Open letter to Marxist.com: Can Marxists be friends with the police?

[Wladek Flakin]

Dear comrades of Marxist.com:

I was shocked to read your report of the anti-racist protests in Cologne last weekend (marxist.com/anti-islamic-congress-stopped.htm). We are used to you referring to all left-wing groups besides yourselves as "sects", "ultra-lefts", "on the sidelines of the workers' movement" etc. In Germany, this arrogance is particularly amusing, given that your section can't mobilize more than a dozen people.

But this particular article is much worse than usual. It says towards the end: "The police union itself, in this traditionally cosmopolitan and hospitable city, is taking part in the anti-fascist demonstration with green Police Union banners a few hundred metres away at the main demo but a few dozen crazy ultra-lefts have been attacking the police as if they were the enemy!"

We can imagine a Social-Democrat smiling to himself: "Thank God the police were able to take care of those awful racists!" But self-proclaimed Marxists like yourselves should at least be able to confront the facts: the reason that the racists' congress and rally couldn't take place was that thousands of young, left-wing demonstrators blockaded all the access routes, from the airport, along the river and within the city center. You mention these blockades (and then only in relation to the airport) with one short sentence at the end of the article. Otherwise, a reader could think it was the "cosmopolitan" police union and the "hospitable" conservative party who prevented the racists from meeting!

These successful blockades were illegal. The organizers were denounced in the bourgeois press as "anarchist hooligans" (and on your web site as "crazy ultra-lefts") and in numerous cases, the blockades were carried out against the resistance of the police. More than five hundred demonstrators were arrested and locked in cages by the employees of the capitalist state's repressive apparatus. But according to you, these "thugs in uniform" weren't the enemy. Perhaps they were friends? I can't help imagine a reader of Marxist.com in Cologne being dragged off by police, calling out "But wait! We're on the same side! We're friends!"

The ironic thing is that many of the young militants who were supporting the blockades and fighting the police (and there were thousands of them, not dozens!) were themselves members of the trade unions' or Left Party's youth organizations. In your fear of "ultra-leftism", you are positioning yourselves to the right of the more advanced sectors of the reformist organizations!

A Social-Democrat might be shocked to see the "democratic police", whose union officially opposed the racists' congress, using such violence against peaceful demonstrators. But we, as Marxists, have absorbed the theories of Marx and Engels, so clearly presented by Lenin, on this question: that the state's repressive organs, including the police, are fundamentally "special groups of armed men" who defend the dominant property relations. They are not "workers in uniform" (as "Militant" used to say). They are not "friends". They are servants of the capitalists and enemies of the workers, whose must break up the police in order to accomplish their historic goal of abolishing private property of the means of production.

Now, no one is questioning your right to be naive on the question of the police - as Marxists, we defend the democratic right to just about any kind of idiocy, political or religious, as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others. But we simply can't accept your choice of a pseudonym for the article's author: Walter Held was not a Marxist.com correspondent but a German Trotskyist in the 1930s and a youth leader of the Fourth International and its forerunners who was murdered by the Stalinist secret service in 1941. He is one of countless militants who sacrificed their lives to build up the Fourth International as a world party which would oppose the Second and Third Internationals' collapse into reformism, fight for workers' class independence against the reformists' class collaboration and dreams of a "democratic road to socialsim", and lead the struggle of the working class to seize power and smash the state. In short, it was an international that clearly understood Marx's and Lenin's explanations that the police were, in fact, the enemy - an enemy which must be smashed (routed, dissolved, eliminated) in the socialist revolution.

So comrades: Feel free to fill the internet with your reformist fantasies about your "friends" from the police supporting the workers movement in the struggle against racism and fascism. But keep your hands off comrade Walter Held!

red greetings,
Wladek Flakin, Berlin, from the independent youth organization REVOLUTION (onesolutionrevolution.org)

[Tower of Bebel]

petty ... sectarianism. What an awful language (http://www.marxist.com/anti-islamic-congress-stopped.html) the article in question is using!

