct their hate, and so they end up just pacing up and down their living rooms muttering about the old lady next door, and her vile bourgeois oppression of her cats.

Oh God, I just saw this. You need to fuck off immediately.

edit: This shit, too.


The police themselves are members of the working class, calling them the enemy displays an extreme ignorance of the systems at work here.

Go away.


I have never met an anarchist before who didn't have some semblance of an analysis of the role of the police in capitalism. Kinda confused.

I'm not sure our friend here means the same thing we do when he calls himself an anarchist.

[The Disillusionist]

So you're saying that when someone pulls over in a car, puts their hand on a gun, and threatens to kill you, that retaliation just legitimizes that? Yeah, fuck your shit. I hope a cop makes you feel unsafe in your own home one day.

I don't care if a police officer scared you. Police officers have scared me too. It's not justification to murder another person just because he/she is a police officer. We aren't children here, we are capable of rational thought, we don't just kill everyone who scares us.


What the fuck does that mean? Of course men are unaware of the brutality women experience at the hands of other men.
Your police sympathizing shows a total lack of understanding and inexperience with police. The town I live in has been called one of the safest for it's size and population, and all my life I have not seen the police help the community in any way significant or otherwise. Me and my family have experienced harassment by police constantly since I was 5. Fuck them if they don't make the laws, they still very well CHOOSE to enforce them. I have never seen any of those scumbag pricks attempt to change the law. If it was really for a paycheck, they would be cleaning toilets or turning in papers like the rest of us. In fact that's what I hear from cops is the biggest deterrent for them, the fucking legal process where they turn in the documented proof that what they did was justified.
I knew a cop and he said he loved being on the field, and he loved the adrenaline rush that he got beating people. That's another thing EVERY cop does. Among those is harassing the homeless, which the former cop I knew actively admitted to doing and even laughed at. When I was driving and the car broke down, the cop who showed up didn't try to help me. He wanted to make sure I was getting the car towed away at my expense or I would get fined otherwise.
Your logic that cops are just bored underappreciated community leaders is akin to thinking that the bourgeoisie worked hard to be exploiters. No one should have the right to exploit and no one should be enforcing that right. Anyone that does should be mercilessly disposed of by revolutionary means. If you can't accept that, then you're not a revolutionary in any sense applicable to socialism.

Your personal experiences and the testimony of "some guy you know" don't mean anything in this discussion. You are just seeing what you want to see to justify your psychopathic fantasies. Again, some cop didn't go out of his way to accomodate you, so cops are the enemy and should all be killed mercilessly? Give me a break. That's just masturbation.

I'm not saying that "cops are just bored underappreciated community leaders". If you seriously think that, reread the discussion. What I'm saying is that this dumbass argument that cops are all evil meaniefaces who are scary and therefore should be killed is just stupid. Cops are individual humans within a system, and don't deserve to be killed for actions that are not their own. Again, I could just as easily justify killing you because you bought your computer without consideration for the workers who built it. You exploited workers by buying your computer, and you enforced that right by endorsing the company who exploited the workers who built it.

If there was ever a revolutionary context in which some guy was going around executing cops, I would shoot that guy in a heartbeat, because 1. He would be a murderer, and 2. His actions would be a direct threat to the success of that revolution.

Oh, and you don't have the right to claim that people who don't adhere to your fantasies about killing cops aren't true socialists. That naive and childish.




Yeah, same. Cops will actually, to everyone's face, say: "I'll beat you the fuck out", and then proceed to do it.

Like, fuck, why are we even saying such obvious things. Astonishing thread.

A few might, but "cops" in general do not. You are stereotyping to justify these ideas of violence, another tactic commonly used by racists.

[The Disillusionist]

I have never met an anarchist before who didn't have some semblance of an analysis of the role of the police in capitalism. Kinda confused.

I don't like the system, and don't believe it should exist. That doesn't mean I'm asshole enough to condone murder just because cops are a part of that system. We're all a part of that system. The issue here is that I've actually studied social science (not just Marxism), and have a much wider perspective on the structures that operate society, therefore I'm not taking such a narrow, reactionary view as the extremists.

[The Disillusionist]

Oh God, I just saw this. You need to fuck off immediately.

I'm not sure our friend here means the same thing we do when he calls himself an anarchist.

Again, reality doesn't allow for delusion. The cops have gotten more militarized in recent decades, as I've said, and that's a problem, but if you seriously think that the police have become a beligerrent army constructed for the sole purpose of enforcing the will of the ruling elite, you are delusional. That's it. There is no realistic basis to what you are saying. If you want to maintain your delusion, move to Egypt, where the police literally are an army, and see how well it goes for you.

Just because I'm not letting myself become hysterical over naive, idealistic ravings about cop-killing doesn't mean I don't have the same end goal as other anarchists, a society without a need for police or government, I just realize that it's not as simple or black and white as you so wrongly assume.

[motion denied]

#NotAllCops

thread of the year

[synthesis]

The issue here is that I've actually studied social science (not just Marxism), and have a much wider perspective on the structures that operate society, therefore I'm not taking such a narrow, reactionary view as the extremists.

...wow. Just, wow. For one thing, the way you use "reactionary" here strongly suggests that you don't know what the word means. Second of all, everything else that's wrong with this.

[The Disillusionist]

#NotAllCops

thread of the year

You joke, but if leftists displayed even a tiny fraction of the humanism that supposedly guides so many of their other beliefs (like feminism) in regard to this thread, this discussion wouldn't be happening.

[The Disillusionist]

...wow. Just, wow. For one thing, the way you use "reactionary" here strongly suggests that you don't know what the word means. Second of all, everything else that's wrong with this.

"Cops are scary and mean, therefore we should kill them."

I don't think there has ever been a better context in which to use the word "reactionary."

According to the online dictionary, reactionary means:
"of, pertaining to, marked by, or favoring reaction (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reaction), especially extreme conservatism or rightism in politics."

I can't think of anything more right-wing than killing/oppressing people you don't like/don't agree with... Here's some of the charming examples that the GOP has given us:

"All Muslims are terrorists, therefore we should bomb them!"
"Pedophiles are evil, therefore they should be tortured and killed!"
"Retarded people are dumb, therefore they should be sterilized!"
"Obama is the antichrist, therefore he should be shot!"

[Bala Perdida]

Why do keep assuming that we want to kill cops? No one that's been in the discussion this long has expressed any feelings of celebration towards the cops being killed. Most people on here are apathetic to it, but are annoyed by people such as yourself who claim that cops are noble people with their "support our troops" logic.
You also keep putting thing like buying a computer and beating minorities on the same level. There are very significant differences between the two in terms of capitalism.
Your liberal politics where exposed when you advocated the death penalty for murderers, but condemned acting against cops. I wasn't saying you're not a socialist, I was saying you're not a revolutionary.
I gotta go to work, so I guess I'll cut the talk short. I have to go do stuff so my boss can get paid, just the way you like it.

[Lord Testicles]

"Cops are scary and mean, therefore we should kill them."


You've got us all wrong. Cops should be killed because the tears of their bereaved family members are salty and delicious. Especially during the Christmas season.

[synthesis]

"Cops are scary and mean, therefore we should kill them."

I don't think there has ever been a better context in which to use the word "reactionary."

Whatever, man. You're past the point of no return here. You don't say that everyone who hates cops "just has to have someone to tag as their enemy" (because "they don't know where else to direct their hate") and come back from that.


According to the online dictionary, reactionary means:
"of, pertaining to, marked by, or favoring reaction (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reaction), especially extreme conservatism or rightism in politics."

I can't think of anything more right-wing than killing/oppressing people you don't like/don't agree with...

So you don't understand what revolution means either. Great.

[The Disillusionist]

Why do keep assuming that we want to kill cops? No one that's been in the discussion this long has expressed any feelings of celebration towards the cops being killed. Most people on here are apathetic to it, but are annoyed by people such as yourself who claim that cops are noble people with their "support our troops" logic.

What? Is anyone really reading my posts? I didn't say this in the least. I never said that cops are noble people, I just said that they are people, like everyone else.



You also keep putting thing like buying a computer and beating minorities on the same level. There are very significant differences between the two in terms of capitalism.
Your liberal politics where exposed when you advocated the death penalty for murderers, but condemned acting against cops. I wasn't saying you're not a socialist, I was saying you're not a revolutionary.
I gotta go to work, so I guess I'll cut the talk short. I have to go do stuff so my boss can get paid, just the way you like it.

Wait... when did I advocate the death penalty for murderers?
Ohhhh, right, with the comment about the nutjob executing cops... To therefore claim that I support the death penalty for all murderers is stretching things just a LOT... If a violent lunatic is going around executing people, cop or not, shooting him/her is most likely going to be the only option to prevent that person from continuing his/her actions, as he/she isn't likely to cooperate.

Also, I'm a liberal for advocating the death penalty of murders, but advocating the death penalty for cops is just being a "true socialist?" That makes no sense. And this whole thing has absolutely nothing to do with me being a "liberal." Politically and philosophically, I'm not a liberal. You can call me one all you want, but that doesn't make it true.

Oh, and I never condemned not acting against the cops, I just condemned shooting them in cold blood for no good reason. There is a vast territory of compromise there that you are ignoring...

The illustration about buying a computer is meant to illustrate that we are all a part of the capitalist system, and a person's position in that system does not define them.

Finally, it is not in a cop's job description to beat minorities. It happens, and that's a bad thing, but cops are not hired with the expectation that they will do such things. Cops shouldn't have so much authority, but that doesn't mean that they are all criminals who should be killed, most of them don't act like that (and no, I don't care what you heard from a friend of a friend, the actual hard data shows that most cops aren't criminals).

[The Disillusionist]

Whatever, man. You're past the point of no return here. You don't say that everyone who hates cops "just has to have someone to tag as their enemy" (because "they don't know where else to direct their hate") and come back from that.

So you don't understand what revolution means either. Great.

I didn't say that. I said that extremist nutjobs tag cops as their enemies in order to direct their hate. That doesn't mean that a dislike of the police system is irrational (though hating cops as individual people, when those individual people have done nothing wrong, is irrational).

I know what a revolution is. I know what my idea of a revolution is, and I know what your idea of a revolution is. Your revolution will fail because, as I've already implied, it's essentially a right-wing hate movement with leftist philosophies slapped over it.

[PhoenixAsh]

Lol. You know nothing about me. But whatever... I'm not gonna let you bunch of extremists turn this thread into a celebration of hate and death. I've seen enough to be sick of that crap and the people who propagate it.

I don't. Except that your arguments are liberal crap and basically already repeatedly disproven by reality.

Now what I DO know about you is that you are incredibly invested in apologizing for cops in the face of overwhelming daily evidence for the entire existance of the police.


First, EVERYONE serves to maintain the status quo.

No...they don't.

There is a huge misunderstanding and misconception you have about the nature of existance and getting by in a capitalist society....and actively trying to enforce that society. This misconception starts at you thinking policework is just another job. And it really isn't.

I seriously you suggest you do some research into the history and function of police and how that evolved over time.


Participation in the system helps to maintain the status quo. We don't need cops to maintain capitalism, we are maintaining it ourselves by buying computers.

Again...comparing apples with oranges. The funcion of the police is to actively prevent the status quo from being challenged to any meaningfull degree. I would again urge you to actually do some study into what the police is and you can find that in its history.

The primary reason why we have a police force is because the ruling class needed to be ensured the daily commerce and flow of products and capital was ensured and unobstructed. They also needed to protect their property from those who would threaten their property rights.

That is how the police came into existence....and this role and function has not changed. Everything the police does...from helping little old ladies cross the streets (which they rarely do) to harassing homeless people and POC (which they repeatedly and regularly do) to enforcing laws which maintian order and instill a sense of fear for reprsial in the working class (which they do structurally)...is gared at maintaining the status quo and keeping people in line so that theeconomics of society can function as unobstructed as possible and the class system is maintained.

In every protest, strike, every revolutionary situation...throughout history...internationally...the police have consistently and structurally and enmasse chosen to violently repress the working class and side with the state and the ruling class.


Getting rid of cops would do almost nothing to help the revolution, because the ruling elite literally have their own private armies.

It would have a huge effect on the revolution because it would take away the vestiges and illusions (which...as your arguments testifies...is hugely effective) of legitimization.

Imagine Occupy Wallstreet with no cops. Imagine the Greek protests without cops. Imagine the many socialist revolts and strikes that have been broken by cops...without those very same cops.


Second, the cops are not directly controlled by the ruling elite. This isn't a comic book, in which the league of evil controls its own army of less-than-human drones for the heroes to kill. Cops are, to a large extent, controlled by public opinion.

You really are clueless...

The ruling class controll the state. The state controlls the cops. There can be argument about the dynamics between the state and the bourgeois (and there is) but there is no argument that they serve the same purpose in maintaining the status quo.

We are also not talking about good and evil. We are talking about serving interests. And these interests are diametrically opposed to the class interests of the working class. The class interests of both the state and the bourgeois is the continued existance of capitalism and that means the continued exploitation of labour...and therefore the working class.

The public opinion you talk about...and which you make a nice link to which ultimately contradicts many of your own arguments...is merely served to ensure the primary interests: the continued unobstructed perpetuation of the status quo and the flow of capital.

In order to do so...the population needs to believe in things like "justice", "protect and serve" and "fairness" within the current system.

Currently we have commissionars in the Netherlands who have openly admitted that the cops are not your friends at all. And you in the US have commissionars and politicians who will ultimately excuse every act of violence committed by the police.

Why? Because the police serves their interest...not ours.


As I said before, if extremists really did anything to sway public opinion, rather than sitting in their houses and fantasizing about murder, change could be built from the ground up.

We are not talking about change. You liberals had your chance with Obama. Nothing changed. That is the problem...and this is why I am calling you a liberal.

We do not want change. We need a revolution.



https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/109955.pdf

And again, the majority of police have nothing to do with riots, and very rarely fire their guns. I don't give a damn if you've gotten one too many parking tickets, they aren't really the enemy. I don't care about your masturbatory fantasies about killing cops either, it won't help anyone's cause one damn bit.

You keep saying that. But that simply is not true nor the issue I am trying to get through to you.

Now...again...actually do some research about the role of the cops in left-wing protests, revolutions, strikes and civil rights movements. You will find that your argument is simply completely devaluated, disproven and discreditted by the entire scope of police history.

And all those cops that don't participate in the riots? Those cops are the backbone of the system and the auxilary forces that enable large forces of cops being able to violently repress protests, demonstrations, strikes etc.


You say I'm naive? I'm not the one arguing for a reactionary war against cops. That's completely childish.

The only childish position here is the position that cops are our friends...our comrades...or our misguided brothers who have strayed from the flock.

They are not. They have consistently taken position against the working class throughout history. Everything the cops do is designed to maintain the current status quo and protect capitalism, property rights, the state and the bourgeois....and they have done so violently...and will continue to do so for as long as the institution exists.

There is a war. It is waged by the cops daily. You just refuse to see it because you are desperately trying to make cops to be nice.

This leads me to believe that at least on person in your close environment is a cop.




No they aren't, and no they haven't. The police themselves are members of the working class, calling them the enemy displays an extreme ignorance of the systems at work here.

The ignorance is regretfully entirely on your part there. Now...the combined activist experience will in the asbolute majority here state you are wrong. Had you actually researched the subject and its history you could have saved yourself the embaressment of making the arguments you are making.

Cops may come from working class back grounds but they serve entirely to protect the sate and to protect it violently against their own class.

I am sorry. That is just how it is.


As I said, it's way more complicated than that, you can't just make everything black and white when it isn't. The reason that "police" have supposedly stayed loyal to "regimes, states, and class society" is because every regime/state/class society will likely have some sort of police force, even though the members of that force will likely change.

This isn't black and white. This is reality.

Funny thing...During WWII the cops remained the cops...only now served the fascist occupation forces. The same cops. Some of course defected. But the vast majority executed their jobs during the entirety of the war including rounding up resistance fighters...and assisting in razzia's against Jews.

Not just in one country...but all over Europe.

The notion that the loyalty of the cops is somehow incidental and non-causal is really just sad and ignorant.




Revolution isn't a sudden violent thing. It's a process that can often be slow.

Per defintion a revolution is not slow. And even if we accept that a few months is slow...then it will still be violent.


You're still sticking to this naive idea of cops as a bunch of soulless monsters too, ignoring the vast amount of controversy that occurs whenever cops do anything violent like this.

I haven't said they were soulless monsters. I have said they serve to oppress the working class per definition of their function and are diametrically opposed to the class interests of the working class by serving the state and the bourgeois.

This is not about the situation in Ferguson...or New York. This is about the role of the police during its entire existance and how the police have always acted and will always act in a revolutionary situation or during strikes.


As if you are the only one who sees that cops can sometimes abuse their power... As I've said, few US cops ever even fire their guns during duty before retiring. And when a cop does shoot somebody, it's a nightmare.

I am saying cops abuse their power consistently and repeatedly...and that there may be a minority who doesn't.


Your schtick about the "deaths of thousands" and the "maintenance of the system" is just short-sighted. Death by cop is relatively rare. Death by abusive husband as a result of capitalist gender structures is far, far more common. Cops are victims of the system, just like everyone else, and cops are working class, they need to eat too. You could just as easily blame the workers in the gun factories making the guns used to shoot people.

Owww...you mean the capitalist gender norms the cops enforce and are perpetuated by the state the cops protect and the norms the cops use in how they treat female victims and victimize them all over again? Those capitalist gender norms?

Again you compare apples with oranges.

Cops are not victims...saying they are is like saying the poor little Nazi guards of the concentration camps were victims of the system. No..they are not.

They are executing their duty they decided to adopt in enforcing class society and maintaining and perpetuating the continued exploitation and repression of the working class.

THere is a huge reason why the working class, and especially POC, are untrusting of cops and even afraid of cops.



Finally, there is NO police station in the US that is directly condoning murder. Murder happens anyway, and it shouldn't, but you are the only one in this scenario who is directly condoning murder.

But there have been....which disproves your point entirely. AND there are. When the cops justify their murders...like recently in Ferguson...they write their murder off as "justified police procedure".



There is a huge difference between cops around the globe. You just don't see that because ironically, you are priviledged enough to think that you are as oppressed as everyone else.

Ow I do not have the illusion that I am not more privileged than billions of people. I am white, I am of the male sex, and I have a good job. I am very privileged compared to a whole lot of people.

The difference is I actually studied the history of the police, have been an activist for the largest part of my life...have encountered the police in more than 12 different countries. And minor differences in tactics overlooked they are ultimately the exact same.

That is regardless of the fact that police continually harrass my overwhelmingly white and lower middle class community in their own streets and intimidates the neighborhood on a regular basis.

And that pales in comparison what they do in other parts of my town where the community is of the lowest segments of the working class and overwhelmingly non-white.



Also: http://benswann.com/nashville-police-chief-refuses-to-crack-down-on-ferguson-protesters-no-violence-or-property-damage-ensues/

....and nothing changed. At all.

But ultimately this article completely devaluates your entire argument because it is news for the reason that it is an exception. An exception that has come about from months of violent confrontations which ultimately disrupted the flow of capital...hence the change in tactics. If the protests had actually been effective in threatening the status quo...the police would have charged...as the chief himself implicitly states in the interview.


Again, they are humans, with the capability of choice.

Yes...they are. They chose to protect the sate and capitalism against the working class ad are actively trying to prevent the overthrow of class society.

That is my point.


I llive in Idaho, one of the most racist states in the US. Also, just tagging everyone you don't like as your enemy isn't productive.

They are tagging us as their enemy and not the other way around.

That is the consequence of their position. Now...ask theb black community in your state how they feel about the cops.

[Tim Cornelis]

The Dissillusionist, you're such a snob. 'Ugh, plebs enjoying corporate sponsored fighting; ugh, plebs not crying over dead cops, I studied social sciences! Why don't you all pick up a study book and become Enlightened like me?'

[The Disillusionist]

The Dissillusionist, you're such a snob. 'Ugh, plebs enjoying corporate sponsored fighting; ugh, plebs not crying over dead cops, I studied social sciences! Why don't you all pick up a study book and become Enlightened like me?'

It's a damn shame everyone else is so wrong about everything... or I would have the chance to share some of that Enlightenment. Seriously though, I'm up against a wall with all these ignorant, psychopathic, extremists. It's like reading the Fox News comments section, but on the other end. On the bright side, now I know why the left is collapsing, along with any hope of any kind of real, progressive, productive revolution.

[synthesis]

The Dissillusionist, you're such a snob. 'Ugh, plebs enjoying corporate sponsored fighting; ugh, plebs not crying over dead cops, I studied social sciences! Why don't you all pick up a study book and become Enlightened like me?'

I'm pretty sure he also thinks that the main precondition for communist revolution is when conditions get bad for the petite bourgeoisie:


I believe that the spirit of revolution is almost completely dead in America, and won't likely be revived until things get significantly worse for the middle class. But, that's a rant best saved for another thread.

So aside from subscribing to the dumb theory that Marxism is equivalent to "things have to get worse before they get better" - I saw an -ism that seemed to describe that mindset pretty well but I forget it now - he also seems to believe that "the middle class" is the revolutionary class. I'm sure TD doesn't have that deep an understanding of Marxist classes and probably thinks class is based on income, but his actual class position is pretty easy to determine, I think.

[PhoenixAsh]

It's a damn shame everyone else is so wrong about everything... or I would have the chance to share some of that Enlightenment. Seriously though, I'm up against a wall with all these ignorant, psychopathic, extremists. It's like reading the Fox News comments section, but on the other end. On the bright side, now I know why the left is collapsing, along with any hope of any kind of real, progressive, productive revolution.

Serious question....

Have you done any serious revolutionary activism? At all?

[The Disillusionist]

I don't. Except that your arguments are liberal crap and basically already repeatedly disproven by reality.

Now what I DO know about you is that you are incredibly invested in apologizing for cops in the face of overwhelming daily evidence for the entire existance of the police.

No...they don't.

There is a huge misunderstanding and misconception you have about the nature of existance and getting by in a capitalist society....and actively trying to enforce that society. This misconception starts at you thinking policework is just another job. And it really isn't.

I seriously you suggest you do some research into the history and function of police and how that evolved over time.

