Why does police authority exist?
By James Rothenberg
June 01, 2020 "Information
Clearing House"
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Police brutality has again
injected itself into the public
eye. Today we see what could be
covered up before. The actual
crime. And because we see it, we
feel it, making the brutality
seem closer and more frequent.
And then we witness the hostile
reaction of lowly people to the
coercive apparatus which
enforces their subordination and
we feel the rage of the lowly
people. Or, do we?
Burning and looting is
unsettling to watch, even when
you understand it. And,
particularly if you don’t
understand it, you may think
there’s a middle ground
somewhere but none exists.
What’s coming next — what has
to come next — is increased
force from above. Unless we want
to be a part of that, we must
consider ourselves lowly. This I
gladly do because it puts me on
a side.
Things don’t get by as much as
they did in the pre-digital age.
Oppression is not limited to
skin color, but think back to
the days when blacks were
lynched. Not only were the
perpetrators not hiding what
they did, but they broadcast it
in the widest ways possible to
act as examples.
It’s possible that instances of
police brutality have actually
decreased proportional to
population. Though this
reasoning is unscientific, the
restraining presence of security
cameras, body cameras on police
and ubiquitous cell phone
cameras in peoples’ hands figure
to have an effect greater than
zero.
Of course it’s beside the point
if we’re alarmed at a new level
of police violence, or simply
alarmed because this violence
doesn’t escape our attention. If
there is a distinction here, it
is mentioned solely to get it
out of the way for a different
examination.
A recent op-ed in the
New York Times by Philip V.
McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris
bore the strong headline, “No
More Money for the Police”. The
authors observe that the
Minneapolis Police Department,
held up as a model of
progressive police reform, has
gone through all the recommended
procedures you can think of but
to what avail? It seems we
haven’t had much luck in
“training” police brutality
away. At a certain point one
cannot get away from concluding
that police brutality is here
because police are here.
“The problem is that the entire
criminal justice system gives
police officers the power and
opportunity to systematically
harass and kill with impunity.”
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They further envision the power
of the police being reduced and
eventually abolished, along with
the prisons,
with the money — an estimated
$100 billion — directed in ways
more beneficial to society.
That’s a revolutionary thought,
just as it was a century ago
when Lenin wrote “The State and
Revolution”. The Marxist
analysis is that the state is an
unnecessary evil, with the
police (armed force) as the
chief instrument of its power.
Lenin cites Friedrich Engels,
co-author of “The Communist
Manifesto” with Karl Marx, in
that,
“The state is, therefore, by no
means a power forced on society
from without; …Rather, it is a
product of society at a certain
stage of development; it is the
admission that this society has
become entangled in an insoluble
contradiction with itself, that
it has split into irreconcilable
antagonisms which it is
powerless to dispel. But in
order that these antagonisms,
these classes with conflicting
economic interests, might not
consume themselves and society
in fruitless struggle, it became
necessary to have a power,
seemingly standing above
society, that would alleviate
the conflict and keep it within
the bounds of ‘order’…”.
"Engels elucidates the concept
of the “power” which is called
the state, a power which arose
from society but places itself
above it and alienates itself
more and more from it. What does
this power mainly consist of? It
consists of special bodies of
armed men having prisons, etc.,
at their command.”
Thus the special problem of
whether police violence is
becoming worse or not gives way
to the general problem. Why does
police authority exist? If it
exists because “the state is a
product of the irreconcilability
of class antagonisms” (Lenin),
then we have to ask where the
antagonism comes from. And if we
find that the oligarchic class
(the colloquial 1%) have
interests that are inimical to
the class of workers (the
colloquial 99%), but especially
so to the sub-classes of the
99%, we will have identified a
source of the conflict.
If we then find that state power
is associated with the
oligarchy, it becomes clear that
it has to be protected from any
actual or potential movements
from below, and — significantly
— that it does not win on
numbers.
The social function of the
police is to protect and serve
the certain interests of the
state. Changing this involves
taking the side of the
proletariat in the class warfare
which characterizes capitalism.
Since this places one on an
opposite side to the state, the
problem of the police and the
problem of the state become
inseparable.