And back in the city centre, a right-wing rally on the Heumarkt - Haymarket - which had only attracted a few dozen demonstrators has just been summarily forbidden by the police because of a threat to the safety of Cologne's citizens. The police union itself, in this traditionally cosmopolitan and hospitable city, is taking part in the anti-fascist demonstration with green Police Union banners a few hundred metres away at the main demo but a few dozen crazy ultra-lefts have been attacking the police as if they were the enemy!
The demo was forbidden because of a threat to the safety of Cologne's fascists! The police started to act when most fascists were already packing their bags (after noticing that even the police couldn't get them across the barriers put up by the so called ultra-lefts!

As the sun rose this morning on the city, tens of thousands of Cologne residents started to converge on the city centre to join a massive demonstration of protest at the presence of the Right in their hometown. All the main political parties, the churches, the trade unions, immigrant groups had all called for support for the demo. At present as I write this there are around 40,000 foregathered in protest.
The traditional parties ignored the blockades and organized a small festival right next to it. The blockades were held by the "ultra-lefts". When the police tried make way for the fascists the "ultra-lefts" effectively fought back!

By Walter Held in Cologne
Walter Opportunist or Coward suites him better than Held (German for hero).

[Wladek Flakin]

I got a response from the IMT


Dear comrade Wladek,

you seem to have paid more attention to one sentence of the article than the rest of it. By the way, it was just a report we received from a sympathiser and republished.

Our point is simply that there is no point in attacking the police at every opportunity, because otherwise we wouldn't be doing anything else (like some groups on the left actually do, particularly in your country and mine!). Of course the police is part of the bourgeois state apparatus, like the army. Nevertheless, no serious revolutionary (including the original Walter Held) would suggest to stage a revolution without trying to split the army and the police along class lines. The presence of the police union in the demonstration proves this point even more. You are probably aware that the Bolsheviks split the Tsarist army, the Tsarist police and even the Cossacks. This of course does not mean that they were "friends of the police", but it's true that the ordinary policeman or soldier is a "worker in uniform" - which does not mean that he cannot be a Fascist himself... you know, there are also Fascist workers.

In the rest of the article, we never criticise the ultra-left "sects"; actually in the article you can find the following line: "The unions, the SPD and the Left together with most of the ultra-left groups and others have done a tremendous job in organising the resistance"! We have praised the role of all the left-wing groups, including the sects, criticising only those tactics that create a contradiction with the mass character of the mobilisation (of course, you cannot expect to drag tens of thousands into petty clashes with the police). If the police attacks a mass demonstration like in Genoa 2001, we are obviously in favour of self-defence but this is something different than promoting showdowns at the fringe of a mass movement.

Whoever has any experience in political activity and particularly anti-Fascist demonstrations knows what I mean. Nevertheless, we are against the jailing of any anti-Fascist demonstrator, whatever their conduct was. We are aware that several of these young courageous comrades are trying to do their best to oppose Fascism and racism; but this is just not the way, not for moral but for practical reasons: you cannot seriously believe that you can be stronger than the state machine on a purely military field. Hundreds of good militants are lost every day in the world in impotent clashes with the military arm of the bourgeois state, whereas they should better channel their effort towards the mass movement.

Of course, each concrete case must be analysed with a pragmatical approach, that seems to be lacking in your email. Thank you in any case and best regards. Comradely greetings.

[Wladek Flakin]

And wrote this response:


Dear comrade Mauro:

Thank you for your reply. You put me in a difficult position with your comradely response to my polemical letter. I'll do my best to adopt your tone.

Firstly, I think you need to be careful to make it clear when you publish contributions that do not represent the views of your members, leadership, editorial board, etc.