Again...comparing apples with oranges. The funcion of the police is to actively prevent the status quo from being challenged to any meaningfull degree. I would again urge you to actually do some study into what the police is and you can find that in its history.

The primary reason why we have a police force is because the ruling class needed to be ensured the daily commerce and flow of products and capital was ensured and unobstructed. They also needed to protect their property from those who would threaten their property rights.

That is how the police came into existence....and this role and function has not changed. Everything the police does...from helping little old ladies cross the streets (which they rarely do) to harassing homeless people and POC (which they repeatedly and regularly do) to enforcing laws which maintian order and instill a sense of fear for reprsial in the working class (which they do structurally)...is gared at maintaining the status quo and keeping people in line so that theeconomics of society can function as unobstructed as possible and the class system is maintained.

In every protest, strike, every revolutionary situation...throughout history...internationally...the police have consistently and structurally and enmasse chosen to violently repress the working class and side with the state and the ruling class.

It would have a huge effect on the revolution because it would take away the vestiges and illusions (which...as your arguments testifies...is hugely effective) of legitimization.

Imagine Occupy Wallstreet with no cops. Imagine the Greek protests without cops. Imagine the many socialist revolts and strikes that have been broken by cops...without those very same cops.

You really are clueless...

The ruling class controll the state. The state controlls the cops. There can be argument about the dynamics between the state and the bourgeois (and there is) but there is no argument that they serve the same purpose in maintaining the status quo.

We are also not talking about good and evil. We are talking about serving interests. And these interests are diametrically opposed to the class interests of the working class. The class interests of both the state and the bourgeois is the continued existance of capitalism and that means the continued exploitation of labour...and therefore the working class.

The public opinion you talk about...and which you make a nice link to which ultimately contradicts many of your own arguments...is merely served to ensure the primary interests: the continued unobstructed perpetuation of the status quo and the flow of capital.

In order to do so...the population needs to believe in things like "justice", "protect and serve" and "fairness" within the current system.

Currently we have commissionars in the Netherlands who have openly admitted that the cops are not your friends at all. And you in the US have commissionars and politicians who will ultimately excuse every act of violence committed by the police.

Why? Because the police serves their interest...not ours.

We are not talking about change. You liberals had your chance with Obama. Nothing changed. That is the problem...and this is why I am calling you a liberal.

We do not want change. We need a revolution.

You keep saying that. But that simply is not true nor the issue I am trying to get through to you.

Now...again...actually do some research about the role of the cops in left-wing protests, revolutions, strikes and civil rights movements. You will find that your argument is simply completely devaluated, disproven and discreditted by the entire scope of police history.

And all those cops that don't participate in the riots? Those cops are the backbone of the system and the auxilary forces that enable large forces of cops being able to violently repress protests, demonstrations, strikes etc.

The only childish position here is the position that cops are our friends...our comrades...or our misguided brothers who have strayed from the flock.

They are not. They have consistently taken position against the working class throughout history. Everything the cops do is designed to maintain the current status quo and protect capitalism, property rights, the state and the bourgeois....and they have done so violently...and will continue to do so for as long as the institution exists.

There is a war. It is waged by the cops daily. You just refuse to see it because you are desperately trying to make cops to be nice.

This leads me to believe that at least on person in your close environment is a cop.

The ignorance is regretfully entirely on your part there. Now...the combined activist experience will in the asbolute majority here state you are wrong. Had you actually researched the subject and its history you could have saved yourself the embaressment of making the arguments you are making.

Cops may come from working class back grounds but they serve entirely to protect the sate and to protect it violently against their own class.

I am sorry. That is just how it is.

This isn't black and white. This is reality.

Funny thing...During WWII the cops remained the cops...only now served the fascist occupation forces. The same cops. Some of course defected. But the vast majority executed their jobs during the entirety of the war including rounding up resistance fighters...and assisting in razzia's against Jews.

Not just in one country...but all over Europe.

The notion that the loyalty of the cops is somehow incidental and non-causal is really just sad and ignorant.

Per defintion a revolution is not slow. And even if we accept that a few months is slow...then it will still be violent.

I haven't said they were soulless monsters. I have said they serve to oppress the working class per definition of their function and are diametrically opposed to the class interests of the working class by serving the state and the bourgeois.

This is not about the situation in Ferguson...or New York. This is about the role of the police during its entire existance and how the police have always acted and will always act in a revolutionary situation or during strikes.

I am saying cops abuse their power consistently and repeatedly...and that there may be a minority who doesn't.

Owww...you mean the capitalist gender norms the cops enforce and are perpetuated by the state the cops protect and the norms the cops use in how they treat female victims and victimize them all over again? Those capitalist gender norms?

Again you compare apples with oranges.

Cops are not victims...saying they are is like saying the poor little Nazi guards of the concentration camps were victims of the system. No..they are not.

They are executing their duty they decided to adopt in enforcing class society and maintaining and perpetuating the continued exploitation and repression of the working class.

THere is a huge reason why the working class, and especially POC, are untrusting of cops and even afraid of cops.



But there have been....which disproves your point entirely. AND there are. When the cops justify their murders...like recently in Ferguson...they write their murder off as "justified police procedure".



Ow I do not have the illusion that I am not more privileged than billions of people. I am white, I am of the male sex, and I have a good job. I am very privileged compared to a whole lot of people.

The difference is I actually studied the history of the police, have been an activist for the largest part of my life...have encountered the police in more than 12 different countries. And minor differences in tactics overlooked they are ultimately the exact same.

That is regardless of the fact that police continually harrass my overwhelmingly white and lower middle class community in their own streets and intimidates the neighborhood on a regular basis.

And that pales in comparison what they do in other parts of my town where the community is of the lowest segments of the working class and overwhelmingly non-white.

....and nothing changed. At all.

But ultimately this article completely devaluates your entire argument because it is news for the reason that it is an exception. An exception that has come about from months of violent confrontations which ultimately disrupted the flow of capital...hence the change in tactics. If the protests had actually been effective in threatening the status quo...the police would have charged...as the chief himself implicitly states in the interview.

Yes...they are. They chose to protect the sate and capitalism against the working class ad are actively trying to prevent the overthrow of class society.

That is my point.

They are tagging us as their enemy and not the other way around.

That is the consequence of their position. Now...ask theb black community in your state how they feel about the cops.

The way cops treat people is a reflection of society itself, not just the ruling elite. Cops are people, and unless the people start changing their attitudes about race and gender, the cops won't change, and they won't go away. For every black man that a white cop kills, white civilians kill hundreds more. Your naive idea about wiping out the cops would never work anyway, because with the support of the people, the cops just become martyrs and new ones take their place.

And actually, the western idea of the "police" force started with the idea of the community watchman. Every man in a town would take a nightly shift, keeping watch over the town for one night, and making sure everything was in order, and no crimes were being committed. Then the next night, another man would take his place. Over time, this became a paid position, rather than a volunteer position, and so it morphed into the idea of the beat-walking street cop that we know today.

Im invested in bring the rational part of the discussion to this thread because you and your gungho comrades are trying to stir up irrational hate and single-minded extremist fervor. You're delusional, and your visions of grandeur and Lord-of-the-Rings style epic battles between cops and leftist heroes have no basis in reality, despite your claims.

The rest of this is just stuff that we've gone over already, rhetoric, and personal anecdotes, along with a completely woeful misreading of my previous posts, and more strawmanning me (seriously, now I'm an Obama fan? Obama isn't even close to being a liberal, which you called me before, and again in this comment), and I'm exhausted, so... I'm gonna go to bed now.

[The Disillusionist]

I'm pretty sure he also thinks that the main precondition for communist revolution is when conditions get bad for the petite bourgeoisie:



So aside from subscribing to the dumb theory that Marxism is equivalent to "things have to get worse before they get better" - I saw an -ism that seemed to describe that mindset pretty well but I forget it now - he also seems to believe that "the middle class" is the revolutionary class. I'm sure TD doesn't have that deep an understanding of Marxist classes and probably thinks class is based on income, but his actual class position is pretty easy to determine, I think.

Way to put words in my mouth. I'm beginning to think that everyone on this site just picks like one random sentence from each post, ignores all context, and bases all future responses on that sentence. I actually believe the exact opposite. The middle class is the consuming class that maintains the capitalist economy, thus keeping the upper class at the top and the working class at the bottom. Until the middle class suffers enough, and becomes a part of the working class (as Marx stated), then the mechanisms of capitalism are too well-maintained to collapse, because the middle class will oppose the lower class in order to maintain its own interests.

Also, class is based on the ownership of property and means of production. I am not one of those neo-leftists who believes that the middle-classes are part of the proletariat, because the middle-classes own property.

Ok, but seriously now, bed.

[synthesis]

Way to put words in my mouth. I'm beginning to think that everyone on this site just picks like one random sentence from each post, ignores all context, and bases all future responses on that sentence. I actually believe the exact opposite. The middle class is the consuming class that maintains the capitalist economy, thus keeping the upper class at the top and the working class at the bottom. Until the middle class suffers enough, and becomes a part of the working class (as Marx stated), then the mechanisms of capitalism are too well-maintained to collapse, because the middle class will oppose the lower class in order to maintain its own interests.

Also, class is based on the ownership of property and means of production. I am not one of those neo-leftists who believes that the middle-classes are part of the proletariat, because the middle-classes own property.

Ok, but seriously now, bed.

All right, my bad. I still want you to go away, or just not post for a long, long time, but I'll accede that that post was off-base.

[PhoenixAsh]

The way cops treat people is a reflection of society itself, not just the ruling elite. Cops are people, and unless the people start changing their attitudes about race and gender, the cops won't change, and they won't go away. For every black man that a white cop kills, white civilians kill hundreds more. Your naive idea about wiping out the cops would never work anyway, because with the support of the people, the cops just become martyrs and new ones take their place.

Eventually you do understand that mathematically...the cops will lose.

Anyways...that is besides the point.

The point is not who kills the most...but what the primary function is of the cops.

And it is not the function you claim...nor is it their historical role...nor is your position susbstantiated by any part in the entirety of police history....or even...you know...by reality.




And actually, the western idea of the "police" force started with the idea of the community watchman. Every man in a town would take a nightly shift, keeping watch over the town for one night, and making sure everything was in order, and no crimes were being committed. Then the next night, another man would take his place. Over time, this became a paid position, rather than a volunteer position, and so it morphed into the idea of the beat-walking street cop that we know today.

Eh...no...completely wrong and utterly contrary to history. Really...DO SOME ACTUAL RESEARCH. Wikipedia is a good start for you.




Im invested in bring the rational part of the discussion to this thread because you and your gungho comrades are trying to stir up irrational hate and single-minded extremist fervor. You're delusional, and your visions of grandeur and Lord-of-the-Rings style epic battles between cops and leftist heroes have no basis in reality, despite your claims.

Your input is not rational. It is emotionalist regurgitated bullshit based on the flawed notion that policeman or women is just another job like every other job. And it is not. This assumption of yours is based on a lack of knowledge and understanding of how capitalism and class society function as well as a gross lack of practical experience outside sheltered privileged communities and with any revolutionary activism.

Dose that with an overload of arrogance and the misconception that you actually know what you are talking about...and we have the recipe why you are now the most unpopular person on this forum.

But yes...you have proven to be a liberal, non-revolutionary, cop apologist who is emotionally invested in protecting their law enforcement friends and/or family members and how bases themselves on the idea that the police are merely public servants doing what is best for society...like helping little old ladies and fetching cats out of trees.


It is not like 60% of all fatal and arrest related shootings were classified as homicides (less than 2% resulted in serious action taken against the cops) by the BJS. Nor is this including the deaths caused by the over use of non-lethal tasers. Nor the fact that contageous shooting is now a real thing in the US because of the over use of violence by the police. QAlso neglecting the deaths from beatings...and other uses of violence by the cops. Or the deaths by neglect, lack of medical aid and care. In comparison...Angelo Freeman was hit by 110 bullets. That is roughly thirty more than the nation of Germany uses on average in an entire year....of which most were non lethal and only 6 resulted in deaths.

THose things...meh...well...thats just cops being human.

[Palmares]

#NotAllCops

thread of the year

I'll raise you.

NACAB. Not All Cops Are Bastards.

[The Disillusionist]

Eventually you do understand that mathematically...the cops will lose.

Anyways...that is besides the point.

The point is not who kills the most...but what the primary function is of the cops.

And it is not the function you claim...nor is it their historical role...nor is your position susbstantiated by any part in the entirety of police history....or even...you know...by reality.




Eh...no...completely wrong and utterly contrary to history. Really...DO SOME ACTUAL RESEARCH. Wikipedia is a good start for you.




Your input is not rational. It is emotionalist regurgitated bullshit based on the flawed notion that policeman or women is just another job like every other job. And it is not. This assumption of yours is based on a lack of knowledge and understanding of how capitalism and class society function as well as a gross lack of practical experience outside sheltered privileged communities and with any revolutionary activism.

Dose that with an overload of arrogance and the misconception that you actually know what you are talking about...and we have the recipe why you are now the most unpopular person on this forum.

But yes...you have proven to be a liberal, non-revolutionary, cop apologist who is emotionally invested in protecting their law enforcement friends and/or family members and how bases themselves on the idea that the police are merely public servants doing what is best for society...like helping little old ladies and fetching cats out of trees.


It is not like 60% of all fatal and arrest related shootings were classified as homicides (less than 2% resulted in serious action taken against the cops) by the BJS. Nor is this including the deaths caused by the over use of non-lethal tasers. Nor the fact that contageous shooting is now a real thing in the US because of the over use of violence by the police. QAlso neglecting the deaths from beatings...and other uses of violence by the cops. Or the deaths by neglect, lack of medical aid and care. In comparison...Angelo Freeman was hit by 110 bullets. That is roughly thirty more than the nation of Germany uses on average in an entire year....of which most were non lethal and only 6 resulted in deaths.

THose things...meh...well...thats just cops being human.

This site is an addiction.... I'm never going to get to sleep...

Mathematically the cops will lose? What? Are you suggesting that we just kill every single cop until mathematically, there is no one left to take their places?

Look... the police system SUCKS. It lets assholes act like even worse assholes, and as a result, it causes a lot of harm. But, I still can't condone the murder of police officers who haven't personally done anything wrong, just because they are police officers.

Alright, fine, I'll fess up, though I know you'll just use it to strawman me some more. I was a criminal justice student for a while. I don't have any cop relatives or friends, I was studying to be a cop for a while, until I became totally disgusted with police culture. Then, eventually, I completely rejected the legalistic/government approach and became a humanist/anarchist. That's how I know that the US/English police system started as a nightwatchman system, because it's straight out of my history of police textbook (yeah, yeah, it's biased, therefore it can't possibly be true... as if your sources as any better).

And no, I am NOT a police sympathizer. I originally called myself that as a sarcastic joke, and then everyone picked up on it for some reason. I don't like police culture, it's arrogant, it treats civilians like criminals, even when they've done nothing wrong, and it is too violent in its response. I don't like police culture for the same reason I don't like anti-police culture. Again, it's arrogant, it treats all police officers like criminals, even when they've done nothing wrong, and it is too violent in response.

But in reality, being a cop really is a very boring job, 90% of the time. As I've said many times, the majority of cops never fire a shot during their entire careers, and many of them really do act as civil servants most of the time. The first thing they tell you in "Intro to Police" class is, "If you're looking for action, find a different career, because police work is nothing like the stereotype." Though unfortunately, not all police students listen... Police stations don't encourage murder either, that's a stupid idea. Every time an officer is involved in a shooting, whether the other person dies or wasn't even hit, that officer is immediately put on leave until the shooting is investigated and forced to undergo counseling.

Also, white people in general are more likely to get away with shooting black people. As I said, that's a reflection of society, though the police system does, without a doubt, have a problem with accountability.

[synthesis]

And no, I am NOT a police sympathizer. I originally called myself that as a sarcastic joke, and then everyone picked up on it for some reason.

I think that impression has more to do with the substance of every post you've made in this thread, rather than anything you've actually confessed to.

[The Disillusionist]

I think that impression has more to do with the substance of every post you've made in this thread, rather than anything you've actually confessed to.

Believing that a group of people shouldn't be murdered isn't the same as sympathizing with them.

[PhoenixAsh]

This site is an addiction.... I'm never going to get to sleep...

Mathematically the cops will lose? What? Are you suggesting that we just kill every single cop until mathematically, there is no one left to take their places?


well...since this site is obviously watched it is a hypothetical naturally,

But yes...and disected and fed to alligators or fed into woodchoppers. Alternatively we could send the meat to parts of the world to feed those hungy enough...and though I personally don't favor this option...we do have a very consistent group of revolutionary cannibals. http://www.revleft.com/vb/cannibalism-t189526/index.html?t=189526&highlight=cannibalism

seriously though...I am just saying that mathematically your argument that killing cops won't matter because they will be replaced...is not really an issue.


Look... the police system SUCKS. It lets assholes act like even worse assholes, and as a result, it causes a lot of harm. But, I still can't condone the murder of police officers who haven't personally done anything wrong, just because they are police officers.



Alright, fine, I'll fess up, though I know you'll just use it to strawman me some more. I was a criminal justice student for a while. I don't have any cop relatives or friends, I was studying to be a cop for a while, until I became totally disgusted with police culture.

It would have been better if you included this from the start so that we knew where you were comming from. I am sure some people will feel uneasy around you for this.

There is a very good reason we do not like cops...and it is not because we are paranoid or radicals...it is because how we are treated by cops in general and more specifically as left wing revolutionaries and activists. We also have to deal with undercover cops that shy no unethical behaviour to infiltrate organizations and groups including starting relationships...some even with abandoned children as the end result...in order to gain access. Or with the intent to escalate protests and actions so the police can repress them.

THis is a real issue and not a figment of our imagination.


Then, eventually, I completely rejected the legalistic/government approach and became a humanist/anarchist. That's how I know that the US/English police system started as a nightwatchman system, because it's straight out of my history of police textbook (yeah, yeah, it's biased, therefore it can't possibly be true... as if your sources as any better).

The western police started in France and from there spread to the rest of Europe. You are not entirely wrong on watchmen being the basis of the Anglo-American models. Except they were actually paid by private entities before they were paid through taxation. But there is a huge distinction between the English and the American models in that the policing in America was done by semi military organizations.


And no, I am NOT a police sympathizer. I originally called myself that as a sarcastic joke, and then everyone picked up on it for some reason.

Well yes...because your arguments defended the cops.



I don't like police culture, it's arrogant, it treats civilians like criminals, even when they've done nothing wrong, and it is too violent in its response. I don't like police culture for the same reason I don't like anti-police culture. Again, it's arrogant, it treats all police officers like criminals, even when they've done nothing wrong, and it is too violent in response.

We don't think they are criminals per se. We think that in class war they are legitimate targets. There is a huge difference...although the outcome would be the same. This is also a huge difference from advocating the unstructured and random killing of cops. Although there are some tendencies within Anarchism that uphold the concept of propganda of the deed such as insurrectionists.

At a certain point people need to chose on what side of the class line they will stand.

We re not unaware of individual cops having intentions of helping people. However the nature of the job itself aswell as the goal of the police force is different from those intentions and part of the misconception resulting from disinformation and propaganda about the police.

This specific incident is the logical outcome of police tactics against POC and we will see more and more of these incidents as time progresses. These incidents are political in nature even when committed by hard core criminals..they however are not necessarilly revolutionary.



But in reality, being a cop really is a very boring job, 90% of the time. As I've said many times, the majority of cops never fire a shot during their entire careers, and many of them really do act as civil servants most of the time. The first thing they tell you in "Intro to Police" class is, "If you're looking for action, find a different career, because police work is nothing like the stereotype." Though unfortunately, not all police students listen... Police stations don't encourage murder either, that's a stupid idea. Every time an officer is involved in a shooting, whether the other person dies or wasn't even hit, that officer is immediately put on leave until the shooting is investigated and forced to undergo counseling.

Most of the time however their actions are excused. As I have said the SBJ statistics show that more than 60% of the fatal arrest shootings are classified as homicides. Yet they only result in serious sanctions in about 2% of the cases. All the rest are classified as permissible....and cops get away with the most unbelievable of excuses




Also, white people in general are more likely to get away with shooting black people. As I said, that's a reflection of society, though the police system does, without a doubt, have a problem with accountability.

Absolutely. Yet the police force perpetuates a system of racial profiliing and systematic targetting of POC. They do so with the full backing of the legal system and lawenforcement system. Aside from that the police actively protect the system which creates the social norms.

[The Disillusionist]

well...since this site is obviously watched it is a hypothetical naturally,

But yes...and disected and fed to alligators or fed into woodchoppers. Alternatively we could send the meat to parts of the world to feed those hungy enough...and though I personally don't favor this option...we do have a very consistent group of revolutionary cannibals. http://www.revleft.com/vb/cannibalism-t189526/index.html?t=189526&highlight=cannibalism

seriously though...I am just saying that mathematically your argument that killing cops won't matter because they will be replaced...is not really an issue.

It would have been better if you included this from the start so that we knew where you were comming from. I am sure some people will feel uneasy around you for this.

There is a very good reason we do not like cops...and it is not because we are paranoid or radicals...it is because how we are treated by cops in general and more specifically as left wing revolutionaries and activists. We also have to deal with undercover cops that shy no unethical behaviour to infiltrate organizations and groups including starting relationships...some even with abandoned children as the end result...in order to gain access. Or with the intent to escalate protests and actions so the police can repress them.

THis is a real issue and not a figment of our imagination.

The western police started in France and from there spread to the rest of Europe. You are not entirely wrong on watchmen being the basis of the Anglo-American models. Except they were actually paid by private entities before they were paid through taxation. But there is a huge distinction between the English and the American models in that the policing in America was done by semi military organizations.

Well yes...because your arguments defended the cops.

We don't think they are criminals per se. We think that in class war they are legitimate targets. There is a huge difference...although the outcome would be the same. This is also a huge difference from advocating the unstructured and random killing of cops. Although there are some tendencies within Anarchism that uphold the concept of propganda of the deed such as insurrectionists.

At a certain point people need to chose on what side of the class line they will stand.

We re not unaware of individual cops having intentions of helping people. However the nature of the job itself aswell as the goal of the police force is different from those intentions and part of the misconception resulting from disinformation and propaganda about the police.

