The police - a challenge for Marxism
Jul 24 2007 20:54
I've brought this up several times in the past, and I will again, until I'm given a satisfactory answer:
How is it that people, who sell their labor power for relatively low wages, who do not have hiring/firing power, and who do not usually derive an income from capital, nontheless consistently maintain, uphold and reproduce a consciousness that is almost diametrically opposed to working-class consciousness? I am talking, of course, about police officers.
This is an important issue, in my opinion, since I see police officers as a kind of extreme case of what is true for many workers. For example, I, and others who work in retail, are expected to enforce private property laws, by assisting in dissuading customers from theft, again in direct contradiction to our alleged class interests. Other workers in my store take this for granted and even approve of this.
What is to be made of it?
Jul 24 2007 21:38
#2
alibadani wrote:
Does your job include attacking strikers, protecting scabs, shooting protesters?
yeah and even when they are going after real scum fucks it generally serves to reinforce a certain attitude about society.
Jul 24 2007 21:46
#3
Apart from the SPGB, marxists have always argued that the police are not part of the working class. The definition of class is in general based on the criteria Tree puts forward, but it's not a tick-boxing exercise. If your job is founded on the repression of the working class, you're not part of it.
Jul 24 2007 21:48
#4
I'd argue they are part of the working class just that their role puts them at odds with the rest of it.
Jul 24 2007 22:09
#5
Alf wrote:
If your job is founded on the repression of the working class, you're not part of it.
What about bank tellers? They're the ones who decide if workers get money or not.
Jul 24 2007 22:15
#6
revol68 wrote:
I'd argue they are part of the working class just that their role puts them at odds with the rest of it.
i'd tend to agree, though apparently in the winnipeg general strike of 1919 the cops joined the strikers. generally they do that less than armies though, but i guess armies have historically been conscripted, i don't know how cop insubordination relates to professional soldier insubordination.
Jul 24 2007 22:18
#7
alibadani wrote:
Does your job include attacking strikers, protecting scabs, shooting protesters?
Only on weekends... 
Anyway, my work does include (at least hypothetically) shouting at people, possibly even physically blocking them, if they try to steal from the shop, or at least calling security on them. That makes my job, indeed, any retail work, complicit with enforcing private property relations and impeding expropriation.
Alf wrote:
If your job is founded on the repression of the working class, you're not part of it.
I'd imagine the circumstances leading someone to find work in the police are pretty much the same ones which would lead someone to find work in retail or in a factory. When is that crucial point where one has drifted off from the working class?
revol68 wrote:
I'd argue they are part of the working class just that their role puts them at odds with the rest of it.
Indeed. But how does that come about? What is it that makes it so difficult to disentangle them from their role, when it's claimed that the physical conditions of one's existence should have an overwhelming influence on one's consciousness, and these conditions are in many ways the same for a factory worker as they are for a cop?
Jul 24 2007 22:23
#8
there's a statue in Moscow of William Barrett the cop who sparked the 1907 police mutiny when he refused to sit beside a scab driver on a motor wagon.
Jul 24 2007 22:34
#9
Just for those who don't know this police mutiny was in Belfast at the time of the 1907 dock strike.
As to disentangling them from their role, why is that relevant to our attitude to the police and policing. Some of them may be opposed to the war in Iraq, some of them may believe that there should be investment by government in social housing to alleviate homelessness, some of them may be opposed to the running down of the health service, school closures and the driving down of wages and terms and conditions. Thats individuals, in their role they will be involved in harassing, carrying out surveillance of and beating and arresting anti-war protestors, harassing homeless people and 'beggars', policing and breaking picketlines. What needs disentangled? If in any situation people like this are confronted with contradictions between their instincts as working class people and the role they are placed in in their job (to an uncomparable level to you and others in the retail industry) then they need to sort that and disentangle themselves.
Jul 24 2007 22:55
#10
Quote:
Revol wrote: "there's a statue in Moscow of William Barrett the cop who sparked the 1907 police mutiny when he refused to sit beside a scab driver on a motor wagon."
Wow! Tell us more of the story of the statue and how that came to be, did he end up in the CPI or CPGB or something?
Quote:
Boul wrote "disentangle themselves"
Yeah that is what happens I should imagine, treeofjudas consciousness changes through struggle, it doesn't exist in some class of automatic relationship with an objective economic position, a process of struggle is hardly gonna have your copper develop this or that perspective though as more often than you will find them engaged in repressing, on the other side of your proverbial barricade.