Secondly, I must again object to the article's claim that the racists' congress was stopped by the boring rallies of bourgeois parties, the "public relations antifascism" of hotel owners, and the "cosmopolitan behaviour" of police, with only a small mention of the blockades. As one reporter wrote (in German): "The rally by 'Pro Köln' was banned in the late afternoon. Not because the police discovered their antifascist convictions, but because up to 10,000 blockaders forced them to." Further: "The positive reactions by the bourgeois press to this [ban] give the impression that they want to grant this success to Mayor Schramma – and not to the radical left." (de.indymedia.org/2008/09/227827.shtml)

I disagree with your views on how to deal with police in a workers' revolution (more on that in a second), but the question of "splitting the police along class lines" is simply not mentioned in the article. The article claims that the radical left, the trade unions, the conservative party and even the police all worked together to block the racists. That is precisely what the bourgeois papers have been saying – and it's simply not true!

If you read my letter, you'll see that I am in no way arguing to "attack the police at every opportunity". The organization in which I am a member consistently argues that violence is only useful within the framework of a strategy based on mass action. At anti-fascist protests, we reject both the reformists' voluntary helplessness and the anarchists' aimless destructiveness – we try to draw the masses into direct struggles against the fascists and the state that protects them. This is why we supported the mass blockades which were successful in Cologne (and also in Heiligendamm the year before), and not the church-sponsored rallies several blocks away!

Thirdly, I'm aware how the Bolsheviks split the tsarist army, which was made up of millions of peasants' sons, and won the majority of the soldiers for the revolution. But I'm not aware that the Bolsheviks split the police. Trotsky, in his "History of the Russian Revolution", claims the opposite, namely that no part of the police was won for the revolution and that the police apparatus had to be smashed in its entirety:


Throughout the entire day, crowds of people poured from one part of the city to another. They were persistently dispelled by the police, stopped and crowded back by cavalry detachments and occasionally by infantry. Along with shouts of “Down with the police!” was heard oftener and oftener a “Hurrah!” addressed to the Cossacks. That was significant. Toward the police the crowd showed ferocious hatred. They routed the mounted police with whistles, stones, and pieces of ice. In a totally different way the workers approached the soldiers. Around the barracks, sentinels, patrols and lines of soldiers stood groups of working men and women exchanging friendly words with the army men. This was a new stage, due to the growth of the strike and the personal meeting of the worker with the army. Such a stage is inevitable in every revolution. But it always seems new, and does in fact occur differently every time: those who have read and written about it do not recognise the thing when they see it.


Soon the police disappear altogether – that is, begin to act secretly. Then the soldiers appear “bayonets lowered. Anxiously the workers ask them: “Comrades, you haven’t come to help the police?” A rude “Move along!” for answer. Another attempt ends the same way. The soldiers are sullen. A worm is gnawing them, and they cannot stand it when a question hits the very centre of the pain. Meanwhile disarmament of the Pharaohs becomes a universal slogan. The police are fierce, implacable, hated and hating foes. To win them over is out of the question. Beat them up and kill them. It is different with the soldiers: the crowd makes every effort to avoid hostile encounters with them; on the contrary, seeks ways to dispose them in its favour, convince, attract, fraternise, merge them in itself.

(Both passages from History of the Russian Revolution, Chapter 7, marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch07.htm)

So how does Trotsky suggest dealing with the police? "To win them over is out of the question. Beat them up and kill them." Then again, Trotsky was a well-known ultra-left sectarian! :-)

That you should mention the German police union as an example of "splitting the police along class lines" is particularly instructive. You will be aware that the GdP is the most right-wing "union" in Germany. It is closely linked to the Conservative Party and its demands include better weapons for police officers, less citizens' control over their actions and more racist laws against "criminal foreigners". These reactionary demands are not just a question of a bad "union" leadership: They reflect the fact that the police, as part of the repressive apparatus, have interests which are directly opposed to the interests of the workers' movement!