This specific incident is the logical outcome of police tactics against POC and we will see more and more of these incidents as time progresses. These incidents are political in nature even when committed by hard core criminals..they however are not necessarilly revolutionary.

Most of the time however their actions are excused. As I have said the SBJ statistics show that more than 60% of the fatal arrest shootings are classified as homicides. Yet they only result in serious sanctions in about 2% of the cases. All the rest are classified as permissible....and cops get away with the most unbelievable of excuse.

Absolutely. Yet the police force perpetuates a system of racial profiliing and systematic targetting of POC. They do so with the full backing of the legal system and lawenforcement system. Aside from that the police actively protect the system which creates the social norms.

Alright, I can agree with everything in this post except the part about wiping out all cops (I still don't agree with that for moral and practical reasons). And if we are talking about the context of an overt class war, then yes, I agree that dynamics could change and the police could become a serious enemy (I would bet that a number of officers would also quit the force if that happened though.) But as for the rest of your post, I think that we are about as close to agreement as we are going to get, and so I will say, it's been a stimulating discussion. Have a good night sir.

Now that I've got some closure, maybe I can really get some sleep now.

[Loony Le Fist]

Lantz, that's all easy to say when you've never been threatened by the cops, seen them hurt your friends, been followed, etc...

They are the enemy.

I know what you mean. I held my friend in my arms for several hours as she cried because of how they hurt her. They bruised her forearm and shoulder badly. She was also punched her in the jaw. Then to top it off, she started singing in jail to get her mind off what had happened and they pepper sprayed her.

Bunch of fucking bullies.

[PhoenixAsh]

Well I don't particularly care about whiping out the cops nor is it something I advocate.

I do however think cops are legitimate targets in class war and that revolutionary politics needs to be aimed at disbanding police in the current meaning of the term.

In the currently highly theoretical situation of an actual succesful revolution I do think some cops will quit or support the revolution but those who won't will have to be effectively dealt with. That situation however is regrettably hypothetical and what should be done is mere speculation based on assumptions based on previous reactions of the police forces around the world in similar situations.

[consuming negativity]

this is interesting and relevant to the discussion here:


One Group Has a Higher Domestic Violence Rate Than Everyone Else — And It's Not the NFL

The NFL has jump-started a national conversation on domestic violence, but there's one group we're overlooking: The people we trust to keep us safe.

In families of police officers, domestic violence is two-to-four times more likely than in the general population — from stalking and harassment to sexual assault and even homicide. As the National Center for Women and Policing notes, two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10% of families in the general population.

America's police domestic abuse problem was on full display in Monday's horrific murder of Valerie Morrow, who police say was shot to death by her ex-boyfriend, Stephen Rozniakowski, a Philadelphia-area police officer. Morrow, 40, had just been granted a protection from abuse order against Rozniakowski, who had been charged with 75 counts of stalking.

After Rozniakowski reportedly resigned from his job Monday, police say he kicked open the door to Morrow's home, shot her to death and wounded her teenage daughter before being apprehended at the scene.

There is an epidemic of domestic violence by police officers: In the last two weeks, a Cleveland police officer was arrested for stalking and domestic violence, and officers in New Jersey and New York were charged in domestic violence cases.

A 2013 Bowling Green State University study, through news searches, tallied 324 cases of reported officer domestic violence. It is likely that this number is a gross underestimate, because as the National Center for Women and Policing has detailed, officers frequently cover for each other.

"A big part of police culture is the code of silence," Diane Wetendorf, author of Police Domestic Violence: Handbook for Victims, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "The prosecutors depend on police for their cases, the police depend on each other — it's a very insulated system,"

Why aren't we talking about this more? A September analysis on officer domestic violence by the Atlantic explains how cases come to be underreported. It's not just that women are more intimidated to report domestic violence because their attackers are officers and worry that nobody will believe them; it's that officers adjudicate the entire process on an informal level.

"Cops 'typically handle cases of police family violence informally, often without an official report, investigation, or even check of the victim's safety,'" the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf writes, quoting a study from the National Center for Women and Policing. "'Even officers who are found guilty of domestic violence are unlikely to be fired, arrested or referred for prosecution.'"

From underreporting by victims and colleagues to informal investigations, this means that available statistics only hint at the pervasive violence perpetrated by the people who are paid to protect and serve us. If evidence from a 2007 change in reporting arrests of Florida officers is any indication, reported cases of officer domestic violence would double.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/policymic-images/l4m1iehig65fov5kzjcr9a8g6oh6qofrkvpykju34eyd8u07lq 1xet2rm4n7wm75.jpg

Unfortunately there is no solution to this solution in sight, because this epidemic is systemic. Underreporting is a symptom of the fact that officers are rarely criminalized or even fired from their jobs even though, like Rozniakowski, their criminal history is well-documented.

In fact, as the Atlantic and and other sources observe, not only are these officers not fired, many of them receive promotions. This evidence suggests that not only is domestic violence by police officers ignored by the criminal justice system, it is condoned and, at times, even rewarded.

But available statistics prove one thing: The criminal justice system needs to readjust its focus. Instead of policing the general public, it needs to turn inward to police itself first, before it can claim to "protect and serve" in the truest sense of justice.

http://mic.com/articles/106886/one-group-has-a-higher-domestic-violence-rate-than-everyone-else-and-it-s-not-the-nfl

sources for the info can be found via link from the article above.

[Bala Perdida]

Gotta put in my last word too. I still hate cops regardless of their intentions, they know what they're getting into yada yada yada...
I'm not gonna convince any pacifist sympathizer otherwise.
I'm gonna keep preaching my extremism for an idea who's activity is not even significant enough to harm. I don't mean to bash it, but the revolution ain't coming any time soon we all know that.
Peace is submission, change only comes when their blood spills. Lol

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

Serious question....

Have you done any serious revolutionary activism? At all?
What's that?

[synthesis]

Believing that a group of people shouldn't be murdered isn't the same as sympathizing with them.

But let's be honest here: that's not all you've said in this thread. Your statements about "not glorifying cop-killing," or whatever, have to be seen in the context of a ton of other stuff you've said here, about how cops are just working class guys doing their job, and how people who think differently are extremist nutjobs who just have too much hate in their hearts, and I'm not sure you understand the reason behind people taking exception to that.

I mean, I'm not gonna go around talking about how badly I want to kill cops for being cops, but I'm also not going to spend time chiding people I don't know for not demonstrating the same level of lip service to "the sanctity of human life" when it comes to the "enemy combatants" on the front line against us in the class struggle. I don't think it's necessarily unfair that the more time and effort you put into tut-tutting about it, the more it might arouse suspicion about "cop sympathy" in people who look at the police differently than you do, people with, dare I say, a more informed analysis of the role of police in capitalism.

[consuming negativity]

>judging the disillusionist based on extrapolated delusions rather than on reality

actually, this describes your positions on the police, too, so it's not really surprising

"but communer, when we go out and protest, they call the cops and they beat us! they have to be our enemies!"

no, asshole. this is what the ruling class, who controls the media and the rest, wants you to think.

social classes are ultimately defined by their relation to the means of production, which is ultimately reducible to two classes defined as either those who sell their wage labor or those who purchase labor power. there is the middle class, but they will inevitably be subsumed into the working class as the law of capital accumulation continues to work and drain everyone dry for every penny they've got. same with the lumpen. they are irrelevant and, ultimately, on our side.

but why am i telling you this? because apparently, none of you know what the fuck a class even is, because you think that being a police officer is fundamentally different from being a janitor, or a welder, or any other job where the economic activity is receiving a wage for a good or service. the police are proletarians.

"but communer! you still haven't told me how them shooting as us doesn't make them the enemy"

because they are still working class and all of our economic activity supports the ruling class, including theirs. theirs is more direct - and thus we are inclined to think of them as our immediate enemies - but, in truth, they are merely reactionary workers.

"but aren't the reactionaries our enemies?"

only because they are reactionaries - NOT because they are police officers.

the importance of the proletariat to the revolution is that we control economic activity. if garbage men refuse to collect garbage, what happens? if truck drivers stop driving their trucks, what happens? if janitors stop cleaning, what happens? they're proletarians.

but what happens when the cops say "you know what? i'm not going to keep killing innocent civilians"?

they're working class. they are not the real enemy. in fact, that is what the ruling class wants you to think. but it is an illusion. the cops don't control anything. they're a section of the working class which is employed against the working class, and by directing our hate at the police rather than capital, we are directing our hate against the working class. in fact, by directing our hate at the police, we make them less likely to recognize that our interests and their interests are economically-speaking, exactly the same. that all economic activity under the capitalist mode of production results in the enrichment of the ruling class does not take away from this, and by buying into the "kill all cops yolo" bullshit you are contributing to the ignorance which will actually lead to more innocent people being killed in addition to further obfuscation of the actual social relations of the capitalist mode of production.

if cops are killed, it is a sad event where people needlessly died because of ignorance, on one side or the other. either the cops didn't recognize we were their friends, we didn't recognize they were our friends, or both. it's not great, it's a goddamn shame. it doesn't mean we shouldn't do what needs to be done, but it means that we should be careful in contributing to a dumbing-down of the discourse while we create "cop-apologists" where there are none; where such a term is fucking as meaningless and hollow as "analysis" or "petit bourgeois" on this website.

[socialistlawyer]

NYPD is a classic example of righting a wrong with another wrong. No wonder, two cops got shot. It's their fault.

[PhoenixAsh]

but why am i telling you this? because apparently, none of you know what the fuck a class even is, because you think that being a police officer is fundamentally different from being a janitor, or a welder, or any other job where the economic activity is receiving a wage for a good or service. the police are proletarians.

And their job is substantially different and geared at violently opposing ending class society....and their interests run diamterically opposed to the interest of the class in general because of their dependency of maintaining the current relationship to the means of production.

Too bad you are caught up in the dillusionary believe that this is not the case....and still have the absolute naivity in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary for as far back as the very conception of the police...that they will not side squarely behind the bourgeois class and use violence to prevent strikes, revolutions and will do their utmost to prevent the overhrow of class society.

Their interest is absolutely not economically the same. They will never realize this. They will never take our side.

Never happened...never will. And this is continuously proved every single day world wide for centuries.

[PhoenixAsh]

but it means that we should be careful in contributing to a dumbing-down of the discourse while we create "cop-apologists" where there are none; where such a term is fucking as meaningless and hollow as "analysis" or "petit bourgeois" on this website.

We reserve this for people who against all evidence continue to spew the absolute garbage position that the police is merely misunderstood....and didn't actually mean it like that.

It is not a hollow rhetoric. It is exactly what you are doing and exactly what your line of argument here makes you out to be. This is not a grey area where you can find some ground for disagreement ininterpretation like with petit-bourgeois....it is exactly what it says: apologizing for cops. Like you are litterally doing right here.

[consuming negativity]

this is the section of my post that you didn't read, which is directly between the two sections that you quoted out of context to address. it pre-empts and dismantles your counter.


"but communer! you still haven't told me how them shooting as us doesn't make them the enemy"

because they are still working class and all of our economic activity supports the ruling class, including theirs. theirs is more direct - and thus we are inclined to think of them as our immediate enemies - but, in truth, they are merely reactionary workers.

"but aren't the reactionaries our enemies?"

only because they are reactionaries - NOT because they are police officers.

the importance of the proletariat to the revolution is that we control economic activity. if garbage men refuse to collect garbage, what happens? if truck drivers stop driving their trucks, what happens? if janitors stop cleaning, what happens? they're proletarians.

but what happens when the cops say "you know what? i'm not going to keep killing innocent civilians"?

they're working class. they are not the real enemy. in fact, that is what the ruling class wants you to think. but it is an illusion. the cops don't control anything. they're a section of the working class which is employed against the working class, and by directing our hate at the police rather than capital, we are directing our hate against the working class. in fact, by directing our hate at the police, we make them less likely to recognize that our interests and their interests are economically-speaking, exactly the same. that all economic activity under the capitalist mode of production results in the enrichment of the ruling class does not take away from this, and by buying into the "kill all cops yolo" bullshit you are contributing to the ignorance which will actually lead to more innocent people being killed in addition to further obfuscation of the actual social relations of the capitalist mode of production.

[The Disillusionist]

But let's be honest here: that's not all you've said in this thread. Your statements about "not glorifying cop-killing," or whatever, have to be seen in the context of a ton of other stuff you've said here, about how cops are just working class guys doing their job, and how people who think differently are extremist nutjobs who just have too much hate in their hearts, and I'm not sure you understand the reason behind people taking exception to that.

I mean, I'm not gonna go around talking about how badly I want to kill cops for being cops, but I'm also not going to spend time chiding people I don't know for not demonstrating the same level of lip service to "the sanctity of human life" when it comes to the "enemy combatants" on the front line against us in the class struggle. I don't think it's necessarily unfair that the more time and effort you put into tut-tutting about it, the more it might arouse suspicion about "cop sympathy" in people who look at the police differently than you do, people with, dare I say, a more informed analysis of the role of police in capitalism.

Cops are literally working class, by definition. I wasn't making some emotional appeal there. You don't think there can be working class assholes? And I'll say for the billionth time, to the billionth person, read my freakin posts. I never claimed that cops were saints, I don't like the police system either. That doesn't justify cold-blooded murder of cops who have done nothing wrong as individuals.

I'm also sick of hearing about this "more informed analysis" that people think I've somehow missed. You think I haven't read all that same crap you've read? There is no FRONT LINE in this class struggle. There is no overt class war at the moment. You cannot pigeonhole the struggle "between" (that's not where the real struggle is anyway) the police and the people into some kind of Lord-of-the-Rings type epic-battle, at least not yet. That's delusion, because the situation is much more complicated than that. Just because I check my Marxist dogma against the reality of context doesn't mean that I don't understand the theory behind it.

Leftism is supposed to be based on a humanist foundation, we are supposed to be considerate of human lives and the conditions that shape them. It's why we're anti-fascists, anti-racists, and feminists in the first place. So no, while I can understood where PhoenixAsh is coming from now, I will not back down in my claim that police officers should be treated like people, with a consideration for context, and individual choice. I rejected hate when I was a criminal justice student, and I reject hate now as a leftist.

[Lord Testicles]

There is no overt class war at the moment.


This should tell anyone how much of a grasp you've really got on the situation.


Leftism is supposed to be based on a humanist foundation, we are supposed to be considerate of human lives and the conditions that shape them. It's why we're anti-fascists, anti-racists, and feminists in the first place.

It's why we're anti-police, it's why we're anti-bailiff, it's why we're anti-military.

[The Disillusionist]

This should tell anyone how much of a grasp you've really got on the situation.

It's why we're anti-police, it's why we're anti-bailiff, it's why we're anti-military.

You are seriously going to claim that the classes are engaged in violent warfare right now? All that mess makes for some nifty propaganda, but it ignores the real context of the situation.

Also, there is a difference between hating those things as institutions and hating people who belong to those institutions. If you want to learn more, reread the last half of this thread, because that's been my entire point this whole time.

[Lord Testicles]

You are seriously going to claim that the classes are engaged in violent warfare right now? All that mess makes for some nifty propaganda, but it ignores the real context of the situation.


Class warfare? Yes and we're losing.


Also, there is a difference between hating those things as institutions and hating people who belong to those institutions. If you want to learn more, reread the last half of this thread, because that's been my entire point this whole time.

Institutions are made up of people. Do you think you can get rid of an institution without getting rid of the people who make up said institution? Police stopped being able to pull the "we're just everyday, normal people like you, trying to make the best of a bad situation" card on the day that they decided to become pigs. Here's a clue as to why: everyday, normal people can't just fucking murder who they like and get away with it, you and I can't beat the living shit out of people and turn around and say "hey buddy, I'm just doing my job."

[left-of-the-dial]

Cops did it.

It's just a little too perfect isn't it?

[The Disillusionist]

Class warfare? Yes and we're losing.



Institutions are made up of people. Do you think you can get rid of an institution without getting rid of the people who make up said institution? Police stopped being able to pull the "we're just everyday, normal people like you, trying to make the best of a bad situation" card on the day that they decided to become pigs. Here's a clue as to why: everyday, normal people can't just fucking murder who they like and get away with it, you and I can't beat the living shit out of people and turn around and say "hey buddy, I'm just doing my job."

That's not class warfare, that's the capitalist system, and it is far more pervasive and complicated than that. To call it "class warfare" is a disservice to the entire struggle. That's like summarizing the Cold "War" as "Lenin and Reagan punching each other for 60 years." As I said, it makes for nice propaganda, but it's a useless term in real life.

Normal people get away with murder all the time, especially if they are white and kill black people, or men and kill women. As I said, the police are a reflection of society. A society that lets police get away with murder will let others get away with murder as well.

Also, as I've stated several times, beating and murdering people isn't in the police officer's job description, and it's naive to think that. It happens, and it's bad, but it's not required or even encouraged. A cop that beats up people isn't "doing his job," he is abusing his authority to be an asshole, or he is reacting poorly to some kind of abnormal situation. He shouldn't have that authority, but that doesn't automatically make him an evil person who should be murdered. Seriously, grow up.

Oh, and your understanding of "institutions" is pretty crude. That's like saying, "Well, cultures are made up of people, and I don't agree with this culture, therefore the solution is clearly to commit the genocide of everyone in that culture."

But, clearly I'm not going to convince you that your cartoonish view of reality needs to be expanded, so you can go on thinking that all cops deserve to die. It really doesn't matter anyway, because until the world really does become the black-and-white action movie of your delusions, your opinion will never be valid or publicly accepted in any real life context, for the reasons I've already laid out.

[#FF0000]

Hand-wringing is just as pathetic and hardman posturing.

There's nothing one can take from this other than schadenfreude if one is so inclined. Is this a "step forward"? No. I think it's barely politically motivated -- an unhinged dude going postal and dressing it up in current events. Do I feel bad for the cops? Sorry, I can't say that I do, because they'd do the same thing to a civilian, or let it happen to a civilian (as they aren't legally required to protect anybody they see being victimized).

No tears for cops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[#FF0000]

And a big "what's up" to the guests that've been swarming this thread lol

[Lord Testicles]

That's not class warfare, that's the capitalist system, and it is far more pervasive and complicated than that. To call it "class warfare" is a disservice to the entire struggle. That's like summarizing the Cold "War" as "Lenin and Reagan punching each other for 60 years." As I said, it makes for nice propaganda, but it's a useless term in real life.

Normal people get away with murder all the time, especially if they are white and kill black people, or men and kill women. As I said, the police are a reflection of society. A society that lets police get away with murder will let others get away with murder as well.

Also, as I've stated several times, beating and murdering people isn't in the police officer's job description, and it's naive to think that. It happens, and it's bad, but it's not required or even encouraged. A cop that beats up people isn't "doing his job," he is abusing his authority to be an asshole, or he is reacting poorly to some kind of abnormal situation. He shouldn't have that authority, but that doesn't automatically make him an evil person who should be murdered. Seriously, grow up.

Oh, and your understanding of "institutions" is pretty crude. That's like saying, "Well, cultures are made up of people, and I don't agree with this culture, therefore the solution is clearly to commit the genocide of everyone in that culture."

But, clearly I'm not going to convince you that your cartoonish view of reality needs to be expanded, so you can go on thinking that all cops deserve to die. It really doesn't matter anyway, because until the world really does become the black-and-white action movie of your delusions, your opinion will never be valid or publicly accepted in any real life context, for the reasons I've already laid out.

I can't even be bothered to deal with this level of utter rubbish.

[consuming negativity]

You are seriously going to claim that the classes are engaged in violent warfare right now?


That's not class warfare, that's the capitalist system

see:


The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.


"War is the continuation of politics." In this sense, war is politics and war itself is a political action; since ancient times there has never been a war that did not have a political character.... However, war has its own particular characteristics and in this sense, it cannot be equated with politics in general. "War is the continuation of politics by other . . . means." When politics develops to a certain stage beyond which it cannot proceed by the usual means, war breaks out to sweep the obstacles from the way.... When the obstacle is removed and our political aim attained the war will stop. Nevertheless, if the obstacle is not completely swept away, the war will have to continue until the aim is fully accomplished.... It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.

class struggle is violent, whether overtly or covertly, and is happening at all times

the capitalist system is characterized by class struggle in the same ways that the feudal system was; society itself at this point in time is a struggle between conflicting interests. the problem is that we do not all recognize what our interests actually are.

[PhoenixAsh]

this is the section of my post that you didn't read, which is directly between the two sections that you quoted out of context to address. it pre-empts and dismantles your counter.

No...actually it doesn't and I read it.

The problem is that that your analysis is pure shit.

While the cops are comming from the working class their day to day job is preventing the working class from challenging the status quo. They are directly responsible for ensuring the day to day unobstructed and continued existance of class society and the perpetuation of the inherrent exploitation. They are also specifically trained and organized to be the first line of pro-active, violent defense in the case of escalations.

This makes them entirely integrated within the current mode of production and directly responsible for the daily exploitation of the working class.... This goes beyond any other proletarian function within this system...including soldiers.

This sets them aside from mere reactionaries. Their primary goal is to protect the state, the bourgeois, and capitalism...and ensure the continued exploitation and oppression of the working class...and they perform this duty on a day to day basis and have consistently done so for ages. They are the armed body of the ruling elite. They are not misguided. They are not confused. They are not simply reactionary. They are trained, armed, and exceedingly willing to perform this function every single day. Their class interests no longer lies with the proletariat.

The idea and notion that they are misguided victims...that they can be salvaged...that they will somehow chose our side...or will not use overwhelming and immediate force in order to repress any revolt, strike, uprising or act of insurrection...is extremely misguided and downright dangerous. It is also based on a complete and utter misunderstanding of the nature of the system, the nature of the police force and the nature of class conflict. It has also never, ever been true on a significant basis that actually warrants such a position to be made in the first place.

And while you falsely try to portray this as a reduction of the class struggle to a "us vs the cops" 1-on-1; this actually is not an accurate reflection of what we are saying at all. By no means are we arguing that cops are our only enemies. By no means are we arguing that "if only there aren't cops" we would have an unopposed revolution. But cops are NOT part of the working class during a revolution but an integral part of the defense mechanism of class society. They are one of our primary enemies that will confront us in case of a revolution.

