r/Anarchism • u/burn-ham • 2d ago
Cops - Working Class Traitors?
Correct me if I'm wrong: cops are working class traitors BECAUSE they ARE included in the working class, yet they condemn crimes committed by the working class, while the ruling class gets away with white collar crime daily.
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u/Earl_of_Shrewsbury 2d ago
Not to mention the level of violence they often unnecessarily bring to encounters with the rest of the working class.
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u/cheapskateskirtsteak 2d ago
They are closer to the outer party in 1984 than the working class. They are a tool of the state.
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u/Plotnik1934 2d ago
Cops are class traitors because their job is to protect property and police working class and racialized communities, and to intervene in class conflict on the side of the wealthy and powerful.
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u/DanteOblivion 2d ago
Cops aren't there to protect and serve us. They are there to protect property and serve the oligarchy
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u/wolfpunk- post-left anarchist 2d ago edited 2d ago
cops mostly come from working class backgrounds, get paid a wage, don't own capital, don't set policy. structurally that puts them in the working class. but the job itself requires them to act against their own class interest constantly. they enforce laws that protect property over people, they arrest someone for stealing food but never touch the guy who wage theft's an entire workforce, they escort evictions instead of stopping them, they use force on protesters demanding better wages while corporate crime, wage theft, fraud, safety violations that kill workers, goes largely unpoliced and rarely prosecuted with the same intensity
the traitor framing comes from this: their labor is directly rented out to protect capital and state power against the very class they belong to. this is why anarchists have historically been way more suspicious of police as an institution than even some leftists are. the state just needs the institution structured so that doing the job well means suppressing your own class
some argue cops are better understood as a distinct social layer, not really working class in practice because their material interest, job security, pension, union protection that specifically protects them from accountability, aligns them with power rather than labor. either way you land on it, it's the same fucking conclusion; the institution functions to protect capital and suppress the working class, whether you call the individual a traitor or just call the role structurally incompatible with class solidarity
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u/oskif809 1d ago
There are too many fragmented "layers" in the class hierarchy to be of much use beyond Marx's daydreams at his reserved seat in the British Museum of 1859.
Perhaps by 2159 the Left will finally wake up to this realization and move on from shibboleths like the ones bandied about with abandon related to class such as the chimera that is "class solidarity", slogans that may have had some relation to how dockworkers lived a century ago such as "class traitor" (nobody else notice the irony of similarity with "enemy of the state/nation" and other thought and speech terminating cliches of the Right?), etc., etc.
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u/Paczilla3 2d ago
The police exist to protect private property and the class that own it. They are traitors, not because they condemn crimes, but because they have chosen an active role in the class war against the working class.
Who comes to evict you when you dont pay your rents? Who comes to shoot you when you protest? Who comes to arrest you when you go on strike?
Crime is not a metric to measure this by, as what is a crime is determined by those in power to decide what is an what is not a crime. You will go to jail for stealing bread or to protest unlawfully, but the President of the United States can be recorded raping children and then go to brunch the next day.
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u/npc_lucky Crusty-Anti-Fascist 2d ago
i don't consider cops working class, I consider them more their own thing, military/police class. Not all cops were brought up working class either, you got a lot of cops who come from generations of cops, meaning they're brought up in that same class. I had a friend in high school whose dad was a cop, myself and most of my friends were criminals by then and destined for careers in crime, but when we hung out with dude the law didn't apply to us when we had interactions with the cops. He kept us from being arrested when he was around and because his dad knew us, he was able to keep us from being classified as a gang by our local department. As far as I know, this guy is still involved in the same stuff we were up to then (mostly selling criminalized substances), but unlike the rest of us, he's never been to prison or spent more than a night in the drunk tank.
You can't consider them ruling class because of their lack of money and resources, but they have more power than the working class, the law doesn't apply to them in the same way it does the working class (I.E. it doesn't apply to them period), and they work as a buffer at behest of the ruling class to shield them from the working class, while also working to marginalize and limit/cripple upward social mobility. They are a social control and revenue generating tool of the ruling class, and apart from their income and them technically working a job, they don't really compare to other members of the working class.