In conclusion, we both agree that Marxists are opposed to isolated and essentially hopeless actions by small groups against the state. But I hope we also both agree that Marxists should support advanced sectors of the masses when they fight against the ruling class and its institutions, even if their actions aren't well thought-out, even if we have to be critical about the details. (Say, for example, a group of factory workers out on strike beat up the factory owner - we might offer some small criticism about the tactics necessary for winning the strike, but we'd defend the action, right?). In my opinion, the blockades in Cologne represent the latter, and you seem to think it represents the former.

red greetings,
WLADEK

[Wanted Man]

Typical. They also withheld solidarity at the anti-G8 actions in Rostock. In that case, the Left Party's line was also more radical than the IMT's. It's a sad joke. Why waste time on these nuts? I'm glad they don't exist in my country.

(Rostock discussion with hilarious intervention from American IMT-er: http://www.revleft.com/vb/rostock-g8-demonstrations-t60780/index2.html?highlight=rostock)

[Wladek Flakin]

If you go back just a few years further, you'll find leaders of "Militant" in Britain (a part of which became the IMT) after the Poll Tax Riot of 1990 blaming the violence not on police but on anarchists, and saying they would name names to the state.

Like I wrote in my letter, we don't have more than half a dozen IMTlers in my country either.

[Wanted Man]

Edit: First of all, why is this article only on the English page of marxist.com? Why not on the German version, or on 'der Funke', the website of the German IMT branch?

Yeah, that tidbit came up in similar discussions in the past, here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/trotskyist-parties-t45874/index2.html) for example. But it's kind of hard to discuss with people who have never known anything but their own group's rewrite of history.

Anyway, that they end up taking positions like this is no surprise. They are basically trying to perpetuate the bourgeois political system by reinforcing its 'workers' social-democratic faction. The joke's on them, because they actually think that this somehow paves the way for a revolution, by 'radicalising' the social-democrats and making a revolutionary split from them at the right time. But of course, entryism is a two-way street, and the reformists within the social-democrats are always bigger and stronger. They want to infuse the soc-dems with revolutionary ideology, but instead they are infused with reformist thought. So strongly, in fact, that they come out to the right of the soc-dems by taking an even more conservative position in mass protests like the anti-G8 or anti-fascism.

I mean, seriously. To think that we have the police, the SPD, the CDU and other bourgeois forces to thank for the prevention of pro-Köln. Fucking hell.

[Wladek Flakin]

Response to edit: I think there's a good reason the IMT's report wasn't published in German, since it's easier to sell this reformist's fairy tail to people who can't get much alternative information about the protests.

But here it is again, in a report of a rally in New York:


Once again, the crowd moved to spontaneously march through downtown. I think it is important to point out that there were no problems with the police and that they were actually quite helpful in "clearing the way" for the march. Due to the size of the NYPD and the relative ease it is to become a cop in New York, many average cops seem to be more sympathetic towards these types of things.
(socialistappeal.org/content/view/618/65/)

You start to wonder if the IMT knows of any examples of police being unhelpful to progessive protests?

[redSHARP]

i think the NYPD are alright when it comes to protests. i fact there were alligations thrown at them that when the Klan was in town the last time (middle 90's) the police "arrested" violent protesters and took them around the corner and let them go with a smile. but in general cops are there for the statis quo and nothing else.

[bcbm]

i think the NYPD are alright when it comes to protests.

Yeah, totally.

3YnM8-gwy28

[Holden Caulfield]

^the people united should de-arrest the victims of such actions such massive fear of the police soons melts away when the people are mobilized with one goal,

i dont like to post such comments but that copper needs lynched,

[bolchevique]

In the Spanish Civil War in certain partof the country the revoutionaries were able to win the support of civil guard which was the most facist organization in spain , there are pictures of the civil guards fighting together with the militias in the barricades. Last year there was a demonstration of civil guards in unofrm and with fist, and a minority of these union is closer to the comunist and the leader himself in Málaga considers himself a comunist, surprisingly, but I agree the number of facists is higher, but the majority are neutral only worry about getting a better salary that's why the majority support the unionand the facist are agains the union