Humanist basis does not mean we can not and should not use violence or leathal violence in order to protect ourselves. And make no mistake...we are under daily attack. Daily people die as a result of the oppression, exploitation and repression of the system...which is on a daily basis enforced and protected by the cops. In every situation in which the proletarian class is violated the cops are at the heart of this violation and the instrument which enforces it or will enforce it if necessary.

To reduce this to: well...they are just workers and we are humanists so we shouldn't use violence or leathal violence against them....is incredibly short-sighted in the face of this reality.

[#FF0000]

Also, as I've stated several times, beating and murdering people isn't in the police officer's job description, and it's naive to think that.

It isn't but neither are they trained to do anything but. They aren't trained to de-escalate, are barely trained in soft-hand techniques, and are seldom punished for any use of force. Christ, no one even filled out a page of paperwork when they shot Mike Brown.

All of this, and then there's "Broken Window" policing as they practice it in New York, where they flood poor neighborhoods with cops, stop anyone for anything (it isn't unusual to be charged with "obstructing traffic" for walking down a sidewalk) and attempt to make arrests for even summary offenses which would otherwise only warrant a ticket (as in the Eric Garner case).

Instead of looking at this as a thing to condemn or celebrate, I see it as an inevitable consequence of an institution overstepping what certain people are willing to tolerate.

[The Disillusionist]

I can't even be bothered to deal with this level of utter rubbish. Let me keep it simple: The first half of your post shows how little you know and how naive you truly are and the second half of your post shows what an uppity, mewling prick you are.

I graciously accept your acknowledgement of defeat.


see:

class struggle is violent, whether overtly or covertly, and is happening at all times

the capitalist system is characterized by class struggle in the same ways that the feudal system was; society itself at this point in time is a struggle between conflicting interests. the problem is that we do not all recognize what our interests actually are.

"Struggle" is not even remotely the same as overt, violent war. We are NOT in trenches in a military conflict with the police, and the police are NOT actively seeking out and killing "enemies" in a militant role, therefore it does not make sense to actively seek out and kill them. Neither of those quotes discredits what I was trying to say in any way.

I also disagree that class struggle is always violent. If it was, it would be almost as obvious as these extremists make it out to be. Class struggle is most often an insidious pervasive matter, often perpetuating by quiet, covert actions, such as the attempted passing of the recent spending bill in Congress. Unless your definition of violence is different than mine... I'm defining violence as physical violence.

Finally, Phoenix, you are still referring to the police as "them." "They" are people, capable of making individual choices, and the majority of those people haven't ever killed anyone.

[consuming negativity]

@Phoenix: The difference in our positions is that I recognize that any sufficiently-advanced self-interested person will understand that, ultimately, in the longest-term scenario, it is NOT in the interests of the police to actually do their jobs. In the same way that it is not in either of our interests to do our jobs (which involve enriching the bourgeoisie), except in the short term, because we need the money to continue our day-to-day survival.

You ascribe to the police not only a better knowledge of class relations than the majority of the working class, but a purposeful and malevolent self-interested desire to act against their own long-term self-interest. They are not malevolent against themselves; nor are they more intelligent than the majority of humanity. They're just wrong. They don't understand how society works and so they willingly act against their own self-interests, whereas we do so begrudgingly and with the knowledge that our long-term interests and short-term interests are not the same.

How do I know that they are ignorant? Because we are correct. And, if they knew we were correct, they would be on our side. All roads lead to Rome; there is an objective reality and to understand it - to open your eyes to what is around you - is to see the world in the same way that Karl Marx did. The police are not comic book villains, they're just wrong. That doesn't mean we just allow them to slaughter us; but by understanding their perspective, we can forgive their behavior insofar as we can recognize that they are doing bad things but with good intentions. It does not mean we cheer them on while doing it. It does not mean we remain uncritical of their actions while showing how they are wrong. It just means that we see the police as they actually are while doing what we have to do.

It is, according to Emma Goldman, easier to condemn than to think. It is a lot easier to shoot a cop thinking of him as some comic book villain who wants to ruin humanity in the same way that it is a lot easier to shoot a black kid with a gun if you ascribe a certain set of negative behaviors and opinions to black people. If you want to justify what revolutionaries do, do it the way it is actually justified, by self-defense against the violence inherent to capitalism and against immediate perceived threats to our livelihood.

[Lord Testicles]

I graciously accept your acknowledgement of defeat.

Yes, discussions should be viewed in relation to some nebulous concept of victory or defeat, and I'm the one who needs to grow up. :rolleyes:

I literally can't deal with how naive you are, try not to view your ignorance as a victory. I'm not bothered though, I'm sure you'll understand if you ever need to confront the police or ever have the unfortunate displeasure of seeing the filth in action on a regular basis.

[The Disillusionist]

Yes, discussions should be viewed in relation to some nebulous concept of victory or defeat, and I'm the one who needs to grow up. :rolleyes:

Once a person stops making any actual contributions to the discussion, I figure they have essentially dropped out of the discussion, though they usually throw lots of insults behind them, to save face.

[PhoenixAsh]

@Phoenix: The difference in our positions is that I recognize that any sufficiently-advanced self-interested person will understand that, ultimately, in the longest-term scenario, it is NOT in the interests of the police to actually do their jobs. In the same way that it is not in either of our interests to do our jobs (which involve enriching the bourgeoisie), except in the short term, because we need the money to continue our day-to-day survival.

You ascribe to the police not only a better knowledge of class relations than the majority of the working class, but a purposeful and malevolent self-interested desire to act against their own long-term self-interest. They are not malevolent against themselves; nor are they more intelligent than the majority of humanity. They're just wrong. They don't understand how society works and so they willingly act against their own self-interests, whereas we do so begrudgingly and with the knowledge that our long-term interests and short-term interests are not the same.


That is your misconception. Maybe I didn't really make myself clear so I will try to do better: Cops are from the working class...they are not working class.

Their position is elevated above the working class in order to maintain their position of power so they can effectively fullfill their class role: protecting the capitalists and the state.

Their interests are not with the working class and they do not benefit in the long term for exactly this reason.,...because their very existance and continued position of privilege is dependend on their continued ability to hire themselves out to the capitalists.

THe notion of "they are doing their jobs" the notion that they are merely "misguided" is a really weird notion. Do you understand if this would in any way alleviate or excuse what situations this applies too as well?

Your position has no basis in any fact. Has never been produced in class sturggle throughout history. And is really utopian and misguided.


How do I know that they are ignorant? Because we are correct. And, if they knew we were correct, they would be on our side.

No...they won't. In fact...they are on the opposite side every day including dureing strikes, revolutions and every instance where the working class is being repressed.


All roads lead to Rome; there is an objective reality and to understand it - to open your eyes to what is around you - is to see the world in the same way that Karl Marx did.

Yes...lets look at what Marx has to say:

Marx writes, “The ‘police’, the ‘judiciary’, and the ‘administration’ are not the representatives of a civil society which administers its own universal interests in them and through them; they are the representatives of the state and their task is to administer the state against civil society.”

So...nope. Marx doesn't agree with you either.




The police are not comic book villains, they're just wrong.

nobody said they are villains. Thats you making up some sentimental language in order to ridicule something which has been apparent for ages.

They are however our class enemies.


That doesn't mean we just allow them to slaughter us; but by understanding their perspective, we can forgive their behavior insofar as we can recognize that they are doing bad things but with good intentions.

Wtf did I just read? Are you fucking kidding me?

OMG can you be more idiotic? So should I by this same account...also forgive the Nazi's for understanding their perspective and realizing that they were doing that with the best intentions? Because THAT is what your position ultimately comes down to: as long as it is done with the best of intentions...well....then we will forgive you.

Fuck that. Ridiculous.


It does not mean we cheer them on while doing it. It does not mean we remain uncritical of their actions while showing how they are wrong. It just means that we see the police as they actually are while doing what we have to do.

Bad cop. Bad cop. No...in your basket!

:laugh:



It is, according to Emma Goldman, easier to condemn than to think.

You should start thinking. It would be ultimately helpfull in not saying these incredibly stupid things.



It is a lot easier to shoot a cop thinking of him as some comic book villain who wants to ruin humanity in the same way that it is a lot easier to shoot a black kid with a gun if you ascribe a certain set of negative behaviors and opinions to black people. If you want to justify what revolutionaries do, do it the way it is actually justified, by self-defense against the violence inherent to capitalism and against immediate perceived threats to our livelihood.

Again...your sentimentalisation only serves to ridicule the arguments that are actually make in order to create a more favorable outlook for your utopian dillusion.

I am justifying lethal violence against cops as self-defense. I am not saying to go out there and kill random cops. But I am saying that cops are always legitimate targets within the class struggle....because they are the day to day enforcers of the state, capitalism and the exploitation of the proletariat which repeatedly, frequently and daily leads to the deaths of thousands of workers world wide.

[consuming negativity]

And I could also say that it is in the interests of the proletariat to preserve the state because it is in our immediate interests. I would be just as wrong as you are now. Let me put it like this: you have a test tomorrow that you need to pass to get your next level of degree or whatever. In the short term, the most fun and immediately rewarding thing to do would be to get really high and blow the whole thing off. But, in the longer term, you want to pass and get a degree, so you ignore your short-term wants in favor of your longer term interests. In capitalism, this process is reversed. We are forced to ignore our long-term interests in favor of our more immediate short-term interests; we have to work for the capitalists, thus destroying our future, so that we can live in the here-and-now. Revolution happens when we get to the future, realize that we've been fucked, and our immediate interests then become the overthrow of class society. And, while the immediate interests of the police may very well be to do their jobs, in the long-term, their interests and ours align. Getting them to understand this as a grouping might be impossible, especially given that a majority of them wake up every Sunday to go worship a 2,000-year-old dead Jewish carpenter, but it does not change the reality that our class interests do align and the the police are, as you said, a section of the proletariat. In the same way that the "middle class" who have nice desk jobs are also a section of the proletariat who think themselves better. Their relation to production is not different, however, which Marx recognized, in addition to his recognition that the police, judiciary, etc. all play a role in the upholding of class society. Would you say that those snobs are of a different class just because they benefit from us being kept down? What about us as proletarians, who ourselves benefit from the oppression of proletarians in other countries around the world? All of this is, ultimately, exactly the sort of division and finger-pointing that keeps us as a class from sticking together and getting rid of the small minority of fucks at the top who are our actual class enemies.

[Rosa Partizan]

So shooting a woman is just a “private, isolated incident,” whereas killing a police officer is a public incident and “an attack on all of us, and everything we hold dear. (http://observer.com/2014/12/de-blasio-calls-assassination-of-police-an-attack-on-everything-we-hold-dear/)”
That makes sense I guess, since the police are “the public” and everyone else is “no one important, really, just some rando.”


To be clear, those two officers — Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos – did not deserve to die. Their deaths are a tragedy. But to pretend, with all that we know about the ways in which women, people of colour, and other marginalized groups have historically been and continue to be targeted and subjected to violence, that this shooting constitutes some kind of “war” against the police force is incredibly offensive, ignorant, and manipulative.


Why are we still not talking about male violence? Why is there (apparently) no “war” on black people or on Aboriginal people or on women but there is (apparently) a “war” on cops??


http://feministcurrent.com/10183/a-war-on-the-police-how-about-the-war-on-women-and-other-marginalized-groups/

[PhoenixAsh]

Which are consistently protected by the cops. Who are not part to the proletariat. And have a completely different class position from proletarians....which results in different class interests.

Your analysis is manky on so many levels and you are so willfully ignoring the mountains of evidence which completely reject and contradict your argument....that you resemble some religious nutjob who ignores all science and facts in order to maintain the notion that the guarden of eden actually exists and woman was created from te rib of man.

From Egypt to the Ukraine from the Paris Commune to the Russian revolution...consistently and without fail the police has structurally sided with the regime and capitalists. Why has the police sided with the regime and the capitalists? Because they are an integral part of the state and of the system.

They are no longer part of the working class and have no interestes which coincide with the working class because of their elevated and prvileged position. THeir entire existance is legitimized onlny by maintaining the status quo.

They are not fucked. They are not exploited in the same sense as the working class. They are hirelings instrumental to the maintenance of the status quo. This ultimately is the conclusion about the role and function of the police which Marx and Engels advocate.

Misguided revolutionaries have consistently and throughout history advocated the same position as you. Up to an including the notion of siding with the police during times of conflict between the cops and the state. Know what happened? The police immediately turned on them....even as the proletarians supported them....by repressing the very demonstrations that were aimed at assisting the interests of the cops.

THe sheer stupidity and sheer amount of willfull ignorance that goes in to the notion that cops will see the error of their ways and are merely misled is so overwhelmingly disproven by the facts and the consistent actions of the cops that by now arguing this very same position is akin to arguing that the world really is flat..and that the notion that it is not is really wrong.

Marx said something enitrely different. He did not say that the cops uphold class society...they are opposed to civil society by enforcing the state.

That role and function is entirely different from the working class.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

There really is a war going on against the police though, it's sometimes unacknowledged even by the combatants themselves but that doesn't change anything. Institute such a system of control as we have and people will eventually snap and lash out at symbols of that control, as well as other people that happen to be around them when it happens. The existence of this war does not make the issue of domestic violence disappear into thin air however. I disagree with the attempt to separate them. Killing the police doesn't validate anything else this guy may have done in his life. One can assume that since he shot his girlfriend he was probably a piece of shit in fact.

[consuming negativity]

Which are consistently protected by the cops. Who are not part to the proletariat. And have a completely different class position from proletarians....which results in different class interests.

Your analysis is manky on so many levels and you are so willfully ignoring the mountains of evidence which completely reject and contradict your argument....that you resemble some religious nutjob who ignores all science and facts in order to maintain the notion that the guarden of eden actually exists and woman was created from te rib of man.

From Egypt to the Ukraine from the Paris Commune to the Russian revolution...consistently and without fail the police has structurally sided with the regime and capitalists. Why has the police sided with the regime and the capitalists? Because they are an integral part of the state and of the system.

They are no longer part of the working class and have no interestes which coincide with the working class because of their elevated and prvileged position. THeir entire existance is legitimized onlny by maintaining the status quo.

They are not fucked. They are not exploited in the same sense as the working class. They are hirelings instrumental to the maintenance of the status quo. This ultimately is the conclusion about the role and function of the police which Marx and Engels advocate.

Misguided revolutionaries have consistently and throughout history advocated the same position as you. Up to an including the notion of siding with the police during times of conflict between the cops and the state. Know what happened? The police immediately turned on them....even as the proletarians supported them....by repressing the very demonstrations that were aimed at assisting the interests of the cops.

THe sheer stupidity and sheer amount of willfull ignorance that goes in to the notion that cops will see the error of their ways and are merely misled is so overwhelmingly disproven by the facts and the consistent actions of the cops that by now arguing this very same position is akin to arguing that the world really is flat..and that the notion that it is not is really wrong.

Marx said something enitrely different. He did not say that the cops uphold class society...they are opposed to civil society by enforcing the state.

That role and function is entirely different from the working class.

the cops don't "uphold class society" but they "enforce the state"? okay, well what does the state do? according to lenin, it is an organ of class oppression. if it is in our interest to get rid of classes, and the state is instead working in the interests of the bourgeoisie, then the state is upholding class society, which would mean that the enforcers of the state are upholding class society.

this is what i mean by obfuscation. your position is internally incongruent and i'm not sure how else i can say it. i never said that cops will see the light, i said that they are ignorant. i never said we should support the cops, i said that we shouldn't direct hate at them. i never said we should let them walk all over us, i said that we shouldn't act like a pack of deranged dogs with rabies who have no sense of humanity or strategy. my position is that cops are humans. so were the nazis you mentioned earlier. to deny these people their humanity is not being tough-minded; it is a cop-out to having to admit that in their position, we could have been the exact same thing

[Invader Zim]

The people on here attempting to paint this event as an act of justice need to remove their heads from their posteriors. Let us be clear, a mentally ill individual, went on a rampage shooting his girlfriend, two people who happened to be police, and then himself. Clearly, given that this incident was precipitated by his turning a gun on his girlfriend, was not triggered by a desire for 'revenge' against the police for the slaying of Gardner and Brown, but because this individual was a deeply disturbed and deranged young man who happened to chose these two particular victims because his point of instability happened to coincide with the public debate surrounding these two earlier events.

This should not be celebrated because cops died, but mourned yet as another tragedy the result of the ubiquity of mental illness in modern society and the failure of society to address a hidden epidemic typically swept under the carpet. And those doing so should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for both their callous decision to forget Shaneka Nicole Thompson from their narrative but also their abject stupidity and ignorance.

[synthesis]

>judging the disillusionist based on extrapolated delusions rather than on reality

actually, this describes your positions on the police, too, so it's not really surprising

"but communer, when we go out and protest, they call the cops and they beat us! they have to be our enemies!"

no, asshole. this is what the ruling class, who controls the media and the rest, wants you to think.

social classes are ultimately defined by their relation to the means of production, which is ultimately reducible to two classes defined as either those who sell their wage labor or those who purchase labor power. there is the middle class, but they will inevitably be subsumed into the working class as the law of capital accumulation continues to work and drain everyone dry for every penny they've got. same with the lumpen. they are irrelevant and, ultimately, on our side.

but why am i telling you this? because apparently, none of you know what the fuck a class even is, because you think that being a police officer is fundamentally different from being a janitor, or a welder, or any other job where the economic activity is receiving a wage for a good or service. the police are proletarians.

"but communer! you still haven't told me how them shooting as us doesn't make them the enemy"

because they are still working class and all of our economic activity supports the ruling class, including theirs. theirs is more direct - and thus we are inclined to think of them as our immediate enemies - but, in truth, they are merely reactionary workers.

"but aren't the reactionaries our enemies?"

only because they are reactionaries - NOT because they are police officers.

the importance of the proletariat to the revolution is that we control economic activity. if garbage men refuse to collect garbage, what happens? if truck drivers stop driving their trucks, what happens? if janitors stop cleaning, what happens? they're proletarians.

but what happens when the cops say "you know what? i'm not going to keep killing innocent civilians"?

they're working class. they are not the real enemy. in fact, that is what the ruling class wants you to think. but it is an illusion. the cops don't control anything. they're a section of the working class which is employed against the working class, and by directing our hate at the police rather than capital, we are directing our hate against the working class. in fact, by directing our hate at the police, we make them less likely to recognize that our interests and their interests are economically-speaking, exactly the same. that all economic activity under the capitalist mode of production results in the enrichment of the ruling class does not take away from this, and by buying into the "kill all cops yolo" bullshit you are contributing to the ignorance which will actually lead to more innocent people being killed in addition to further obfuscation of the actual social relations of the capitalist mode of production.

if cops are killed, it is a sad event where people needlessly died because of ignorance, on one side or the other. either the cops didn't recognize we were their friends, we didn't recognize they were our friends, or both. it's not great, it's a goddamn shame. it doesn't mean we shouldn't do what needs to be done, but it means that we should be careful in contributing to a dumbing-down of the discourse while we create "cop-apologists" where there are none; where such a term is fucking as meaningless and hollow as "analysis" or "petit bourgeois" on this website.

It's really this simple: as soon as there is a whiff of revolution, the cops are the first people sent in to quell the unrest. That's in their job description. There is no world in which cops, as an institution, will be on the same side as the working class when the shit hits the fan. It's really hard for me to overstate how much respect I've lost for you as a poster after this post. I thought your politics were better than this.

[Chaos316]

Doing something precedes doing something effective. Obviously the effective thing to do in this situation, is to swing public opinion as far as you can. However, no one seems to be doing it. You can talk about doing something effective, but until you can actually convince people that your way is the right way, it will means fuck all. And this isn't an appeal to emotion, this is an appeal to action. Your Marxistpedia would do wonders. It'll be hard to fuck talking about it up.

Anyway, emotion is all we got. Blacks are in no position to focus on Marxist politics, so like I said, engaging in public opinion is not a hard thing to do. And is effective. I didn't advocate shooting the cops up, I advocated changing public opinion as far as you can. That IS effective.

[consuming negativity]

It's really this simple: as soon as there is a whiff of revolution, the cops are the first people sent in to quell the unrest. That's in their job description. There is no world in which cops, as an institution, will be on the same side as the working class when the shit hits the fan. It's really hard for me to overstate how much respect I've lost for you as a poster after this post. I thought your politics were better than this.

this is not the first thread in which i have made these arguments as i have yet to have my actual arguments be rebutted. for example, had you read the rest of the thread, you'd know that my point is not that we can expect the majority of cops to be on our side of the fence. but why would you do that when you can look down your nose at me, as if i'm supposed to be hurt by the fact that you're too small a person to show respect to those who you disagree with on a singular issue? :rolleyes:


Doing something precedes doing something effective. Obviously the effective thing to do in this situation, is to swing public opinion as far as you can. However, no one seems to be doing it. You can talk about doing something effective, but until you can actually convince people that your way is the right way, it will means fuck all. And this isn't an appeal to emotion, this is an appeal to action. Your Marxistpedia would do wonders. It'll be hard to fuck talking about it up.

Anyway, emotion is all we got. Blacks are in no position to focus on Marxist politics, so like I said, engaging in public opinion is not a hard thing to do. And is effective. I didn't advocate shooting the cops up, I advocated changing public opinion as far as you can. That IS effective.

>blacks are in no position to focus on marxist politics

alright this seems a bit racist to me

[Lord Testicles]

I'm going to deal with this shit becasue, ugh, "The Disillusionist", fuck that guy.


That's not class warfare, that's the capitalist system, and it is far more pervasive and complicated than that. To call it "class warfare" is a disservice to the entire struggle. That's like summarizing the Cold "War" as "Lenin and Reagan punching each other for 60 years." As I said, it makes for nice propaganda, but it's a useless term in real life.

You clearly don't understand what "class warfare" means and considering what I'm going to post next you don't want to understand what "class warfare" means. (Probably because learning from discourse might allude to some childish concept of defeat.)



"Struggle" is not even remotely the same as overt, violent war. We are NOT in trenches in a military conflict with the police, and the police are NOT actively seeking out and killing "enemies" in a militant role, therefore it does not make sense to actively seek out and kill them.

Nobody is saying that and nobody means anything like this when they use the term "class war."