Not always though as in the Belfast 1907 example...and there is some footage from Bolivia in 2001 or 2003 of the cops shooting it out with an elite military unit after the unit in question had started to open fire on anti-privatisation demonstrators, and there was some anti-open cast mining protest camp in Wales that the local cops used to collect money for, they got ones in from another division to evict it....less spectacular than Bolivia though..but interesing.
Jul 24 2007 23:14
#11
I can't find anymore about it but they had a BBC documentary about the 1907 strike and at the end they mentioned there was a statue of him in Moscow. Google hasn't produced anything though.
Jul 24 2007 23:16
#12
Workers in struggle have a long tradition of trying to decompose the police force by calling on them to break ranks, by pointing out that they may well be the children or parents of workers, etc, so it's not a question of demonising them as individuals. But there is an objective element to their role which cuts them off from the class as long as they are fulfilling it 'properly'. There are many jobs where you get caught up in minor 'policing' functions, but being a shop worker who when minding the till has to look out for shoplifters is not the same as being a policeman whose entire role involves directly reinforcing the system. It's only when that role begins to break down that there can be any possibility of (former) policemen going over to the class struggle.
Jul 24 2007 23:36
#13
I was going to post a similar thread a little while ago. This was prompted by reading somewhere that the Police Federation was balloting its members re taking industrial action. Apparently the last time the Police Force went on strike in mainland Britain was in 1919, after which strike action was made illegal. The 'Workers in Uniform' debate has rolled on for years. Are police officers (and indeed military personell) by definition, tools of the state - protectors of property and guardians of law & order ie the interests of the ruling class. Or are they misguided workers, corrupted, conditioned and brain washed by the system - like a lot of other workers who prop up the system (some of which are mentioned earlier). I think we missed out charming characters like bailiffs, security guards (like the ones who beat shit out of tree and road protestors, guard research establishments, power plants etcc etc), bouncers, debt collectors, insurance and benefit fraud investigators, the people who do the clerical and admin work for Money lenders, armed forces and the police. The list goes on....... working class all.... So back to the police. Do they 'deserve' or warrent class solidarity for industrial action or examples of conscientious objection? Sections of the left and anti-war movement supported military refusniks and dissenters over Iraq (who actually probably went to N.Ireland without question), would/should the same happen for the police? Again, as mentioned earlier, most revolutionary situations in history have hinged on which way the military went - granted mainly conscript armies - but not always. In a revolutionary situation would class consciousness and solidarity with their communities prevail with large sections of the police force and army, and indeed reactionary elements of the working class? I think it's about creating a situation where all workers search their consciousness, question what they are doing, question their relationship with statism and capital, learn and appreciate what the social order of things is really about. On another point, the state has generally in times of civil unrest/disobediance/industrial action, when it deemed it necessary to bring in the troops , they always brought them in from out of town to avoid any sympathy with the local population.
Jul 25 2007 03:04
#14
Alf wrote:
Apart from the SPGB
What do they think about the police? Quotes/resources?
Jul 25 2007 03:11
#15
Quote:
I'd tend to agree, though apparently in the winnipeg general strike of 1919 the cops joined the strikers. generally they do that less than armies though, but i guess armies have historically been conscripted, i don't know how cop insubordination relates to professional soldier insubordination.
There was actually several instances into the 20's of the police siding with strikers and even taking extremely militant industrial action (including blowing up a judges house apparently). R.R. Berkman has a bunch of stuff on this, pretty interesting stuff. I would say cops are part of the working class but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to side with us, and when they do we should make sure they are sticking their neck out to extend solidarity and not the other way around. Lets not be naive here.
Jul 25 2007 03:18
#16
Oh one other thing, many of the strikers in winnipeg were soldiers who had just returned from the war, often the police is also used as a means of employing ex vets as well. So was the post office (300 OBU members were fired from the Canadian post for participating in the general strike). Much of the strike was over veterans benefits and so likely their being ex soldiers may have played a major role. I'll see what Berkman has to say on this stuff.
Jul 25 2007 07:16
#17
Interesting that Marx gave no guidance on how to deal with dissidents.
Hence every Marxist regime that took power found it had to quickly set up departments of civil and secret police. And if this wasn't enough they needed networks of informers and the criminalisation of dissent.
Anarchists do not prosper under Marxist regimes.
