The living struggle & the state

In his groundbreaking book “The ­Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” Frederick Engels explained the evolution of the state this way: “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’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”

The role of the state as a repressive apparatus that includes the police, the prisons, the courts, the big business media and more should be studied and understood by every activist and revolutionary not only theoretically but practically. Even though Engels wrote this book over a century ago in 1884, it is more relevant today than ever.

The state arose out of class society thousands of years ago in order to protect the private property of the exploiters and to prevent organized rebellion by the exploited to liberate themselves. Private property under capitalism comes in the form of the means of production of everything in society — from machinery to factories to office buildings.

For nationally oppressed peoples or people of color, the state, especially in the form of the police and the courts, is an everyday menace that is extreme in nature. From the South Bronx, N.Y., to South Central in Los Angeles, Black and Brown communities face repressive police occupation on a daily basis.

Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo, an African American and an African immigrant respectively, were both unarmed when they were shot to death by the New York Police Department. A 2008 class action lawsuit revealed that Black and Latino/a people were stopped and frisked in large numbers within their neighborhoods by the NYPD based on their nationality. The numbers are vastly disproportionate to their actual number in the population.

But this violent nature of the state is spreading beyond the boundaries of the most marginalized sectors. The unprecedented capitalist economic crisis is now creating suffering among those layers who were once viewed as being “middle class” or privileged, especially if they were white. The Occupy Wall Street struggle is the most dynamic expression of the disillusionment that many white youth and others are feeling with the capitalist system.

The cops & Occupy Wall Street