Class conflict [frequently referred to as class warfare or class struggle] can take many different forms: direct violence, such as wars fought for resources and cheap labor; indirect violence, such as deaths from poverty, starvation, illness or unsafe working conditions; coercion, such as the threat of losing a job...- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict


I also disagree that class struggle is always violent. [...]Class struggle is most often an insidious pervasive matter, often perpetuating by quiet, covert actions, such as the attempted passing of the recent spending bill in Congress.

What would you know kid? You probably don't even pay your own bills. Class warfare is pretty violent when you're on the receiving end of it.


Finally, Phoenix, you are still referring to the police as "them."

"Them" is an acceptable term to refer to a group of people you overly sensitive tool.


Them:
1. Used as the object of a verb or preposition to refer to two or more people or things previously mentioned or easily identifiedhttp://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/them


Normal people get away with murder all the time

You are one disingenuous little shit, either that or you literally don't know what you are talking about. Tell me, how many people (who aren't police) can film themselves killing an individual, have that footage widely distributed and still don't get prosecuted for murder?


A society that lets police get away with murder will let others get away with murder as well.

So if only we stopped police getting away with murder then maybe they'd stop turning a blind eye to all the other murders that people get away with all the time. (LOL what a delusion.) How does that logic work? How is that statement even related to reality?


Also, as I've stated several times, beating and murdering people isn't in the police officer's job description, and it's naive to think that.

Firstly, just because you've stated something doesn't make it so. Secondly, as others have pointed out just because it's no in their job description doesn't mean that not what they spend most of their time training for. Lastly, whist something may not be in their job description doesn't mean it doesn't happen.


It happens, and it's bad, but it's not required or even encouraged. A cop that beats up people isn't "doing his job," he is abusing his authority to be an asshole, or he is reacting poorly to some kind of abnormal situation. He shouldn't have that authority, but that doesn't automatically make him an evil person who should be murdered. Seriously, grow up.

Yeah, they shouldn't have that authority but they do and you can call them assholes as much as you like but it's not going to stop it happening. Besides who says they have to spend their time murdering or assaulting people to be "bad guys"? They spend their entire time ruining or attempting to ruin peoples lives. Even if the police stopped killing and beating people tomorrow they would still be fucking shitting on people and incarcerating them.



Oh, and your understanding of "institutions" is pretty crude. That's like saying, "Well, cultures are made up of people, and I don't agree with this culture, therefore the solution is clearly to commit the genocide of everyone in that culture."

This is literally the textbook definition of a straw-man argument. How about you try again & try a little harder this time?


But, clearly I'm not going to convince you that your cartoonish view of reality needs to be expanded

Clearly, you have the ability to convince people expand their view of reality. :rolleyes:

I can feel the superiority complex oozing from your fetid pores.


It really doesn't matter anyway, because until the world really does become the black-and-white action movie of your delusions, your opinion will never be valid or publicly accepted in any real life context, for the reasons I've already laid out.

You can't grasp the most basic arguments that are presented to you, (You don't even understand the concept of class warfare outside of some simplistic idea of trenches and death squads) and you presume to understand my opinion and even go as far as to paint them as "delusions." Heh. Why don't you fuck off you pompous dickwad?

[PhoenixAsh]

the cops don't "uphold class society" but they "enforce the state"? okay, well what does the state do? according to lenin, it is an organ of class oppression. if it is in our interest to get rid of classes, and the state is instead working in the interests of the bourgeoisie, then the state is upholding class society, which would mean that the enforcers of the state are upholding class society.

Learn to read if you try to be clever.

You stated (refering to the quote I gave) that Marx said the cops uphold class society. He didn't say that. What he said goes beyond mere "upholding". He said they enforce the state against civil society. Which means they are actively enforcing class society and not merely "holding it up".

This is an incredibly important distinction.



this is what i mean by obfuscation. your position is internally incongruent and i'm not sure how else i can say it. i never said that cops will see the light, i said that they are ignorant. i never said we should support the cops, i said that we shouldn't direct hate at them. i never said we should let them walk all over us, i said that we shouldn't act like a pack of deranged dogs with rabies who have no sense of humanity or strategy. my position is that cops are humans. so were the nazis you mentioned earlier. to deny these people their humanity is not being tough-minded; it is a cop-out to having to admit that in their position, we could have been the exact same thing

I am not denying them their humanity. After all I have rejected your notion to portray this as something which can be encased in a "good vs evil" and reduced to labels such as "hate" like you tried to reduce the argument to.

What I am saying that they are legitimate targets.

I am not advocating walking out your front door to go kill a cop. Absolutely not. But within class warfare they are legitimate targets and a class enemy.

[consuming negativity]

Learn to read if you try to be clever.

You stated (refering to the quote I gave) that Marx said the cops uphold class society. He didn't say that. What he said goes beyond mere "upholding". He said they enforce the state against civil society. Which means they are actively enforcing class society and not merely "holding it up".

This is an incredibly important distinction.

I am not denying them their humanity. After all I have rejected your notion to portray this as something which can be encased in a "good vs evil" and reduced to labels such as "hate" like you tried to reduce the argument to.

What I am saying that they are legitimate targets.

I am not advocating walking out your front door to go kill a cop. Absolutely not. But within class warfare they are legitimate targets and a class enemy.

it isn't "trying to be clever"... which you say before calling me out on having used different wording than you to articulate the same idea.

discussion isn't supposed to be a battle between people; it isn't some gotcha contest with a set of winners and losers. the point is to figure shit out without attachment to any ends.

sigh.

i don't care about this anymore. later

[BIXX]

Listen, while the subject of this thread is a tragedy, let thus be clear: if someone decides to shoot cops, good for them. And as opposed to most people here, yes, I am denying them their humanity, because to me, the moment they become a cop they don't deserve my empathy.

[The Disillusionist]

I'm going to deal with this shit becasue, ugh, "The Disillusionist", fuck that guy.

You clearly don't understand what "class warfare" means and considering what I'm going to post next you don't want to understand what "class warfare" means. (Probably because learning from discourse might allude to some childish concept of defeat.)

Nobody is saying that and nobody means anything like this when they use the term "class war."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict


Ok, let's just stop right here and state the obvious distinction, using this definition, one I've been trying to make for a while now. There is a difference between "Direct" and "Indirect" conflict. The definition might call all class conflict synonymous with "warfare," but that is a gross oversimplification, because this is the standard definition of warfare:
war·fare

(wor′far′)n.1. a. The waging of war against an enemy; armed conflict.
b. Military operations marked by a specific characteristic: guerrilla warfare; chemical warfare.

You can use emotional terms of propaganda all you want, but class conflict, and class "warfare" are obviously not always the same thing, and the presence of "indirect" conflict is not justification for murder.






What would you know kid? You probably don't even pay your own bills. Class warfare is pretty violent when you're on the receiving end of it.

I live on about 10 grand a year, in a house that shouldn't be legal to live in. Before that, I didn't have a house to live in. So boohoo, you can't pay your bills and life is hard. That still doesn't justify murder.




"Them" is an acceptable term to refer to a group of people you overly sensitive tool.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/them


I used his use of the word "them" to make the point that the police are not always a unified group of people who act and think the same, you are just taking it way too literally.



You are one disingenuous little shit, either that or you literally don't know what you are talking about. Tell me, how many people (who aren't police) can film themselves killing an individual, have that footage widely distributed and still don't get prosecuted for murder?


Anyone who can convince the jury that there was reasonable doubt. Blame the jury/court system for that. That video business is really screwed up, and shouldn't have happened, but it was clearly a rare event, as evidenced by the vast amount of conflict it has stirred up.



So if only we stopped police getting away with murder then maybe they'd stop turning a blind eye to all the other murders that people get away with all the time. (LOL what a delusion.) How does that logic work? How is that statement even related to reality?


What? How did you even get this argument out of what I said? This is like the complete reverse of what I said. I said that police behavior is a symptom of social context, not that social context is a symptom of police behavior. A racist society will tolerate and even support racist cops.



Firstly, just because you've stated something doesn't make it so. Secondly, as others have pointed out just because it's no in their job description doesn't mean that not what they spend most of their time training for. Lastly, whist something may not be in their job description doesn't mean it doesn't happen.


Seriously? Again, this is naive. Cops don't train to kill people. In fact, many police shootings can be attributed to the fact that, as I've said before, cops very rarely use their guns, and thus don't really know how to use them properly.

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/27-000-cops-cant-shoot-20120303

Cops are trained first and foremost in non-lethal "self-defense" techniques. I know you likely won't believe me, but look it up. Cops spend a lot more time with pepper spray and tasers than with guns, and they aren't really trained to fight, save for a few "takedown and handcuff" moves. If you ever see one of those videos of some asshole cop fighting with some civilian, you'll likely see that the cop is fighting just like the guy on the street, and really has no idea what he's doing. In the Eric Garner case for example, those guys weren't doing what they were trained to do, they were falling all over the place and it took like 6 of them to take down one guy. If anything, that choke hold was primarily the result of stupidity, as was that entire fight.

And yeah, this kind of crap does happen when it shouldn't. And I personally think that cops who commit crimes like that should be fired and thrown in jail. That STILL doesn't justify the murder of other cops who have done nothing wrong.



Yeah, they shouldn't have that authority but they do and you can call them assholes as much as you like but it's not going to stop it happening. Besides who says they have to spend their time murdering or assaulting people to be "bad guys"? They spend their entire time ruining or attempting to ruin peoples lives. Even if the police stopped killing and beating people tomorrow they would still be fucking shitting on people and incarcerating them.

They do not spend their entire time "ruining or attempting to ruin people's lives." This is the same naive black and white thinking that I've been fighting against throughout this whole discussion. A lot of cops get into their jobs hoping to do good, and many of them actually do help their communities.



This is literally the textbook definition of a straw-man argument. How about you try again & try a little harder this time?


So I guess that excuses you from responding? Your idea of the way institutions work is still crude, and my example of the way your faulty logic can lead to disaster still stands.



Clearly, you have the ability to convince people expand their view of reality. :rolleyes:

I can feel the superiority complex oozing from your fetid pores.

You can't grasp the most basic arguments that are presented to you, (You don't even understand the concept of class warfare outside of some simplistic idea of trenches and death squads) and you presume to understand my opinion and even go as far as to paint them as "delusions." Heh. Why don't you fuck off you pompous dickwad?

In summary, "class warfare" is, except in the case of real warfare, just a stupid propaganda term. You are delusional, and your view of reality is extremely limited.

I might seem pompous, but there is no arrogance so supreme as the arrogance that possesses a person to believe that he has the authority to determine who should live or die.

[The Disillusionist]

Listen, while the subject of this thread is a tragedy, let thus be clear: if someone decides to shoot cops, good for them. And as opposed to most people here, yes, I am denying them their humanity, because to me, the moment they become a cop they don't deserve my empathy.

Willful sociopathy is nothing to be proud of.

[BIXX]

Willful sociopathy is nothing to be proud of.
I am, I am also not subject to your moralist bullshit.

[Rafiq]

Willful sociopathy is nothing to be proud of.

We greet the same apathy or enthusiasm the death of the police as do the silent nihilists when confronted with the marginal systemic murder of the enemies of the state.

We cheer on the death of the police not because we are nihilists, but in faith to Communist morality. The real nihilists and moral dwarves are those who are so quick to passively condemn the righteous wrath of the oppressed. Moralism - what a wretched word! We can only ever speak of the morals of the exploiters and the exploited.

What are the police if not an army of weaponized sociopaths? Violence is not passive. You cannot condone violence independently of moral sentiment. That's why this argument is a false one. This isn't about moralism vs. edgy nonsense. It's about our morals against theirs.

[Rafiq]

The class conflict isn't individual attacks on the police. It's about TAKING A SIDE on the matter afterwards - it has become an event, a controversy. It is class based in nature. No matter how you write it off - were talking about a real struggle. It is necessary to take a side.

[The Disillusionist]

I am, I am also not subject to your moralist bullshit.

Lol. So edgy... Believe what you want, but as I said earlier, your way of thinking will never, ever, be a legitimate foundation for revolution or social progress.

[BIXX]

Lol. So edgy... Believe what you want, but as I said earlier, your way of thinking will never, ever, be a legitimate foundation for revolution or social progress.
I don't really care for your revolution.

[The Disillusionist]

We greet the same apathy or enthusiasm the death of the police as do the silent nihilists when confronted with the marginal systemic murder of the enemies of the state.

We cheer on the death of the police not because we are nihilists, but in faith to Communist morality. The real nihilists and moral dwarves are those who are so quick to passively condemn the righteous wrath of the oppressed. Moralism - what a wretched word! We can only ever speak of the morals of the exploiters and the exploited.

What are the police if not an army of weaponized sociopaths? Violence is not passive. You cannot condone violence independently of moral sentiment. That's why this argument is a false one. This isn't about moralism vs. edgy nonsense. It's about our morals against theirs.

"They" don't have a universal morality, they are individual people. The conflict has not yet escalated to the point in which the two sides are as clear cut as you suggest. The police are working class people tasked with enforcing social norms of behavior. They aren't the mindless slaves of the ruling class, that's ridiculous. Their faults are our faults, and our faults are their faults. We can't view the police as a separate entity completely apart from ourselves, that's a crude oversimplification of the entire situation. They are not our enemies, they are us.

By the way, "Communist" morality in practice doesn't have an especially good track record because it turns out that if you can think of one social group as your enemies, you can think of most other groups as your enemies as well, like religious people and anyone else who mildly disagrees with you.

[Sharia Lawn]

I am, I am also not subject to your moralist bullshit. Sure you are. You just inverted the dominant moral narrative of police as heros and turned them into demons and non-humans instead. Whatever a person might think of that "analysis" (and I don't think much of it), it's not a political one. It's visceral prolier-than-thou posturing and venting. 100% moralism with no real political content. Others here have mentioned edgy. I'm inclined to agree.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

but why am i telling you this? because apparently, none of you know what the fuck a class even is, because you think that being a police officer is fundamentally different from being a janitor, or a welder, or any other job where the economic activity is receiving a wage for a good or service. the police are proletarians.

they're working class. they are not the real enemy. in fact, that is what the ruling class wants you to think. but it is an illusion. the cops don't control anything. they're a section of the working class which is employed against the working class, and by directing our hate at the police rather than capital, we are directing our hate against the working class. in fact, by directing our hate at the police, we make them less likely to recognize that our interests and their interests are economically-speaking, exactly the same. that all economic activity under the capitalist mode of production results in the enrichment of the ruling class does not take away from this, and by buying into the "kill all cops yolo" bullshit you are contributing to the ignorance which will actually lead to more innocent people being killed in addition to further obfuscation of the actual social relations of the capitalist mode of production.

if cops are killed, it is a sad event where people needlessly died because of ignorance, on one side or the other. either the cops didn't recognize we were their friends, we didn't recognize they were our friends, or both. it's not great, it's a goddamn shame. it doesn't mean we shouldn't do what needs to be done, but it means that we should be careful in contributing to a dumbing-down of the discourse while we create "cop-apologists" where there are none; where such a term is fucking as meaningless and hollow as "analysis" or "petit bourgeois" on this website.

You accuse other people of "dumbing down" the "discourse" (good grief), when your notion of the proletariat is so abstract, schematic, ahistorical and anti-materialist it beggars belief. No, classes can't be brought down to one-sentence definitions of the sort you might find in textbooks. People that understand that aren't ignoring the "actual social relations"; they're actually paying attention to the relations of production and the role of various groups in the process of production. And this Jesuitical notion of the proletariat has nothing to do with Marx and Engels, who explicitly recognised the complex nature of class division in modern society, and who did not, at any point, treat the police as workers. (Generally, Marx and Engels, living in the nineteenth century, understood what some people in the twenty-first century fail to grasp, that not all salaried positions are proletarian.)

The fact that the pig is not a proletarian is not some abstract theoretical position either; it's felt by every conscious worker in their very bones, whenever the piggies come to break up a strike or a protest. If you are a friend of the pigs, then you've crossed a very real line. More likely, however, you're not a confirmed social-democrat and piggy-lover like the erstwhile "Workers'" League, just Petit-Bourgeois Kid Number 9046 who saw a simplified definition of the proletariat once and thinks they can ignore the basic position of all proletarian politics due to their great theoretical insight.

[The Disillusionist]

You accuse other people of "dumbing down" the "discourse" (good grief), when your notion of the proletariat is so abstract, schematic, ahistorical and anti-materialist it beggars belief. No, classes can't be brought down to one-sentence definitions of the sort you might find in textbooks. People that understand that aren't ignoring the "actual social relations"; they're actually paying attention to the relations of production and the role of various groups in the process of production. And this Jesuitical notion of the proletariat has nothing to do with Marx and Engels, who explicitly recognised the complex nature of class division in modern society, and who did not, at any point, treat the police as workers. (Generally, Marx and Engels, living in the nineteenth century, understood what some people in the twenty-first century fail to grasp, that not all salaried positions are proletarian.)

The fact that the pig is not a proletarian is not some abstract theoretical position either; it's felt by every conscious worker in their very bones, whenever the piggies come to break up a strike or a protest. If you are a friend of the pigs, then you've crossed a very real line. More likely, however, you're not a confirmed social-democrat and piggy-lover like the erstwhile "Workers'" League, just Petit-Bourgeois Kid Number 9046 who saw a simplified definition of the proletariat once and thinks they can ignore the basic position of all proletarian politics due to their great theoretical insight.

While I agree that the definition of proletariat is abused nowadays, I disagree with the "feel it in your bones" approach to class analysis.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

While I agree that the definition of proletariat is abused nowadays, I disagree with the "feel it in your bones" approach to class analysis.

What "'feel it in your bones' approach to class analysis"? Again, this is not an academic question but a question of basic political orientation. The proletariat, in its struggles, is hostile to police. As it should be. Smashing the bourgeois police - smashing it so thoroughly it has no hope of being reconstituted - is the first task of the proletarian revolution.

[consuming negativity]

You accuse other people of "dumbing down" the "discourse" (good grief), when your notion of the proletariat is so abstract, schematic, ahistorical and anti-materialist it beggars belief. No, classes can't be brought down to one-sentence definitions of the sort you might find in textbooks. People that understand that aren't ignoring the "actual social relations"; they're actually paying attention to the relations of production and the role of various groups in the process of production. And this Jesuitical notion of the proletariat has nothing to do with Marx and Engels, who explicitly recognised the complex nature of class division in modern society, and who did not, at any point, treat the police as workers. (Generally, Marx and Engels, living in the nineteenth century, understood what some people in the twenty-first century fail to grasp, that not all salaried positions are proletarian.)

The fact that the pig is not a proletarian is not some abstract theoretical position either; it's felt by every conscious worker in their very bones, whenever the piggies come to break up a strike or a protest. If you are a friend of the pigs, then you've crossed a very real line. More likely, however, you're not a confirmed social-democrat and piggy-lover like the erstwhile "Workers'" League, just Petit-Bourgeois Kid Number 9046 who saw a simplified definition of the proletariat once and thinks they can ignore the basic position of all proletarian politics due to their great theoretical insight.

there is a certain charm that comes with staying on topic and getting to the point.

you write a lot because, in truth, you usually don't have anything to say. if you were to condense the majority of your posts down to what is actually worth reading you would find that there would be nothing left for you to post. and what fun would that be?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

there is a certain charm that comes with staying on topic and getting to the point.

you write a lot because, in truth, you usually don't have anything to say. if you were to condense the majority of your posts down to what is actually worth reading you would find that there would be nothing left for you to post. and what fun would that be?

If you don't want to be criticised, don't go around claiming cops are proletarians and our friends. In fact, even if you do want to be criticised, don't go around claiming that because it's gob-smackingly stupid.

[The Disillusionist]

What "'feel it in your bones' approach to class analysis"? Again, this is not an academic question but a question of basic political orientation. The proletariat, in its struggles, is hostile to police. As it should be. Smashing the bourgeois police - smashing it so thoroughly it has no hope of being reconstituted - is the first task of the proletarian revolution.

This is the "feel it in your bones" approach. It's all emotion, and no reality, logic, or hard facts.

Also, why is it so hard for anyone here to comprend the fact that just because we're arguing that cops are humans doesn't mean that we are arguing that they are heroes. Are your minds THAT locked into the narrow, dualistic, dialectic approach that you just can't comprehend any gray between your black and white?

[Sharia Lawn]

People here are arguing that police are workers, then criticizing somebody who makes the unremarkable suggestion that police have an objective interest in their occupation in propping up bourgeois law and society. Is this revleft or Huffington Post?

[consuming negativity]

If you don't want to be criticised, don't go around claiming cops are proletarians and our friends. In fact, even if you do want to be criticised, don't go around claiming that because it's gob-smackingly stupid.

another profound argument: "what you said is stupid"

wow, i'm clearly incredibly wrong about the fact that you are "dumbing down" the "discourse". here, let me go edit out all of my posts to hide my shame and embarrassment! clearly everything i know is a lie! thank you, 870, for helping phoenix re-articulate the fact that he is in disagreement with me on this issue! without your help i would have never discovered that what i said was stupid because you said it is.

:glare:

wasting my fucking time here is what you're doing.

[consuming negativity]

reminder: i am wrong because you can feel that i am wrong, and marx and engels were both in agreement (you know, because bullshit is more authentic if it comes from one of the Prophets of Communism™)

yes, that sounds absolutely nothing like christian faith; it sounds exactly like scientific socialist anti-petit-bourgeois [insert meaningless buzzword here] analysis!

no, you're not dumbing down the discourse; it's just that all of the counter-arguments ITT are "they don't deserve to be considered human!" and "you are wrong!"

where have i ever heard someone say that someone is less than human before in celebration of a death? i think, uh, engels said it, right before he tried to exterminate the jews. must be legit!

fucking ridiculous. and you all have the audacity to call us "cop apologists" and critique our "analysis"? what the fuck kind of analysis is "you're wrong, i can just FEEL it, and i've lost so much respect for you!"

[Sharia Lawn]

communer, do you think that cops are a part of the working class and share the same political interests as all other members of the working class?

[#FF0000]

i am wrong because you can feel that i am wrong,

You're wrong because the function of the police is to enforce the laws and will of the state and maintain the status quo. Police are not workers and their interests are completely and absolutely opposed to the interests of the working class.

[consuming negativity]

You're wrong because the function of the police is to enforce the laws and will of the state and maintain the status quo. Police are not workers and their interests are completely and absolutely opposed to the interests of the working class.


