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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 3, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Capitalism, police brutality and the state
Adapted from a talk by Pat Chin at the July 20 Workers World Party meeting in New York.
Not too long ago another Black man was viciously beaten by the police. On July 12, Thomas Jones was attacked by at least 12 Philadelphia cops after being shot and subdued following a car chase. The actions of the police lynch mob were videotaped and broadcast around the world. Days later, some cops appeared in public wearing T-shirts with a picture of the racist beating and the slogan, "Welcome to America."
As if this wasn't enough, only six days later Amtrak police in the "City of Brotherly Love"--site of the Republican convention--shot and killed a homeless man of African descent.
After the Jones beating, the big-business media and their puppets were quick to announce that some of the cops were Black. This tactic is used--as it was in the case of Patrick Dorismond, who was shot by a Latino cop--to divert attention from just how deeply entrenched racism is in the United States.
It is a fact that it's mostly white cops who attack Black people. And Black people are the main targets of police terror. But it's fundamentally important to expose the broader class context in which the police operate, their relationship to and position in the hierarchy of the capitalist state.
The beating of Thomas Jones was an outrageous and unfortunate occurrence. But it presents us with an opportunity to expose class oppression in the United States and the divisive role that racism plays.
The state
The state, according to Leninist theory, has four fundamental components: the army, the police, the courts, and the prisons. What's consistent about them all is that they're institutions of repression that exist in class society for the purpose of maintaining the power and privileges of the ruling class in their insatiable drive for limitless profits.
This necessarily means having mechanisms in place to dominate and control the majority of the population: the workers whose labor creates the wealth that fills the coffers of the rich; women, who reproduce the work force; the poor, whose hunger might drive them to rebellion; and any other groups like, for example, the lesbian/gay/bi/trans community, whose members do not conform to the hypocritical bourgeois model of acceptable behavior, or who are seen as threats to the nuclear family.
Racism, which is rooted in the slave trade and white supremacy, is not the only phenomenon the ruling class wants to deny. There's a reason we all learn to say the Pledge of Allegiance, for example. The words "one nation under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all" are really meant to fool us into believing that the United States is not divided into economic classes. And, consequently, that there is no repressive apparatus.
But this is a big lie. Marx and Lenin exposed decades ago that while the form of government may change, the fundamental function of the state remains the same--to keep the workers, the poor and oppressed from rebelling against the unjust rule of the rich. The army, the courts, the prisons and the police throughout all types of class societies have functioned to support the ruling class. This was true during the days of feudalism and during the days of chattel slavery in the U.S.
Today the repressive apparatus continues under the yoke of capitalist wage slavery. Let's look at what happens during a job action. There's never been one instance in history when striking workers could call the police to stop scabs from taking their jobs. It's never happened. But the bosses have the legal right, under bourgeois law, to call the police against strikers.
The repressive arms of the state often work together. This is what has created today's vast pool of super-exploited prisoners--the latest source of cheap labor. The courts play their part by assigning incompetent public defenders to poor people or railroading people to jail for minor drug offenses. The police, in turn, engage in frame-ups of innocent people, like Shaka Sankofa and Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Cops are mercenary agents
The cops are all mercenary agents of state terrorism. It doesn't matter if they're white, Black, Latino or Asian, if they're men or women, if they're gay, straight, bi or trans. They work to uphold the power of the rich in a system where racism is vital to continued exploitation.
Black cops are expected to be even more brutal than white cops, especially against their own people. Fortunately for the liberation struggle, not everyone is complicit with the white racist power structure like Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode was. In 1985 Goode allowed Philadelphia cops--duly advised by the Pentagon--to bomb the house occupied by MOVE members, causing death and destruction in a Black neighborhood.
And let's not talk about Gen. Colin Powell, who directed the invasion of Panama in 1989, killing thousands of poor people of color. This mass murderer is now being held up as a hero for Black children to emulate.
So you see, it's not enough to look at just race in analyzing a situation like the police beating of Thomas Jones or the killing of Patrick Dorismond. One has to look beyond the surface--at how the victimizer identifies--with what class, and who gets to rent his or her services.
The ruling class is driven to keep super-exploiting the masses. But they now have a big dilemma. For example, how to keep hiding the hideous crimes of racist police brutality and murders, as well as having the world's biggest prison population, a disproportionate number of whom are Black people and poor. It's becoming increasingly difficult to cover up these gaping wounds in the fabric of the so-called "American" success story--especially with the Internet and a video camera in almost every hand.
While it's very important to understand all the complexities of our society as they relate to the interaction of race and class, it's also crucial to comprehend how capitalism distorts reality and how the psychological effects of what amounts to brainwashing can paralyze the struggle.
We are led to believe, for example, that without the bosses we would be nothing. But it's the other way around. Without the workers the bosses would be nothing, there would be no such thing as profits--which is wealth that's created by and stolen from the working class.
History turned upside down
Under capitalism, history gets turned upside down. Cause becomes effect, effect becomes cause, and affirmative action gets turned into "reverse racism." Victims are demonized and victimizers get recast as the victims.
The lawyer for the four white cops who slaughtered Amadou Diallo, for example, had the gall to say that the trial of the four killer cops had to be moved to white upstate New York to avoid a "lynching"! As if Amadou wasn't the one who got lynched! The same tactic was tried in the case of Justin Volpe, the white cop who tortured Abner Louima.
Black people also get called "racist" when our rage finally boils over at being treated as less than human. This was true of Colin Fergueson, who shot and killed several white people on the Long Island Railroad some years ago. It was a tragic and unfortunate incident involving someone who in fact had an extreme reaction to living with racism. Reacting to racism, which is tied to white supremacy, is not the same as being a racist. The consequence of a phenomenon is not the same as its cause.
The profit system has a lot invested--literally--in fostering widespread denial about slavery and racism, their relationship to each other and to economic exploitation. This keeps hidden the bourgeoisie's most powerful weapon against working class unity, even though that's beginning to change.
When racism is discussed it's often watered down. Racist profiling is called racial profiling. Instead of talking about racism, a recent series in the New York Times spun the problem as "How the Races Live." And Bruce Springsteen composed a song about the murder of Amadou Diallo in which he talks about how easy it is to get killed in your "American" skin, rather than telling it like it really is: how easy it is to get killed in your Black skin.
Another thing is all this talk about Black people taking responsibility. What about the exploiters, when are they going to take responsibility? And, anyway, taking responsibility doesn't mean aspiring to Black capitalism, which the big bourgeoisie wouldn't allow anyway on a large scale.
For us revolutionaries, taking responsibility means using any means necessary to overturn the unjust system of the capitalist class that breeds, racism, poverty and war.
We need to keep organizing. But not just passing events. We need activities that will evolve into real political struggles with the repressive state that, for example, is trying to lynch Mumia Abu-Jamal and that executed Shaka Sankofa.
Capitalist exploitation and imperialist plunder have brought death, disease and misery to billions of people for hundreds of years. A system that is predatory, that breeds inequality by its very nature can't be reformed. It has to be uprooted by a social revolution.
This is what we live and prepare for as revolutionaries: to do everything possible to prosecute the class struggle. Our victory will set in motion the forces needed to end bigotry, racism and war.
The struggle will be a long one. It will be a hard one. But united, focused and clear, victory is certain.
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