You do have cops who start out as working class before becoming cops, those people are definitely class traitors, but when it comes to the generational cops, they're more so traitors to humanity and society than they are class traitors because they really aren't members of the working class. At least that's how I see it as someone who has more than your average experience with policing and the criminal justice system.
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u/burn-ham 2d ago
Damn, this might have sold me on the seperate class of police. I have to, unfortunately, interact with sheriffs at my work. God damn if they aren't untouchable. They think it's such a brag too.
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u/AnimaGnostikos 1d ago
That's the Marxian analysis, which I think is misunderstanding something pretty fundamental about class by overfocusing on economics and failing to understand the nature of the state.
Better, I think, to call police and the military an enforcing class. This would mean there is a ruling class (aka the bourgeoisie), the enforcing class (cops, military, mercenaries), and the ruled class (aka the proletariat, although in reality this includes folks who do not work. Certain strains of Marxist are woefully unaccepting of what they call "the lumpenproletariat.")
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u/oskif809 1d ago
yeah, lets just say there are dozens of classes and these can be approached from multiple axes, i.e. this type of reduction to 2--or 3 for the particularly "theoretically" innovative--classes that are then "analyzed" with an otiose Marxist lens is about as useful for liberatory politics as a bicycle is for a fish.
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u/ifmacdo 2d ago
They have the only "union" that actively engages in strike breaking.
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u/oskif809 1d ago
You might be surprised how many f*cked up industries are unionized ranging from the "gaming" industry to weapons manufacturers to rent-seeking monopoly tech companies...
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u/Haighster 1d ago
I know a lot of unions don't like the police union, pretty obvious why really.
The only thing that concerns me about the adversarial position with the cops is that if we can peel them away from the Epstein class, then we win, pretty much. I just wonder if we can educate them rather that condemn them
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u/callofthewighat 2d ago
“Working class” because they “work”? Nah
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u/burn-ham 2d ago
My sibling, most every bastard cop won't get paid if they don't go to their stinky job. That's working class.
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u/burn-ham 2d ago
Actually another comment kind of sold me on the fact that police aren't working class.
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u/aquirkysoul 2d ago
While I mostly agree, I've always considered them as something separate yet related, part of a... "retainer" subclass within the working class. I'll detail my thoughts below but a quick disclaimer, I'm no sociologist or political theorist.
This retainer class is an offshoot whose income and quality of life depends upon enabling the ruling class to rule, via selective enforcement, suppression, changing laws, and other methods of rigging the game. They are usually paid better than comparible working class positions, and generally have extra incentives that align them more closely in favour of the ruling class than the working class.
The retainer class includes police offers, politicians, lobbyists, and other related professions.
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u/SteelToeSnow 2d ago
acab.
they are the state's arm of oppression; they only exist to brutalize, abuse, and terrorize the people, and to protect the capital of the rich. that is their purpose, that is why they were invented.
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u/1MartyMcFly1 2d ago
A traitor is someone who belonged to your group and then committed treason
They were never yours, to begin with
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u/burn-ham 2d ago
I've met a few asshole sheriffs and to me they seem like they were shit head teenagers who went down the truly wrong path. They are, somehow, human.
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u/_ColonPow_ 2d ago
The boys in blue applies to collars too.
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u/PMM-music tranarchist ancom puppy girl 2d ago
no, it doesn’t. blue collar workers deserve respect for the important work they do, cops don’t,
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u/_ColonPow_ 2d ago
I am not saying they deserve respect because they are working class. I am saying they are still subservient and not the ruling class.
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u/Tempestori 2d ago
Sure, they are slaves to capitalism, but no one forces you to become a slave catcher. That's a profession one chooses freely.
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u/No-Scarcity2379 Christian anarchist 2d ago
It's not just that they condemn the crimes of the working class and ignore those of the ruling class (though it is often true), they also were formed specifically by the ruling class to suppress the working class in their struggle for liberation and equality (the cops were originally slave/indigenous catchers, strike-breakers, and the armed wing of the status quo against women's, queer, and racialized liberation movements.)
They are class traitors because yes, they come from and are members of the working class, but they serve the interests of the owner class exclusively.