We saw that an essential characteristic of the state is the existence of a public force differentiated from the mass of the people. At this time, Athens still had only a people’s army and a fleet provided directly by the people; army and fleet gave protection against external enemies and kept in check the slaves, who already formed the great majority of the population. In relation to the citizens, the public power at first existed only in the form of the police force, which is as old as the state itself; for which reason the naive French of the eighteenth century did not speak of civilized peoples, but of policed peoples (nations policees). The Athenians then instituted a police force simultaneously with their state, a veritable gendarmerie of bowmen, foot and mounted Landjäger [the country's hunters] as they call them in South Germany and Switzerland. But this gendarmerie consisted of slaves. The free Athenian considered police duty so degrading that he would rather be arrested by an armed slave than himself have any hand in such despicable work. That was still the old gentile spirit. The state could not exist without police, but the state was still young and could not yet inspire enough moral respect to make honorable an occupation which, to the older members of the gens, necessarily appeared infamous.

From "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch05.htm)" (1844)

Wait, did Engels just say that those slaves were still slaves even though they were also the police? That would certainly fly directly in the face of the magical thinking which holds that police are somehow separate from the proletariat by virtue of their labor being sold as police officers.

But wait, there's more.

This was quoted earlier by several of you, completely out of context:


The ‘police’, the ‘judiciary’, and the ‘administration’ are not the representatives of a civil society which administers its own universal interests in them and through them; they are the representatives of the state and their task is to administer the state against civil society.

From "Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of State" (google it)

But there's more to it than that. He continues:


The class of private citizens does not transform itself into a political class but enters into its political significance and efficacy as a class of private citizens. It does not simply have a right to political significance and efficacy. Its political significance and efficacy is the political significance and efficacy of the class of private citizens as the class of private citizens. This class can therefore enter the sphere of politics only in accordance with the class distinctions of civil society. The class distinctions of civil society thus become established as political distinctions.

Or, in other words,



The perfect political state is, by its nature, man’s species-life, as opposed to his material life. All the preconditions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society outside the sphere of the state, but as qualities of civil society. Where the political state has attained its true development, man – not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life – leads a twofold life, a heavenly and an earthly life: life in the political community, in which he considers himself a communal being, and life in civil society, in which he acts as a private individual, regards other men as a means, degrades himself into a means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers. The relation of the political state to civil society is just as spiritual as the relations of heaven to earth. The political state stands in the same opposition to civil society, and it prevails over the latter in the same way as religion prevails over the narrowness of the secular world – i.e., by likewise having always to acknowledge it, to restore it, and allow itself to be dominated by it. In his most immediate reality, in civil society, man is a secular being. Here, where he regards himself as a real individual, and is so regarded by others, he is a fictitious phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where man is regarded as a species-being, he is the imaginary member of an illusory sovereignty, is deprived of his real individual life and endowed with an unreal universality.

Man, as the adherent of a particular religion, finds himself in conflict with his citizenship and with other men as members of the community. This conflict reduces itself to the secular division between the political state and civil society. For man as a bourgeois [i.e., as a member of civil society, “bourgeois society” in German], “life in the state” is “only a semblance or a temporary exception to the essential and the rule.” Of course, the bourgeois, like the Jew, remains only sophistically in the sphere of political life, just as the citoyen [‘citizen’ in French, i.e., the participant in political life] only sophistically remains a Jew or a bourgeois. But, this sophistry is not personal. It is the sophistry of the political state itself. The difference between the merchant and the citizen [Staatsbürger], between the day-laborer and the citizen, between the landowner and the citizen, between the merchant and the citizen, between the living individual and the citizen. The contradiction in which the religious man finds himself with the political man is the same contradiction in which the bourgeois finds himself with the citoyen, and the member of civil society with his political lion’s skin.

From "On the Jewish Question (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/)" (1844)

[bcbm]

my god, our holy prophets marx and engels hath spoke nigh on one hundred fifty years ago and yea, we shall heed their eternal wisdom



They" don't have a universal morality, they are individual people. The conflict has not yet escalated to the point in which the two sides are as clear cut as you suggest. The police are working class people tasked with enforcing social norms of behavior. They aren't the mindless slaves of the ruling class, that's ridiculous. Their faults are our faults, and our faults are their faults. We can't view the police as a separate entity completely apart from ourselves, that's a crude oversimplification of the entire situation. They are not our enemies, they are us.

no theyre not us theyre separated from us by their badge and their faults are not indibuda, they are collective. they certianly have an internal cod ethat governs their behavior and they protect each other and silence opposition and u can see the disgusting sentiments of the pigs through the nypd chief or through the lapd gleefully making fun of mike browns death; these are not random or isolated incidents, they are endemic and the police as an institution are responsible. which is not to call for or glory in the random ambussh of officers, but the chickens come home to roost when you play bad long enugh, boo hoo

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

From "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch05.htm)" (1844)

[...]

Wait, did Engels just say that those slaves were still slaves even though they were also the police? That would certainly fly directly in the face of the magical thinking which holds that police are somehow separate from the proletariat by virtue of their labor being sold as police officers.

Engels noted that the police force of the early Athenian state was made up of slaves in the sense of persons who are legally enslaved. It does not follow that these slaves were still part of the class of enslaved direct producers. Not all slaves are part of this class; I certainly hope no-one is going to claim that the Mamluks or the early Janissaries were oppressed direct producers.

But why talk about ancient Athens? Why not mention how Marx saw the police of his day? For example:

"The police have opened up a really splendid field for our people: the ever-present and uninterrupted struggle with the police themselves. This is being carried on everywhere and always, with great success and, the best thing about it, with great humour. The police are defeated--and made to look foolish into the bargain. And I consider this struggle the most useful in the circumstances. Above all it keeps the contempt for the enemy alive among our lads. Worse troops could not be sent into the field against us than the German police; even where they have the upper hand they suffer a moral defeat, and confidence in victory is growing among our lads every day. This struggle will bring it about that as soon as the pressure is at last relaxed (and that will happen on the day the dance in Russia begins) we shall no longer count our numbers in hundreds of thousands but in millions. There is a lot of rotten stuff among the so-called leaders but I have unqualified confidence in our masses, and what they lack in revolutionary tradition they are gaining more and more from this little war with the police. And you can say what you like, but we have never seen a proletariat yet which has learnt to act collectively and to march together in so short a time. For this reason, even though nothing appears on the surface, we can, I think, calmly await the moment when the call to arms is given. You will see how they muster!"

There it is: the proletariat is at war with the police. And not a single sentence hints at something so ludicrous as the police being proletarians. I guess Marx was driven by emotion to deny something so obvious as the police being proletarians.

Again, if your understanding of class society is so schematic that you think anyone who receives a salary (not a wage; police aren't wage workers for the love of the nonexistent God) is a proletarian, that is not something to be proud of. Particularly not since it follows from your claim that socialists should support pig strikes and other pig actions, and any support for the pigs, in any form, unless we're helping them get down from the bridge in Helsignfors, is treason, is crossing the class line.

(But now that I've obliquely referenced Mayakovsky's Ode to the Revolution, I suppose that, since admirals also receive a salary, they are also proletarians according to the School of Disillusionist-communer. Stupid German and Russian sailors, fighting against their brother-proletarian admirals and ministers.)

[Sharia Lawn]

From "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch05.htm)" (1844)

Wait, did Engels just say that those slaves were still slaves even though they were also the police? That would certainly fly directly in the face of the magical thinking which holds that police are somehow separate from the proletariat by virtue of their labor being sold as police officers.
Engels, as one familiar with the classics, was adopting their (the classicists') term for the Athenian police force: "city slaves." In reality, the individuals in question were no longer slaves in the economic sense of being compelled to produce a surplus. They were slaves in the sense that their ancestry (Scythian) belonged to an enslaved class, and that ancestry marked them off into a socially lower rank appropriate for the "dirty" job of policing. William Stearns Davis, the early 20th century classicist, elaborates on the nature of this force of "city-slaves":
A large number of nominal "slaves" in Athens differ from any of the creatures we have described. The community, no less than an individual, can own slaves just as it can own warships and temples. Athens owns "city slaves" (Demosioi) of several varieties. The clerks in the treasury office and the checking officers at the public assemblies are slaves; so too are the less reputable public executioners and torturers....But chiefest of all, the city owns its public police force. The "Scythian" they are called from their usual land of origin, or the "bowmen," from their special weapon, which incidentally makes a convenient cudgel in a street brawl. There are 1200 of them, always at the disposal of the city magistrates. They patrol the town at night, arrest evil-doers, sustain law and order in the Agora, and especially enforce decorum, if the public assemblies or the jury courts become tumultuous. They have a special cantonment on the hill of Areopagus near the Acropolis. "Slaves" they are of course in name, and under a kind of military discipline; but they are highly privileged slaves. The security of the city may depend upon their loyal zeal. In times of war they are auxiliaries. Life in this police force cannot therefore be burdensome, and their position is envied by all the factory workers and the house servants. It is clear that slaves don't just entail agricultural laborers from which an economic surplus is extracted, but all people politically coerced or assigned automatically into performing a job based on birth. What should really catch your attention is the point Davis makes about the treatment of these "slaves," and how, even in a society so dramatically different from our own, they so closely reflect the treatment of current police.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

And actually, the western idea of the "police" force started with the idea of the community watchman. Every man in a town would take a nightly shift, keeping watch over the town for one night, and making sure everything was in order, and no crimes were being committed. Then the next night, another man would take his place. Over time, this became a paid position, rather than a volunteer position, and so it morphed into the idea of the beat-walking street cop that we know today.

Modern police forces originated from the armed gendarmeries of late Mediaeval rulers. Of course, you probably think the Santa Hermandad were poor proletarians that the mean leftists pushed away by not being their friend.

[VivalaCuarta]

Modern police forces were organized when the industrial proletariat became a significant social class concentrated in the cities. They were organized to break strikes and demonstrations. Additionally in the U.S. rural and southern police forces originated in slave catching gangs and militias to counter the threat of slave revolts.

[consuming negativity]

Engels noted that the police force of the early Athenian state was made up of slaves in the sense of persons who are legally enslaved. It does not follow that these slaves were still part of the class of enslaved direct producers. Not all slaves are part of this class; I certainly hope no-one is going to claim that the Mamluks or the early Janissaries were oppressed direct producers.

But why talk about ancient Athens? Why not mention how Marx saw the police of his day? For example:

"The police have opened up a really splendid field for our people: the ever-present and uninterrupted struggle with the police themselves. This is being carried on everywhere and always, with great success and, the best thing about it, with great humour. The police are defeated--and made to look foolish into the bargain. And I consider this struggle the most useful in the circumstances. Above all it keeps the contempt for the enemy alive among our lads. Worse troops could not be sent into the field against us than the German police; even where they have the upper hand they suffer a moral defeat, and confidence in victory is growing among our lads every day. This struggle will bring it about that as soon as the pressure is at last relaxed (and that will happen on the day the dance in Russia begins) we shall no longer count our numbers in hundreds of thousands but in millions. There is a lot of rotten stuff among the so-called leaders but I have unqualified confidence in our masses, and what they lack in revolutionary tradition they are gaining more and more from this little war with the police. And you can say what you like, but we have never seen a proletariat yet which has learnt to act collectively and to march together in so short a time. For this reason, even though nothing appears on the surface, we can, I think, calmly await the moment when the call to arms is given. You will see how they muster!"

There it is: the proletariat is at war with the police. And not a single sentence hints at something so ludicrous as the police being proletarians. I guess Marx was driven by emotion to deny something so obvious as the police being proletarians.

Again, if your understanding of class society is so schematic that you think anyone who receives a salary (not a wage; police aren't wage workers for the love of the nonexistent God) is a proletarian, that is not something to be proud of. Particularly not since it follows from your claim that socialists should support pig strikes and other pig actions, and any support for the pigs, in any form, unless we're helping them get down from the bridge in Helsignfors, is treason, is crossing the class line.

(But now that I've obliquely referenced Mayakovsky's Ode to the Revolution, I suppose that, since admirals also receive a salary, they are also proletarians according to the School of Disillusionist-communer. Stupid German and Russian sailors, fighting against their brother-proletarian admirals and ministers.)

This is sort of like if I were to try to justify communism through the bible to a Christian, and then another verse is quoted which contradicts mine. I don't actually care what Engels or Marx said, and frankly, to say that the proletarians are fighting the police does not mean that the police are not proletarians in the same way that Engels can say that the slaves are police and yet they would no longer be slaves in the sense that you were referring to. It was a sophistic argument that I used because all of my logical arguments got ignored. Unfortunately, you can misconstrue or twist anything to mean anything; I mean, you're saying right here that I think we should "support pig strikes and other pig actions", followed by a bunch more of ridiculous straw men of my position. At this point, I think you're just trying to be an asshole on purpose. When the hell did I ever say any of that garbage? I've actually never even met a cop whose presence I could stand; they're on the whole a bunch of assholes with a superiority complex. But that barely means anything in the context of attempting to explain the role of the police force in society. The elevation of the police force from the proletariat is illusory in nature; they and you both might believe that their interests are served by the continuation of capitalism, but you're all wrong about it. In the longest term, even the bourgeoisie would be better served by their own destruction as a class. Does that mean that I think they're going to just give up their position tomorrow? Of course not. Even if they were smart enough to understand this, they would still be hamstrung by the fact that they don't get to make the decision - we do.

But go ahead: feel free to show me how my "understanding of class society" is wrong. Quote it from your Texts™ and lay it all out for me. I'd love to see you try.

[PhoenixAsh]

That is the problem right there....even if we try, and we did, you will not budge from your position that the police are proletarians.

Your position hinges on one huge flawed assessment: the power of the virtue of the class demands. We are right, they are wrong...and so their interests ultimately are with the proletarian demands.

And this is not the case.

The entire existance of the police is dependend on contradicting the class interests of the proletariat and the perpetuation of the continuation of bourgeois interests.

[consuming negativity]

Would you consider the labor aristocracy to no longer be proletarian? What about the lumpenproletariat? What about the so-called "middle class" (not the bourgeoisie)?

[Thirsty Crow]

Would you consider the labor aristocracy to no longer be proletarian? What about the lumpenproletariat? What about the so-called "middle class" (not the bourgeoisie)?
The real question isn't related to some facile classification, but concerns the social activity of the groups you mention and prospects for revolutionary activity arising from it; or the lack of such prospects.

I think a good majority of communists would be suspicious of such prospects when it comes to cops who're basically running dogs of the ruling class. This, however, doesn't translate into some puerile and seemingly unproblematic "ACAB!" attitude as I think communists ought to be well aware that the working class needs to at least pacify (if not win over) a good segment of the police force in order that revolutionary transformation doesn't drown in blood. Anyway, I'd state is as fact that large scale violence is always and everywhere an inherent danger for the continuity of such a transformation.

Anyway, I think this is a huge question, and one that hasn't been sufficiently dealt with in Marxist theory so it might be best not to derail the thread too much here and maybe open another one in Theory or something.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I don't actually care what Engels or Marx said... It was a sophistic argument that I used because all of my logical arguments got ignored.

So in other words you're openly admitting to being dishonest. Fair enough. But there was no "logical argument" for us to ignore; don't big yourself up, the only thing you offered as an argument was an elementary conflation of salary-earners with the proletariat.


Unfortunately, you can misconstrue or twist anything to mean anything; I mean, you're saying right here that I think we should "support pig strikes and other pig actions", followed by a bunch more of ridiculous straw men of my position.

I love how some posters abuse the term "straw man" to the extent that it doesn't really mean anything anymore. What you call a "ridiculous straw man" is the consequence of your claims here if you have a shred of socialist consistency in you. Socialists stand even with reactionary workers when they fight for better conditions, higher pay etc. Politically, we will fight the Catholic (for example) worker mercilessly when he supports criminalising abortion or homosexuality or whatever. But when he strikes for higher pay, for more sick leave, for better conditions on the job, for the right to unionise - we back him.

But when pigs strike for higher pay and better conditions? That's one of the basic lines dividing the socialists from liberals. We don't support them. Ever.

[PhoenixAsh]

Would you consider the labor aristocracy to no longer be proletarian? What about the lumpenproletariat? What about the so-called "middle class" (not the bourgeoisie)?

I am not a Leninist.

But I remember Engels and Marx designating labour aristocracy those workers who turned bourgeois. This was once again confimed by Lenin when he called them:

“This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie."

[consuming negativity]

The real question isn't related to some facile classification, but concerns the social activity of the groups you mention and prospects for revolutionary activity arising from it; or the lack of such prospects.

I think a good majority of communists would be suspicious of such prospects when it comes to cops who're basically running dogs of the ruling class. This, however, doesn't translate into some puerile and seemingly unproblematic "ACAB!" attitude as I think communists ought to be well aware that the working class needs to at least pacify (if not win over) a good segment of the police force in order that revolutionary transformation doesn't drown in blood. Anyway, I'd state is as fact that large scale violence is always and everywhere an inherent danger for the continuity of such a transformation.

Anyway, I think this is a huge question, and one that hasn't been sufficiently dealt with in Marxist theory so it might be best not to derail the thread too much here and maybe open another one in Theory or something.

You cannot ignore the position of the police relative to the means of production when attempting to determine the revolutionary potential of police as a grouping.


So in other words you're openly admitting to being dishonest. Fair enough. But there was no "logical argument" for us to ignore; don't big yourself up, the only thing you offered as an argument was an elementary conflation of salary-earners with the proletariat.

I love how some posters abuse the term "straw man" to the extent that it doesn't really mean anything anymore. What you call a "ridiculous straw man" is the consequence of your claims here if you have a shred of socialist consistency in you. Socialists stand even with reactionary workers when they fight for better conditions, higher pay etc. Politically, we will fight the Catholic (for example) worker mercilessly when he supports criminalising abortion or homosexuality or whatever. But when he strikes for higher pay, for more sick leave, for better conditions on the job, for the right to unionise - we back him.

But when pigs strike for higher pay and better conditions? That's one of the basic lines dividing the socialists from liberals. We don't support them. Ever.

The thing is, you purposefully ignored it when I asked for you to show me what you think of classes. And you know what would have happened if you had? You'd have ended up being forced to say something like this:


The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.

Which is straight from "The Principles of Communism". It is, in fact, the same definition I am using here, which you claim is "schematic" and "nothing to be proud of". You claim to speak for "socialists", but in truth, you claim that actual socialist terminology is ridiculous. You have no idea what you're talking about, and perhaps "socialists" such as yourself should recognize that the bourgeoisie does not go on strike for better working conditions and higher wages, and attempt to create a world-view that comes from reality. So, no, I never in the past said that we should support cops when they strike, but you know what? Maybe we should. It seems a lot more logical than anything you've said thus far.



I am not a Leninist.

But I remember Engels and Marx designating labour aristocracy those workers who turned bourgeois. This was once again confimed by Lenin when he called them:

“This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie."

I didn't ask what Lenin thought - I asked what you think. And about more than just the labor aristocracy. So I'll ask again: do you think that the labor aristocracy, the lumpenproletariat, and/or the "middle class" are part of the working class? You don't have to answer, but if you do, give me a real answer - even if it is "well, I'm not entirely sure".

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The thing is, you purposefully ignored it when I asked for you to show me what you think of classes.

Well, no, I did not ignore that request, whether purposefully or otherwise, because you never made it, as anyone can verify (our interaction being limited to the last two pages of this thread, at the time of writing). And the point, of course, is not what I think of classes, but what classes are, and what non-class strata exist in the modern society.


And you know what would have happened if you had? You'd have ended up being forced to say something like this:

[...]

Which is straight from "The Principles of Communism". It is, in fact, the same definition I am using here, which you claim is "schematic" and "nothing to be proud of".

The problem is that you're reducing the problematic of class society to one of definitions, as if Marxist analysis could be done by defining terms and then reaching conclusions by simple syllogisms. That is beyond puerile; in the twenty and first century after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ it is unthinkable for anyone to propose that serious social analysis be conducted in this manner.

The proletariat is a lot of things. It is the class of wage workers, of those who have nothing to sell but their labour-power, of direct producers. Who is a proletarian can't be captured in a one-sentence definition, try as you might. But the direct role of the proletarians in the production process (which includes the reproduction of the labour-power of others) is an important characteristic of that class. The police are something else entirely; they are one of the many strata that bourgeois society requires in order to safeguard the rule of the bourgeoisie, similar to what Marx called a "foreman and overseer" stratum (even though foremen receive a salary, which you conflate with a wage, so apparently you think foremen are proletarians as well), but even more directly opposed to the proletariat in its world-historic tasks.


You claim to speak for "socialists", but in truth, you claim that actual socialist terminology is ridiculous.

"Actual socialist terminology", apparently, is how you interpret one paragraph in a popular work by Engels, and not how actual socialists, including Marx and Engels, actually used the terms. And guess what, they never called the police proletarian and in fact distinguished between the police and the proletariat several times. Good grief, you remind me of our good friend impossible, he also had the hots for simplified definitions.


You have no idea what you're talking about, and perhaps "socialists" such as yourself should recognize that the bourgeoisie does not go on strike for better working conditions and higher wages, and attempt to create a world-view that comes from reality. So, no, I never in the past said that we should support cops when they strike, but you know what? Maybe we should. It seems a lot more logical than anything you've said thus far.

Maybe you should stop calling yourself a socialist if you support pig strikes.

"Look at me mother I can cross the class line." Well fan-fucking-tastic, so could Healy and Wohlforth. Do you people want a medal or something? Go ask your local police commissioner for one.

[VivalaCuarta]

The elevation of the police force from the proletariat is illusory in nature

Wow! Now where I come from an illusion is a belief that, while supported by some superficial observation, is contradicted in practice. Light refracted by hot air gives the appearance of liquid water ... but try to drink it and you will be disappointed. Cops are paid to work ... but give them the chance and they will show you that they are the enemies of the working class. It is much better to learn the easy way. Giving up some ill-deserved petit bourgeois arrogance is preferable to giving up a pint of blood. But if you must chase after mirages, at least go alone. Anyone who follows you is a bigger fool than you.

[consuming negativity]

Well, no, I did not ignore that request, whether purposefully or otherwise, because you never made it, as anyone can verify (our interaction being limited to the last two pages of this thread, at the time of writing). And the point, of course, is not what I think of classes, but what classes are, and what non-class strata exist in the modern society.

