Capitalism and cop violence
By Louis Paulsen
Chicago
The Black, Latino, Native, Asian and other
oppressed communities in the United States are suffering
under-in the apt words of Chicago activists-a "reign of police
terror."
On paper, the police are ordinary city workers, like
firefighters or paramedics. There are thousands of government
officials, investigators, and politicians with the power and
obligation to control the police, clean out the "rotten apples"
and provide the people with "good, honest police
protection."
But in reality, the crimes of the police are ignored and
hushed up by every level of politician and official, from the
watch commander up to Congress and the president.
Courts accept the confessions police extract by torture.
Prosecutors ignore the crimes of the police. "Oversight boards"
dismiss complaints against them.
Mayors, governors, and presidents defend the police and shut
their eyes to the ongoing violence.
Police are not just ordinary "city workers." Marxist theory
explains that they have a very special role.
Under capitalism most of the population-the working class-is
exploited for the benefit of a small minority. To protect this
small group of exploiters' wealth, people with guns keep the
majority from taking the wealth back. For the cops, protecting
the rich also means terrorizing the communities that have had
the most stolen from them.
At the moment, most white workers in the United States do
not feel the brutality of the police in their daily lives. But
when workers-Black or white-are driven to strike, when they
march in protest, police club and tear-gas them.
In a socialist country such as Cuba, the police play a much
different role. They do not defend a class of wealthy
exploiters, but serve the class of working people.
In any society, the behavior of the police is almost a
direct reflection of the ideas and values of the class that is
in power.
In the United States, the racist killer cop has the same
social values as business owners who close factories and bust
unions, politicians who throw millions off welfare, judges who
sentence Mumia Abu-Jamal to death, generals who organize wars
and massacres, and a president who imposes a genocidal blockade
upon Iraq.
The ruling class does not use its power to "reform" the
police because it wants the police as they are-racist, brutal
and violent just like the capitalist social order.
This shows that the fight against police brutality cannot
rely on some higher level of the capitalist government to
control the police.
The only way to control the police is to mobilize the poor,
working and oppressed people to build a force strong enough to
do it.
This is why the mission statement of the Greater Chicago
Committee against Police Brutality deserves to be read by
activists across the United States. It proclaims a strategy of
mass mobilization and of building community institutions of
control. And this is why it is so important that the
committee's May 19 protest be a success.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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