The police aren't neutral PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 03 March 2009 11:03

Chris B

There’s a pretty pervasive myth that the state plays the role of a neutral arbiter, sort of some objective force, above and removed from society, which acts to mediate disputes between individuals in society. There’s this idea that by upholding the rule-of-law, all the competing interesting of all citizens can be fairly balanced.

So, in this light, the state is not seen as being an obstacle to a better society. The obstacle only arises when the state, and the machinery of the state – like the police – fail to maintain their separation from society and are “corrupted”. However, what needs to be appreciated here is that the State is not a neutral instrument – a tool which can be wielded by any class in society, but rather it is an expression of the class society which created it – namely a capitalist one. Lenin pointed out in State and Revolution, that just as "the ancient and feudal states were organs for the exploitation of the slaves and serfs; likewise, the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage-labour by capital."
Fredrick Engels put it very well in his book “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Summing up he says:
“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.”
Under a capitalist system, the two major classes are the Capitalists, (the bourgeois) and the Working Class. Both these classes have their own economic interests. Workers generally want higher wages, better working conditions, public healthcare and things like that. Capitalists, on the other hand generally want to pay lower wages, to spend less on working conditions, and to pay less taxes. And as you can see, these interests are generally irreconcilable – you cannot have both higher wages, and lower wages at the same time. This conflict of interest which gives rise to the Class Struggle.
So, as you can see, far from being an objective arbiter, the state is in fact a piller of capitalist rule. With this in mind, how does the State accomplish it’s task?
When times are good, and capital can afford to give a little back, and worker’s confidence is high, the state can act to channel that confidence, and co-opt the working class via reforms, and raising the minimum wage.
But what happens when the economy is not adequately performing? What happens when capital cannot afford to accede to the demands of the workers? This is where as Lenin puts it “Special bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc” come into play. And also, crucially, the state, and the police force’s, position above and separated from society.
The police as we know them were first established in London in 1829 by a ruling class increasingly worried about the Chartists, a rebellious workers' movement. Fredrick Engels wrote later that for "the English bourgeois...the policeman's truncheon … has a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working man quite otherwise." The police were much needed defenders of capitalist rule and property, able to violently break up demonstrations, arrest ringleaders and protect scab labour.
Early attempts to use the army on strikers and other demonstrations ran into difficulties - on the one hand, soldiers were usually conscripts billeted with working class families who might rebel against such orders; on the other hand their training and weapons were for indiscriminate killing which could provoke insurrection.
Most people do not think of repression and class conflict when they think of the police. When police constabularies were first introduced to British communities, there was massive public resistance. They were often stoned out of town, and when a constable was killed after a baton charge in 1833, the jury brought down a verdict of justifiable homicide.In response to this, a public relations exercise had to be carried out, emphasizing the role of the police as crime-fighters protecting your neighborhood.
But this image doesn’t really stand up to much scrutiny. The absolutely farcical performance of the Dunedin police recently, when they shut down half of the central city for a day all over one teenager with a flare gun is a good example. The fact that it took so many police officers, as well as other emergency services, so long to calm down one boy illustrates how having a police force that is separate, and crucially, antagonistic to the population is counterproductive to fighting crime. Other high profile cases also back up this position.
But it’s not just anecdotal evidence, crime statistics show how woefully inadequate the police force is at actually doing what they claim to do. Only about 20% of crimes are solved. And in the vast majority of these cases the offender is known to the victim – in Australia, according to their Bureau of Statistics, only about three percent of crimes are solved through actual detective work.
Futhermore, The Police actively target the most vulnerable members of society, almost half of arrests made for violence and dishonesty offences are Maori. Maori youth arrest rates are almost three times higher than Pakeha. It's a strategy of divide and rule that diverts attention away from real threats, such as government cuts to health care, towards unemployed teenagers, Maori or some other target group.
The 2007 terror raids on the Tuhoe communities in the Urewera has the same effect on a larger scale.
The role police play encourages them to see ordinary people as dangerous if uncontrolled, so as a group, they are among the most right-wing sections of society and have been shown again and again to have a deeply racist, sexist and homophobic culture. The culture exposed by the police rape trials of Rickards, Schollum, and Shipton was not an unfortunate historical anomaly, or however it was rationalized, but rather it is indicative of the sort of institutional behaviour encouraged by the way our police force is organized.
In a socialist world, there would be no police force. Rather, workers would democratically elect and control a militia force. They would work in the general interests of society. They would not be racist, sexist or homophobic. They would arrest real criminals, rather than the petty thieves whom receive the majority of police attention today.