The problem is that you're reducing the problematic of class society to one of definitions, as if Marxist analysis could be done by defining terms and then reaching conclusions by simple syllogisms. That is beyond puerile; in the twenty and first century after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ it is unthinkable for anyone to propose that serious social analysis be conducted in this manner.

The proletariat is a lot of things. It is the class of wage workers, of those who have nothing to sell but their labour-power, of direct producers. Who is a proletarian can't be captured in a one-sentence definition, try as you might. But the direct role of the proletarians in the production process (which includes the reproduction of the labour-power of others) is an important characteristic of that class. The police are something else entirely; they are one of the many strata that bourgeois society requires in order to safeguard the rule of the bourgeoisie, similar to what Marx called a "foreman and overseer" stratum (even though foremen receive a salary, which you conflate with a wage, so apparently you think foremen are proletarians as well), but even more directly opposed to the proletariat in its world-historic tasks.

"Actual socialist terminology", apparently, is how you interpret one paragraph in a popular work by Engels, and not how actual socialists, including Marx and Engels, actually used the terms. And guess what, they never called the police proletarian and in fact distinguished between the police and the proletariat several times. Good grief, you remind me of our good friend impossible, he also had the hots for simplified definitions.

Maybe you should stop calling yourself a socialist if you support pig strikes.

"Look at me mother I can cross the class line." Well fan-fucking-tastic, so could Healy and Wohlforth. Do you people want a medal or something? Go ask your local police commissioner for one.


Wow! Now where I come from an illusion is a belief that, while supported by some superficial observation, is contradicted in practice. Light refracted by hot air gives the appearance of liquid water ... but try to drink it and you will be disappointed. Cops are paid to work ... but give them the chance and they will show you that they are the enemies of the working class. It is much better to learn the easy way. Giving up some ill-deserved petit bourgeois arrogance is preferable to giving up a pint of blood. But if you must chase after mirages, at least go alone. Anyone who follows you is a bigger fool than you.

Being a proletarian does not require being a socialist or otherwise not being a reactionary fuckwit. In fact, you can be a proletarian and actively oppose the interests of the working class, working class revolution, unions, strikes, and everything else. If having an occupation under capitalism which supports the working class is required to be a proletarian, there is no such thing, because every occupation exists in our society because it benefits the ruling class in our society. It is impossible to not support the ruling class in some way, shape, or form without being an illegalist.

Yes, when the police show up to break up strikes, to fuck with protesters, or to otherwise oppose the working class they are absolutely and without question our enemies, but this does not change the fact that they are part of the working class. In the same way that Marx and Engels did not suddenly become proletarians because they became communists, police do not change position relative to the means of production by being reactionaries. Foremen, bosses, and the rest, they are all proletarians who are employed directly against the class and who benefit by fucking over other proletarians. Does that make them reactionary class-traitor pieces of shit? Yes. But they are still proletarians; they could not be class-traitors if they were not of our class, and they are certainly not bourgeoisie.

Now, do I think that the police, the supervisors, the labor aristocracy, and all of the others who benefit from capitalism as much as they do are as likely to work in the interests of the proletariat as, say, your rank-and-file factory worker? Absolutely not. But they are still workers and the distinction between us and them serves the purposes of the bourgeoisie. How does it do this? Because it reinforces the idea that their interests and ours - in the long term - are not the same. It legitimizes their class betrayal because it makes it seem as though they are actually acting in the interests of their own class which is separate from ours - but this is bullshit. They are acting in the interests of the bourgeoisie, because they ostensibly coincide with their immediate interests, which is exactly what proletarians do every time we do a second of work anywhere in the world under the capitalist mode of production. When workers go on strike, they are acting against the interests of the bourgeoisie while acting in their own interests. When they get some/any of their demands and go back to work, they are yet again acting in the interests of the bourgeoisie. This does not change their class character or make them any less proletarian. ALL LEGITIMATE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SUPPORTS THE RULING CLASS AND WORKS AGAINST THE GOALS OF THE GLOBAL PROLETARIAT.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Being a proletarian does not require being a socialist or otherwise not being a reactionary fuckwit. In fact, you can be a proletarian and actively oppose the interests of the working class, working class revolution, unions, strikes, and everything else. If having an occupation under capitalism which supports the working class is required to be a proletarian, there is no such thing, because every occupation exists in our society because it benefits the ruling class in our society. It is impossible to not support the ruling class in some way, shape, or form without being an illegalist.

Yes, when the police show up to break up strikes, to fuck with protesters, or to otherwise oppose the working class they are absolutely and without question our enemies, but this does not change the fact that they are part of the working class. In the same way that Marx and Engels did not suddenly become proletarians because they became communists, police do not change position relative to the means of production by being reactionaries. Foremen, bosses, and the rest, they are all proletarians who are employed directly against the class and who benefit by fucking over other proletarians. Does that make them reactionary class-traitor pieces of shit? Yes. But they are still proletarians; they could not be class-traitors if they were not of our class, and they are certainly not bourgeoisie.

Now, do I think that the police, the supervisors, the labor aristocracy, and all of the others who benefit from capitalism as much as they do are as likely to work in the interests of the proletariat as, say, your rank-and-file factory worker? Absolutely not. But they are still workers and the distinction between us and them serves the purposes of the bourgeoisie. How does it do this? Because it reinforces the idea that their interests and ours - in the long term - are not the same. It legitimizes their class betrayal because it makes it seem as though they are actually acting in the interests of their own class which is separate from ours - but this is bullshit. They are acting in the interests of the bourgeoisie, because they ostensibly coincide with their immediate interests, which is exactly what proletarians do every time we do a second of work anywhere in the world under the capitalist mode of production. When workers go on strike, they are acting against the interests of the bourgeoisie while acting in their own interests. When they get some/any of their demands and go back to work, they are yet again acting in the interests of the bourgeoisie. This does not change their class character or make them any less proletarian. ALL LEGITIMATE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SUPPORTS THE RULING CLASS AND WORKS AGAINST THE GOALS OF THE GLOBAL PROLETARIAT.


Serious question: are there really people so lost in their abstractions that they don't see the difference between buying groceries and gunning down black people, beating up striking workers and gay people, and infiltrating and destroying socialist and labour organisations, or are our pro-police "anarchists" so desperate for something resembling an argument they are willing to ignore all reason? The police are not reactionary workers, they're not a part of the proletariat at all. Nothing you have said has been convincing because you blatantly don't understand what the proletariat is. According to you, managers, foremen, policemen, ministers and admirals, all of them are proletarians. And all you have to offer, politically, is supporting pigs in their efforts to be even more well-fed and even more capable of breaking the backs of the proletariat, and the vague nonsense that the interests of the police are those of the proletariat. If I were an anarchist, I would feel insulted for being indirectly associated with this load of bullshit.

[consuming negativity]

What is the proletariat?
What is the bourgeoisie?
What is the lumpenproletariat?
What is the labor aristocracy?
What is the "middle class"?

Answer the questions yourself: go ahead. Inform me as to how my class analysis is "insulting" by showing us all what's *really* going on. I humbly invite you - for the second time today - to actually make a valid point about something. If you are so confident in your abilities - and in my being wrong - it should be absolutely no problem for you to do something so simple as explain the concept of class and to articulate the class(es) of our society. Simply saying "no, you are wrong" in the face of reason and logic is not a valid fucking argument. It will never be a valid argument. Are you capable of actually making a counter-argument at all, or is all that you're capable of restating your disagreement and proceeding to slur your discussion partner? Do you know how to answer that question, or will your response be another "serious question" that you use as a platform to completely avoid addressing any aspect of my post?

[Thirsty Crow]

You cannot ignore the position of the police relative to the means of production when attempting to determine the revolutionary potential of police as a grouping.

And I'm not, yet still I'd say that there is a significant difference between cops on one side, and factory/office (for instance) workers on the other, enough that insisting on cops being proletarians is close enough to obfuscating the problem at hand, as much as a rigid and blind anti-cop position is.

EDIT: To clarify, this insistence isn't problematic cause it isn't true that, if the sole determinant of class position is ownership/dispossession of the MoP, cops aren't bourgeois. It's problematic because it implicitly disregards the serious and real differences within this broader group of people that are dispossessed of the means of production. So for the sake of the argument, if you were talking about a broader global working class and cops as a very peculiar segment of it, then I'd have no problem with it. However, what constitutes this peculiarity is the kind of activity done, and complementary issues such as psycho-social formation (personality for instance). Ultimately, communists have always stressed the class becoming an active political force and bloc, with our own programme reflecting our needs and precisely because of this there's the necessity of thinking about prospects for revolutionary activity. In terms of particular working class layers/strata.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

What is the proletariat?
What is the bourgeoisie?
What is the lumpenproletariat?
What is the labor aristocracy?
What is the "middle class"?

Answer the questions yourself: go ahead. Inform me as to how my class analysis is "insulting" by showing us all what's *really* going on. I humbly invite you - for the second time today - to actually make a valid point about something. If you are so confident in your abilities - and in my being wrong - it should be absolutely no problem for you to do something so simple as explain the concept of class and to articulate the class(es) of our society. Simply saying "no, you are wrong" in the face of reason and logic is not a valid fucking argument. It will never be a valid argument. Are you capable of actually making a counter-argument at all, or is all that you're capable of restating your disagreement and proceeding to slur your discussion partner? Do you know how to answer that question, or will your response be another "serious question" that you use as a platform to completely avoid addressing any aspect of my post?

Good grief, I already stated that the way in which society is divided into various classes and strata can't be put in terms of one-sentence definitions. So what do you want me to do, exactly? Write an essay on the modern production process? Not likely to happen.

I could say that the proletariat is the dispossessed class of direct producers in modern capitalist production; that it consists of those who are forced to sell their labour-power to capital, directly or indirectly, overtly or in ideologically-obscured forms (like housewives), and so on. But all of this just leads to further questions. As it should - after all, class analysis is not something you can reduce to a few lines on a bloody forum. The point is to understand how to do class analysis.

But you can always spot ridiculous analysis by ridiculous political conclusions - such as the notion that ministers are proletarians who need unions, and our solidarity and support.

[consuming negativity]

And I'm not, yet still I'd say that there is a significant difference between cops on one side, and factory/office (for instance) workers on the other, enough that insisting on cops being proletarians is close enough to obfuscating the problem at hand, as much as a rigid and blind anti-cop position is.

EDIT: To clarify, this insistence isn't problematic cause it isn't true that, if the sole determinant of class position is ownership/dispossession of the MoP, cops aren't bourgeois. It's problematic because it implicitly disregards the serious and real differences within this broader group of people that are dispossessed of the means of production. So for the sake of the argument, if you were talking about a broader global working class and cops as a very peculiar segment of it, then I'd have no problem with it. However, what constitutes this peculiarity is the kind of activity done, and complementary issues such as psycho-social formation (personality for instance). Ultimately, communists have always stressed the class becoming an active political force and bloc, with our own programme reflecting our needs and precisely because of this there's the necessity of thinking about prospects for revolutionary activity. In terms of particular working class layers/strata.

The point isn't to obfuscate differences but rather to explain them more perfectly; my position is that the police are a section of the working class in the same way that the "middle class", the labor aristocracy, and the lumpenproletariat are all sections of the working class. In the same way that the service sector can be differentiated from the rest of the working class but does not actually become separate from the working class just based on the work taking on different characteristics than other work. The same logic that leads to cops not being workers could also be applied to show that sex workers are not workers, that doctors are not workers, and that social workers are not workers. This is nonsense - but in the case of cops, emotional interplay and the very real fear/hatred that comes from seeing cops act the way they do interferes with our logical processes. But the point is that just because certain sections of the proletariat may be more or less likely to be communists or anarchists does not mean that they stop being part of the proletariat. Pretty much everybody you see on a given day, in actuality, is a part of the working class.

And on the topic of "complementary issues", I'm the person who posted a link ITT to an article talking about how there is at least a twofold increase in domestic violence in the households of police officers when compared to the rest of the general population. According to it, as much as 40% of police households experience domestic violence. This is a very real difference and it helps us to develop an ideal type of the police officer if not as abusive than as abuse-prone in their relationships. This is, of course, completely in line with an understanding of the police as ignorant, often stupid reactionaries who have a hard time controlling their emotional reactions. Which, when presented with a young black male, means that they are likely to act in ways that showcase their not-always-conscious prejudices. And that's exactly what happens. They're not malevolent; they have good intentions but they're products of our society in the same way that you and I are. You would have a much harder time killing a baby than killing a police officer, and yet both are fundamentally the same. This disconnect - this dehumanization of the police - is not just ignorant, but it contributes to (as I said before) a dumbing down of the discourse. It is what is responsible for the "ACAB" position which I also find extremely problematic.

[Thirsty Crow]

The point isn't to obfuscate differences but rather to explain them more perfectly; my position is that the police are a section of the working class in the same way that the "middle class", the labor aristocracy, and the lumpenproletariat are all sections of the working class.

Okay, I definitely think that this is necessary. Though, in effect you do seem to be obfuscating how things stand:


In the same way that the service sector can be differentiated from the rest of the working class but does not actually become separate from the working class just based on the work taking on different characteristics than other work.

This is hugely problematic, and a really strained analogy. In fact, the analogy doesn't work at all, at least not how you would want it to work.

The crucial difference between either the service sector labor or industrial labor, on one hand, and policing on the other is...well, the policing, which sees nominal proletarians actively engaged in disciplinary and repressive activity which is almost always also highly ideologically charged.

The differentiation of the service sector has historically been based on numerous phenomena, and has also served as a kind of a myth, but it definitely wasn't conceived of along lines I sketched above.


The same logic that leads to cops not being workers could also be applied to show that sex workers are not workers, that doctors are not workers, and that social workers are not workers.

It could, but we wouldn't want to argue from a fallacy, would we? The fallacy being appeal to consequences.

Anyway, there is the significant difference I already sketched - cops are directly involved in the most naked form of disciplining the working class. The same cannot be said about sex workers at all (I think you're actually wrong on this count), and the situation with doctors and social workers is a bit more complex, though neither here there is this problem of discipline and repression. Although the point you bring up is valid, I think it is fairly easy to avoid such incorrect reasoning about the three groups you mention. And what you imply about the "logic" itself is misguided.

Anyway, you seem to be skirting the issue I pose. I'm not claiming that cops are a part of the working class, but then again I'm not claiming the opposite. What I am claiming is that any such classification is based on a bare procedure of determining the relationship to the means of production; but this is only the first step, and yeah here we are dealing with such dispossession and sale of labor power. The second step (or third, fourth in a more detailed analysis) is to focus on the prospects for developing revolutionary activity among this stratum.



They're not malevolent; they have good intentions but they're products of our society in the same way that you and I are.I don't think intentions are in any way important. Anyway, I'm also having a hard time seeing just how you could possibly know that not one cop is malevolent.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The point isn't to obfuscate differences but rather to explain them more perfectly; my position is that the police are a section of the working class in the same way that the "middle class", the labor aristocracy, and the lumpenproletariat are all sections of the working class. In the same way that the service sector can be differentiated from the rest of the working class but does not actually become separate from the working class just based on the work taking on different characteristics than other work.

See, the thing is, the distinctions between the lumpen-proletariat, proletariat proper, and labour aristocracy aren't the same as the distinction between the service sector and other work. In fact, each set of distinctions is specific, and simply saying, "Well, they're all workers!" leads to politically nonsensical conclusions.
Police (and the labour aristocracy) have objectively different sets of short-term interests from the proletariat. They benefit in incredibly clear material terms from imperialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Not only do they benefit in a passive way, but they are organized specifically to sustain these relations and intervene in struggle to defend their own interests.
This is pretty distinctly not the distinction between working in a grocery store and sewing shoes.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The point isn't to obfuscate differences but rather to explain them more perfectly; my position is that the police are a section of the working class in the same way that the "middle class", the labor aristocracy, and the lumpenproletariat are all sections of the working class.

The "middle class" are a section of the working class.

Oh dear.


In the same way that the service sector can be differentiated from the rest of the working class but does not actually become separate from the working class just based on the work taking on different characteristics than other work.

Because the service sector is still a sector of capitalist commodity production.


The same logic that leads to cops not being workers could also be applied to show that sex workers are not workers, that doctors are not workers, and that social workers are not workers.

Sex workers, some of them at least, sell their labour-power and produce commodities. So those sex workers that are not petit-bourgeois are indeed proletarian. Doctors and social workers are not. I don't think that's controversial.

[Thirsty Crow]

The "middle class" are a section of the working class.

Oh dear.


The concept probably refers to a particular stratum of the working class - better educated, office work, and so on, and not strictly to mid-tier management and management in general.


Sex workers, some of them at least, sell their labour-power and produce commodities. So those sex workers that are not petit-bourgeois are indeed proletarian. Doctors and social workers are not. I don't think that's controversial.
You seem to be riding the wave of the distinction between productive and non-productive labor (better named reproductive labor - in the sense of broader social reproduction), and in a really bad way since you seem to opine that it is not controversial to state that social workers' aren't proletarian. But it surely is. And even more problematically, such use of this distinction, without further specifications, commits you to conclude that hospital cleaners for instance aren't proletarian as well.

Either that or you're implicitly making a distinction between proletarians and workers. That distinction ought to be made explicit.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The concept probably refers to a particular stratum of the working class - better educated, office work, and so on, and not strictly to mid-tier management and management in general.

Possibly, but to be honest I've never heard the term "middle class" being used by ostensible leftists for anything but the petite bourgeoisie, "foremen and overseers" and similar middle (middling?) strata.


You seem to be riding the wave of the distinction between productive and non-productive labor (better named reproductive labor - in the sense of broader social reproduction), and in a really bad way since you seem to opine that it is not controversial to state that social workers' aren't proletarian. But it surely is.

No, I don't think so. One can be non-productive and still participate in commodity production as a dispossessed direct producer, even when this is obscured by ideological assumptions. Indeed I mentioned housewives earlier. But social workers are also street-level enforcers of bourgeois rule, although not to the extent that police is. What is the difference between a social and a parole officer, for example? To me it seems that there is little difference as far as their class position is concerned.


Either that or you're implicitly making a distinction between proletarians and workers. That distinction ought to be made explicit.

Yes, I would say there is a distinction. A proletarian is a particular kind of worker. "Worker" encompasses a lot of things, from semi-proletarian Third-World toilers to prison guards etc.

[Thirsty Crow]

Going ever more off topic, but hey


Possibly, but to be honest I've never heard the term "middle class" being used by ostensible leftists for anything but the petite bourgeoisie, "foremen and overseers" and similar middle (middling?) strata.You have a point, but political discussion in the US is saturated with the term so no wonder some users make use of it (it really depends on how they use it).


No, I don't think so. One can be non-productive and still participate in commodity production as a dispossessed direct producer, even when this is obscured by ideological assumptions. Indeed I mentioned housewives earlier. But social workers are also street-level enforcers of bourgeois rule, although not to the extent that police is. What is the difference between a social and a parole officer, for example? To me it seems that there is little difference as far as their class position is concerned.
Well, this is that "further specification" no doubt.

The problems here are: social workers are hardly "street level" enforcers if this expression is used as it is when referring to cops. It's also clear that parole officers are a particular group (for instance, would you refer to a social worker employed at the center for aiding people with disabilities as a street level enforcer of bourgeois rule?) among a, well, a particular group.



Yes, I would say there is a distinction. A proletarian is a particular kind of worker. "Worker" encompasses a lot of things, from semi-proletarian Third-World toilers to prison guards etc.
Particularity of kind is mere empty words when it is only asserted and not explained and elaborated upon.

The purpose of the example provided is to highlight the not-so-straightforward character of social work. A fact you didn't acknowledge in the initial assessment, and neither in further elaboration.

[consuming negativity]

Okay, I definitely think that this is necessary. Though, in effect you do seem to be obfuscating how things stand:

This is hugely problematic, and a really strained analogy. In fact, the analogy doesn't work at all, at least not how you would want it to work.

The crucial difference between either the service sector labor or industrial labor, on one hand, and policing on the other is...well, the policing, which sees nominal proletarians actively engaged in disciplinary and repressive activity which is almost always also highly ideologically charged.

The differentiation of the service sector has historically been based on numerous phenomena, and has also served as a kind of a myth, but it definitely wasn't conceived of along lines I sketched above.

It could, but we wouldn't want to argue from a fallacy, would we? The fallacy being appeal to consequences.

Anyway, there is the significant difference I already sketched - cops are directly involved in the most naked form of disciplining the working class. The same cannot be said about sex workers at all (I think you're actually wrong on this count), and the situation with doctors and social workers is a bit more complex, though neither here there is this problem of discipline and repression. Although the point you bring up is valid, I think it is fairly easy to avoid such incorrect reasoning about the three groups you mention. And what you imply about the "logic" itself is misguided.

Anyway, you seem to be skirting the issue I pose. I'm not claiming that cops are a part of the working class, but then again I'm not claiming the opposite. What I am claiming is that any such classification is based on a bare procedure of determining the relationship to the means of production; but this is only the first step, and yeah here we are dealing with such dispossession and sale of labor power. The second step (or third, fourth in a more detailed analysis) is to focus on the prospects for developing revolutionary activity among this stratum.

I don't think intentions are in any way important. Anyway, I'm also having a hard time seeing just how you could possibly know that not one cop is malevolent.

I don't think anyone is malevolent.

I'm not sure how I am skirting any issues; I don't see how it is possible to focus on steps 2-4 without figuring out step 1. That is, I don't understand how you expect to determine the revolutionary prospects of the police without determining their class character. You said that you're not claiming that police are proletarians, but that you're also not claiming the opposite (ie. that they are bourgeoisie). Well, they've got to be one or the other as the most basic level. They either own the means of production or they do not. They sell their labor or they don't. It's only after we determine that they are proletarians that we, as you said, can get into steps 2-4 which are determining how they relate to other sections of the working class.

And yes, I'm aware that the distinction between service sector labor and manual labor is not the same sort of distinction as between the lumpenproletariat, the middle class, and the labor aristocracy. I was just trying to make the point more than once that being able to distinguish between sections of the proletariat based on X or Y or Z does not change their class character.


