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The following was written in a discussion with members of the 'International Marxist Tendency' (Marxist.com) over the nature of the police, and how that organisation supports the idea that police are workers just like any other, forced to sell their labour power as all workers are. They just have a really s**t job: enforcing the oppression and repression of the working class and minorities. As such, they support strikes by police and prison guards as one would normally expect socialists to support strikes.

"David, when a worker goes to become a thug for the capitalist state, then that's what they are. It doesn't matter if they are forced to sell their labour, because the labour they perform is the direct oppression and repression of workers and minorities.

When they go on strike, they are striking for more rights against workers and the rest of the oppressed. You can say you support them as workers, but 'good conditions of work' for cops and screws mean in a very real, direct, physical way, the oppression and repression of the working class.

Good working conditions for cops, mean armor, guns and rights against workers. Why would any striking worker want the scabherders to have better riot shields, training, and guns? More rights to get away with breaking people's faces on the picket line? Why would any black want the paid thugs of the capitalist state to have more rights, weapons, and back up when terrorizing their community? Why would protesters want cops to have decent pay, inducing more people to become cops, meaning that the cops have reserves to deploy if here and there the protesters defend themselves from a cop assault?

The interests of the workers include a weak capitalist state power, and if you want to take that line in the manifesto seriously, then you can't avoid that point. But good living and working conditions for cops run directly counter to this basic interest of the proletariat. Andy said above that many workers voted for hitler, and that is no reason for Marxists to support the nazis in tailing the stupid backward views held by 'a lot' of workers. So why tail the stupid and backward views held by 'a lot' of workers that the cops are workers too? At bottom, a strong police force, with good working and living conditions is contradictory, physically contradictory in the form of guns, clubs, and tear gas, to the interests of the working class as a whole."

edit: 26-5-12 In a later discussion, about a photo that's been doing the rounds, in which there are unhelmeted cops in front of a protest, that leftists have been saying is a sign of cops joining the protest, when in reality, they just had their helmets off because they didn't expect s**t to get heavy, so why overprepare... And the cops were surrounding, not joining the protest, as subsequently became clear. That's beside the point though, for what follows:

About cops and pay, it doesn't really matter if they get paid s**t. I could go on my rant about how cops don't produce anything, and are merely bureaucrats with guns, and not proletarians, but that is an extremely technical argument, and kinda beside the point. It doesn't matter. It also doesn't matter if cops get paid 20k, 40k, 60k, or 160k. That's of concern only to to the treasury that shells out the dough, and the capitalists who may or may not be concerned about loyalty through pay.

To make an argument on that basis is to ignore the fact that cops are engaged in the day to day oppression and repression of workers and minorities. Their objective position is 'armed thugs of the bourgeoisie' while their subjective position puts them opposite workers, women, blacks, gays, all minorities in enforcing the racist, sexist, homophobic law and order of the capitalists. Everything from telling teens to stop loitering, to speeding tickets, to cracking down on drunken behaviors, drugs, enforcing evictions, breaking strikes, smashing protests, and scabherding, all of that puts them SUBJECTIVELY opposite the workers.

Rather than seize on temporary moments where the interests of the cops and other workers are aligned, such as in a public worker pay dispute where cops stand along side fire fighters, ambo's, clerks, teachers, and , leftists should denounce these temporary moments, leftists should seize on them to say "these racist, sexist, homophobic strikebreaking thugs are demanding MORE of your tax money in order to beat you up!"

This. So much this.