Peter Good(TCA)
Jul 25 2007 08:58
#18
playinghob wrote:
On another point, the state has generally in times of civil unrest/disobediance/industrial action, when it deemed it necessary to bring in the troops , they always brought them in from out of town to avoid any sympathy with the local population.
yeah, like in the '84 miners' strike the london met did most of the dirty work
Jul 25 2007 09:26
#19
The SPGB defines the police as workers because they are paid a wage. Haven't checked the sources for a while but I have had this discussion with SPGB members many times.
I don't think we can support police strikes and call for solidarity with them, even if, in a period of intense class struggle, such developments could herald the actual dissolution of the police.
Jul 25 2007 12:01
#20
What the fuck is a marxist regime?
Jul 25 2007 12:58
#21
This is an interesting question. Cue some rambling thoughts from me!
The question of class is determined by a true economic role. While receiving a wage is part of the definition of class, by itself it's not enough. For example, many senior managers are paid a wage (even those right up the top) are paid in a salary form but this doesn't make them working class, does it? How about MPs? The Prime Minister? Priests?
The police, by definition, are part of the state apparatus and perform unproductive labour in that they don't actually produce anything. In decades gone by, this alone would have made it obvious to most workers that they were "the enemy" but the massive expansion of the state and unproductive labour has perhaps blurred this distinction. For example, a clerk processing council tax collection is a state employee and performing unproductive labour - but I'd say they're still part of the working class. The difference is that an admin function can basically be anything in any organisation - similarly a factory worker may produce medicine for workers or weapons to kill them. But the police function is very specific in that it defends the state. This sets them apart even from your average security guard, about whom similar arguments may be raised.
Are the police exploited? Their wages are relatively low but exploitation means they produce more value than they are remunerated for. With a factory worker, this is pretty obvious. Slightly less so for office workers (due to the largely unproductive nature of their work) but still relatively straightforward. What "value" can be ascribed to catching a murderer (a positive function, it might be argued) or beating the crap out a worker on a picket line (their real function)? Difficult to say ...
How about form of work? A shop worker, a factory worker, a nurse, a clerk all share the factory form of organisation in that they are subject to division of labour to a greater or lesser extent. While the police have different areas of specialisation, I don't think this applies to them in anywhere near the same degree.
As far as consciousness is concerned, I don't think Marxism has ever claimed a purely mechanical link between class and consciousness. In Marxist terms, consciousness is a measure of a class' awareness of its objective situation and interests. There is generally a tendency for this to be pushed forward, but there are also counter-tendencies. For the working class, an exploited class with no access to the means of intellectual production there are particular difficulties.
Jul 25 2007 19:08
#22
Here's how I think of it. Cops are in the class like the class in itself. They're paid a wage, I'd guess they do surplus labor greater than what they're paid, they don't live from the purchase of others' labor power, and they play a role in making capital accumulate. But they're not and can't be part of the class for itself, acting on the interest of the class as a whole, because they're class traitors. Same for jobs like managers and prison guards etc, and for scabs and workers who rat others out etc.
Jul 25 2007 19:22
#23
revol68 wrote:
I can't find anymore about it but they had a BBC documentary about the 1907 strike and at the end they mentioned there was a statue of him in Moscow. Google hasn't produced anything though.
This help?
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/82459
Jul 25 2007 21:50
#24
Demogorgon303 wrote:
What "value" can be ascribed to catching a murderer (a positive function, it might be argued) or beating the crap out a worker on a picket line (their real function)? Difficult to say ...How about form of work? A shop worker, a factory worker, a nurse, a clerk all share the factory form of organisation in that they are subject to division of labour to a greater or lesser extent. While the police have different areas of specialisation, I don't think this applies to them in anywhere near the same degree.
Obviously there is value in catching murderers, paedophiles, etc - but you have to consider two different types of policing. There are detectives and investigators who work after the event, and you could argue that this is the only police you really need, since how often do 'beat' police and other posts like that actually stop crimes from occurring, they might catch the odd shoplifter running away, but generally their role is to intimidate people. The former type are for punishment, the latter for prevention - but it will never be possible to prevent crime, to believe so is just a trap that people fall into by allowing more state intrusion. So perhaps there should be more division of labour within the police? Divide what performs a genuine social function and exclude the rest.
Jul 27 2007 10:47
#25
Demogorgon303 wrote:
Are the police exploited? Their wages are relatively low but exploitation means they produce more value than they are remunerated for. With a factory worker, this is pretty obvious. Slightly less so for office workers (due to the largely unproductive nature of their work) but still relatively straightforward. What "value" can be ascribed to catching a murderer (a positive function, it might be argued) or beating the crap out a worker on a picket line (their real function)? Difficult to say ...