See, the thing is, the distinctions between the lumpen-proletariat, proletariat proper, and labour aristocracy aren't the same as the distinction between the service sector and other work. In fact, each set of distinctions is specific, and simply saying, "Well, they're all workers!" leads to politically nonsensical conclusions.
Police (and the labour aristocracy) have objectively different sets of short-term interests from the proletariat. They benefit in incredibly clear material terms from imperialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Not only do they benefit in a passive way, but they are organized specifically to sustain these relations and intervene in struggle to defend their own interests.
This is pretty distinctly not the distinction between working in a grocery store and sewing shoes.


I already addressed the first paragraph of this in the very last paragraph of my response to LinksRadical.

To continue from there, I disagree that there are objective, fundamental differences in the short-term interests of the police and the rest of the proletariat. The only difference is in the degree of abstraction, which you codify as either "direct" or "indirect". But just because you can make a distinction doesn't mean that it is a meaningful one in terms of class analysis. Yeah, sure, the fact that cops are employed to quell riots and keep order and everything puts them in direct opposition to workers who are acting purely in their own interests by striking, rioting, etc. And what this means for our purposes is that class-conscious proletarians are less likely to choose to be police among their bad options, that the police as an organization are reactionary in comparison to the rest of the population, and that the police are less likely than other sections of the working class to support the long-term goals of the working class in their political or economic actions. But correlation is not causation, and the fact that it is more direct does not make it a guaranteed thing one way or another. There are plenty of rank-and-file workers who are straight up reactionary fuckwits who would never support unions or striking. In fact, the majority of society's reactionaries are members of the working class; the majority of the working class are reactionaries even though they are not police or foremen who have direct and immediate interest served by purposefully fucking over other workers as part of their job description. And there are people like Kropotkin or Engels who were incredibly wealthy and privileged but whom were on our side of the fence. How can any position except for mine - the position of acknowledging reality - explain this incongruence? It is a good thing that they existed, too, or else I'd also have to sit here and argue that being a member of the bourgeoisie does not make one an idiotic-but-superintelligent chaotic evil comic book villain.

[consuming negativity]

The concept probably refers to a particular stratum of the working class - better educated, office work, and so on, and not strictly to mid-tier management and management in general.

yep

i speak assuming that people will give me the benefit of the doubt that i know what the term "bourgeoisie" means and that i'm using the colloquial terminology used to differentiate between 'blue collar' and 'white collar' sections of the skilled working class.

i mean, shit - why do you think i kept putting it in quotes? <_<

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Well, this is that "further specification" no doubt.

The problems here are: social workers are hardly "street level" enforcers if this expression is used as it is when referring to cops. It's also clear that parole officers are a particular group (for instance, would you refer to a social worker employed at the center for aiding people with disabilities as a street level enforcer of bourgeois rule?) among a, well, a particular group.

I think social workers are just as much on the "street level" as policemen, but the nature of their enforcement (it's late, and there's probably a better way to formulate that, but I think you know what I mean) differs, as I said previously. Of course, we are not opposed to helping people with disabilities. But that is not the only thing social workers in these centres do, and arguably it's not the main thing they do either. Certainly an important part of their job is rationing out welfare and other social assistance money, and in that aspect of their jobs, they prevent a net "drain" on the bourgeois state, guided by the logic of the market as they are.


Particularity of kind is mere empty words when it is only asserted and not explained and elaborated upon.

No, I don't think it's empty words. It denotes that proletarians are a subset of workers (and there are proletarians that are not generally conceived of as workers). I think the examples should have illustrated what I was talking about; semi-proletarian toilers are tied to the backward economic forms of semi-colonial regions, often superficially resembling slaves or serfs of some form, prison guards are a particular subspecies of the genus cop.

[Thirsty Crow]

I think social workers are just as much on the "street level" as policemen, but the nature of their enforcement (it's late, and there's probably a better way to formulate that, but I think you know what I mean) differs, as I said previously. Of course, we are not opposed to helping people with disabilities. But that is not the only thing social workers in these centres do, and arguably it's not the main thing they do either. Certainly an important part of their job is rationing out welfare and other social assistance money, and in that aspect of their jobs, they prevent a net "drain" on the bourgeois state, guided by the logic of the market as they are.
I can't say anything else than what I stated before - you're not only overgeneralizing (thereby distorting real and important differences) but also willingly discounting facets of the activity in question. For what? A crude theoretical construct. And yes, in centers for work with people with disabilities, this is pretty much the only thing being done as I didn't mention the particular social centers as institutions responsible for social assistance funds (it's not that social workers only work at social care centers).

Even then it is completely ridiculous to assume social workers as a general category "prevent net drain on the bourgeois state" as this is the task of, in the first place, the relevant ministry and its apparatus, the government in general and to some extent the top management of said social care centers. If you think that what cops do and what social workers tasked with shuffling papers and taking care of assistance claims do is not significant enough for a different assessment, then it seems clear to me that you're favoring a hazy theoretical construct over a detailed account of real life activity of wage workers.

As a general point about the peculiar position of employees of state apparatuses and the need for more detailed and careful analysis, this might stand, but as such a generalization that also conflicts with that basic point of the relationship to the means of production (and to the means of social reproduction I might add), this doesn't make any sense and seems pretty much theoretically confused, if not arbitrary also.

My fundamental point though is that there are significant underlying causes for such confusion; the almost total insufficiency of classical Marxism with regard to particular problems of class analysis of state employees in particular, and to problems tied with the state in general.


No, I don't think it's empty words. It denotes that proletarians are a subset of workers (and there are proletarians that are not generally conceived of as workers). I think the examples should have illustrated what I was talking about; semi-proletarian toilers are tied to the backward economic forms of semi-colonial regions, often superficially resembling slaves or serfs of some form, prison guards are a particular subspecies of the genus cop.We're not talking about backward economic forms, but about the modern state apparatuses and the activity of their employees in light of the revolutionary prospects (if the working class is the only potentially revolutionary class today, it is worth examining said potential of the strata of this class).

Be that as it may, I think criteria need to be rigorously thought out and clearly, explicitly stated. Because examples of workers tied to backward economic forms illustrates nothing at all about state apparatus employees.

[BIXX]

Sure you are. You just inverted the dominant moral narrative of police as heros and turned them into demons and non-humans instead. Whatever a person might think of that "analysis" (and I don't think much of it), it's not a political one. It's visceral prolier-than-thou posturing and venting. 100% moralism with no real political content. Others here have mentioned edgy. I'm inclined to agree.

I'm anti-political, for one. So thank you for mentioning my lack of political analysis.

And yet you're wrong, I don't see the police as demons- I just hate them. And if one person tries to visit in with that "preferences are the same as morals crap" I probably will stab myself because no give up. Those conversations are ridiculously stupid.

[Sharia Lawn]

I'm anti-political, for one. So thank you for mentioning my lack of political analysis. You seem to be proud of it, as though it puts you above the fray. It doesn't. It means you aren't consciously applying sets of political principles or logic to the activities you discuss and engage in. This doesn't exempt those activities from the world of politics. It just gives them a bad politics, a politics that is inordinately shaped by the bourgeois assumptions that permeate our existing society, even if your positions are knee-jerk repudiations of them. You still can't be bothered to engage in the kind of critical political thinking that would allow you to step outside of their framework. Your views therefore perpetuate that framework and sustain it, even if through token opposition.
And yet you're wrong, I don't see the police as demons- I just hate them. And if one person tries to visit in with that "preferences are the same as morals crap" I probably will stab myself because no give up. Those conversations are ridiculously stupid. No, preferences aren't the same as morals. Expressing preferences ex nihilo is the same as moralizing, though, in that both are making arbitrary declarations without any grounding other people should care about.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I can't say anything else than what I stated before - you're not only overgeneralizing (thereby distorting real and important differences) but also willingly discounting facets of the activity in question. For what? A crude theoretical construct.

No, I don't think I am ignoring the difference between the police and social workers. At the same time, I think both are, in the end, part of the strata that enforce the rule of the bourgeoisie. Cops are the direct enforcers. Social workers are probably best characterised as indirect enforcers, along with detectives etc. But as for the charge of overgeneralising, considering the next few sentences:


And yes, in centers for work with people with disabilities, this is pretty much the only thing being done as I didn't mention the particular social centers as institutions responsible for social assistance funds (it's not that social workers only work at social care centers).

I wonder if we have the same thing in mind. Because, to me, a social worker is a case worker, someone who keeps the files on various "socially vulnerable" people, monitors their activities etc. It is quite possible that other workers in these centres are also called "social workers" - I can't say I've had the pleasure of working with them - in which case, I'm only talking about case workers. Hence my comparison to parole officers.


Even then it is completely ridiculous to assume social workers as a general category "prevent net drain on the bourgeois state" as this is the task of, in the first place, the relevant ministry and its apparatus, the government in general and to some extent the top management of said social care centers. If you think that what cops do and what social workers tasked with shuffling papers and taking care of assistance claims do is not significant enough for a different assessment, then it seems clear to me that you're favoring a hazy theoretical construct over a detailed account of real life activity of wage workers.

There is more than one way for the bourgeois state to save money. One way is to simply slash the budget of various government institutions, which is where the ministries and other central offices of the state come into play. But it is also possible for street-level bureaucrats to find (often very creative) ways to deny the eligibility of applicants for government assistance. I don't think this is a minor part of their work; in fact I would say that this is why the bourgeois state employs them. And as we've seen recently, in the UK, the state-appointed bureaucrats weren't doing this well enough, causing the government to throw a fit and outsource the job to a private company.

I do think that rejecting benefit claims is not the same thing as policing, but it is, I think, similar enough to warrant including them in the same cluster of strata. There are real differences and possibly contradictions between them, but I don't think these are of interest to socialists. There were contradictions between the police and the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Personal Chancellery as well.

Of course, nothing is simple in class society. There are jobs, which are proletarian or belong to the non-state sector of the middle strata (various professionals etc., which people seem to conflate with proletarians depressingly often), that contain some element of enforcement, from janitorial staff and night watchmen to doctors and nurses. This element of enforcement is not, I think, dominant enough in their work to justify placing them together with the police, but it is a real complicating factor.


As a general point about the peculiar position of employees of state apparatuses and the need for more detailed and careful analysis, this might stand, but as such a generalization that also conflicts with that basic point of the relationship to the means of production (and to the means of social reproduction I might add), this doesn't make any sense and seems pretty much theoretically confused, if not arbitrary also.

My fundamental point though is that there are significant underlying causes for such confusion; the almost total insufficiency of classical Marxism with regard to particular problems of class analysis of state employees in particular, and to problems tied with the state in general.

Well, "classical Marxism" is terribly vague, and to be honest I haven't seen the term used much. Obviously all of our analyses have developed from the time of Marx and Engels. I would say my view on these matters is informed by Trotsky, Canon and the debate concerning Cuba in the SWP just as much as by Marx and Engels. But I don't think that Marxism has a problem with the analysis of state employees, and if you think this is the case, I would be interest in knowing why.


We're not talking about backward economic forms, but about the modern state apparatuses and the activity of their employees in light of the revolutionary prospects (if the working class is the only potentially revolutionary class today, it is worth examining said potential of the strata of this class).

Be that as it may, I think criteria need to be rigorously thought out and clearly, explicitly stated. Because examples of workers tied to backward economic forms illustrates nothing at all about state apparatus employees.

I was making a far broader point, though. I mean, if you equate workers with proletarians, then, yes, cops are proletarians (this is where the alarms should start going off). So are toilers still tied to various feudal atavisms in the so-called Third World. So are ministers. Surely that makes no sense?

Proletarians are, I would say, a particular kind of workers, connected to wage work in capitalist commodity production. Many state employees are outside capitalist commodity production in a very real sense. This is, as I'm sure you'll note, a bit vague, but I think I would have to write an essay on the question to do it justice.

[BIXX]

You seem to be proud of it, as though it puts you above the fray. It doesn't. It means you aren't consciously applying sets of political principles or logic to the activities you discuss and engage in. This doesn't exempt those activities from the world of politics. It just gives them a bad politics, a politics that is inordinately shaped by the bourgeois assumptions that permeate our existing society, even if your positions are knee-jerk repudiations of them. You still can't be bothered to engage in the kind of critical political thinking that would allow you to step outside of their framework. Your views therefore perpetuate that framework and sustain it, even if through token opposition.
Wow, revleft is funny today, thank you.

When politics is in favour of the continuation of its society rather than its complete destruction, of course I'm not political. Society and civilized existence being opposed to my very existence and to the very existence of so many queers and free people I explicitly oppose politics, in favour of an explosive anti-politics, where we can say fuck the future, let's live now.

The fact is that I am outside of political framework, instead taking negation of all political narratives, including the leftist ones. Of course I'm not exempt from being analyzed by the trash that would see me be explicitly political, but that fails to put me under any sort of political narrative, only makes an attempt to understand me where none can be made.



No, preferences aren't the same as morals. Expressing preferences ex nihilo is the same as moralizing, though, in that both are making arbitrary declarations without any grounding other people should care about.

Except preferences don't claim you should care.

[Sharia Lawn]

Wow, revleft is funny today, thank you.

When politics is in favour of the continuation of its society rather than its complete destruction, of course I'm not political. Society and civilized existence being opposed to my very existence and to the very existence of so many queers and free people I explicitly oppose politics, in favour of an explosive anti-politics, where we can say fuck the future, let's live now.

The fact is that I am outside of political framework, instead taking negation of all political narratives, including the leftist ones. Of course I'm not exempt from being analyzed by the trash that would see me be explicitly political, but that fails to put me under any sort of political narrative, only makes an attempt to understand me where none can be made.
Subjectively opposing something, saying you oppose something, trying to oppose something is different than successfully thwarting something in reality. That is the difference I was pointing out in the previous post. You can say you aren't political, while making arguments that just sustain the status quo by failing to move outside the existing political framework. Whatever you might think of your supposed anti-politics, what you are doing is "political" in the sense that it has observable political consequences.
Except preferences don't claim you should care. If you don't care about what other people think, why are you here? The purpose of communication is either to inform or persuade others with a specific goal in mind.

[DAN E BOY]

My own opinion is i don't like to cheer for the death of these two cops, who probably weren't evil people. But than again it's there decision to put on the uniform of the establishment. A tough one.

[bricolage]

NYPD traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent following the execution of two cops — as officers feel betrayed by the mayor and fear for their safety, The Post has learned.
http://nypost.com/2014/12/29/arrests-plummet-following-execution-of-two-cops/

[Creative Destruction]

http://nypost.com/2014/12/29/arrests-plummet-following-execution-of-two-cops/

This seems like a good thing to me. I'd like to see citizen committees formed to take care of things like public urination (cleaning up the streets if need be) or whatever "low level offenses" need to be taken care of. Help out people who are publicly drunk and what not. But the sudden drop in the arrest rate only seems like a good thing generally, and I haven't heard NYC falling deep into chaos because of it. The cops might want to be careful, else they'll find that they're not really as useful as they claim to be.

[Loony Le Fist]

This seems like a good thing to me. I'd like to see citizen committees formed to take care of things like public urination (cleaning up the streets if need be) or whatever "low level offenses" need to be taken care of. Help out people who are publicly drunk and what not. But the sudden drop in the arrest rate only seems like a good thing generally, and I haven't heard NYC falling deep into chaos because of it. The cops might want to be careful, else they'll find that they're not really as useful as they claim to be.

Here's how you take care of public urination. You fucking put in public bathrooms so people can piss. Fuck! :laugh:

[Ocean Seal]

Come on guys, be real about it. This is just some asshole without any political motivation killing his girlfriend and 2 guys that happen to be policemen. Now police is gonna press this into some scheme to fit their idea of someone deliberately killing cops for political reasons. But enjoy your edgy police murder wet dreams, yawn.
And you enable this police lie when you disown the murder or reduce it to these simplified terms.



I'm pretty sure the murderer thought the same, like "I'm gonna be part of the revolution and kill the authorities of the bourgeoise, fuck yeah, fuck private property!"
I honestly doubt that. This guy had serious mental health issues. This guy killed his girlfriend for reasons that we don't care to understand. He also killed himself at the end of it, and didn't really purport a message that made him seem like a revleft faithful. He seemed like someone who rather than being a violence fetishist really felt that the police lacked care for black people, and had probably had a series of bad interactions with the police. I don't think he was thinking about private property, and how the police are a proxy oppressor for the capitalist class, but rather that this was most likely the expression of class anger.

[Rafiq]

"They" don't have a universal morality, they are individual people. The conflict has not yet escalated to the point in which the two sides are as clear cut as you suggest. The police are working class people tasked with enforcing social norms of behavior. They aren't the mindless slaves of the ruling class, that's ridiculous. Their faults are our faults, and our faults are their faults. We can't view the police as a separate entity completely apart from ourselves, that's a crude oversimplification of the entire situation. They are not our enemies, they are us.

By the way, "Communist" morality in practice doesn't have an especially good track record because it turns out that if you can think of one social group as your enemies, you can think of most other groups as your enemies as well, like religious people and anyone else who mildly disagrees with you.

They are individual people who together form real distinguishable relations to production. Or do you deny the existence of class all together? Are we all unique entrepreneurs after all? Logically - if one recognizes the existence of class, one must also recognize distinct forms of morality. But this isn't even the argument here - the point is that morality is different with regard to fundamental relationships of power. The morality of those who seek to preserve the existing order and those who seek to destroy it - is undoubtedly different. Indeed they do have a "universal form of morality" - these irrelevant personal niches of moral views don't really mean shit when push comes to shove, and any idiot who has a semblance of an understanding of any revolution knows this.

You clearly have absolutely no understanding of the nature of the existing struggle - or any struggle for that matter. So tiring this is - must I really demonstrate how your ideological predispositions - how the enemy for you could only be an enemy which self-identifies with your caricature of it is purely reflective of ideologically-festering ignorance and uncompromising faith in the legitimacy of ruling ideas? Who claims that the enemy is a "mindless drone". It is precisely the police in all their individual, unique complexity that makes us despise them. Especially with regard to the American situation with our gun-ho cowboys. And this goes for any enemy - the enemy is an enemy precisely because their existence is rational and explicable. If the existence of oppressors was irrational, if they were doing it just to be assholes, oppression would not exist. Any idiot must recognize that the enemy - the bourgeoisie even - is either not conscious of its reception among revolutionaries, or cares not for it. Are you a child? How can you not know this? Do you think that those we seek to destroy are comic book villains?

Oh, and spare me of your revolting and vomit inducing sentiment. As if everyday religious people are comparable to the clergy which festered in backwardness and parasitically thrived off of the ignorance of the exploited classes. It takes a bourgeois ideologue to identify the suppression of the former exploiters with the "everyday man". Because at the end of the day, this is how they view our condition: There are no exploiters or exploited, merely everyday men and women, equal entrepreneurs playing the game of life. Drivel! You are ignorant of the fundamental condition of oppression. Go on, prattle to me of how the enemy is only someone whose story we haven't heard - tell this to the millions who toil, degrade in misery and slavery while a handful indulge in gross luxury and filth, completely shameless and unafraid of potential revolutionary justice with scum liberals casting intellectual shields in the name of a weak, worthless and dishonest petty sentiment which recognizes the sanctity of "individual life" so long as we do not challenge the fact that those who oppose this state of affairs are no longer individuals. To add insult to infinite injury, the guardians of this condition, the heroic and gallant police, abuse, murder and terrorize with impunity. Go on and tell me how the vengeance of the damned disgusts you so, you fucking worm.

Yes the situation is clear cut, the revolutionary movement is not some gross ideological imposition on conditions of harmony, it is the disciplined and codified struggle of the already existing exploited against the exploiters. The absence of the revolutionary movement does not invalidate the existence of the conditions of oppression! Fuck off with your disgusting liberal narratives - we don't have a good track record in the eyes of bourgeois ideologues and we are proud of it. All radicals hail the heroic efforts of the Communists in rooting out the reaction, and the remnants of the previous order. We 'think' of no one as our enemies - the enemy exists whether we decide to think of them or not. This struggle is not some kind of intellectual abstraction - it is real. The more you understand that the enemy is not as neutral or passive as you perceive them, that the ruling classes must actively dominate and oppress the exploited classes - the more you will understand, mark my words. When you understand this, you will be horrified and shocked at the utter predispositions to restraint of previous revolutionary movements.

[Lily Briscoe]

This seems like a good thing to me. I'd like to see citizen committees formed to take care of things like public urination (cleaning up the streets if need be) or whatever "low level offenses" need to be taken care of. Help out people who are publicly drunk and what not. But the sudden drop in the arrest rate only seems like a good thing generally, and I haven't heard NYC falling deep into chaos because of it. The cops might want to be careful, else they'll find that they're not really as useful as they claim to be.It's important to look at what's happening in context. From the blurb that 'bricolage' posted, you could get the impression that this shooting has put fear in the hearts of law enforcement to such an extent that they're now afraid to do their jobs, which is of course how the police are trying to spin it. That isn't what's happening, though. They're doing this to make a statement, to put pressure on the mayor for not being (as they perceive it) hardline enough.


...this was most likely the expression of class anger.
I think it's ridiculous to characterize this guy's actions in those terms. 'Class anger' to me implies a spontaneous expression of anger by masses of working class people, e.g. the rioting in Ferguson, not some random individual who flew off the handle. But I guess a guy putting a bullet in his girlfriend is "class anger" now.

[Creative Destruction]

It's important to look at what's happening in context. From the blurb that 'bricolage' posted, you could get the impression that this shooting has put fear in the hearts of law enforcement to such an extent that they're now afraid to do their jobs, which is of course how the police are trying to spin it. That isn't what's happening, though. They're doing this to make a statement, to put pressure on the mayor for not being (as they perceive it) hardline enough..

I understand that, but that doesn't have anything to do with what I posted.

[consuming negativity]

This seems like a good thing to me. I'd like to see citizen committees formed to take care of things like public urination (cleaning up the streets if need be) or whatever "low level offenses" need to be taken care of. Help out people who are publicly drunk and what not. But the sudden drop in the arrest rate only seems like a good thing generally, and I haven't heard NYC falling deep into chaos because of it. The cops might want to be careful, else they'll find that they're not really as useful as they claim to be.

the cops are basically on strike. and as a result they're depriving the government of millions of dollars in unnecessary fines... while at the same time proving how unnecessary over 90% of what they do actually is and making people's lives actually better

merry fucking christmas NYPD, you blue-suited pig bastards you