Police

[Yung Trev]

Hello, I have had this question on my mind for a while. What happens to the police in a communist society (or even a socialist one)? I mean people are still gonna do bad things so what do we do as a society for these people? I am just curious and I am not trying to start a tendency war just curious.

[Comrade #138672]

Define "bad".

[Exterminatus]

In communist society there will be no need for police, as it's main function - defending the interests of capital - will be rendered obsolete. People won't do "bad things" because bad things are result of capitalism and it's destructive impact on human mind. We will create a society embedded with values of solidarity and universal love of humanity, forged through the fires of revolution.

[Tim Cornelis]

In communist society there will be no need for police, as it's main function - defending the interests of capital - will be rendered obsolete. People won't do "bad things" because bad things are result of capitalism and it's destructive impact on human mind. We will create a society embedded with values of solidarity and universal love of humanity, forged through the fires of revolution.

This sounds like a right-winger with a more than superficial understanding of communism explaining his view on the communist view of crime and law. It's overly reductionistic (and optimistic).

Also, its*

[Vee]

In communist society there will be no need for police, as it's main function - defending the interests of capital - will be rendered obsolete. People won't do "bad things" because bad things are result of capitalism and it's destructive impact on human mind. We will create a society embedded with values of solidarity and universal love of humanity, forged through the fires of revolution.
i believe he means "bad things" caused by mental illness. by destroying capitalism we can't just expect all other problems to go away at first.

[Comrade #138672]

So a definition of "bad" would he useful. It could also mean "criminal", which again begs the question of what constitutes as "criminal" (we cannot just use the definition of "crime" created by bourgeois society).

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

So a definition of "bad" would he useful. It could also mean "criminal", which again begs the question of what constitutes as "criminal" (we cannot just use the definition of "crime" created by bourgeois society).

I would define it as an act which oppresses or exploits another person, such as murder, rape, kidnapping or some kind of unwarranted assault. As long as such acts exist, there will be a demand to prevent such acts. However, a socialist society would presumably reduce the occurrence of behavior like this over time.

[BIXX]

No police for any reason ever. Fuck anyone who has even an inkling of a though that they get to control me.

[odysseus]

Well, police serve the interests of the state. State serves the interests of capitalists. In world w/o capitalists, i.e communist society, what would a group of people do to keep the law and order that a communist society would create. I would assume that in a communist society since the workers are now in power, they keep they surplus they produce, the police would be beholden to them for their livelihoods since police don't produce a surplus themselves. Just like now, where capitalists get the surplus workers produce and the police serve their interests.

[BIXX]

But why even have police?

[odysseus]

But why even have police?

I doubt there would be a need to have the size of police we have now in the US, but if there is a crime committed not related to how production shapes our world, i.e a mentally ill person does something despite societies best attempts to help, or you really want to arrest those damn capitalists you overthrew, or etc., then you'd want a person who has expertise in policing. And another point, I think policing would become a much, much kinder practice than we are used to now a days, and naturally so would prison. I'd bet prison becomes even better than what Norway has got right now.

[BIXX]

So, OK, tell me what crimes would be considered "applicable"?

[mutualaid]

i think horizontal organizations of authority would exist in a stateless, classless society; we would still want educators, for example. But because class inequality is the cause of crime in our culture, it's really impossible to say what any kind of authority would look like if all class divisions were erased, our entire conception of ethics would have to change.

[Emmett Till]

I doubt there would be a need to have the size of police we have now in the US, but if there is a crime committed not related to how production shapes our world, i.e a mentally ill person does something despite societies best attempts to help, or you really want to arrest those damn capitalists you overthrew, or etc., then you'd want a person who has expertise in policing. And another point, I think policing would become a much, much kinder practice than we are used to now a days, and naturally so would prison. I'd bet prison becomes even better than what Norway has got right now.

Almost the first thing the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 did was fire all police without exception, and release all prisoners without exception from jail, except for the Tsarist royal family and a handful of other reactionaries jailed under Kerensky. idea being that prisoners who had been warped under capitalist society should get a fair opportunity to reform under a non-capitalist society. And with many, this worked.

Of course, it didn't work with all of them, generating problems, especially when some former prisoners baptised themselves as "anarchists," formed alleged "anarchist communes," and went back to their old ways under the black flag. But that's another story...

This is what Lenin had to say about what to do aboutcrime in the future communist society.

"Lastly, only communism makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressed--“nobody” in the sense of a class, of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population. We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. In the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this: this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to "wither away". We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know they will wither away. With their withering away the state will also wither away."

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm#s2