.
Er are you claiming the police don't produce value for capital? Thats somewhat bizarre, i would have thought the value they produce was pretty clear. And yeah i'd say being a copper would be a lot fucking easier in a communist society; less hours, a lot less crime, no strike breaking, less bueaucracy and all that. Unless you think we're just going to do without a police force (albeit a saller and massively restructurd one) and that traffic will just police itself or something, but i generally assumed that position was restricted to weirdo maoists and crackpot individualist anarchos.
I don't think you can really let actively serving police officers in socialist organisations outside of a revolutionary period, or i'd at least be more than a little skeptical of any organisation that was doing so in britain in 2007, but i don't see a problem with treating them as workers for the purposes of theory and agitation other than a ridiculous cultural one. Sure a lot of working class areas hate the cops, but i don't see why we should base our actions on this just as we don't base our actions on the opposite spectrum of social conservatism. Lots of people i worked with hated squaddies back in colchester, largely because the paras were based there, but you can't base peace stuff on that prejudice or the opposite point of view.
Jul 31 2007 20:17
#26
I'm not convinced they do produce value for capital, certainly not in terms of accumulation. That in itself doesn't make them non-proletarian, though, as I tried to suggest above.
Nor did I say there would be no "police" in a communist society - although actually I think this is possible in a truly communist society. But certainly post-revolution there will need to be one - composed of workers mandated by the Soviets, like the Red Guard, or the workers in the Seattle uprising that were identified by white armbands, etc.
But we're talking about the police in bourgeois society, which serve a particular function of oppressing the working class in direct service to the bourgeois class. Their entire existence is predicated upon this.
You mention treating them as workers for the purposes of agitation. What agitation do you intend to carry out towards the police? I think leafleting a police station would be rather unwise. Similarly, I wonder how many workers in a period of rising confrontation with the state (which will involve conflict with the police) will be sympathetic to the idea that they're really part of us?
The comparison with the Armed Forces is a common one, of course and superficially this would seem justified. There are a number of key difference, however. Firstly, we should differentiate between professional armies and conscript armies. When Lenin talked about "workers and peasants in uniform", he was referring to a situation where most armies in the world functioned on the basis of conscription. Despite this, even today, most soldiers come from a working class background - and usually from the more impoverished sections of the working class. Hence the reason Marxists talk about economic conscription. I'm not sure you can say the same for the police.
Jul 31 2007 20:43
#27
Just to add to police who crossed over, there's Sandor Kopasci who was police chief in Budapest, wrote "In the Name of the Working Class" (on my bookshelf but not read yet).
in general - one way I've heard it described is that the police's "condition is proletarian" - i.e. waged labour, no property etc. Although I'd follow a police strike with interest, I don't think they can be supported and they're only going to support workers struggle to the extent they cease to be police officers.
I reckon when there's so few strikes (and even the ones there are don't have big picket lines), a lot more 'neutral' people will join the police, especially with all this community policing bollocks, who could just as easily leave it if things started getting difficult.
What about PCSOs and special constables?
Jul 31 2007 21:05
#28
Quote:
I reckon when there's so few strikes (and even the ones there are don't have big picket lines), a lot more 'neutral' people will join the police, especially with all this community policing bollocks, who could just as easily leave it if things started getting difficult.
aye the amount of people i keep hearing of who've joined the PSNI is fucking mental, people you wouldn't imagine as your typical cops, saying that the PSNI is marketing itself as possibly the most liberal PC police force in the world at the moment, there's even been 1000 polish immigrants applied so far this year.
Aug 1 2007 11:33
#29
Is that not a very exagerated figure, I think the chief constables report has a much lower number - like a cuppla hundred. They weren't immigrants either - the PSNI had a recruitment drive in Poland. None of them got through selection by the way.
Aug 1 2007 13:26
#30
Boulcolonialboy wrote:
Is that not a very exagerated figure, I think the chief constables report has a much lower number - like a cuppla hundred. They weren't immigrants either - the PSNI had a recruitment drive in Poland. None of them got through selection by the way.
nah the figure that applied was about 1000 (I heard 800 though as well) , and they might not be immigrants right now but unless the PSNI's work from home policy is very very progressive I'd imagine they'll have to become immigrants (you pedantic gobshite!).
Does your job include attacking strikers, protecting scabs, shooting protesters?